this all sounds very familiar, i remember getting over the 40wpm barrier as being pretty key in the usability stakes - and you're already there in only 7 weeks

in my typeracer history i can see all the 'ravines' in my wpm where i implemented mods to vanilla colemak - they typically took me a lot longer than 2 weeks to cross

it sounds like you're making rapid progress

I've tried a lot, and dropped a lot of it. I like to change only what makes sense, not make changes just for the changes themselves. And some things stood the test of time, but most "hunches" didn't.

That's progress. Costly progress. Hope you too, get better soon! ;-)

Nice! Yes, it's amazing how good the Angle mod really is. So simple, yet so good.

There are several ways of bringing your layout with you. You can have a USB stick with PortableKeyboardLayout (or just a simpler AutoHotKey hack) on it, alone or via a PortableApps menu (which I love!). I'm about to test out a USB-USB HID converter which may be plugged between a keyboard and a computer or other USB port to remap and add nice functionality.

My preferred Colemak-CAW[eD](Extend) layout is described in my sig topics, as I'm sure you're aware.

Again, I encourage careful remapping. So if your K/Y/P antics irk you, take a step back and go for a more conservative yet similarly beneficial solution! You'll thank yourself later for it. Personally, I think your original plan of putting the J on QWERTY-P was perfect – if you find a decent enough spot for the semicolon/colon on one of the neighboring symbol keys. Also, swapping Æ and Ø is completely unnecessary.

There's only one basic Colemak-CurlAngleWide[eD] – the one I use. But it's got an international and a Norwegian variant, and other locale variants of course.

Here's mine, as shown in the Big Bag:

   
    Colemak [edition DreymaR], showing the Norwegian 'us' variant on an ISO board with the Curl(DbgHk)Angle and Wide(Slash) ergonomic mods.

There's Extend on top of that, naturally.

Back to your situation: One fairly non-invasive plan might be to put the Back on the Backslash key with a Wide mod!? I think it's still fairly easy to reach with the index finger down there, and yet you're still using proper Colemak(-DH) which will be an advantage when migrating – trust me. It should be safe enough to tuck the somewhat rarely needed backslash up on the Back key; there's also a measure of mnemonic sweetness to that...

You should be getting a 2% or so error rate soon enough. That means that the H should be more common than the Backspace after all. J is less common unless you're a very precise typist, but then again remapping letters is a bit messy.

Another low-damage way would be putting the Backspace on the semicolon key. But then there's the question of where to put the fairly common semi-/colon! It might have to go to the RBracket key but the Slash is also quite common so I personally wouldn't dislodge mine from there.

I do believe that you give the Backspace too good a position, all in all, and that's going to bite you later on.

I think that's a wise choice.

  q   w   f   p   b   [   ←   l   u   y   J 
   a   r   s   t   g   ]   k   n   e   i   o      Moving J right and BackSpace (shown as ←) in
 z   x   c   v   b   _   ;   h   m   ,   .

Looking at it from a more visual perspective, a WideAngle modded board with the J exchanged for a non-letter is very pretty! It adds area and symmetry to the "service island" in the middle of the board. :-)

But that leads to another idea: Once you've dislodged the J it'd be entirely possible to put the RBracket/Æ on that key, and Backspace on the former QWERTY-H! That'd look even prettier for sure... but in my opinion it'd also give the Backspace a more interesting position because now it'd be equally available to both hands! Granted, the stretch is a little bit longer in mm but to me it feels about the same in effort – plus the both-hands thing (and the pretty).

  q   w   f   p   b   [   ]   l   u   y   J 
   a   r   s   t   g   ←   k   n   e   i   o      Moving J right and BackSpace in, keeping brackets in line
 z   x   c   v   b   _   ;   h   m   ,   .

And it wouldn't be more disruptive/radical, especially since the symbol keys are considered less typing-flowy anyway. In fact, keeping the relative positions of the bracket keys is less disruptive than my current Wide mod!

As a final consideration to future modders: Moving the very rare J about is exactly what fuels the Tarmak progression! So this mod would be right up that alley, really, and easily implemented by Tarmak users at least.

What do you think? I'm thinking this could actually become one of the Wide mod options, if someone tries it out and likes it a lot...

There is one more added bonus or curse to this, depending on how you look at it: The semicolon (or Ø) key is moved out of the letter block which now holds J instead. Again, pretty! But where does is go? It could be in the center island with the other fairly often-used symbol keys, or in the old RBracket position which holds the Slash (or -) key in my Wide mod. The somewhat annoying thing is that both :; and /? (and their Norwegian keyboard counterparts) are not entirely uncommon (some programmers REALLY like their semicolon key!) and I don't think the old QWERTY-N position is that good. Well, that's frustrating.

One possibility could be to move the J to QWERTY-N instead, and keep :;/Ø where it was. For Norwegian alone, I don't think it'd matter much since the letter frequencies of J (1.2%) and Ø (0.9%) are quite similar. For English as well, the colon+semicolon together (0.15%) are about the same frequency as the surprisingly rare J (0.15%). The center "island" would be a little less prettier that way, granted, but functionality before aesthetics of course! Also, it's even less disruptive in the style of the DH-mods, not changing fingers for J.

  q   w   f   p   b   [   ]   l   u   y   ; 
   a   r   s   t   g   ←   k   n   e   i   o      Moving J down and BackSpace in
 z   x   c   v   b   _   J   h   m   ,   .

Moving the BackSpace into the middle, might we call this the Back-In-Space mod? :-)

  q   w   f   p   b   Å   Æ   l   u   y   Ø 
   a   r   s   t   g   ←   k   n   e   i   o      Moving J down and BackSpace in – Norwegian variant
 z   x   c   v   b   _   J   h   m   ,   .

Today's the 2nd of May, and I started learning Colemak on the 19th of February. So it's been 2½ months already. When I last checked my typing speed (using www.typingtest.com (typinghero has been recommended but doesn't seem to work with Android.)) it was only around 45 wpm, as compared with my previous speed on qwerty which I believe was somewhere in the environs of 50–60 wpm. Not moving along all that quickly, are we?... But in my case progress has been hampered by two re-mapping bouts that occurred on the way: First, one month after starting, I remapped no less than 10 keys, following the recommendations for DreymaR's Curl Mod (4 keys) and adding a few of my own (6 keys). Then, three weeks ago, I followed DreymaR's advice and re-remapped 4 of my own remappings, bringing three of them back to their previous positions and one to the standard Curl position. (I've posted images of some of the layouts I've been through in another thread:  User contributions» Re-mapping BACK-SPACE to an index finger key) Consequently, I've been working with my present layout for much less than 2½ months, making it hard to gauge precisely the actual rate of progress.

Tweaking the layout underways did, at first, make me lose some of my fear of messing around with key positions, as I could see how quickly the mind was able to pick up and remember the changes. In no long time I was able to type e-mails etc. with the new key positions, and it didn't seem like such a big deal. But then, over time, it became clear that to progress from that initial state of sort-of-remembering the new positions to the state of being so thoroughly familiar with them that I can just type away without giving it a second thought takes a loooong time. That, in turn, put the fear of God right back in my previously over-confident heart! So now I'm done—at least for a long time to come—with any more re-mappings of letters and am solemnly resolved to solely concentrate on perfecting my familiarity with what I've got at this point.
I'm not sure how many of the people who read these posts are newbies. To those who are old hands I can only apologize if, in the observations below, I'm only stating the all-to-obvious and/or what's been articulated with more clarity elsewhere in this forum. The thing is I've been contemplating the learning process and thought I'd share it with whoever might find it interesting and not obvious. As I see it, the process of mastering touch-typing, or any other skill, can be divided into three stages:
1) THE INTELLECTUAL STAGE is where one first learns the new positions so that one may type without looking at the keyboard and without making (too many) mistakes. This, at least for someone with previous touch-typing experience, can be achieved surprisingly quickly: Within a few hours to a day for the whole Colemak layout. When that happens it's easy to get overly confident. At this stage one has to rely on reasoning and rational thinking.
2) THE INTUITIVE STAGE is where one develops an intuitive sense, a so-called "muscle memory" for the new positionings, so that one can type with some fluency, mostly relying on a felt sense and without having to think much. This takes a lot of time, weeks or months, to develop.
... and lastly,
3) THE AUTOMATIC STAGE, which is the culmination of one's efforts. At this stage one doesn't have to think at all, and there's no doubt, no hesitation, as to how each letter is to be typed. The letter E can, so far as the fingers are concerned, only be typed by pressing one finger in one certain way. There's no wavering, and lack of concentration has minimal detrimental effect. This is the stage of blind, unquestioning faith! To get to this point really takes a lot of work. The automatic sense is the first to go when remappings occur. Suddenly there's more than one option: Let's see, K, that's typed by extending the right index finger directly to the left, or was it left and down? Hmm... One is thrown into that limbo realm where blind faith can no longer be relied upon and one has to again resort to thinking and memory and trial and error.

Intellectual understanding is the quickest to achieve and the slowest to perform; automatic "knowledge" is the slowest to achieve and the quickest to perform.

At this point, I've penetrated comfortably deep into the intuitive stage but am still far from the automaton's happy state of blind faith. To tell the truth, I'm a little bit unhappy with how long it's all taken, but since that is, to a large degree/mostly, the result of my own remapping antics, I will not complain.

So more re-mapping for me again, ever? Well, not exactly. I'm still re-mapping symbols and numbers as the spirit moves me. That's a totally different kettle of fish from re-mapping letters. Having to stop and think for a millisecond before typing a paranthesis has nowhere the same detrimental impact on typing speed and general fluency as having to do the same with a letter.

Regarding the modifications that I've made so far, I can't, based on my own experience, say for sure how much of an improvement the Curl Mod (Dreymar Edition) is compared to the standard Colemak layout. But I do BELIEVE it's better and will probably be able to feel this more directly as my typing gets better. On the other hand, there are three other modifications that I already clearly experience as conducive to a more comfortable and/or efficient typing experience. They are:

1) DreymaR's advice to move the letters on the bottom left hand row—ZXCVB (or ZXCVD, if you follow the Curl Mod *(ed DreymaR))—one key to the left. This is only fully possible on an *ISO keyboard, which has an extra key between Shift and qwerty-Z. At a stroke, this makes a normal keyboard vastly more ergonomical in that it allows the left hand to type in an angle that's almost the mirror image of the right one, and not, as it otherwise would, with an unhealthy inward twist at the wrist. I can only chime in with DreymaR on this one and advice everyone to do this right away! It can be done even if one decides to stick with the overall qwerty layout.

2) The other simple and clearly beneficial change was stevep99's advice to re-map the Caps key as an Alt key and then use it to enable typing numbers and symbols using the right hand. This modification, to my mind, can hardly be praised enough, and it doesn't interfere with anything of substance. The way I've done it is to map the numbers 1–2–3–4–5 to qwerty-<H>–<J>–<K>–<L>–<;>, and 6–7–8–9–0 to qwerty-<N>–<M>–<,>–<.>–</>, respectively. It truly works wonders: With this placement, not only are the numbers supremely easy to reach, it's also very intuitive— 1 & 2 for index finger, 3 for middle finger, etc. After only a few minutes, I was quicker and surer when typing numbers this way than when using the top row, even though I had been using the latter for thirty years!! Now I've almost completely stopped using the top, numerical row. For the remaining right-hand keys, I've mapped my most used symbols, such as " ' ( ) , to them.

3) Re-mapping Backspace to qwerty-Y (=Colemak-J; J, which is an extremely uncommon letter anyway, has been moved to qwerty-P/Colemak-<;>). This is my own personal contribution, and only a sense of proper decorum and personal humility prevents me from saying how much I like it :) It allows me to use my strong right-hand index finger to press a button that often requires a lot of repeated pressing (as opposed to using my weakest finger—the left pinkie—as per the original Colemak layout),  and I can do so without having to move the hand away from home position.

So. All in all, do I consider the change to Colemak worth all the hassles? Well, I think so. If nothing else, the standard qwerty layout is just so incredibly hopeless and such an affront to all ergonomic reason that, looking back, it's almost hard to fathom that I was able to put up with it for so many years. Yes, I'm glad to be rid of it!
That's it for now. Sorry if this post got a bit on the long side, and thanks for reading so far ... if anyone did. I may try to post again at a later point to inform about further progress...

Nice and interesting writeup, BeeJay!

I do think there's a fourth stage to layout learning like Pinky suggests: The stage where it's words or at least n-grams instead of just key positions. The 'organic' stage?

I wouldn't call your number remappings an 'alt' layer; that's very confusing as the Alt key is for using menus. The AltGr key (Alternate Graphics) is closer, but if you remap the keys themselves I'd call it an Extend mapping layer. I went for a NumPad setup on my second Extend layer, but if a two-row numeric setup suits you better then I guess that's fine too. I haven't tried such a setup but it might be intuitive enough. Looks a bit odd to put 67890- below when it's also above, but that's a minor detail.

Let's see ... let me just look up "n-grams"... OK... Hmm... I think I'll have to chew on that one for a while... Sounds interesting.
Anyway, I think your point about words or "n-grams" is a very good one. I completely agree with you on that account. Except I think I would probably just include it in the three-stage model. Three or four or five stages—those are, after all, somewhat arbitrary divisions. "Organic" stage—I like that. Sounds much nicer than "automatic". What I like about words like "automaton" and "blind faith", though, is that they help to wake people up! Speaking from my experience with studying foreign languages, I can certainly testify that as one moves along, the basic building blocks—the remembered units—grow much bigger than individual letters. At first, an adult learner will tend to learn words and basic expressions by piecing together individual letters, much in the same way as a child starting to learn to read, deciphers each letter before mentally assembling them into words. So, "a-r-i-g-a-t-ō — arigatō". As one progresses, individual letters and phonemes become less and less conscious as the focus shifts toward fully formed words. At an even later stage, whole complex expressions and phrases get added, i.e. the phrase "Would that work for you?" is remembered as a whole unit, not so much as individual words which are then fitted together in line with the rules of grammar, etc. That's of course part of the reason why these later stages are later, and why it takes so long go get there: because they require storing such large amounts of specific information in order to be functional. As opposed to the very beginner's approach, where only a tiny toolbox consisting of extremely generalized information—such as the approximately 15–30 vowels and consonants of most languages—is utilized to cover everything. Again, this is quick to learn—or start learning—but slow in its application; as opposed to learning and remembering and familiarizing oneself with larger specific segments and structures, which is slow to learn but quick in its application.

Just from the top of my head—what I assume happens during the process of learning to touch-type according to one layout or other, is that all the information regarding the relationship between each finger and its assigned characters/keys gets worked out first, then as it slowly gets cemented into the intuitive, reflective-instinctual memory, the focus of learning gradually shifts towards whole words. And from that, probably towards whole phrases and sentences. At least on the level of words versus individual characters, this is obvious true—even after just a few months with my new layout: Words that I can quickly and easily type when I just follow the flow, can become rather cumbersome if I start thinking of each letter separately.

So with all that in mind, my proposed way of dividing the stages of the learning process into the categories of INTELLECTUAL (THOUGHT-BASED), FLUENT, & AUTOMATIC was probably a rather simplified and somewhat one-sided approach. Not wrong, perhaps, but only covering a small part of the basic spectrum.

As for Pinkyache's mention of using various finger arrangements for the same letters, I don't know... On a subtle level, I'm sure that is completely true. The letter "e" as part of "them" is certainly hit in a slightly different way than "e" as part of "grey"—just in the same way as the phonemes (vowels and consonants etc.) of a spoken language are influenced by their immediate "environment". But I do find it hard to fathom how using a completely different finger for the same key—if that indeed is what was meant—would be conducive to fast and fluent typing.

Sorry about that. I'm not very well-versed yet in the proper terminology. Alt and AltGr is just what my re-mapping app calls these these keys, and they function identically. So an "Extend mapping layer" it is. I tried a few different ways of mapping the numbers and found my present arrangement to be, by far, the most intuitive one—it makes sense, after all the whole decimal system of counting is based on the fingers, so there's definitely a strong sense that the middle finger goes with 3, the ring finger with 4, the pinkie with 5; whereas the index finger goes with both 1 (being the finger most often used to represent that number, when using gestures) and 2 (being the 2nd finger). It just clicked with me right away. The same goes for 67890, but to a lesser degree. The fact that 67890 are also to be found on the top row doesn't, to my mind, make much of a difference, since the objective to a large extent was to avoid having to stretch the fingers all the way up there. I almost completely ignore the top row these days, and do so very blissfully indeed!

Good question. Why indeed? Not having to change the layer in order to type periods and commas would have been better, I agree. The reasons I chose otherwise are two-fold: First, I wanted to have my most used symbols in a better position, having just evicted them from the home row in order to make space for the numbers, and therefore chose to give them the row above (I assume this is the row you're referring to, the one just above the home row, when you say "top row", not the numerical row at the very top (which I've basically stopped using)). But more importantly, since I had already assigned Backspace to qwerty-Y, using the row above home row would have required me to either give up my much loved Back-space key (the app I'm using for re-mapping, "External Keyboard Helper Pro", does not allow more than one layer for function keys such as Backspace) or else move numbers 6–0 one key to the right, which would have messed up the whole intuitive finger-number correspondence.

But it was worth it! :) 

If I do get myself a Texblade at some point, and then only use that and not other keyboards, I'd be able to have my cake and eat it too: It's got a "green" layer with different key codes (probably akin to the Fn layer in other keyboards), making it possible to have a functional key and something else in the same physical location. Until then I'll just have to put up with this minor hassle...

That does look neat, SteveP. However, if you're thinking about BeeJay's layout, some tweaks are necessary as it's a Wide layout so there's one more key to the left of Back and I wouldn't move the comma/period from their normal positions which is one to the right from your suggestion.

But then I wouldn't put the Backspace all the way into QWERTY-Y! Better to have it on QWERTY-H then, Back-In-The-Middle!

No, 5 doesn't disappear on an ANSI keyboard. But you have the whole thing one key too far to the right methinks? I read it as having 3-4-5 on fingers 3/4/5, so the index finger hits both 1 and 2. Maybe I'm wrong; it depends on whether BeeJay was referring to a Wide setup or not... ;-)

 (q) (w) (f) (p) (b)  =   6   7   8   9   -   / 
  (a) (r) (s) (t) (g)  ←   1   2   3   4   5   '      Num layer on a Wide layout with Back-In-Space
(z) (x) (c) (v) (d) (_)  *   0   +   ,   .

Like this, maybe? The slash is easy to reach on the normal layer, so it's plus/minus/asterisk that need most help (but I left a / in there nevertheless). I suppose that +- are most used.

I'm warming up to this. I think it may be better for numeric input than the NumPad-esque setups. At least for some. On the other hand, it may be a bit less intuitive for people who are used to Laptop Fn-NumPad layers? But the numbers at least seem very intuitive this way! On the other hand, either you have to use the index finger for five numbers or run the risk of running out of keys on ANSI boards...