Two-handed mouse control

via /.: Logitech's child company 3DConnexion sells what are essentially mice for the user's secondary hand. With the Spaceball 5000 (or one of the other devices), users can guide their projects around the screen by panning, rotating, and zooming, while the primary hand is free to select and modify. I can easily imagine how much happier this interface would have made me back when I was studying to be a mechanical engineer...

Eliminate tedious and repetitive steps that put unnecessary stress on your mouse hand. Users of 3Dconnexion motion controllers report up to a 30% increase in productivity and as little as half the repetitive mouse movement.

Here are all the applications it supports. Unfortunately, the thing costs $500...I don't have a whole lot of use for it now, but it would be really cool to play with.

I've been working on a new design for this site, and I have a few ideas, but nothing has really congealed so far. Last night I worked for hours on a design based around a picture of a hotel downtown. The mass of brick was beautiful painted in the orange glow of the setting sun. It's a neat picture, but I'm having trouble making it work with a blog design. To get the full impact, I had to make it a long, non-scrolling image, and that limits my options for other parts of the page.

This morning I woke up with an idea for an entirely different design, using the picture I'd wanted to use to begin with. It will involve a bit more design work, but it looks really pretty in my head. We'll see how it comes out on the screen...