thank u again….

risherz wrote:

By the way those bumpy things (hehe, do they even have a technical term?) are really hard to use… I tried one of them and it was totally hard to control the pointer… may be I’m just not ’skilled’ enough to use it?

It’s not you.. they are really hard to use. I’m lead to believe it’s because the brain develops strong control over small wrist movements when at school – learning to write, to draw and to paint etc and these are the muscles and movements used by mice. So even someone with no experience can use a mouse – with sometimes hilarious results but still. Then you spend a few hours/days/weeks building the precise movement skills needed to be accurate.

With a bumpy thing you are using your finger tips – previously programmed to ring doorbells, hence the wild inaccuracy. I read a study whilst at university which showed that people were increasingly using their thumbs to do “finger tasks” – such as ringing doorbells and pressing down stamps because of mobile phones which are designed to be used by thumbs – presumably because the fingers are tied up holding the device.

I personally use my thumb whenever I use a bumpy thing and get significantly better results than my colleages who try to use their finger tips. However, it usually makes it harder to type at the same time because my hand is leaning over the keys.

I still prefer a trackpad… but yes, I use my thumb for that too :)

I just though that this recipe might help people with wireless mice. Usually for me the battery runs out just when I need it the most and I can’t finish my project or something like that, so this really helps me out when I’m too lazy to move from where I am to access my USB mouse (even though it is already plugged in).

By the way those bumpy things (hehe, do they even have a technical term?) are really hard to use… I tried one of them and it was totally hard to control the pointer… may be I’m just not ’skilled’ enough to use it?

davak wrote:

I’m an ICU doc so I see a fair number of patients that are left with disabilities after their acute illness.

It might be worth your while contacting the Beckman institute in Illinois, the daddy there is Bruce Wheeler http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/profiles/faculty/bwheeler.html. In the UK, I’m affiliated with the University of Reading, the daddy there being Kevin Warwick http://www.cyber.reading.ac.uk/people/K.Warwick.htm.

Not to pick sides, but Kevin has his own wikipedia page.. Bruce does not :)

I know Kevin would be interested in hearing any comments or suggestions you might have for technologies (rather than devices, he’s a research man) which would help people who have recently suffered serious disabilities.

I would be really interested in working with a medical professional – it’s an area I’m very interested in but not as knowledable as I’d like. Sure, a Cybernetics degree gives you a hell of a lot of general knowledge as well as specifics, but my highest level of human biology ends shortly after drawing accurate diagrams of the homunculus and knowing where the cerebrocerebellar pathway would want to be if ever I find one lying around loose.

My current project has a lot of computer intelligence work in it so I can’t get too sidetracked with biological interfacing at the moment, but it is definately something I will be coming back to!

-
Peter

I’m an ICU doc so I see a fair number of patients that are left with disabilities after their acute illness.

I use a ton of computer <-> med record systems… most of which are done very poorly.

It would be interesting for us to work on a project together sometime.

Building better ways to communciate with people basically covers both bases, and working with people with disabilities gives a better understanding of what interfaces actually work at a low level, and which are only understandable by the higher brain functions. You don’t have to have a highly developed forebrain to push a stick in a hole, but you do to operate a mouse.

To better interface with people at a lower level (thereby making it feel more natural and faster to learn), you need to use their lower level senses.

Anyway, that’s hopefully enough of an explaination to explain my comment :)

I love the bumpy nipples, they require great hand eye coordination to use properly and a sense of comedy timing to be entertaining. Both of which are even more entertaining in someone else if they are missing.

-
Peter