posted
I do get a fair number of calls for left handed mice and keyboards (with the numpad on the other side) at work. Unfortunately, we don't have any keyboards, and the mice we have are at best symmetrical. There are specialty sites like The Left Hand with such things though.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Psycho, I never even gave the mouse a second thought when I started using a computer. It was easy for me to learn to use my right hand. *shrug* I don't know why that is, since my right hand is usually completely useless.
Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
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The cheap leftie scissors that were eventually provided in my school hurt my hand. So I'd grab a decent pair of rightie scissors, and cope.
Posts: 271 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Hmm, I just passed the other left handed engineer in the hall while I was getting lunch. It suddenly struck me that in this company of greybeards, he's one of the youngest other than me. (If he's over thirty I'd be surprised.) Maybe it is also a generational thing, and we will see the numbers of left handed engineers drastically increase in subsequent generations. Even in my parents generation left handedness wasn't quite as accepted as it is now.
By the way, I cut things with my right hand and use a mouse on the right side. I tried using a mouse configured for lefty use and found it to be pretty natural as well. I use either hand for the touchpad mouse on my computer, though it's usually the left.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I'm also left handed - amazing how many of us there are on Hatrack, since we make up only 10% of the population. However, I'm odd because although I write and draw with my left hand, I do almost everything else right-handed - use scissors, play tennis, throw and catch balls, you name it. I'm right-footed and right-eyed though (many people have dominant feet, eyes and ears, though most people don't think about that).
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
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I would be hesitant to recommend researching left-hand discrimination for this particular assignment, but I'm sure you could find enough resources if you dealt with other cultures and the significance of different hands (I'm thinking about Saudi Arabia here). But I would think abot choosing a different topic, unless you can find a way to develop an insightful 'solution' to the problem of handedness descrimination. Being somewhat familiar with your particular assignment, I would shy away from any problem that you can't suggest a course of action for.
However, if you are very interested in the topic, I'm sure you could do a good job. (Isaac Asimov even mentioned a theory on the development of right-hand dominance in a column for Fantasy & Science Fiction (Jan 1988)). So there's lots of good stuff out there, and I'm sure you could find it. But make sure to use the actual OSU library to research. that's a pretty awesome library.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
I couldn't make up my mind in school which hand I wnated to use, so up to second grade I was using one and then another when tht one got tired.
The problem was that my handwriting was horrible with both.
Finally they made me use my right hand..but I won awards shooting my bow left-handed, and when i got a new compound bow it was right ahnded, and I sucked (comparativly).
I still play billiards lefty, and love it. I can play with my right as well, but not nearly as well as lefty....I just don't have the control for it.
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I love telling people I'm a righty and then beating them in arm wrestling becausde I told them I'd use my bad hand. Tee Hee. Posts: 1401 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I've always used the mouse on the right side, that's just the way it was always configured when I started learning to use a computer. Though when I'm using a laptop with a touchpad I'll use my left hand, and the fact that the buttons aren't mirrored didn't even occur to me until now. I guess it's a matter of how it was learned in the first place. I'd suspect lefties are more adaptable and more comfortable finding unconventional ways to use things. I always remember when we would get scissors way back in school, it was a choice between the sharper righties and these rediculously dull, rounded, lefty scissors, so I sort of modified my hand position so that I could use the good ones.
One thing that still bothers me, and the reason I try to carry around a stylus is touchpads for signatures at places like Best Buy. The cord for the "pen" is too short to allow for comfortable lefty signing. Oh, and the supposed ergonomic mice are terrible since they're designed for use with the right hand. I still don't understand how the woman across from me does it (she switches hands due to some wrist problems).
I'd be interested to see if there are any correlations between Myers-Briggs types and hand dominance.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Most mice have an option to switch the buttons, I believe. My best friend is a lefty, and that is something he told me years ago, when i couldn't get it to work on his computer.
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Just switched my cordless mouse to my left side. I think both Steve and I keep our mice on the right, but part of it is due to the setup of our computers, which is due to the furniture we have and looking at Steve's computer desk while it is a corner desk it is more designed for a right handed person.
It feels a litte odd having the mouse on the left.
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Before Cayla was a year old, I knew she was left-handed. She favored her left hand even at that early stage. I had decided to not force her to try to be right-handed because the whole "force them to be right-handed" thing was, IMO, barbaric. I think I've heard what has been echoed here - forcing kids to change that tendency can give them other problems like clumsiness and (I think I heard this) stuttering.
Cayla is 8 now, and in the Talented and Gifted program at school. She is artistic and sensitive. She amazes me with her knowledge and abilities. It's definitely her nature and not my parenting.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Hmm, I must be rare, too. I have no artistic talent whatsoever (though I am good at spatial visualization type things) and I absolutely love math and science. Undoubtedly I will end up in a career as an engineer, just like the rest of my family...
Also, AJ, my aunt is a left-handed civil engineer, and my mom (also an engineer) writes right handed but throws left handed. So, including my sister, I have 2.5 left-handed female engineers in my family
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I'm a lefty when it comes to writing, but it depends on everything else as to which hand I use, cutting(scissors)- right, crocheting- right, needlepoint-left, cutting(kinfe)- left. I think it's just one of those adaptability issues. No lefty scissors in kindergarten, the right ones don't work in my left hand, learn to use the other hand. I accidently bought some lefty shears the other day and tried them. I loved them!
Posts: 862 | Registered: Oct 2003
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