The Misadventures of David K

Staying Healthy When My Job Involves Sitting at a Computer all Day. Part 1.

2014-03-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

I spend hours on the computer every day. I suspect many of you do the same. It's a part of life for this generation. On average, I spend a minimum of eight hours in front of the screen each day. Another 3 hours are spend sitting while I commute. Close to eight hours are spent lying down. And the remaining 5 hours are a mixture of sitting down and standing up, but mostly sitting down.

I spend half my day sitting down. That translates to half my life sitting down.

Now I used to think that a few hours of running each week and some bodyweight exercises could help get me back into shape. While this is definitely possible, I have recently learned that even if I am in top shape, if I spend more than six hours at a stretch sitting down, I am more prone to heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes, and a shorter life. Not that I am in top shape.

Here are some links for more information on the risks of sitting at a stretch for too long.

Solutions?

Now the obvious solution is to stand up and move around some more. So I installed Workrave, a very nice little program that reminds me that I need to move once in a while. A few years ago it helped me get rid of a case of Very Stiff Knee. Recently, however, I have tended to forget that it is important to move around once in a while. I get lost in something I'm writing, and before I know it, three hours have gone by and I haven't moved a muscle (except for my fingers). As you can imagine, I ended up with another episode of Very Stiff Knee and also Very Sore Calves. I was sternly warned that I was taking my health for granted. So Workrave has become a serious part of my life again and I now take its break prompts seriously.

But at the end of the day, I've still spent half of it sitting down.

Enter the Standing Desk

Since the bulk of my time working is spent sitting down, a simple change that will greatly reduce the time I spend sitting down, is to work standing up. I didn't come up with this solution by myself, I read about it on Lifehacker. Now I know that standing for long periods of time also has its own set of problems, but I wanted the option. So I made myself a standing desk with the following:

A small table
My son's toy box
A flat board I had lying around
Two empty cans of oats
Two empty cans of infant formula
My self-made laptop stand

And voila! A standing desk. Being a freelancer does give me the freedom to do this :) I know it looks tall, but the keyboard is just the right height and I had to raise the laptop stand on the cans so I wasn't looking down at the screen at an awkward angle. Also excuse the grainy image, I do not have the luxury of time to properly edit the picture I took, or a tripod to use a lower ISO setting.

My Experience so Far

Well, so far equates to one day of standing. That day was yesterday. Today I am experiencing aches in my legs and lower back because standing forced me to stand straighter rather than slouching. But what about my experience when working standing?

For starters, I was able to focus better. Also, because I was standing, I found myself shuffling my feet, bending my knees, and kicking the air whenever my legs started feeling stiff. Overall it made me move a bit more. Now I may have overdone it yesterday because I spent the entire time I was at my computer standing (about six hours with tea breaks and lunch break). But overall, most of my aches are just my body getting used to the increased "activity" and some soreness I had in my upper back because of the way I tend to hunch over my laptop when sitting has decreased.

So I'm hoping to keep a log of my experiences with my improvised standing desk here. I'll keep updating it as I learn (from experience or from elsewhere) how to make standing desks work for me.

Maybe you can find them useful too.

Other Useful Stuff

If you are like me -- out of shape and unfit -- then you might find these books useful. Please note that these are affiliate links and if you purchase these books I will receive a small percentage at no extra cost to you.

The Beginning Runner's Handbook: The Proven 13-Week RunWalk Program: This is a great book for anyone who has been sedentary for years and wants to jog/run 10kms. The program takes 13 weeks and features run-walk segments that help you very slowly build your body's strength and endurance. I bought this book in 2012 and made it all the way to week 7 -- more than half way through -- before a severe asthma attack after exposure to insect repellent sidetracked me. My wife and I are planning to start the program together this coming week.
You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises: Though I have enjoyed working out at gyms (a long, long time ago) I do not have the luxury of time these days. A gym would need at least 2 hours of time for a 1 hour workout (commute, workout, shower, commute). As I searched for other ways to give me body something better to do I discovered bodyweight exercises. This book includes illustrated examples of over a hundred exercises. It also includes a few programs tailored for different fitness levels. So if you are very badly out of shape, there is a nice 10-week program for you. I haven't yet had the time to complete a program since I've bought this book, but I will post updates here once I am done.

To HUD or not to HUD - is the new addition to Ubuntu good?

2012-02-21T02:32:00.000-08:00

I am an avid user of Ubuntu, a popular version of the Linux OS. Why? Because a licenced version of Windows would cost me over a month's salary and the cost of a Mac is almost what I earn in half a year. I just can't justify the cost of another operating system.

But more than the cost issue, I found the operating system simple to use, the interface clean and the community extremely helpful. So I've stuck with Ubuntu for almost 5 years now as my primary operating system.

When the team working on Ubuntu announced Unity a few versions back, I was very skeptical. I liked the way things worked so why change everything so drastically? When I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 I did so with the intention of using the classic interface.

I haven't used it even once.

Despite my skepticism, I found Unity made my life easier. I quickly found the programs I needed and I found that it didn't affect my workflow negatively. And I learnt the ropes very fast.

And now it looks like we're in for another big change.

On January 24, Mark Shuttleworth (The man behind Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company if you will) announced the HUD in a blog post entitled Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.

Calling it the "Intenterface" he describes the HUD as a way of mapping a user's intent to the interface.

What is the HUD anyway

The HUD (Head-up display) is something similar to Ubuntu Unity. Similar to how Unity replaced the traditional menu through which one could find all the programs on a system, the HUD presents a new way to access application menus. However, menus will still be present.

So starting from Ubuntu 12.04, when you run a program that uses Unity for its menu, you will still see a menu, but you can now press a key - I believe it's ALT - and just like Unity, you'll be able to type in what you want to do (express your intent) and the HUD will present all possible options available in the program's menu. In his blog post, Mark Shuttleworth talks about the next step being voice commands. Apparently this is similar to Apple's Siri, but since I haven't used that I really can't say anything about it.

The HUD will also learn as time goes by and present your most used commands first. Here's a video on YouTube posted by the Ubuntu developers that illustrates the HUD:

So is it good or not?

Just as with Unity, there is controversy surrounding this development. You'll find lively debates on every blog that broaches the subject. Here are some snippets for:

This awesome, I have wanted something like this for a long time! In Libre Office for example I always know what function I want, but I rarely find it in the first menu tree I try.

I'm really not a fanboy and I'm the biggest critic of Unity. For example. what's up with discovering installed applications? I used to just click on Applications->Internet to find all Internet apps. Now news users don't even find the category because they don't think of them as filters. But with every release Unity is getting better and better and pieces start to fall into place as the bigger picture becomes clearer. Here's an example for HUD. I wanted to use Liquid Rescale im GIMP, yesterday. I couldn't find it in the filters but I was sure it is installed. So after 5min of not finding it, I went on to Google and figured out how to invoke it. This could have been as fast as hitting ALT and typing "liq"

A lot of people wants to drop the menubar and use a Chrome-style menu instead. That is now possible. The idea that it is impossible to come up with a more user friendly type of menu than the menubar is very strange. Of course it is. The reason it hasn't been changed is that it has never before been possible to change them without changing all the applications that uses menus.

And some against:

Perhaps they should upgrade the name as well to Dumbuntu. Did Mark plan for the 12.04 (April 2012) release to sink like the Titanic did 100 years earlier (April 1912).

Seriously….. first moving the buttons order and location, then Unity, now HUD?
I can see where it is so much easier to type bookmark instead of clicking a star. Using a GUI use to be so easy until everyone decided to make it easier.

My take on the HUD

As you can see from the comments above, there are many opinions about whether or not the HUD makes sense. A lot of the controversy stems from the fact that readers think traditional menus will be gone forever. That is not really the case. Here's a snippet from Mark's blog post:

In 12.04 LTS, the HUD is a smart look-ahead search through the app and system (indicator) menus... No app modifications are needed to get this level of experience. And you don’t have to adopt the HUD immediately, it’s there if you want it, supplementing the existing menu mechanism.

So I say it looks like something that can be pretty handy. Just like Unity, I can see myself quickly learning how to do a few things faster with the help of the HUD. Since the existing menu structure is still in place, I can use that for situations where the menu would be a faster way for me to do something.

Innovation-wise, I personally think it's great. Will it make the end user happy? We'll just have to wait and see. If Unity is anything to go by, I think many critics who gave it a shot found it pretty easy to use.

So basically, I am looking forward to it but I'll have to reserve my final comments till April when I actually take the HUD out for a spin.

Hello to Blogger! (And what this blog is for)

2012-01-21T06:56:00.000-08:00

Howdy folks!

My name is David. This is my third blog.

Why a third blog? Especially when I hardly have time to update the other two.

Well, the first blog is all about Ethiopia. And the second one is all about photography on Ubuntu. But there are so many other things that I want to write about. Every day I learn something new. I have so many interests.

Where do I put everything?

On this blog of course :)

You know how you find old boxes in old houses that are stuffed with things that can sometimes be very interesting? That's what I want this blog to be. I'm going to write about and save everything that I find fascinating that doesn't fit into my other two blogs.

On this blog, you will find:

Thoughts about life in general
A lot of things about Ubuntu Linux
Thoughts about gadgets
Thoughts about productivity
Thoughts about writing
Reviews of software and products
Thoughts about running a creative team

More about me:

I'm a blogger, photographer, copywriter and family guy :)

Why is this called the Misadventures of David Kirba

When I was 14, I started writing a book. It didn't get very far, but whatever did get written down was pretty nice. Unfortunately I lost everything in a flood, but that's another story. So this is a continuation of my story. Sixteen years down the line. I hope you enjoy it.