You’d think by now I would, after spending a significant proportion of my life being alive, know that sitting in the same place, resting on my elbows whilst I type and not moving causes me pain. I do know this but do I do anything about it? Not really no.

So the question is of course raised why not? And the answer is simple - I forget. I get so engrossed in the task at hand often related to working on the computer that I forget to move. I often don’t realise until I am shaking with cold and my feet have gone numb. Now when I was at work and working I could readily get up and go somewhere else to either work or to annoy other people. But since I am now working from home I don’t.  Worse still I work for longer and appear to get even less done and make my elbows even sorer. I don’t think people really appreciate how horrible it is to have sore elbows. I’ve thought about building some sort of padding device to help prevent it because it is really horrible. Worse still when I would get them at work then I would drive home and my sore elbows would be sore in the car on all the car elbow resting areas - ouch.

My elbow look how sore it is. It is all red and elbow like

So now I’ve started to build coffee breaks back into my daily routine to break the sitting. I now look out the window and drink, walk to the other side of the room and drink. Go to the bedroom and drink and then return. Great stuff - its not working though. Well not yet. You see there is no one to go and annoy to go and chat to. So if I want a break and to chat I have to chat online - which if you hadn’t noticed is the same as work. You type on the keyboard and the words appear and that is the same as work.

Apparently sitting like this all the time is going to kill me (I saw that on iplayer last year with the guy who was on Tomorrow’s world a million years ago so I believe it) and that is also bad. So I’ve also started trying to stand whilst typing but this gives me a bad back. So I stand whilst eating instead. But since I don’t eat all day long and appear to spend the day typing all day long then well that isn’t working for me either.

So there is now this thing called the

MYO

(sorry I felt like a silly use of space)

it is a thing that you wear on your arm and it like senses that you are using your arm and then it does things on your PC/Mac/PAD/iPAD/iAndroid device etc. Sadly of course this isn’t going to help me no matter how much I want one because I use Linux and no one ever makes anything for Linux until the user community makes it and by which point the device no longer exists or the manufacturers require it to have a signed certificate to turn on (grumble what the fuck is all the signed certificate booting crap about in the bios). So I can’t use MYO to manipulate the molecules in Olex2 from the other side of the room, standing, holding a cup of tea. To be fair it could be quiet dangerous I could nip to the loo come back and find I’ve deleted all the files off my harddisk. But saying that I use Linux so there is always a high probability that I may have done that already and haven’t noticed yet. Did I mention my Android pad has no sound when it comes off standby. I should have it has nothing to do with this post but it is very annoying.

What else can I do to ease the aching neck and stiff back? How about long looks to the left and right until my head and or neck pops and crackles. Yes that appears to be the way I get the my back pain to go by making my neck hurt. But I know if I had got up instead of writing this or tweeting that then I wouldn’t now be in pain or mild discomfort at the least.

How about voice dictation? NO

What do you mean NO? Erm No it is rubbish, and did I mention I use Linux so it won’t work and did I mention I do chemistry and I am a crystallographer? No? Try making your voice thingy type:

> > The aromatic ring of the 2,6-dissopropylphenylaniline can be readily observed to be involved with a weak CH-π interaction between the two moieties. > >

Yes I know that was a stupid sentence - that is my point.

OK my elbows are really, really hurting now and it feels like someone is jamming their thumbs in to the base of my neck (the nape even) in an attempt to remove my head. So I am signing off with this in mind - take breaks, get away from the computer, go talk to real people, make sure your workstation is correctly setup and ignore Yahoo if they tell you working from home is not good. It is good but at the same time so is alcohol. Same rules apply “a little in moderation otherwise you’ll end up with sore elbows”.

Update - 14/03/2013

There is a campaign to get MYO on Linux http://geeks.myoforlinux.com/ why not cast your vote?