h a l f b a k e r yWarm and Fussy
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There was a thing called accupoint that went in and out of
fashion around the turn of the century. It was like a tiny
clickable joystick that sat between the g and h keys. You
could use it with either index finger without moving from
the home position. I loved it, but apparently I was in the
minority, because it lost out to the annoying and inferior
palmboard touchpad. |
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I'm still amazed after the popularity of ee-pads and other tablet type devices that touch-screens are not standard issue on all computers now. I mean what's all this faffing around moving one thing to control the position of another? We have evolved for millions of years to move a thing by touching it directly. |
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Just wait a few minutes and your wish will be granted. |
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...and the cat gets the other half of the keyboard? |
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//what's all this faffing around moving one thing
to control the position of another?// |
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For most heavy-duty users, they want the screen
to be large and vertical for ease of viewing, while
they want their hand movements to be small and
horizontal for ergonomics. |
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Also, touch-screens are useless whenever
precision is needed (as in graphics) since the
finger or stylus obscures the thing you're trying to
move. Touchscreens are great for simple uses or
when you don't have space for a keyboard, mouse,
trackpad or whatever. |
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Alterother I had an IBM thinkpad around 2005 with what
you describe. Reminded me of fingering a wart. |
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Yep, that's it. Some of them were pretty stiff, but they
were all quite precise. No idea why they stopped making
them. |
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My keyboards (all of the one I use these days) have
touchpads built into them. So I only have to move
my hand a very short distance from the keys to be
able to move the mouse-cursor. I recognized the
efficiency-of-motion thing about this arrangement as
soon as I first got a keyboard that had a trackball
built into it, and have always preferred such
combined keyboards since. |
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I'm typing on a ThinkPad with a Trackpoint right now. |
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I think there might be RSI issues eventually: fingers aren't really meant to be stressed laterally. |
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"I mean what's all this faffing around moving one thing to
control the position of another?" |
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Fascinating, isn't it? The way we send electrical impulses to
muscles that pull on tendons that cause things like elbows
and wrists to rotate, bony appendages to lift or extend, all
in order to make the fingers at the end of that "hand" at the
end of the "arm" change position. |
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Faffing around is a fundamental part of the human tool set.
We do it well because we need it to move our bodies.
Without the ability to learn new bodies we probably
wouldn't survive growing up. |
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Hey rcarty, check out the video in the Combimouse link.
He's actually moving the pointer by moving the keyboard. I
think something in my brain just broke watching that. |
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From reading rcarty ideas it seems that he would need a keyboard on his willy for using the computer. |
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I thought I'd already said this, but this is in the oven, for
both hands, three times over: King's Assembly, KeyMouse,
and Talons. |
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