The walking talking blogging machine
More and more people are working from home, and given the typical Canadian winter, our typical Canadian diets supplemented by typical Canadian binges during the Christmas holidays, the Super Bowl party, and the annual Valentine's Day feast of chocolates, many of us home office types are getting noticeably wider.
It's all that sitting in front of a computer terminal. But that's how we work. If you work from home, you're going to be using the computer, the telephone or both. And it usually happens in a chair. There are few signs of that changing any day soon so the only rational option is to change the working environment. Actually, it means changing the focus of the working environment.
And that means taking advantage of thin, light, mobile monitors, wireless connections, alternative input methods, some innovative office furniture, and some standard exercise equipment.
Monitors, as we've seen from the explosion in popularity of computer tablets led by Apple's iPad, are not tied down anymore. And while they've gotten larger, they've become smaller and lighter. So much that they're being carried around in ever increasing numbers as smartphones, laptops, netbooks and now - tablets.
This mobility on the part of monitors - allowing us to put them on the wall in front of us or in our jacket pockets - coupled with some other relatively ordinary tools have the capability to get us back on our feet, back in shape, and even more productive than when we worked sitting down.
For the past year, I've been researching the benefits of working standing up. That led to learning about standing desks, essentially desks that are designed more like working counters or work benches.
That led in turn to learning about what are called walking desks or treadmill that. These desks are designed to fit over a treadmill, the idea being that you walk while you work.
There are homemade and commercial versions of treadmill desks that range from the extraordinarily simple - like the my fake maple 35" x 14" Canadian Tire shelf - to the extraordinarily elaborate that cost several thousand dollars. Most are stationary, but some have hydraulic lifts that allow the desk to be raised and lowered at will.
About three weeks ago, I installed a treadmill in my office and started experimenting with it as a workspace. Since then, I've logged about 70 kms while reading, watching online videos or webinars, taking part in phone meetings, testing various devices like keyboards and touchpads, and so on.
I'm dictating this while walking at a rate of about two kilometers an hour. Not very fast, but easily the upper limit for typing. Which is why I'm also experimenting with the latest voice-to-text software.
Which led to an attempt to create a blog entry that could be written and posted without touching a keyboard. Failed at perfection, but succeeded in moving up the learning curve. Expecting 100% keyboard free writing and posting the first time out is admittedly optimistic. Yet I can't stop thinking about the advantages of being able to compose while walking at work.
Granted, only a portion of this post was created with the dictation software while walking on treadmill. Yet it was a whole lot more than I was able to accurately type in the same period time and with the same relative effort.
During the experiment today, I also took part in an online chat using a combination of typing and dictation. It took a while to figure out some quirks - such as how to send message once I entered them - but now that they've been discovered and the workarounds documented, the next experiments look even more promising.
