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Article Synopsis
Tips, Hints and Suggestions from the Bear to reduce repetitive strain injury, a common affliction experienced by many late-night gamers. | |
The Clickety Click Disease.
Ever had it? The clickety click disease? It’s also known as RSI or Repetitive Strain Injury. There are many variants of this one, but the most common problem resides in your wrist. However, those who have played Diablo I have most likely also experienced the “one-click-one-hit-finger-pain”. One click, one shot, and lots of clicks = painful finger. So, how do you fix it? Or better yet, how do you prevent it? The following is a list of helpful hints against the clickety click disease. Some of them are rather obvious, but others are not. So read on…
Avoid! Get a trackball so that your wrist stays still. Trackballs need some time getting used too, but once you are used to them, you don’t ever want to go back to a mouse again. Trackballs are ideal. For those of you who claim you cannot game with a trackball, I can make headshots with them in the original UT without zooming in. No, I’m not playing at experienced level, but at adept, so the bots DO shoot back and they move around a fair amount too.
Avoid! Get a left-handed mouse and a right handed mouse, and switch on a regular basis. RSI is all about constantly using those hands in a similar manner, and with two mouses and two hands, you can switch. As an added bonus it increases your ambi-dexterity. Isn’t that nice?
Tone down your muscle tension. Low muscle tension means less strain. Less strain means less repetitive strain, thus less repetitive strain injury.
Get a decent keyboard. If you need to press down the keys as if you’re chiseling in granite, you’re doing something wrong. Hard keypresses means you are overextending your muscles, and that leads to RSI.
Every once in a while, move around your wrists and stretch them a bit, to keep them supple.
Don’t play in a cold room. It cools down your fingers and stiffens them up.
The last and most obvious: Take regular breaks. Really. Take them. But the problem is not taking those breaks, but forcing yourself to take those breaks. How many times have you found yourself gaming well over the time you had planned? Yes, that’s the problem… whilst gaming, you loose track of time. There are several solutions to this problem.
1) Discipline yourself. Place a clock where you can see it, and simply take a 5 minute break after every hour. Chances that this will actually work are about 3%, as you’ve already shown yourself to be a non-disciplined gamer by playing on until 3 in the night.
2) Install an alarm clock next to your pc which makes a nasty noise. Downside is that if its next to your pc, you can slap it and shut it down. Again, bad idea. See number 1 why.
3) See 2, but install it at the other side of the room, and turn the volume up so that you HAVE to shut it down.
4) Install a program that forces you to stop. An example of such a program can be found here. This is a rather polite program, but there are other, more vicious interrupters on the market that simply shut down your keyboard or your monitor for 5 minutes.
5) Get a pet. Pets want attention, and drive you away from your PC.
6) Get a wife. For those who are married, you know why I write this down. For those who are not, and do not know or have no idea of how a wife affects your life, well, imagine your mother, but as a pretty girl not the same as your mother. She sleeps in the same room with you. She gets up at the same time. She controls your cash flow. She keeps you fed. She takes care of you. She can provide you with a lot of fun, but she can also make your life hell if you do not adhere to her wishes. Your mother is your mother, and you can ignore her, but ignoring your wife is not a good idea.
7) Get kids. Obviously, you need nr. 6 for that… kids need attention, and if you don’t give them attention, they’ll break stuff. And if you do give them attention, they’ll come in and whine just when you’re slaying that Ubar Dragon of Utter Item Droppyness. Makes you humble and teaches you manners.
Hope my tips are helpful.
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