I'm curious about the standing desk because to me it's always seemed like something that would make me focus less on the task at hand. Then again, I've always been baffled by how others at the gym can read novels while on the eliptical. I can't even focus properly on the TV shows the gym has running when I'm exercising. Perhaps it's a reflection of my overall health or maybe my brain is wired in a way where I can't handle both involved physical and mental activity.<p>I'd like to hear from people who use standing desks on how it's affected their productivity and quality of work.
I don't see much of a correlation between these goofy treadmill desks and user interface defaults. I like the UI example of what they do at Exec, I think it's a smart design. But the second half of the article just reminds me of Mitch Hedberg's joke about escalators.
I'm very curious about this claim<p>> I appreciate the most about having a treadmill desk is that even if I don’t turn it on once during a day it still functions by default as a standing desk, which is already way better for you than sitting!<p>As far as I can tell the only thing we know is sitting is bad. We don't know that standing desks are good. Standing desks could ruin your feet. Treadmills could ruin your eye site as your head bounces as you try to read.<p>If there is some evidence that standing desks and treadmill desks are actually a net positive it would be nice to see the citations rather the just citations that sitting is bad.
Defaulting to the last thing the user did is very often the simplest and best thing to do. But I'd question the <i>initial</i> defaults -- is 1 b.r. 1 bath the most common option? Maybe it is. Is it the most common option for people wanting their place cleaned?<p>For all I know you've figured this stuff out and the answer to both questions is yes.
Good defaults also let you give power users complex features while keeping the common case manageable.<p>For <a href="http://ratchet.io" rel="nofollow">http://ratchet.io</a> , we're currently working on overhauling our notification system. The new system is rule-based, extremely flexible, and can be as complex to configure as you want it to be. But we're providing sane defaults -- e.g. "email everyone on the project when a new error occurs in production", "if Pivotal Tracker is set up, create a story for each new error" -- so it will (hopefully!) work just fine for most people out of the box.
Speaking of unconventional desk surfaces, does anyone make a good wall-mounted standing keyboard tray? All I can find are crazy articulated arm systems and gigantic freestanding desks. I just want a ready-made shelf designed to be used for only a keyboard + mouse facing a wall-mounted monitor.
On servers, distros that has sane defaults and do not force one to configure every little piece of software is clearly "winning" over the more old ways of compile and configure. Back when BSD was the normal OS for servers, distros like Debian really showed the way that sane defaults was way superior than to the no defaults policy some had.<p>Thankfully we have moved away from the no defaults. Some places still need to see the benefits first hand, but universally, the old policy that said one should have no defaults is long gone. Those that previously had no defaults have mostly moved to the same style as Debian.