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    My switch

    • Started by flexable_777
    • 6 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • From: Bærum, Norway
    • Registered: 06-Jan-2009
    • Posts: 2
    20-Feb-2009 23:23:07#1 My switch

    Hi! I thought I should share my experience with Colemak after using it a few months.

    I work as a developer and have been doing that for 6 years (using QWERTY). A few months ago (December -08?) I decided that I definitely should learn how to touch type after years with "Hunt and Peck". I was pretty good using 2-3 fingers but I had to look at the keyboard while typing. I'd heard about Dvorak and decided that if I was going to learn how to touch type, I might as well learn a better layout. While I was searching on Wikipedia for Dvorak, I saw Colemak being mentioned. I read about it and decided it was the way to go :)

    I finally began to study Colemak on the first of January -09. I practiced a couple(++) of hours a day the first days to complete the first three lessons. After that it took about one two weeks to finish all twelve lessons. After I'd learned all the letters I completely switched to Colemak and I haven't used QWERTY on my computers since.

    When I began to practice on hi-games getting I was getting scores like 20 wpm. A couple of weeks ago I managed 46 wpm. Lately I've been practicing frequent words on http://www.powertyping.com/typing_test/ … test.shtml and I've reached 80 wpm on "frequent words 1" :) I still practice about thirty minutes to one hour every day, in addition that I use it at work, and more on the weekends because I think it's really fun.

    I could also mention that I experienced some minor pain (right hand) in the start but that was probably because I never used to touch type. It only lasted on and off the first week or so and is now long gone.

    I'm on Linux so I used KTouch to learn the layout. At first I used the command line to switch between layouts, but after a while I discovered that I couldn't type Norwegian characters, so I switched to the built in method in Ubuntu 8.10. It works fine but you have to fix the caps key on startup so it doesn't turn caps lock on when you use it as backspace. Btw, the switch to backspace on caps lock is great and it took about five minutes to get used to :)

    I have also discovered https://code.google.com/p/amphetype/ lately and it runs fine on my Ubuntu. I think it's a great program as you have to repeat all problem-words. It also has nice graphs etc to monitor progress.

    I'm very satisfied with Colemak and I've even convinced a coworker to do the switch. I should also mention that after my switch to Colemak I ordered a Das Keyboard III Ultimate http://www.daskeyboard.com/ that I use at work (my boss payed for it!) and I love it :)

    I will post future progress in this thread, if any.. :) My closest goal now is to reach 55 wpm, but I think that I will aim at about 80 wpm over time. Seeing the highscores at hi-games I'm convinced that you can reach much more than 80 wpm if you really want to. I'm a guitarist so I know all about practicing and what you can achieve with good practice.

    Thanks for a great layout!

    /Andreas

    My current highscore on hi-games http://hi-games.net/typing-test/watch?u=1740

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    20-Feb-2009 23:46:42#2 Re: My switch

    Sounds familiar.

    If you started december 08 it is not few months! But keeping in mind that you started to learn touch type I assume you started december 07, am I right?

    Did you feel some pain (around knuckle) due to "too much of home row fancy rolls" somewhere in advancement path then you were acquairing about 35WPM? I got that, but it has gone in time.

    Cheers,

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,371
    21-Feb-2009 09:34:24#3 Re: My switch

    Bærum is now the Colemak capital of Norway, methinks!  :)

    Welcome to the boards Andreas, and thanks for sharing your story. I'm sure there will be future progress for you too, as there was for me and everyone else who keeps persevering. I too would like to hit 80 WPM some day but I don't sweat it much these days. It's still fun to train a bit. I'm currently in the 60+WPM segment and need to work on my accuracy it seems. I find that a high accuracy helps speed a lot and, more importantly, makes typing more comfortable too.

    Does your Das III have the VK_102 key next to the left Shift? I'd need that. And another question: Does it still have that scanning thing wherein if you press several keys at once it'll always give the same result instead of, e.g., rst rts rst rts tsr trs rts rst like my (el cheapo) board and most other boards do (and should do!)? You've probably heard of it and I hear it bothers some really fast typists, but I'm not sure whether the later makes of the Das III have it.

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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    • From: Bærum, Norway
    • Registered: 06-Jan-2009
    • Posts: 2
    22-Feb-2009 00:07:47#4 Re: My switch
    bombadil said:

    Sounds familiar.

    If you started december 08 it is not few months! But keeping in mind that you started to learn touch type I assume you started december 07, am I right?

    Did you feel some pain (around knuckle) due to "too much of home row fancy rolls" somewhere in advancement path then you were acquairing about 35WPM? I got that, but it has gone in time.

    Cheers,

    Hi. I started to learn both touch typing and Colemak in january 09, so a "few months" was maybe not the correct expression. More like two months or so :)

    From what I remember about the "pain" it was more on the wrist of the right hand.

    DreymaR said:

    Bærum is now the Colemak capital of Norway, methinks!  :)

    Welcome to the boards Andreas, and thanks for sharing your story. I'm sure there will be future progress for you too, as there was for me and everyone else who keeps persevering. I too would like to hit 80 WPM some day but I don't sweat it much these days. It's still fun to train a bit. I'm currently in the 60+WPM segment and need to work on my accuracy it seems. I find that a high accuracy helps speed a lot and, more importantly, makes typing more comfortable too.

    Does your Das III have the VK_102 key next to the left Shift? I'd need that. And another question: Does it still have that scanning thing wherein if you press several keys at once it'll always give the same result instead of, e.g., rst rts rst rts tsr trs rts rst like my (el cheapo) board and most other boards do (and should do!)? You've probably heard of it and I hear it bothers some really fast typists, but I'm not sure whether the later makes of the Das III have it.

    Bærum is definetly the Colemak capital of Norway now, especially since the coworker I "turned" is also from Bærum :)

    My Das have the VK_102 key because I ordered the european version. It still "suffer" from the scanning thing but so far it hasn't been an issue for me. And from what I read on the geekhack forums it's not the only keyboard suffering from it. I've made some experiments with it and it's easy to reproduce, but when I deliberately increase the "time space" between keys to what I believe is a "normal" space even for a pretty fast typist the keys come out correct. Because I'm aware of the issue I will keep my eyes open for any problems with my typing. But of course I would like the problem to be non existent. Some guy at geekhack said that "They are aware of the problem though and said there will be a fix at some point."

    /Andreas

    My current highscore on hi-games: http://hi-games.net/typing-test/watch?u=1740

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    22-Feb-2009 10:00:34#5 Re: My switch

    Yeah, even typing at 150+ WPM wouldn't be a problem as far as I understand... as long as you space all keys evenly! But very few type at a 100% even pace. When I tested, I could 'type' at around 240 WPM max - simple home-row gibberish for sure, but this shows the kind of speed you could in theory use on a few digraphs. And then you might get in trouble I take it.

    But I probably wouldn't notice it. Still nice to know that they're fixing it!  :)

    (Typing at 200 WPM would mean you need a latency time of no more than [60 ms - fixed!] between registering presses. That's pretty fast.)

    Last edited by DreymaR (25-Feb-2009 09:47:41)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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    • Registered: 17-Mar-2008
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    22-Feb-2009 12:47:51#6 Re: My switch

    (Typing at 200 WPM would mean you need a latency time of no more than 1 ms between registering presses. That's pretty fast.)

    Surely not. 200 wpm = 1000 cpm. 1 minute = 60 s = 60000 ms. Time per keypress = 60000 ms / 1000 cpm = 60 ms.

    That's still pretty fast.

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    22-Feb-2009 23:08:23#7 Re: My switch

    My brain is on vacation today. Thanks for pointing out that error, Tomlu!  :)

    Also explains why the DAS III scanning could be a problem and other boards not! I think the PS/2 bus scans at 4 ms and the USB at 8 ms resolution, so neither of those would provide a whole 1 kHz anyway. If you'll need around 50 ms to be safe when you do a 240 WPM-ish digraph, then the extra rollover time of the DAS III (could it be around 6*8=48 ms?) could conceivably get in the way where the other boards stay well within the required scan speeds.

    On a somewhat interesting side note: According to reaction time games (like, e.g., http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/ ) my reaction times are in the 150-250 ms range (typically 200 ms) when I'm focused, which seems to be fairly typical values for a fairly typical non-twitch, non-FPS-player guy. Translated to (re)actions per minute that's about 300[240-400] APM, but keep in mind that the actions in this case only consist of clicking the mouse whenever something moves - nothing really coordinated needs to take place in that test. My 60-70 WPM typing speed, in comparison, equates to 300-350 APM(=CPM). To get substantially faster, obviously every keypress needs to get drilled into 'autopilot' mode since reactions are just too slow for really fast typing!

    Of course, fast typing doesn't consist of single keypresses but also uses patterns. I can probably type some elements at '200 WPM' speeds by now, but the tricky bits may have me down to '30 WPM' speeds I guess. And a major contribution to typing time is error response/correction, even with accuracies over 95% (my goal is to have no lower than 98% eventually).

    Last edited by DreymaR (25-Feb-2009 09:58:54)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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