{"id":4596,"date":"2009-04-25T11:57:23","date_gmt":"2009-04-25T01:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=337"},"modified":"2009-04-25T11:57:23","modified_gmt":"2009-04-25T01:57:23","slug":"aside-keyboards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/04\/25\/aside-keyboards\/","title":{"rendered":"Aside &#8211; Keyboards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a high speed touch typist, I have more than a strong regard for <em>good<\/em> keyboards. As someone who has dealt with RSI for the last 10+ years, I have an even stronger regard for <em>healthy<\/em> keyboards.<\/p>\n<p>First, I&#8217;ll say from the outset that it&#8217;s my non-professional opinion that if you&#8217;re suffering from RSI and using a &#8220;wavy&#8221; keyboard (as pioneered by Microsoft), <strong>you need to throw it out<\/strong>. There&#8217;s a very important reason for this. The wave style keyboard is designed for hands &#8220;at rest&#8221; \u2013 and when you&#8217;re typing, your hands are <em>not at rest<\/em>. Thus, while the wavy keyboards are supposedly ergonomic, I and many other long term RSI sufferers find they simply exacerbate symptoms.<\/p>\n<h3>Kinesis-Ergo Keyboard<\/h3>\n<p>For a good 8 years, up until 18 months ago, I used one style of keyboard whenever I was at a desk \u2013 the <a title=\"Kinesis-Ergo Contoured\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kinesis-ergo.com\/contoured_usb.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Kinesis-Ergo Contoured keyboard<\/a>:<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Kinesis Ergo Contoured Keyboard\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kinesis-ergo.com\/images\/cont-above-hands-blk240x149.jpg\" alt=\"Kinesis Ergo Contoured Keyboard (Photo from Kinesis product page)\" width=\"240\" height=\"149\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kinesis-Ergo Contoured Keyboard (photo linked from Kinesis product page)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This has two very important features for RSI sufferers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The halves of the keyboard are separated far enough to encourage your arms into a 90 degree posture at your sides rather than stretching out or in;<\/li>\n<li>The concave nature of the keys means that your fingers, when you type, stretch outwards\/down, which is <em>an entirely natural movement<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Honestly, if it weren&#8217;t for the Kinesis keyboard I&#8217;d have had to find another industry to work in.<\/p>\n<h3>Apple&#8217;s new streamlined keyboards<\/h3>\n<p>When Apple&#8217;s <a title=\"Apple keyboards\" href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/au\/keyboard\/\" target=\"_self\">new streamlined keyboards<\/a> came out, I was still using my Kinesis-Ergo keyboard, and was entirely dismissive of these spartan designs. I was certain the pseudo-chiclet key design would just make for a bad typing experience. If you&#8217;ve not seen these, they look like this:<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Apple aluminium\/streamlined keyboard\" src=\"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/au\/keyboard\/images\/wired_keyboard20070813.gif\" alt=\"Apple aluminium\/streamlined keyboard (photo from Apple product page)\" width=\"400\" height=\"148\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apple aluminium\/streamlined keyboard (photo linked from Apple product page)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Several weeks after the keyboards came out I was wandering past an Apple reseller&#8217;s store and noticed they had the keyboards, so I went into the store to type on the keyboard to affirm my distrust of them.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine my surprise when I found it was quite simply the best keyboard experience I&#8217;ve ever had. The killer feature in these keyboards is the miniscule <strong>travel<\/strong> associated with hitting each key. Honestly, the typing force required on one of these keyboards is tiny \u2013 the only way I can describe it is that if you know the required force difference between trying to type on a manual type writer and a standard keyboard, you have some appreciation of the force difference required between typing on a regular keyboard and these Apple keyboards. It&#8217;s not quite the same amount, but it&#8217;s still quite a large amount.<\/p>\n<p>I now use the Apple streamlined keyboards exclusively when I&#8217;m at a desk. They&#8217;re <em>that good<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h3>Physical Treatment<\/h3>\n<p>Having been a daily rail commuter for work, I usually saw a chiropractor every 4 weeks (now it&#8217;s around every 6); for years now I&#8217;ve been getting hand\/arm adjustments as well as the regular adjustments (it&#8217;s not something a chiropractor typically looks at unless you ask them) &#8211; this definitely helped as a periodic treatment.<\/p>\n<p>However, about 3 years ago I was referred to a &#8220;neuromuscular massage therapist&#8221;, who worked wonders on my RSI. Through some <em>extremely<\/em> painful sessions, she worked at decalcification in the tissues in my arms, which enabled better blood flow and muscular strength, which literally wiped 8 years of RSI from me in two sessions. Two very painful, but very important sessions. I now go back every year or so for a refresher.<\/p>\n<h3>Final thoughts<\/h3>\n<p>Obviously different people have different experiences with RSI, but given how much I had to endure while looking for solutions, I wanted to post my experiences in the hopes that it helps others.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not a doctor, or have any physical sciences background \u2013 I&#8217;m a backup consultant, so don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m giving medical recommendations, just explaining what happened to work for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a high speed touch typist, I have more than a strong regard for good keyboards. As someone who has&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[514,515,845],"class_list":["post-4596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aside","tag-keyboard","tag-keyboards","tag-rsi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-1c8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}