I finally got around to uploading images to my Flickr account today. Normally my Mom and Dad call me if I haven't uploaded new pictures of their granddaughter for more than 72 hours, but Dad's busy with an IPO road show, and Mom was, y'know, just bitten by a rattlesnake. So they've had other things to think about. They got me on the horn yesterday, though, and I promised I'd upload some shots from July before we go camping today.
I've got a couple thousand shots up on Flickr, but most of them are private for friends and family only. I know it's kind of paranoid, but I guess it just seems more respectful to the little one to let her make her own privacy decisions with respect to her own image. Of course, I can't help leaking a few nice ones every once in a while, like Amita June in the baby pool across the street in Parc La Fontaine:
What's a father to do? I've gotten used to Flickr, and my whole family and circle of friends uses it for sharing photos. It's one of my first stops on the Internet Procrastination Tour. I haven't really had as much luck with sharing video, though. I've tried a few of the video-sharing services, but none of them has worked out very well for me. I hope Flickr eventually gets into the video game.
tags: flickr amitajune mom dad parc la fontaine
Rant and rave
So, I've been using computers on a daily basis for more than 15 years. I get occasional back and arm pain, I'm very lucky in that I haven't had an RSI blowout in that time -- knock on wood. I'd like to keep it that way. Most of the things I love to do and that give me creative satisfaction involve writing at the keyboard.
One thing I do to try to stay healthy is use Workrave, the Gnome tool for splitting up your typing sessions into reasonable chunks. It takes over your screen and forces you to take a rest every 5 minutes or so, and makes you take a long break every hour or so. I definitely feel my best when I've got it running.
However, I also find it insanely frustrating. Right as I'm in the middle of doing something, a little indicator pops up in the center of my screen flashing red and telling me to stop working. Workrave is excellent at getting in my way, like a cubicle-mate who asks you stupid personal questions just as you're getting settled in to a groove.
So while Workrave keeps my hands and arms pain-free, it also keeps me at an elevated level of frustration all day. I wonder: is the advantage of keeping my typing rate slower worth the disadvantage of raising my blood pressure to the boiling point? If your computing tools are aggravating you by design, is there another ergonomic problem going on? What's the balance to be struck between physical and mental stress?
tags: workrave stress rsi aggravation