Avoid Computer Injury - Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) Software

I've recently succumbed to the unforgiving punishment of continued computer use. I purchased my first computer in 1995. It had an Intel Pentium 133 MHz processor. I don't recall the memory size. It had a 4GB hard disk drive (called Quantum BigFoot). And so began my computing journey. I was inseparable from this machine. I vaguely remember a day passing without me using a computer. Of course, I had no hint that muscle injuries could occur due to extended and imporper use of computers. I don't think that everybody agrees the proper computing practices, but no one argues that regular breaks and stertches must be carried out during computer usage sessions.

Looking back at things, I averaged  about 10 hours a day using a computer. So, for the past 15 years, that's: 5,479 days or 54,790 hours!!! To be a bit conservative, I will take an average of 7 hours a day (to account for occasional breaks). That would only take it down to 38,353 hours... that's a lot of hours.

After looking at these numbers, and the stiffness in my shoulders, I decided that it is time to look for options. Of course, forcing myself to take breaks never worked, so the ideal candidate was a software that lurks in the background and tracks my computing levels to suggest micro and macro breaks.

Micro breaks seem to be the most important. These are very short breaks (10 to 30 seconds) that are to be taken between intervals of intense keyboard usage activity (~50 words per minute). In general, taking a micro break every 2 to 4 minutes is a good option. Ive looked at a few software and here's what I liked so far:

MacBreakz - I use that on my Mac. It tracks your activity and suggests breaks with stertching exercises. I like it a lot. It is very cheap ($25 for a single license) and it is worth every penny.

Wellnomics Workpace - Windows only. I used it for a while. The user interface is a bit ugly, but the software has great features. It can perform statistics and does real time keyboard tracking. It is expensive: $69 for a single license.

Workrave - Windows/Linux, and most importantly open source! It may not have all the advanced features of Workpace, but for the price, I'm taking it.

So here you go. My advice, don't underestimate this problem. Take the proper measures to reduce the impact of computer usage on your muscles and ultimately your career.

Cite as:
Saad, T. "Avoid Computer Injury - Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) Software". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/avoid-computer-injury-repetitive-strain.html?m=0

emacs, vim, svn, doxygen, and friends - Stocking your Unix Toolbox

Charles Reid, a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah and a very good colleague of mine, has kindly agreed to post some lectures from his summer "Scientific Computing Workshop" on PMAN. Charles is not only knowledgeable in all Unix related stuff (Unix, Linux, OSX), but also a very rigorous researcher. You can find his original workshop series on his website: http://charles.endoftheinternet.org/.

and here's part 2

Cite as:
Saad, T. "emacs, vim, svn, doxygen, and friends - Stocking your Unix Toolbox". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/emacs-vim-svn-doxygen-and-friends.html?m=0

LaTeX Symbols - Detexify

say you're looking for some weird LaTeX symbol but you don't want to go through an exhausting list of possible candidates. You just want to draw that symbol and have someone tell you what the syntax for that is.

Well, Detexify does this exact thing!!! Go ahead and try it (and train it, and by all means donate to these guys).

This is by far one of the most useful things I found on the net (thanks to this article on fellow blog walking randomly).

Cite as:
Saad, T. "LaTeX Symbols - Detexify". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/latex-symbols-detexify.html?m=0

How to Add a Contact Me Page to your Blog or Website

Turns out to be quite simple using Google docs! Here are the steps:

1. Go to Google docs
2. Create a new form
   
   
3. Customize the form to your liking by filling it with required info (Name, email, website, message...)
   
4. To add new items use the "Add item" button on the upper left. Use this to add more entries. For the message, add a paragraph text.
   
5. Finally, here's how it could look like. Don't forget to name the form and put in a short description
   
6. Now, you can get the code to embed that form in your website or blog. Just go to the "More actions" button on the upper right and choose embed.
7. Copy the embed code to your website or blog. In blogger, you can create a new page for that form and embed the code in it. See how it looks like on mine.

This form will automatically create an associated spreadsheet in your Google docs where it can store all the submissions going through the form. You will want to be notified of those submissions via email for example. To set this up, here's what you do

1. While still editing the form, choose "See responses -> Spreadsheet"
2. In the spreadsheet, go to: "Share -> Set notification rules" and specify how you wish to be notified

Voila!

Cite as:
Saad, T. "How to Add a Contact Me Page to your Blog or Website". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-add-contact-me-page-to-your-blog.html?m=0

How to Place Two Figures Side by Side in Latex Multicolumn Class

If you are using a multicolumn LaTeX class template, then placing two figures side by side so that they spawn the entire width of the page is done by simply using the {figure*} environment

\begin{figure*}
    \subfigure{...}
    \subfigure{...}
\end{figure*}

Voila!
You may want to move the code for your figure around so that it doesn't show up on the last page. Also, try using [ht] for figure placement

\begin{figure*}[ht]
    \subfigure{...}
    \subfigure{...}
\end{figure*}

This is a typical case with the IEEE Transactions LaTeX template which was the reason for searching the web for this. I learned it from here.

Cite as:
Saad, T. "How to Place Two Figures Side by Side in Latex Multicolumn Class". Weblog entry from Please Make A Note. http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-place-two-figures-side-by-side.html?m=0