Wed, 12 Aug 2009
Impressively simple solution to shoulder pain
For the last ten years I've been suffering from heavy shoulder pain due to a shoulder impingement syndrome. (In short: two bones are too close together, so there's too little space for the shoulder tendons to move, so they become inflamed and hurt a lot.) I've seen different doctors about it, the usual proposals were either regular physiotherapy, pain killer injections or an operation. I didn't really like the idea of the injections or the operation and had been forever putting off the physiotherapy, mostly because it just never seemd to be a good time to tell my boss that I'd have to start coming late or leaving early on a regular basis for the weeks to come and the "slow stretch" I had postponed it to just never showed up.
When the pain again got worse a couple of weeks ago I decided to once more see a doctor about it, mostly hoping that in the years since I last did so they might have come up with an alternative solution. Contrary to his colleagues I had consulted earlier this one actually put most effort into finding out, what had actually caused the syndrome in the first place. After establishing that I had never had an accident involving my shoulders and didn't go in for any sports worth mentioning we turned to professions, in my case IT. His prompt response: "Oh, in that case it's the mouse, maybe also the typing. Get a trackball and a wrist rest. I'll bet you'll feel significantly better after a few weeks already."
I wasn't too sure if that would really help that much, my typing is already pretty ergonomic and - considering I only use Linux and on that mostly command line programs - how much strain can I possibly get from using my mouse? Also, while I had never really used a trackball I still considered them rather awkward and kind of 80s. Also I seriously doubted if such a small change could really influence a condition that had been giving me serious pain for more than ten years. However, at least there was an alternative including neither operation, nor heavy drugs or regular obligations, so I decided to give it a try. I looked a bit into the current supply of trackballs (takes a VERY short time, there are like six to eight proper ones) and in the end got a Kensington Optical Expert Mouse. I actually found its price (over 90 Euros) pretty exaggerated but I still bought it, mostly since it had overall very good reviews and was the only one with a decent scroll facility.
After using the trackball for a couple of weeks I have to conclude: it worked. Really well! After some intial getting used to I now use my trackball just as fast and accurately as I used my mouse and, most importantly, the shoulder pain that had been a more or less constant bother during the last ten years is almost completely gone!
So why am I posting all this? Well mostly because I was really sceptic about (1) using a trackball at all and (2) that it would really make that much of a difference, and I guess a lot of other people feel the same. So this blog post it mostly a recommendation. If you work with your computer a lot and suffer from shoulder pain when lifting your arms or sleeping on the side, check if it might be an impingement problem, they're actually not that rare. And if it is and it's not caused by any other obvious reason do try a trackball. They also come with three buttons and a scroll wheel by now and are really not all that awkward once you get used to them.
Posted at: 15:34 in /english/personal
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Tue, 09 Jun 2009
Travel plans
I'll be on the road a lot in the coming weeks. All events (except our anniversary of course) are conferences and thus excellent coffee/beer/key signing possibilities. If you'd like to meet up, drop me a note by mail or irc.
- 11./12. June 2009: CBLOS'09, Flensburg, Germany
- 26.-28. June 2009: Off to the Harz mountains to celebrate our first wedding anniversary
- 17.-24. July 2009: ICCBR-2009, Seattle, WA, USA
- 25.-31. July 2009: Debconf 9, Cáceres, Spain
Posted at: 23:18 in /english/personal
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Sat, 21 Mar 2009
Chemnitz Linux Days 2009
This is my fourth CLT report and they surely are becoming repetitive! But every good event deserves a good report, so here goes:
Contrary to previous years we already arrived on Friday this year. Since we were also not up for another stint with the gym (Aaah the sissifying effects of marriage!) we booked a room with a nice little guesthouse about 15 bus-minutes from the venue.
The conference was great as ever:
- Speakers, booth personel and visitors were taken very good care of, there was nothing left to be desired
- Organisation was exicellent, no (noticable) technical difficulties, no scheduling problems, a helpful staff member literally every 5 meters
- A broad variety of very well-chosen talks from total beginner's to very sophisticated topics
- Several accompanying social events including the 2nd Night of Free Films
- A broad variety of exhibitors from small to large projects, both commercial and non commercial. CLT manages very well to be a community event that feels fun and almost like a family meeting but at the same time instills a sense of seriousness and respectability
I usually visit the CLT mostly for networking but I also managed to see a few talks. I moderated the session on High Performance and got to see three very nice talks on GPU programing, cluster computing and parallel programming.
This year also featured the first talk
on (the lack of) women in Free Software. Unusually enough this one was
even given by a man. I was quite curious about that talk, which was (how
fitting!) scheduled in direct succession to my own. I am kind of torn on
that topic myself. On one hand women in Free Software is a topic that is
very important to me and deserves any attention it can get. On the other
hand instead of talking about how evenly capable women are in Free Software
I'd rather just demonstrate it, for instance by giving a good Free Software
related talk. And instead of talking about how there should be more women
in Free Software I'd rather just be one and try to encourage others with my
example. The usual quota of female speakers at linux events is somewhere
between 2-4% and I just don't like the idea of having a conference with
n men talking about Free Software and 1 woman talking about
women. I've had these settings before and it just doesn't sit well with me.
Because of this I was quite please to find the topic being tackled by a man
this time.
The talk itself, in my impression, left a few open issues though. It was
rather brief and focussed mainly on stating the usual numbers, asserting
that the Women in FLOSS movement wasn't about affirmative action or
discriminating men and explaining how women feel discriminated by sexist
behaviour and advertising and how objection to such things should not be
mistaken as prudery. It's general advice on how to improve the quota of
women in FLOSS mostly boiled down to the linuxchix slogan "Be Polite. Be
Helpful.". What I missed most was practical advice to projects wishing
to attract more female contributors, such as mentoring programs or
low-threshold entry points. Also I felt that the talk lacked a real
motivation beyond "gender balance is a Good Thing". However, I was glad the
topic finally found its way into the CLT as well and I had a couple of very
interesting discussions afterwards.
Concerning my own talk I was rather satisfied as well. Attendance was - as usually in Chemnitz - very good, according to the organisers I got around 200 people. Since I designed the talk as a collaborative project and its feedback was predominantly good I'll continue developing it with the feedback I got and submit it again to other events. I think the topic is very worthwile and there's still a lot in it. Some people asked for a more collaborative way of contributing their thoughts and ideas so I'll just create a wiki to collect the new ideas. I'll of course announce it here as soon as it's in place. The slides and audio recording (both German) are as usually available from the talks page at CLT or my own talks section.
Posted at: 23:14 in /english/debian/events
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Wed, 18 Mar 2009
Release consequences, as seen at CLT'09
Hey Martin, I think you better get that new edition finished real quick!
Translation:
- Book: The Debian System, incl. official Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 sarge on DVD
- Sign: Help yourself! A gift from: Open Source Press
Picture taken at Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2009.
Posted at: 16:34 in /english/debian
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Thu, 05 Feb 2009
Looking for free projects!
Dear all, I am currently assembling a talk that discusses if and how the principles of free software can be applied to topics beyond operating systems and software. The first things that come to mind are surely the Creative Commons, free music, free films, free books etc. but I am sure that there is more, also even beyond the digital world.
I already know a couple projects but I am looking for many many more! So, what examples do you know for applications of the free software philosophy that go beyond the usual software/OS area? I'd be happy for any hints, urls, projects, authors, bands, names etc. that come to your mind!
To contact me, simply drop me an e-mail or prod me on irc (alphascorpii on OFTC and freenode).
Posted at: 18:47 in /english/misc
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