Yep. I first switched to a standing desk at work, and later got one for home as well (built from IKEA parts). I've found that I'm a lot more productive with a standing desk, mostly because I procrastinate less.
Adjusting to working while standing is difficult. Adjustable desks that can go up and down, especially at the push of a button, only make it harder to actually get used to it. You'll get tired quickly from standing, switch to sitting, and then forget to stand back up (because sitting is a habit, whereas standing is not yet).
I've built a standing desk that does not adjust. When I get tired of standing I'll grab my laptop and go to the couch for a bit, and then get back to standing. This might not work for every setup, but it's great for me.
My solution for when I get tired of standing is to sit on a bar stool. I have an Ikea Sebastian bar stool which is the perfect height to sit at my standing desk. It is uncomfortable enough that I switch back to standing after a while.
Agree. Not to be overlooked. Standing ~8 hrs non-stop requires athletic fitness and good posture. One would be surprised. Your shoes, etc. need to be supportive. Any lack of support or posture will make itself known. =D
For those who type have you had issues with your posture standing? I've never used a standing desk but would be concerned that putting weight forward and looking down would be tiresome or fatiguing?
For long periods, it's usually chest out shoulders back and head level (like the army). As off balance element in the spinal column requires a lot of energy to keep upright, otherwise.
Standing desks are amazing. It def made me more productive, felt better during the day because of not sitting and the fact that you can walk off whenever you like is a great thing.
Is typing comfortable with a standing desk? Every time I've used a computer at standing height, it's been a little uncomfortable, but they certainly weren't tailored to my height.
You really need one customized for you. It's probably worse to have a misconfigured standing desk than it is to have a correctly configured sitting desk.
Typing at a standing desk is comfortable if you get the height correct for your body. And for me it is important to have a riser at the front of the keyboard, like this [1]. My arms are angled close to 90 degrees, but pointed slightly downward, a keyboard flat on the desk would put far too much stress on my wrists.
I tried at home for a few month and couldn't adapt to it. It hurts my legs too much after a few hours. I'm really not athletic so that's part of the issue.
What annoyed me also was that I couldn't do creatives things while standing, only simple repetive tasks were ok. So I stopped.
"Standing on a hard floor for prolonged periods without anti-fatigue matting can cause pain and discomfort in the lower legs, feet and back." - some website selling them.
I made the switch by having two computers: a sit down desk where I disabled most websites, and a stand up desk where I could freely browse the web. After a week or two, I was fine standing up and made the full transition.
You will definitely want to relax from time to time though.
I use one at home (so, 2-3 hours a day) and I quite like it. Get comfortable shoes, though; in my limited experience, they are crucial in how enjoyable the experience is.
What boggles my mind about Chrome is how terrible the location bar autocomplete is.
At least, that's how it seemed to me for ages when I switched from Firefox. I mean, I would have just visited a page with "foo" in the URL, and I would type "foo", and that recent page simply would not appear. But a page I visited two months ago with "foo" somewhere in the URL (or worse, somewhere in the page content) would appear.
I haven't noticed this so much recently -- maybe it's gotten better, or maybe I've just gotten used to it.
I've been shocked that I haven't heard many other people complaining about this. Maybe it's just me?
The crazy part? Bookmark something, and then type the keywords that are in the title of the bookmarked page. The last time I used Chrome I could barely find anything unless I opened up all my bookmarks and searched that way.
It makes sense once you realize that Google makes a profit from having a shitty search function...
Chrome location bar autocomplete is unable to recognize my history and bookmarks.
Can it be that google does not want users to do bookmark or history search, but rather prefers us to do a google search instead for data mining and ad monetizing reasons? Or can it be due to an Apple patent?
My Chrome location bar autocompletes my bookmarks just fine. It usually only takes a few characters for the bookmark to be the top result, and I can tell it's the bookmark since I changed the label.
Chrome seems to want to give preference to any random page I visited once rather than my bookmark. And the list is so short - if it's not in the ~6 items you just can't get to it. And you can't just trim the list like you would in Firefox by hitting delete on entries you don't want to be in there.
I'd go back to firefox if their sync system was improved since I last used it.
I don't know when you last used it, and I don't use Firefox, but their sync system strikes me as pretty good. It even encrypts everything client-side using strong cryptography and you have to share the keys by opening another browser, I found it pretty great.
> What boggles my mind about Chrome is how terrible the location bar autocomplete is.
What boggles my mind about Chrome is how completely fucked up its cache behavior is, considering the number of people for whom it's the primary development browser.
I guess, but the saving grace is that the passengers of such cars are less likely to care, unless they're in some special rush.
I mean, if I had one, I would be reading or working or talking to someone, and might not even notice a few extra minutes transit time. It'd be like riding public transit minus the inconveniences (noise, strangers, waiting).
I stopped caring much about extra minutes on the road when cruise control became standard equipment - years ago. When I drive a car without cruise I tend to be competitive and aggressive, but with cruise I set it and chill out. People may pass but I no longer care.
Bring on the Google cars and I'll detach completely.
The article is link bait. The Android Open Source Project ("AOSP", for those who weren't aware of the acronym) doesn't, to my knowledge, have anything that could be considered spyware embedded. The Google Android platform, which they sell to OEMs, included a bunch of non-free applications like Gmail, Maps, Play Store, etc... does indeed collect usage data (it also tells you about it and asks you to opt in).
Things based on AOSP (Kindle Fire, Cyanogenmod-without-gapps, this thing, many budget tablets, etc...) are, essentially, Google-invisible.
"If an app continues to perform some function when the main window is closed, it might be appropriate to leave it running after the user closes the main window. For example, iTunes continues to play after the user closes the main window."
Still, a language monoculture is more convenient for most programmers. As an English-speaking programmer, I'd hate to have to maintain, say, Chinese code.
I think the language constructs/keywords are the "easy" part. But how do you translate identifiers, comments and other "textual" content automatically?
I think the answer is no, they can't stop you. And perhaps I'm being naïve, but it doesn't seem like it would be too terribly tedious if you used a scraping library, at least not for replacing basic API functions (i.e. getting a user's recent tweets).
Obviously this would be limited to public tweets (no private tweets, no tweeting on the user's behalf, and no DMs).
"Obviously this would be limited to public tweets (no private tweets, no tweeting on the user's behalf, and no DMs)."
I don't think any of those limitations apply. If you can do something via a web browser, you can do it programmatically, depending on how much pain you're willing to endure.
Sorry, right -- I was just thinking of straight-up scraping of public pages. Asking for the user's password and logging in to do more scraping would probably be possible, but a lot more painful.
FYI, the article suggests self-driving cars have been approved in Nevada and California, which is true -- but in both states, a human passager (presumably with a driver's license) has to be in the vehicle. In Nevada, you actually have to have two passengers, which in some cases makes it more inconvenient than regular driving.
So ideas like sending your car home instead of parking it, or sending tractor trailers across the country without a driver, aren't going to be legal for the time being.
