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Oct. 23rd, 2004 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenWell, I did manage to get 4-5 hours sleep after I was so tired that I simply couldn't keep awake. Toe is still throb-throb-throbbing. I therefore declare today to be a Day Of Complete Veging. Not even washing shall be done. I haven't quite decided yet what sort of Veging I'll do. The weather isn't as nice as it was yesterday; the sky is grey. Ah, us Aussies don't appreciate our weather. Melbourne tends to be jealous of Sydney, and then shrugs and says that our weather is more interesting anyway. What I didn't realize, until I stayed with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
watervole in May one year, was that Melbourne still tends to get more sunshine than the UK, even in spring. Or maybe I'm just overgeneralizing.
watervole in May one year, was that Melbourne still tends to get more sunshine than the UK, even in spring. Or maybe I'm just overgeneralizing.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-23 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-23 07:46 am (UTC)Well, I didn't read this suggestion until evening, but I did then watch "Children of the Gods". I may go back after this and watch "Enemy Within", because I may have to do what I did last night: stay up until I'm so tired that I go to sleep straight away... (sigh).
Distraction seems to be the best medicine...
What did I end up doing today? Read email and LJ. Tweaked a bit of Perl stuff. Played Gnocatan: an electronic version of Settlers of Catan -- the AI players are pretty stupid, but if I pick a hard position, like the #2 player, then I don't always win. Did my online supermarket shopping. Made pasta and sauce for a late lunch.
Got very upset when I got a tingling/numbness in my right hand, because that is confirming evidence (this is the third such incident, and the first one that occurred during the day) that I may be getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome -- and I was thinking "Don't these things ever let up? Can't I get a *break*?". So I had a long chat on the phone with a friend, and that cheered me up. Then I had a long chat on the phone with my mum.
Carpel tunnel
Date: 2004-10-23 09:13 am (UTC)However, the solution to both is the same - less typing.
Have you looked into voice dictation software? BEtter to look at it now before you're forced into it. A break from typing may make the problem go away. I've used it a couple of times and it can be very helpful (when you're not prone to voice problems)
Re: Carpal tunnel
Date: 2004-10-23 04:08 pm (UTC)Actually, no. I'm talking about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, not Repetitive Stress Injury. Less typing wouldn't hurt of course, but Carpal Tunnel Syndrome isn't caused by too much typing, it's caused by pressure on the carpal tunnel, which can have a number of causes including fluid retention and hormone changes. It is aggravated by warmth (such as hand under the bedclothes and doing the dishes!), which is probably why the first two (more severe) incidents occurred when I woke up in the morning.
People tend to confuse Carpal Tunnel Syndrome with RSI, probably because for quite a few years the health profession in some countries (such as the USA) wouldn't recognise the existance of RSI, but they did recoginise the existance of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which does have similar symptoms, so one was mistaken for the other. The reason I think it may be Carpal Tunnel and not something else is that the pattern for Carpal Tunnel is that the little finger isn't affected, because it isn't connected to the nerve that goes through the carpal tunnel -- and my little finger wasn't affected.
As for dictation software, there's not much point because (a) Carpal Tunnel (as distinct from RSI) is easily treatable (one can have surgery as a last resort) (b) if it gets so bad that I can't type, voice dictation software won't help me program, and there goes my job (c) I don't think they *have* voice dictation software for Solaris (which is what I use at work) and I suspect there isn't any user-friendly software for Linux either. But I guess I'd better actually confirm that there isn't, instead of assuming there isn't...
But I do really really hope that it's a temporary glitch, because having my wrists operated on would not be fun. Even having one done at a time would make life and work very difficult.
I think the best I can do at the moment is just make note of any further incidents, and let my doctor figure out how severe it may or may not be.
Voice Recognition
Date: 2004-10-23 05:36 pm (UTC)There appear to be two open-source projects:
CVoiceControl and Perlbox Voice Control. Both of them are speech-command systems, rather than full speech recognition systems that one could, for example, use to dictate things with, so their helpfulness would be not as great as one would hope. Also the CVoiceControl project is dead, since the programmer had to stop working on it, and nobody seems to have taken it up.
Well, I guess that would be another reason to get a Mac.
Re: Voice Recognition
Date: 2004-10-24 12:15 am (UTC)I don't know what systems that can be used on.
Re: Voice Recognition
Date: 2004-10-24 01:08 am (UTC)Re: Voice Recognition
Date: 2004-10-28 05:51 pm (UTC)Re: Voice Recognition
Date: 2004-10-28 08:21 pm (UTC)Re: Carpal tunnel
Date: 2004-10-23 05:45 pm (UTC)I've just got off the phone with my Mum, and among other things I asked about Carpal Tunnel, and from our discussion it seems likely that my particular problem is hormone related: fluid retention caused by sensitivity to particular hormones (and as we already know that I have a hormone imbalance, this all fits in). She's up on this sort of thing because at one point she was working in a specialist practice dealing with hormone problems (the story of her doctoring is that she started off in paediatrics and then got more interested in the mothers). So, again, I should make note of further incidents, and also take note of when I am in my cycle as well. Data collection...
Re: Carpal tunnel
Date: 2004-10-24 12:12 am (UTC)All data is good. I used to keep a daily record of my asthma for several years.