Hi,
I'm Flemish.  Interested in your experiments with the letter J positioning.  Indeed "ij" is sore as is "je", "jij", etc...  But after years of using Colemak I must say it doesn't really bother me (anymore).

Note: your motivation for moving J (jij/je combinations) already illustrates how important it is to look at digraphs and not just sole letter frequency.
For example putting J on the Q position similarly messes up "ja" ("yes" in Dutch)....

I'm sort of surprised that you rated qwerty-t as easier than qwerty-r.

There are some awkward digraphs in pretty much all layouts, so you don't necessarily have to worry too much.

If you can use AltGr+[key] combos (or [Other modifier]+[key] combos like Dreymar's extend mappings), however, you can put y, q, x on those and replace them with common combinations or symbols (though only the y has prime real estate, so to speak).  If I were to put/move only one, it would probably be the q (moving y to there), just because 0.01% vs 0.04%.  Not sure why I didn't think of this before; too two-dimensional, I guess.

Edit: the AltGr layers can be created in mklc.  Other modifiers like the extend mapping require AHK, IIRC.

naw man, i really don't see why i should drop it. It's only one letter which annoys me. This is just as good as it gets, and I'm okay with that. It's so much better than qwerty anyways.

Also a great achievement today, just passed the 50 WPM!

20 july

22 july

Still getting better every day. Qwerty speed has declined to about 60 WPM as well.

Woop woop, in 3 days I'll be using colemak for a month. I am very satisfied with myself, and the keyboard.

This is my quickest touch typing speed I've ever achieved. I'm on 90% off my quickest qwerty speed ever now, but I hope I'll be back to 100 percent of my speed within a couple of weeks.

Mission succesfull, though now I need a new project.

Okay, it's been a month now.

Here is the graph of my progress in the first month. I'm guessing that I won't become noteworthy quicker than I currently am in the next couple of weeks so I guess this is the end of my progress log. I hope it's been usefull for some of you and that I convinced some visitors who came here by random change just like me to do the switch as well. Because really, what's the worst that could happen..?

I thought it was quite fun to learn a new layout in general. Of course it can be frustrating at times, but making the mental switch was kind of fun. I didn't type a lot in the last period. I've worked 60 hour weeks for the last 6 weeks and never used a PC in the place where I work so the only practice I had was after work. It is enough though. I'm pretty certain that even if you practice 10 hours a day progress won't be much quicker because it is mainly about the mental switch.

In the end I didn't change the layout and the J is still in it's normal position. I learned to live with it and it will have to do. The only thing which I still have to force myself to learn though is to use the capslock button as backspace as well.

Oh yeah and for whoever is interested my qwerty speed is between 55 and 60 WPM now while hunting and pecking a bit. Decent enough not to feel ashamed when typing on other people's computers which I barely ever do anyways.

It's been fun, thanks for the support and advice!

Grats, that's good! :)

Quickest I've ever typed in my life.!!

WOOHOO!

That means that in just 2 months and four days I became quicker in typing Colemak than I was in typing qwerty for over 10 years. The first two weeks were the hardest but after the first two weeks everything becomes much easier. I still type qwerty on a daily basis and although the speed isn't as good as it used to be, it's still around 50-60 WPM which is more than enough for the small things.

So the answer to the question wheter it is worth the switch is:

Hell yeah!

I hope this progress blog was useful for some of you, because it sure was for me.

Cheers,

koekjes

Another month later and I'm still stuck on 87 WPM. Well, I wouldn't call it stuck anymore. I've noticed that I barely have to type at all in my day to day live, and I mainly chat and email on my smartphone. So, I kinda stopped training a month ago, and I now type an avg of about 70-75 wpm in Dutch, English is still quite a bit lower, but that doesn't really concern me since I don't have to type in English at all whatsoever.

Also, it used to bother me that I couldn't really type with one finger anymore, but it doesn't anymore. You get used to getting both hands in typing position as soon as you start typing.

Ouch. Wrong idea, as discussed elsewhere at great length.

For 2 bloody months I'm stuck at 87, and 2 minutes after the last post I manage another 89 WPM... Not sure if lucky or freaky

Grats!