The first column is the old style menu, the middle one is the ribbon, while the big bad left one is the new “file” menu, if you believe it. I was ashamed to post the old file menu….you would have cried…

So while it might be enjoyable to see movies all day long on a very wide monitor, for those of us who care to do a little work every now and again this new system sucks.

I’ll try to post some examples later so you can judge by yourself

1. I tried a different glove, this time it was a much stiffer one from Thermoskin. They have a couple of interesting gloves for people with RSI and CTS. This helped me a lot for my wrist, but in the meantime the pain got worse in my finger – my index – left and double clicks – being the most affected.

2. I bought a Genius Traveler 525 mouse  – which helped a lot as well because instead of the scroll wheel, it has a "touch wheel" so that you have less strain from zooming in Autocad, for example, and two extra buttons one of which I mapped the double click so I reduced my left-clicks by half. Another big advantage of this mouse is that it is very light – ~68grams, so less strain on the wrist

3. I dreamed (and still am) of proper drivers for the Apple Magic Mouse on a Windows PC. Yes, I know they do exist, but they are far from complete since you cannot have (yet) in Windows a software that does the customized mapping of mouse gestures. My goal would be to achieve lef and right clicks without the (mechanical) clicks, like on a touchpad, so that my finger won’t have any resistance to put up with when it clicks.. It can be done on a Mac, but still waiting for that feature in Windows. In the same product line -touch mice – there’s been another product that has been recently launched (only at the Hannover CeBit so far, not in stores yet) – the Ektouch IS Touch Mouse – I’m keeping an eye on that one as well

4. Last but not least, when I could to the point of an almost impossible click, I turned to a Wacom Intuos 4s tablet. I’ve been using it for a month and a half now and I haven’t touched the mouse since. It takes a while to get used to, but afterwards it does wonders to both the wrist and the fingers. For now (fingers crossed) the pain is almost gone and I can work properly again. This tablet has also a few unique advantages that make it even more useful. It has a “touch” scroll wheel on the side (similar to the Click Wheel on the Ipods) that one can use in conjunction with, for example, the middle button mapped on one of the pen’s buttons to do Autocad or 3dsMax  zoom/pan. It has several buttons on the side of the tablet that are fully customizable by mapping any commands on them. Plus, it has an on screen menu (with sub-menus) that you can pop-up and customize with any commands you wish, saving unecessary clicks and mouse movement. One other thing, with the tablet I managed to work without the above-mentioned glove

5. I’m still using in both Autocad and even more so in 3ds Max the 3d Connexion Space Navigator. It’s an amazing piece of machinery and it’s worth every penny – I could hardly ever go back to Alt+Middle Click for 3d navigation in 3ds Max :)). It still has some limitations in Autocad, namely it loses the current selection when zooming and panning if you’re not inside a command, but it’s a very small and acceptable trade-off for the joy of using it for all the navigation in those softwares. It works in Photoshop as well (not to mention most 2d/3d applications, Google Earth, etc), but for PS I prefer the keyboard shortcuts….

Voila, this is the current state of my fight with RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I hope it might help other people in the same situation.

If you think that my stories are crazy, please think again :)  – you cannot imagine how much harm the “harmless” keyboard and mouse in front of you can do to you.

Copy the “Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml”  from – in my XP version – it was in Documents and Setting\User\Application Data\Adobe\Bridge CS3 to – in my Windows 7 version – C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Bridge CS4

done :)

So the steps I took during the last couple of years are the following:

1. I got another chair that could be lifted to about 58-60cm. The elbow needs to be at a 90degrees angle when used for the mouse/keyboard and that was the height I needed.

2. got another mouse – the simplest one, with a wheel, a cable connection and no extra buttons. All the wireless models are in my opinion too heavy and that hurts (me at least ;). I’m good at about ~90grams for the mouse. The optic mouse with a cable is even better (the wheel weights some grams).

3. got an IMAK Smartglove – that was VERY helpful – it helps your palm and fingers rest horizontally on the mouse and not curved; I’ve been using it for more than two years now and I cannot touch a mouse without it.

4.got a different mouse – recently, after two years of steady pain, it started increasing again, so I had to look for new ways to improve/stabilize my condition. I looked into all the ergonomic mouses on the market and found out there is a certain category of them that maintain your hand in a more natural position – the handshake one that is. There are a few brands that do these, but in my opinion most of them are overpriced – Evoluent, Zero Tension Mouse, Aerobic Mouse – in the 80-120 $ range. Finally I found one that was fairly priced and bought it – the Wow Pen Joy at about 20 euros. The difference between the vertical and horizontal position of the palm is incredible – you can hardly go back to the classic mouse afterwards – vertical seems natural the instant you put the hand on the mouse.

5. got a 3d mouse/joystick – the idea I had in mind was to try and avoid as much activity for my right hand and fingers (the index hurt the most …well…all those clicks add up) as possible. I’m a huge fan of shortcuts (a little bit more further below), but in the trade I’m in – architecture – many clicks are unavoidable. One of the clicks that hurt the most was Alt+Middle Button (scroll wheel) in 3dsMax in order to orbit in 3d. On the suggestion of my friend Ionut I asked my boss to get me the Space Navigator. It’s an amazing piece of machinery – it can pan, zoom, rotate and tilt with a very small movement of the left hand and it works not only in Max, but in Autocad and Photoshop as well. Therefore I managed to pass to my left hand all of the clicks I had to do on my scroll wheel (Pan in Autocad is a continuous click on the middle button and you use it a lot)

6.mapped some mouse buttons – The Space Navigator has 2 extra buttons that you can map at will, which I did. The Pen Joy had 2 scroll buttons on the side that you pressed with the thumb and I thought of remapping those as well, give the thumb some work. Unfortunately the Pen Joy didn’t have any software included, so I had to find a software for remapping mouse buttons and I did so here .lt’s very good, easy to use and doesn’t take to much memory.

7.did a little bit of DYI in the hope of easing some of the pain from my index. I had to try and put the left click somewhere else…but where? how about a pedal? There are some foot-mice available, but they are very expensive and not worth it at all. The idea is nevertheless interesting and worth trying, at least in part. And that is what I did – I bought a pedal (basic, industrial one), dismanteled an old mouse, and with three small wires I connected the pedal to the switch of the left click in the mouse. The result was impressive – a USB pedal (I managed to put the entire mouse circuits inside it) that does the left click, and that with a 20 euros pedal and an old mouse. I’ll post a picture soon :)

8. used shortcuts and other tricks:

a) I mainly use 3 softwares with their appropiate shortcuts – for 3dsMax – the shorcut guide, for Photoshop – the shortcut guide and for Autocad – the shortcut guide. Of course I don’t use all the shortcuts available, but with a litte bit of discipline you can do a lot of tasks much faster than with the mouse (think of all the km of mouse distance you’re doing every year).

b) Another useful trick I found for 3d Studio Max was this script – autovb – MouseOver Viewport Switcher. What it does is that it automatically switches the active viewport to the viewport the mouse is hovering over. The big advantage is that you don’t have to right/middle click in order to activate the viewport.

c) as I previously posted here , theright-click customizable directory navigation FolderGit. It avoids hundreds and thousands of clicks that get you to that file/folder.

9. on the “to do” list – get a keyboard that has a scrolling wheel on the left side, take more breaks during work and probably do some more investigations – electromyography, electroneurography  and whatever other graphies can be necessary.

As I found out during my own research concerning the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, many of the tips and tricks that can help, temporary or permanently, have been found by people tinkering around their desk or workplace. If you stumble on my article and find it useful, or if you have any other ideas that might be helpful please don’t hesitate to post a comment :)

In my line of work – architecture, design, visualisation – i have a huge amount of files/directories corresponding to the same project; some are Photoshop related, some are Autocad related and others belong to 3dsMax. On top of that, it happens to me pretty often to have 3-4 current project, on which i might work on the same day even. Although I tried to have a proper directory structure with a couple of useful shortcuts, i still felt  navigation was a considerable timewaster.

So one day, browsing through the rss feed of Max Plugins, i stumbled upon Folder Git ;) – I guess the screenshot below is pretty self explanatory. It allows a user to configure his own right-click menu for browsing through directories and files. It works at the same time as a shortcut once you click on the Open tab of your software or when you’re in Windows Explorer, and it can open directly a file, without the need to go through the directories. The menus are fully customizable and you can even make presets depending on your current work.

The FolderGit wiki can be found here.

Hope you’ll find this useful :)

For some time now i’ve been looking for a way to have both Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk work under one software, sharing contacts – sort of like YM and MSN do. I know, there are several open source (and not only) options like Pidgin, Trillian, etc. For some unknown reason though I’m fond of Yahoo Messenger and i want to stick with it. Moreover,I was (am) waiting still for it to integrate properly with Google Talk – there were some announcements earlier this year concerning inter-operability- but for now there is nothing of the sort. From time to time i google the issue with no succes, until today, when i found the Gtalk plugin for Yahoo Messenger.

The aforementioned plugin is not the most straightforward way to integrate the two IM’s, I am well aware of that. But until a better solution is found – at least from my point of view – , this plugin works great for me. Thanks a lot Marius!

Images are from the plugin’s author post

Just follow the instructions and it works like a charm! One observation – when you unzip the plugin it will create a directory called gtalk.yplugin; rename that to test.yplugin and place it as instructed in C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Plugin\Test\ContentTab\. I had to create the ContentTab directory as well.

Good luck and I hope it helps :)

si ca bonus, ia uitati ce baieti finuti sunt norvegienii astia…ce pun ei drept capture screen cind lanseaza o noua versiune a browser-ului:

….wallpaper!

Pasul 1:

– instalati Ghostscript de  aici, licenta este GPL; cautati link-ul pentru Windows 32 in josul paginii – GPL Ghostscript 8.60 for 32-bit Windows

Pasul 2:

– instalati Ghostview (GSview) de aici, licenta este tot GPL; cautati tot versiunea Windows32

Pasul 3:

– instalati Pstoedit de aici, softul este sub copyright, dar mai degraba contribution-ware din cite am vazut in readme.

Pasul 4:

– deschideti aplicatia GSview (in radacina Ghostgum in Programs) si deschideti si fisierul .pdf pe care doriti sa il convertiti. Meniul de sus – Edit/Convert to vector format. Alegeti formatul .dxf simplu, nu "cu splines", lasati optiunile pe default, iar la sfirsit cind va este cerut numele fisierului aveti grija sa puneti si extensia .dxf la sfirsit (programul nu stie singur).

Pasul 5:

– deschideti .dxf-ul obtinut in Autocad. Textul nu s-a pastrat :), insa toate polylines-urile sunt la locul lor. Vedeti ca s-ar putea ca unele dintre aceastea sa aiba o grosime (width), dar puteti oricind s-o schimbati pe 0

bafta!

spor!

– am cumparat un scaun care sa se inalte suficient astfel ca unghiul cotului meu sa nu fie mai mic de 90de grade (pentru ca incheietura miinii sa nu se sprijine pe birou)

– am schimbat mouse-ul wireless cu baterii (care era foarte greu) cu un good old classic mouse cu fir si bila – mult mai usor

– am incercat sa fac pauze regulate si sa nu stau ore in sir in fata comp-ului nemiscat + oaresce exercitii – ex.1, ex.2, ex.3

– in cazul meu am evitat orice fel de supor pt. incheietura la mouse sau tastatura pentru ca orice presiune pe incheietura, cit de mica, imi face rau.

– si ultima ameliorare pe care am incercat sa o aduc: SmartGlove-ul de la IMAK despre care vorbeam in titlu:

Se face cam un an de cind folosesc o astfel de manusa, zi de zi, intre 8 si 10 ore pe zi. Imbunatatirea confortului de lucru a fost considerabila din prima zi si pina astazi (si cum tocmai mi-am comandat o manusa noua – de aici, se poate comanda si din Romania – m-am gindit sa scriu si articolul, poate foloseste cuiva). Manusa are citeva elemente foarte istete si de ajutor: in palma se afla un fel de "pernuta" care permite acesteia sa fie la acelasi nivel cu mouse-ul sau cu tastatura fara a o curba (una dintre situatiile in care pe mine ma durea foarte tare), deasupra miinii se afla o atela putin flexibila ce permite miinii o arcuire oarscum controlata, iar la acest model de manusa (exista si fara), degetul cel mare este "incadrat" de doua atele micute ce ajuta si ele foarte mult (in cazut in care doare).

bonus: un link cu ergonomia "de birou" si computer

Sper sa va ajute ;)

Inital mi-am inceput cautarea cu google si am gasit citeva:

Qumana blog editor

Post2blog

Blogdesk

Wbloggar

Windows Live Writer

Le-am instalat pe toate si dupa citeva ore de incercari am ajuns la concluzia surpinzatoare ca in ceea ce ma priveste, un produs Microsoft poate iesi pe primul loc. Microsoft Live Writer are toate functiunile pe care le consider necesare unui editor de blog offline: web layout, web preview offline cu setarile theme-ului wordpress, save draft atit local cit si pe server, manipulare usoara a imaginilor inclusiv setarea unui template default de insertie a lor, insert map/video/tag, editare de pagina.

Odata instalat, software-ul extrage toate setarile blogului pentru a-l putea reproduce (post-uri, page-uri) offline. Nu ramine decit sa scrieti articolul si sa apasati pe publish.

Incercati si voi si dati-mi si mie un semn daca ajungeti la alta concluzie