This important commentary talks about repetitive stress injuries and
a possible way to solve it, before it turns into Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.Fred Showker is a long time participant in the user goup community, and was one of the founders of America Online's User Group Forum...
Wrist Action
by Fred Showker
Do you ever have projects like this? The client wants it right away, and wants it cheap. It’s simple, just some pages of text dumped into a template. All photos are supplied, pre-halftoned. Simple. Right? Wrong.
This turned out to be one of those jobs we don’t like to remember. It was simple
until some time after the text we received the client’s layouts. Everything specified
in old-time newspaper lingo. All photos measured width by depth in picas - none of
which fit. Sixty some pages of part typed, part hand copy, all about 30% more than
would fit the space allocated. But that was just the beginning. Once we got it dumped
into the template, and style sheets in place, it actually didn’t look too bad - a
32 page tabloid.
Then they dropped the bomb.
Everything had to be re-formatted which lead us on a path of some sixteen revisions
- all complete with laser printout of the entire job. We changed some things like
cut-lines a half-dozen times. Articles were moved several times. Tweak here, tweak
there. Move this, move that.
It turned out, the guy was reliving his youth as the copy boy at the Baltimore SUN
and now imagined himself wielding awesome powers of the day editor. Not a pretty
sight. Your typical nightmare.
But that’s not why I'm writing this. During the weeks pounding away on this project, 99% of the work was mouse work. Quark XPress, Illustrator, then primarily selecting, dragging, and formatting. At the end of each day my hand, wrist, forearm and elbow ached like hot nails were driven into my joints. In ten short days my grip was completely gone - lifting anything even mildly heavy took two hands.
I spend a lot of my time in Illustrator, which is very mouse intensive, and this condition was now not only affecting my productivity but my sleep as well. I decided it was time to do something.
I picked up a Kensington Turbo Mouse to see if it would help. I had used (and enjoyed) the trackball back in the days of the Mac Plus but had given it up with the advent of ADB. Much to everyone’s surprise, the hand/wrist condition cleared up within a day or two. I now have absolutely no hand/wrist/arm problems whatsoever and can “roll” away all day in Illustrator. So, I just wanted to say: “Thank you” Kensington.
If your mouse hand is suffering. Try the trackball for a few days. It may just make all the difference in the world!
Fred
Fred Showker is a veteran of the graphics industry, and the Director of the internet Design & Publishing Center, and an associate editor for the User Group Network News Service.. You can chat with him directly on America OnLine, where he is “AFA Shwkr”, the forum advisor in the User Group Forum (UGF).
Editors: Permission is granted to reprint the above article in your newsletter so long as the end credit is included. If you reprint this article, please send a copy of the newsletter this article was printed in to: Editor, The User Group Network News Service, 15 Southgate, Harrisonburg, VA 22801 Copyright 1990, Fred Showker
