Slitherine

I just stumbled across this company purely by accident

http://www.visibone.com

See, I was designing a scenario for GoT, and I wanted to use custom colors. But my HTML book only listed colors as hex triplets, and GoT uses the 255 RGB values. Also, my HTML book only listed colors by their names, and I wanted to see color swatches.

Visibone sells a variety of very nice color charts, (along with a million other things)

I bought the Color Card, and also the Hexagonal Mouse Pad. They just arrived today, and they're tupping cool!

For the record, I have no affiliation of any kind with Visibone, nor have I received any compensation of any kind from Visibone.

I like colours!

The mouse pad looks very nice. What is the surface like? Do you use an optical mouse?

Good luck with your efforts!

I don't use a mousepad, bro.

For ergonomic reasons, I use a simple clipboard. I just set it down in my lap, and use the mouse right on the clipboard.

Yes, I use an optical mouse.

Most people mouse on their desktop, and that's just ergonomically awful. Your arm is up too far to be natural, and your back and shoulder start screaming after a few hours.

The clipboard on the lap lets the arms hang down at the sides, in a perfectly comfortable and natural position. I can and often do spend 12+ hours online in a single day. My hand and fingers get tired, but I never have the neck, back, or shoulder problems I used to have before I adopted this setup.

Plus it's cheap Proper ergonomics does not have to mean spending outrageous sums on some silly damn gimmick

The other quick, simple thing that every online gamer should look at is monitor height.

Ideally, when you sit comfortably in your chair, you should be looking either straight across at your monitor, or down 1-2 degrees.

If your monitor is too high or too low, you will get horrid neck pains after a long day online.

The third and hardest thing we should all do is use the keyboard more and mouse less. MS encourages users to use the mouse for everything, and that's just foolish. Repetitive Motion Injury, here we come.

Ideally, the user should learn keyboard shortcuts, and try to split the load equally between the left hand on keyboard and right hand on mouse. Reverse this if you're a southpaw (i.e. kak-handed).

The first two were easy. A quick adjustment, and you're done, no need to think about it anymore. Changing one's habits with regard to input devices is a much more difficult, annoying, and drawn-out process. But it's worth it. If you make your living, (or pursue your favorite hobby), using a computer, you don't want to screw up your ability to use that computer.

And Carpal Tunnel is no joke.

Heh, in all that long-winded and rambling digression, I never answered your questions.

The mousepad is a typical new-style thin mousepad, i.e. not the old-style thick neoprene.

The surface is matte, (non-glossy), and very, very lightly pebbled.

Visibone cautions that the mousepad may not be suitable for optical mice, but a quick function test just now showed no problems.

I bought it to use as a colorchart, I confess. I'll probably never mouse on it again

Thanks for the answers.

When I was using a thumb trackball I could easily place it on my lap/leg and use it for most things than playing FPS games. Now with a mouse I find that very difficult. If I use any surface for the mouse it has to stay still or....Plus if I need to get up often it is not quick or very easy to do so since I will have to pick both the surface and the mouse. Not exactly rocket science but do it many times and it gets annoying. Now, if there was a surface that you could hmm, perhaps a fold out wooden/plastic mousepad attached to the desk or chair, or better on its own (like a very tall desk lamp) to pull over your legs or next to you at any height and distance, hmm, that sounds good.

The only way to do websites is with notepad. I dont see how mouses are related to webdesign specifically?

No, the color charts and font charts and such that Visibone sells are related to webdesign.

We just got to rambling, as soon happens in any thread in which I participate

And I agree about Notepad.

When I first learned about how to use HTML, there was nothing else. Yes, literally, the first HTML editor had yet to be published.

Furthermore, there were no ads on the web. Commercial advertising was banned from the web in those early days.

I started messing in HTML when I was about 11-12 (bout the same time I started with C), and I went File->New and saw an option for web page (this was in Visual Studio), so I thought lets have a mess about with that, and thats how I learned, lol.