Skip to main content

Lappyvator: the day after

Well, that seems to work.

For the first time in weeks I feel as though I’m actually catching up on work, rather than falling further and further behind. I was able to keyboard competently (well, for me :-) and recumbently until about 21:00 whereas yester-yesterday I was completely trashed by about 17:00 and had to have a few hours’ rest before another short (maybe an hour?) burst of work in the evening.

I found that I used completely different groups of muscles than I normally do, forex you have to hold your arms up a little (by pushing them slightly downwards) to type instead of dangling them from my elbows and propping them on my wrists; also the stresses on my neck are completely different — there’s not the constant balancing act, but in compensation if you want to move your head around you have to lift it (push it forwards) first. I can feel that special new-muscle tightness in my arms and neck which says that they’re going to seriously ache in a day or two. It’s going to be a “good” ache, though, a satisfying one rather than just pain.

Speaking of pain, I got an entire night’s uninterrupted sleep, too. Hooraw!

On the ergonomic side, the top of the frame makes a convenient handle for picking the whole thing up, laptop and all, to move it around.

I think that instead of mounting LEDs inside the hooks to light up the keyboard, I’d be better off clipping one to the front edge of the lid to cast light “straight” down onto the keys.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.