[Sitting in for Anthony Caruana]

I had such a great Hydrapinion for you today. It was going to blow your collective minds, dear readers. By the end of it, you’d think that perhaps the fill-in should become the main man. It was so good, in fact, that perhaps the whole Hydrapinion concept was in peril. After reading it, you may all have decided that just plain old ‘Pinion would be enough.

That’s how good it was.

But sadly, I can’t offer it to you this week.

You see, I was writing it on my teensy-weensy eeePC. It’s a marvel, the eee. So light I forget I’m carrying it – even when I’m on my bicycle. So convenient, I sneak work in all over the place. It’s so small I can fit it into a half-way stylish manbag, instead the usual nylon-and-foam monstrosities generally designated for laptop-toting duties.
So … there I was, writing this killer opinion on the eee. I was a few hundred words in, scrolling furiously up and down as I polished it to perfection. Time flew by … and that’s when I felt it … some kind of strange twinge in my shoulder muscles. I literally shrugged it off, but the hunching motion required to get my big, fat fingers onto the eee’s little keyboard for more than 15 minutes meant the ache soon came back. And stayed. And got worse.

At this point I really must spare you the details of just how the musculoskeletal system refers problems around the body, so that it does not break down under stress. But suffice to say that one of the less sensible things you can do to your own musculoskeletal system, dear readers, is to crane your neck downwards and stare at a nine-inch screen that sits at navel-height, while typing quickly on a keyboard designed for a child’s hands.

That’s what my physio has been telling me for the last three visits, as he attempts to un-knot my neck and restore some equilibrium to my spine.

And that’s also why you’re not reading the killer column. I’m not even touching the eeePC until I figure out a way to use it without contortions. And seeing as the physio bill has now reached half the price of the eeePC, I suspect I won’t be the only one who has a serious think about just how to make sure that tiny PCs don’t do big damage to the body.