I've been a touch typist since I was 14 or so (now 20), forced myself to learn it,,,
:-----------------------touch type history
recently i've also learned to touch type in russian because my keyboard didn't have russian keys on it (i am russian, but lived most of my live in england, so i'm not very good at the language.)
when i was 14, my tt was a 4 finger skill, later i learned to use 6 and eventually with the help of typemaster pro i learned to type properly ....
I am a casual typer, I work with computers, but I take them apart and sort out windows problems, but I don't type that much, hence my speed is only 48 wpm....(although others are impressed, "wow you can touch type" )
;------------------ the present, reason for change
I've been typing a lot of emails recently, my wpm's rose and consequently my wrists started to hurt after lengthy email....
I just thought of how poorly qwerty was designed, the most popular keys like I, e t are all over the place but not where i wanted them.. Fingers move around too much,,,
well, after being finished with it I looked out for alternative input methods, came across stuff like kinesis keyboard and some others, (too pricy), then i looked into alternative keyboard layouts.
Looked into Dvorak, didn't like the fact that the shortcut keys where all over the place,., looked into various other layouts,,
until........
then the blessing, the alleluia, The colemak design......
only downside was that windows doesn't have build in support for it. But I use Autohotkey, and on the forms i found Portable Colemak https://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic28447.html
very handy....
;------------------ the learning,
I've learned to touch type qwerty, then I learned to touch type in russian, Привет :) and hence learning a 3rd touch type layout wasn't all too hard for me....
However, I finally understand how hard it is for others to learn touch type ;-(
First i learned the left home row, then the right, then top left, then top right, (bottom row is very similar, so i didn't spend any time on it)...
;-----First steps
What really helped me was:
1) first mentally remember where each key is,, for that i give each key a finger related memory, ie for the p and t i remember them as PoinTing finger,,, the "r" "s", right is on the wrong side, and "s" has moved on a bit,, ,, for the I, i was saying out loud, "rIIIIght rIIIIIng finger,," exc,, what ever suits you. But it really helped,....
2) load up notepad, type a random series of home row chars, put spaces in between..
hit return and below retype the sequence, keep thinking of the rIIIIIght rIIIng ,,,"
something like:
Setn hidhn aoied hhdo hena hidh tsho ets nhts ide nst hdt ose drst noai nsre ith ashda oies rdrs tni
3) after a few lines, when I felt comfortable about it, I moved on to top left, then top right ,,, then memorized k on the bottom row....
4) after mentally learned all keys, and having practiced them a bit, I put theory into practice, loaded up hi-games and went for it.......
;------------------------------ The Result,,,, day by day
Day 0) found out about Colemak 9th/3/08
Day 1) Learning all the letters, 10th..
day 2) Finished learning the keys. Put theory into practice
First go on hi-games: 9 wpms :D (qwerty record 48 wpms)
Second 8, third 12, fourth 11, fifth 13......lots later... 16 wpm top...
;--first attempt impression,....
I'd say,16 wpm not too bad for the 2nd day...
Mentally i keep going back to qwerty, ( i did type all of this in qwerty)
I have to think of every character that i have to type out, it's very exhausting.
But, I do feel that Colemak is lots better... so i guess it's worth the effort...
i did a little chart.. :)
1st day stuff
Update on the chart (will do regularly) Last Update 20/3/2008
