Gnome Typing Break

If you use too much computer you may be risking your health. I use computer around 7 hours in 8 hours' office. Before leaving office around 2 and after office around 5 hours. In total that is 17 hours i.e. around 71% of my day. I am sure I don't follow ergonomic principal. What I have started to do is take three minutes break every one hour. For this I use the 'typing break' option in keyboard preferences. After using this for some time I have concluded the following cons and pros:

• Pros:
1. Nice system tray that blinks few minutes before the break making us ready for the break
2. Option to post pone the break
3. Option to change work interval and break interval
4. If you sit idle the timer automatically resets. That means you have to work continuously in the work interval to be illegible for the break. You leave your computer for few minutes and bang the break is gone.
• Cons:
1. Screen doesn't lock during the break. So you can't leave your computer in the break for privacy reasons. There already is a bug report in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128381
2. Due to transparent lock screen, other people can study your screen.

Now if you also want this option, goto:

System>Preferences>Keyboard>Typing Break

If you find yourself stuck in typing break and don't have the option for postponing the break, you can kill  the break by:

1. Go to virtual terminal by pressing ALT+CTRL+F1
2. Log in
3. killall -9 gnome-typing-monitor

If you are much more health concerned then you probably would like to try apt://workrave . This is a very good software that makes you take break and also helps stretch out. It will guide you through series of exercise to perform during the break.