How To Keep Good Posture When In Front Of A Computer

http://ririanproject.com/2006/10/30/how-to-keep-good-posture-when-in-front-of-a-computer/

“We spend a large portion of our lives sitting, especially during the computer age, so it’s important to learn to sit tall. One of the most common mistakes we make is that when we move into a sitting position, we tend to aim for the center of the chair. The proper method is to sit deep in your chair.”

- Dr. Marvin Arnsdorff

Today we are spending more time at computers, an activity through which people’s bad posture can affect their overall health.

Posture ranks at the top of the list when talking about good health. It is as important as eating right, exercising, getting a good night’s sleep and avoiding harmful substances. Unnatural alignment of the body can cause head, shoulder, neck and back pain, and compromise neurological, digestive, respiratory and cardiovascular functioning.

Unquestionably, students and adults alike spend more time at computers today than 20 years ago. So here are nine tips designed to help people’s posture when they’re at the computer at home, school or work:

1. Support Your Back

Does the chair you are sitting on have enough lumbar support? The backrest should fit into the natural curve of your lower back, filling in the space between your back and the back of the chair. This helps avoid excess pressure on the spine and makes it easier to maintain good sitting posture.

Adequate lumbar support also helps prevent muscle fatigue, which causes many people to lean their heads and upper backs too far forward or to slouch downward. With good lower back support, spinal muscles are relaxed and the spine is able to maintain its neutral position.

2. Comfortable Leg Postures

To promote comfortable leg postures, consider clearing away items from your legs to allow comfortable leg positions and movement. Feet should be flat on the floor or you may use a footrest if your feet do not rest comfortably.

3. Minimize Reaching

Position work station components to minimize reaching and twisting. Keep frequently accessed objects as close as possible to body centre.

4. Comfortable Shoulder and Arm Postures

Place your keyboard and mouse or trackball at the same height; these should be at about elbow level. Your upper arms should fall relaxed at your sides.

Also when typing, center your keyboard in front of you with your mouse or trackball located close to it.

5. Wrist and Finger Postures

Keep your wrists straight while typing and while using a mouse or trackball. Avoid bending your wrists up, down, or to the sides. Use the keyboard legs if they help you maintain a comfortable and straight wrist position. Type with your hands and wrists floating above the keyboard, so that you can use your whole arm to reach for distant keys instead of stretching your fingers.

Make sure you keep your fingers relaxed while typing and using a mouse. Use a soft touch on the keyboard instead of pounding keys with unnecessary force.

Also grasp the mouse gently and avoid holding a pen or anything else in your hands while you type or use the mouse. You should relax your fingers and hands between bursts of typing or mousing using a flat, straight wrist posture.

When moving your mouse, you may be more comfortable if you use your arm, not just your wrist. Choose a mouse that fits the size of your hand comfortably and is as flat as possible to minimize wrist strain.

6. Minimize Neck Bending and Twisting

Center your monitor in front of you. Consider placing your documents directly in front of you and the monitor slightly to the side, if you refer to your documents more frequently than your monitor.

Sit comfortably in the chair. Close both eyes and relax. Then, slowly reopen them. Where the gaze initially focuses should be when the eyes open is the place to put the center of the computer screen. The screen can be raised using books or a stand if needed.

7. Minimize Eyestrain

Place your monitor at a distance of about arm’s length when seated comfortably in front of the monitor. Also avoid glare. Place your monitor away from light sources that produce glare, or use window blinds to control light levels. Don’t forget to adjust your monitor brightness, contrast, and font size to levels that are comfortable for you.

Throughout the day, give your eyes a break by forcing them to focus on something other than on your screen. Try the following exercise: Hold a finger a few inches in front of your face; focus on the finger as you slowly move it away; focus on something far in the distance and then back to the finger; slowly bring the finger back toward your face. Next, shift your focus to something farther than eight feet away and hold your eyes there for a few seconds. Repeat this exercise three times, several times a day.

8. Take Short Breaks

Taking breaks can help your body recover from any activity. The length and frequency of breaks that are right for you depend on the type of work you are doing. Stopping the activity and relaxing is one way to take a break, but there are other ways, also. For example, just changing tasks - perhaps from sitting while typing to standing while talking on the phone can help some muscles relax while others remain productive.

9. Periodically Look Up At the Ceiling to Give Your Posture Muscles a Break

So, improve your sitting posture and remember, a healthy lifestyle can help you perform and enjoy your everyday activities, including the time spent at your computer. Learning more about working comfortably and productively, as well as your overall health, are important ways to help you enjoy your computing experience.

How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in Any Programming Language

*******************************************************************************

The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you’re currently using. This guide is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such dilemmas.

C
You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen clones of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, “That’s me, over there.”

JAVA
After importing java.awt.right.foot.* and java.awt.gun.right.hand.*, and writing the classes and methods of those classes needed, you’ve forgotten what the hell you’re doing.

Ruby
Your foot is ready to be shot in roughly five minutes, but you just can’t find anywhere to shoot it.

PHP
You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made with pieces from 300 other guns.

ASP.NET
Find a gun, it falls apart. Put it back together, it falls apart again. You try using the .GUN Framework, it falls apart. You stab yourself in the foot instead.

SQL
SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger = ‘PULLED’;
INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);

Perl
You start shooting yourself in the foot, but you lose the gun.

Javascript
YOu’ve perfected a robust, rich user experience for shooting yourself in the foot. You then find that bullets are disabled on your gun.

CSS
You shoot your right foot with one hand, then switch hands to shoot your left foot but you realize that the gun has turned into a banana.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.

Modula2
After realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

COBOL
Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER. on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.

LISP
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds ….

BASIC
Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

FORTH
Foot in yourself shoot.

APL
You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

Pascal
The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.

SNOBOL
If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot.
If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

Concurrent Euclid
You shoot yourself in somebody else’s foot.

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot of the left leg of you.
Answer the result.

Motif
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

Unix
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

Paradox
Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.

Revelation
You’ll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.

Visual Basic
You’ll shoot yourself in the foot, but you’ll have so much fun doing it that you won’t care.

Prolog
You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn’t allow it to explain.

Ada
After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type.

Assembly
You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot. After that’s done, you pull the trigger, the gun beeps several times, then crashes.

370 JCL
You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.


Disclaimer: I didn’t write the original article, though I’ve added to it. I have had the funnier definitions above listed in a text file for several years, and I decided to add my own one day.

It has also been pointed out to me that there is another article like this here
(http://www.reed.edu/~tuckers/jokes/foot.html)
, though it’s longer than my original version so I can only assume it is also a hybrid from the original list. Perhaps the original author is updating his list?

********************************************************************************