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    One-month progress check-in

    • Started by Nikk
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    08-Mar-2017 20:39:30#1 One-month progress check-in

    I've been using Colemak for just about a month now, and I think I'm at my first plateau.  As a reminder, I came here from around 100wpm on both Dvorak and QWERTY, using Dvorak as my primary.

    I've been monitoring my progress for this month using the Top 200 English words test on 10fastfingers, since there's some kind of fairness between tests in that they're relatively the same difficulty, but I can't memorize the test because the words are randomized.  A few notes on the test:  It's much harder to start a flow on unrelated words strung together, so it's not a great representation of my speed typing actual sentences.  It also counts a word as "wrong" only when you hit space, and there's no way to go back.  This test is very poor at tracking accuracy because it only tells you how many words you got wrong versus right.

    Attached is a graph of the test points that I've tracked.  I started on day 1 at 9WPM, and my speeds gradually increased at about 16 wpm per week for three weeks.  Since then, I've been stuck at around 55wpm on this test.  My accuracy needs some work, but I need to find a different test to use for that, so I think that's my next step.

    Once I've gotten my accuracy solid, and typing doesn't feel awkward, I'm going to start incorporating Dvorak and QWERTY back into my typing.  I'm not sure which I'll start with, but I'm going to try to maintain all three and see what happens (yes, there's no real benefit, and yes, I am slightly insane).

    Going to look into better accuracy-tracking tests now!

    (Minor edits for grammar.)

    Last edited by Nikk (08-Mar-2017 20:41:10)
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    09-Mar-2017 09:27:59#2 Re: One-month progress check-in

    I think that's good progress. You can expect some plateauing, especially if you're still dedicated to keeping your Dvorak skills as well as QWERTY fluency.

    Instead of attachments, you'll want to use img tags. ;-)

    I'm not sure that counting wrong words is a bad accuracy assessment. When I make a mistake, it'll sometimes lead to a lot of errors before I stop and delete the word to retype it. I wouldn't want all those errors counted separately, as it's really just one mistake. And a mistake usually doesn't spread to the next words, so I'd say that counting wrong words is a decent measure.

    Last edited by DreymaR (09-Mar-2017 09:31:07)

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    09-Mar-2017 13:50:46#3 Re: One-month progress check-in

    haha - a month to 60wpm - curse you and all your kind... :D

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    09-Mar-2017 16:40:38#4 Re: One-month progress check-in

    Hmmmm due to this thread I've been playing on 10ff and I actually like this site. Its not real typing, since the words don't make sense, but its very valuable to use to really drill in all of those common words (and experiment with new fingerings)

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    09-Mar-2017 18:43:58#5 Re: One-month progress check-in
    DreymaR said:

    Instead of attachments, you'll want to use img tags. ;-)

    Yeah, but I didn't want to upload it somewhere else, and you can click through and look at the graph still.  Unless there's some recommendation/request by the forum owners not to upload attachments, I like having it hosted on the same place as people are looking at it.  I can probably use img tags with the uploaded attachment so that you can look at it without having to click through.  Nevermind, it doesn't make a proper image url, so eh.


    DreymaR said:

    I'm not sure that counting wrong words is a bad accuracy assessment.

    Not entirely, but there's a lot of fumbling within words that it doesn't capture, and sometimes I'll accidentally hit space too soon, counting a single keystroke as an entire mistaken word.  For the purposes of improving my typing, I would like to know the accuracy of my key strokes, not of my consecutive characters between spaces.  It's also not a good metric because making a mistake in a 10-letter word is considered equivalent to a mistake in a 2-letter word.

    misterW said:

    Hmmmm due to this thread I've been playing on 10ff and I actually like this site.

    Yeah, I really like it as a metric for speeds.  It's somewhat accurate for most of the typing that I do on a daily basis, too, since I'm programming and running terminal commands, so it's more jumping in and typing a few things rather than an ongoing flow of prose.  I plan to keep using it, but I don't think it's a good tool for me to keep using as a primary form of practice.

    I also have a Python script that I wrote which measures the WPM of a block of freeform text, which is nice to measure my real world speeds, but I haven't been using it much and I don't know that there's a way to measure use of backspace in a terminal.  (If anybody is interested in using said script, I have it here.)

    Last edited by Nikk (09-Mar-2017 18:56:12)
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    09-Mar-2017 19:21:58#6 Re: One-month progress check-in

    I just ran across this test, which has you look at an entire sentence then type it.  This lets you navigate and type however you want, lets you memorize what you're typing first, and doesn't calculate any mistakes until you submit a sentence.  I think I might use this alongside of the 10fastfingers test for future metrics.

    TypingTest.com Scientific Typing Test

    Last edited by Nikk (13-Mar-2017 20:32:35)
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    10-Mar-2017 10:02:46#7 Re: One-month progress check-in

    The python script I use for freeform script is Amphetype. ;-)

    It's not quite the same as you have to import your text first, but it has bells and whistles that I like.

    Last edited by DreymaR (10-Mar-2017 10:04:31)

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    10-Mar-2017 18:04:41#8 Re: One-month progress check-in
    DreymaR said:

    The python script I use for freeform script is Amphetype. ;-)

    It's not quite the same as you have to import your text first, but it has bells and whistles that I like.


    If you import your text, then how is that freeform? You are still transcribing an existing text, not writing from your brain

    Last edited by misterW (10-Mar-2017 18:05:06)
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    11-Mar-2017 12:59:43#9 Re: One-month progress check-in

    I may have misunderstood the expression "a block of freeform text". I understood that as allowing for existing text. Truly freeform typing is rarely blockwise in my case. :-)

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    13-Mar-2017 20:37:16#10 Re: One-month progress check-in

    Yeah, the script that I wrote just lets you type whatever you want, and it measures your WPM for that text.  It's very basic, but since I wasn't able to find anything that did that, I wrote a very basic one myself.

    I might make a JavaScript one if there's any interest.  That would actually be able to estimate some kind of accuracy by tracking your backspacing.  It would also not start measuring your text until you started typing, which is an improvement over my current script.

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    13-Mar-2017 20:52:57#11 Re: One-month progress check-in

    I don't know how you do it!  I type around 100wpm on colemak, and if I have to type for even five minutes on qwerty I am messed up for DAYS...

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    14-Mar-2017 00:34:52#12 Re: One-month progress check-in

    How long have you been typing with Colemak for?

    It really wasn't an issue back when I learned Dvorak, but I spent an entire six months without really using QWERTY at all.  I don't plan to spend quite so long on exclusively my new layout, this time, but I still feel messy even at 60 WPM.

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