…taking a software-mandated ergonomic rest break while your code is recompiling anyway.
Ergonomic injuries — i.e. strain from typing, bad posture, etc. — are actually among the most common injuries for experimental particle physicists, because our jobs usually involve many hours a day sitting in front of a computer. My lab takes such injuries extremely seriously, which is why I have software to remind me to take a break and stretch every so often. It may sound silly at first, but the advice of my colleagues who have been in the field longer is that ergonomic concerns are quite real, and that it’s worth taking whatever steps are necessary to avoid them. (And that’s why, although I might not get paid much, at least I have a nice chair.) So I almost always follow my ergonomic software’s advice to the letter — I even took an extra few seconds’ break to make up for any strain I might have incurred while taking this picture!
Ha! As a programmer, I can assure that all this ergonomic stuff is pure hogwash! Sure, my aging hands may naturally fall into a QWERTY position when I sleep, I can only focus at 32 inches, and my right wrist can only rotate the width of a mouse pad (which happens to also be just enough to operate a Nerf gun) but I assure you that these are just part of the natural aging process. That said, that’s a nifty little break time dialog. Does it get YouTube?
Hmm… can it be set to call for an hour-long break at every full hour?
I was quite startled in my local library when I was using one of their computers and a popup appeared on the screen saying “Please take a break”. It created a bit of a dilemma really, because the time normally comes in 1-hour slots so there’s always a deadline for finishing whatever you’re doing on the PC. In the event, I knew I only had about 10 minutes’ work left to do, so I took very brief break, taking care to relax relevant muscles, then continued for the short while I needed to.
What’s the software you use to remind you of the break? Is this an internal tool?
It’s a commercial package called RSIGuard that’s provided by my lab. Physicists may write a lot of our own software, but not that much. Oh, and it’s playing a suggested exercise, not YouTube. (Too bad!)