Jeff's RSI Stuff

I have tried just about every keyboard, mouse, trackball, and any other input device imaginable. While I will discuss all of these in future entries, I want to discuss one particular trackball today.

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One of the things that I find helpful, is being able to keep track how much I use my computer. Simply recording when I started and when I stop a task however is not very useful. This is especially true when I use voice recognition software which does most of the typing for me.

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I cannot begin to speak highly enough about audiobooks. I read constantly, however I began to notice that holding a book was aggravating my RSI symptoms. At first, it seemed unrelated. I was sitting in a reasonable position, the book wasn't heavy, etc.

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The definitive expert in my opinion. This site is run by Suparna Damany and Jack Bellis, the two authors of, "It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" (see below). This is definitely an excellent place to begin any search related to RSI.

I began using voice recognition programs about 10 years ago. Back then, you would spend $1000 or more to get a program that was barely able to work. You would have to talk in a robotic like monotone putting a pause in between each word. Even then you were lucky to get 70% accuracy (no matter what the marketing hype said).

Things have come a long way. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is an excellent example of that. I am using Dragon right now to "type" this paragraph. Without Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I would not be able to put together this website.

Right now I'm getting about 99% accuracy, and can dictate much faster than I could ever type. All this without exacerbating my injuries.

All of this power does come at a price. I'm running a very fast computer (a pair of dual core processors and 4 GB of RAM). I'm using a very expensive microphone. While none of this hardware is necessary, it dramatically increases the flexibility of the program.

In the future I plan to put a video on this site, illustrating the tips and techniques I've amassed for using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.