When keyboard optimization messes with you.

So I've been playing with Qwerty mini modifications again, aiming for 10 key changes or less while minimizing consecutive finger use. Lots of tests to isolate the greatest bottlenecks and best swaps. ...which I won't get into, as it isn't relevant to the story. Anyways, todays efforts came down to this: 

Q W L S :    Y K I U P
A R T F G    H J O E D
  Z X C V B  N M , . /

(Note: ZXCVB shift is intentional)

Then I decided to see what an optimizer could do if I allowed it to only move the same 10 keys I had when making 'Joe Dart'. At first it came up with something worse, but after a bit of wrangling it came out with a cleaner version:

Q W U S :    Y K I L P
A T E F G    H J O R D
  Z X C V B  N M , . /
 
(ZXCVB shift is still intentional)

The obvious next step is a name, right? It is just sort of instinctual, and really, with 'Jord' right there on the home row, how hard could it be? But then again, so is "US", "KIL" and "ATE". Nothing to be done about the KIL, maybe the US ATE can be mitigated? I mean, look at it left to right, it sort of looks a name. Ateus. Sounds like a Greek hero or something. Ateus: Kil Jord. That works... kinda.

But man, Ateus, that sounds really familiar. I'll look it up.

That's wierd. Nothing but non-english pages. Lets try something else.

Google Translate: Ateus - Portugese. n. Athiests.

Ah.

Well... shit.

"Non-believers: go forth and murder a mythological personification of Earth." Wonderful. Even adding the Y as a 'why' doesn't help much.

So, the moral of this story? To heck with optimizers, you can do it better! Look at this for example; 60% less samefinger than Qwerty (Colemak: 66%), 27% distance reduction (Colemak: 43%) with only 10 keys changed (Colemak: 17). Read 'em and weep:

Q W L S :    Y K I U P
A T R F G    H J O E D
  Z X C V B  N M , . /

And I'll call it - ... uh ... fudge

:P

P.S. I'm thinking "Joe'd Up"