Hi!
I'm a software engineering student from Denmark.
I started to learn QWERTY touch typing in the summer of 2006. In 2007 I sorted out the bad habit of occasionally looking at the keyboard by painting my keyboard completely white. For comfort, I bought a Microsoft NEK4000 but it's kinda tacky and I always ended up using a regular flat keyboard each time I tried to start using the NEK4000.
I had also been reading about alternative layouts but I was afraid of making myself even less able to use other people's computers now that I also used caps lock as control. But no more! (being afraid, that is). Two weeks ago, a friend at uni said he wanted to learn Dvorak. I said "Count me in!" and started reading about it. But Colemak caught my eye and one thing led to another and here I am. On that day, I measured my QWERTY speed to 58 WPM using the 2 minute test at hi-games.net (average of a few runs). I will continue to use that test in this thread.
For a week I was looking at making a Danish Colemak, but I didn't use it more than for typing "setxkbmap dk" to get back to my normal QWERTY. February 27th was the day I started really practicing, so I shall dub it Day 1 (seeing as this is more common than, say, Day 0 (Also, maybe 0 should be reserved for the first week of preparing to learn Colemak)). I plan to maintain my QWERTY skills, so for the time being, I'm doing "Colemak by night". And by "by night" I mean maybe just a half hour of ktouch and mixed typing each night.
On Day 3, I was happy to find my QWERTY at 60 WPM instead of going down the drain. Today, Day 5, is the first time I measured my Colemak speed. 14 WPM. And QWERTY is now at a hurting 64 WPM -- I guess I'm getting familiar with the process of typing fast for two minutes.
I'm thinking that maybe I should make some Danish Colemak exercises for ktouch because so far, I've only been writing English on Colemak. I also still need to figure out some stuff such as what to do about backspace since I already use caps lock for control. I'm also tempted by the idea of a wide layout because shift will be so easy to reach.
I'll return with progress later. Now, I'm off to bed.
