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    Qwerty Typist learning COLEMAK

    • Started by lucageorge
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    Hello hello hello there !

    I'm a Qwerty typist and i'm not sure for how many years i type now, i type without looking at the keyboard , i'm 23 years old :D and i got my 1'st PC and keyboard at 17 i think.

    Aniway with my Qwerty skill now after all those years and practice i type now 80-120 Words/minute (5 chars a word)  for text at 1'st sight but if i can train for a specific text i can reach much more , and did once even 168 WPM .

    I want to type as fast and as eficient as i can and becouse of this i thought to learn Colemak after all my research.

    I haven't typed everyday or something like this since i started but regular , once 1-4 days at last , I think i thought to start learning this layout in December 2010 but i started actually practice around 1 january 2011.

    Aniway today is 15 mars 2011 and after typing 1161 races on the lovely typeracer.com ( I just love it ), i reached today a peak of 91 WPM.

    Here is the graph for my evolution on typeracer.com : FluxBB bbcode test

    For the start i used Typefaster as it was recomanded on the download layout site, practice it few days and after that just typeracer races >:), sometimes i stay and type 1 hour a row :D , sometimes i get bored and type just 2 minutes, depends on how i feel.

    So i can now type any text using the Colemak layout with le's say at last 60 WPM but usually around 70.

    I like the Colemak layout, it's a new chalenge for me and for the future , not too far will surpass my Qwerty speed.

    I just feel very good typing with , it's more smooth than Qwerty.

    BDW i typed the alphabet "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" using Colemak faster than i can on Qwerty, so i typed the alphabet in 1.976 secs, with Qwerty i had just 2.1 secs the best.

    I see a lot of people that go "Cold Turkey" or how you call that, to just start using a layout nonstop and get rid of another :p , i don't think it's the best solution , it's easier obvious , but not the best for the future.

    Actually since i started using Colemak even my Qwerty speed improved :-) , it's very hard to have 2 layouts using same time just at the beginning , the very beginning , i had moments when after typing wih Colemak i couldn't even type letters with Qwerty , just words lol. But the problem it's in the past now , i can switch almost with no problem from one to another in instant.

    I'll use both of the layouts from now on till i dye lol in paralel, but i think i'll use Colemak as primary once i surpass Qwerty speed just becouse the potential for speed/accuracy it's higher.

    Have i said this ? Hmm lol , so i just practice Colemak for the moment but i still use Qwerty for everything else till they'll be even as speed.

    And yes i just love the Caps Lock remaping to Backspace , nice speed improving trick.

    I hope i'll keep posting here my evolution , goodluck to everyone ! I love you all ♥

    Last edited by lucageorge (15-Mar-2011 00:57:47)
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    Hello, and congratulations on choosing Colemak! I hope it will be as much fun for you as it has been for me.  :)

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

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    Wow nice site i see there from you, the replay one , i did 2 races 2 mins and 5 mins 1'st sight texts and those are my resuults :

    http://hi-games.net/typing-test,30/watch?u=4662        30 secs text

    http://hi-games.net/typing-test,300/watch?u=4662      5 minutes text

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    Did you notice that a couple of the world's best typists (in competitions) have been on that site too? Sean Wrona and Daniel Chen, no less. However, for a very new layout it isn't bad that both Ryan Heise and Micah Wine have positions in the top 30 using Colemak. Too little for statistics of any kind of course.  :)

    How awesome would it be if any of the top top typists developed an interest in Colemak? Ryan Heise started from a 100+ WPM speed in QWERTY, for instance. I think the main factor of your speed with most layouts will be your overall technique after all, but also how well you've trained common word (or rather, word parts) on your layout. If one of the top typists would try getting good at Colemak, it'd be awesome to watch their progress and end speed with it!!!

    Last edited by DreymaR (15-Mar-2011 16:05:48)

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

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    Ryan Heise and Micah Wine are the fastest Colemak Typists ? :p , i've now seen their profiles on hi-games .

    The top speed typists , at last mos of them consider now after they got at that level of speed, that was kind of a time loss , that they could of done something more beneficial for their lives with all that time.

    And also they are kind of afraid that if tey start using another layout will mess their speed on the Qwerty.
    That's partially true but for a very short time, and keeping in mind how much they trained for what they can do now :p.... they don't see it worth.

    And also most of the top speed typists are guys that also play an musical instrument like piano ....guitar..., that helped them evolve and get to that speed also ( This i've seen almost at all highspeed typists i spoke with )

    For the moment i type Qwerty most of by Words....
    About Colemak :D i watch every letter separately at last right now , and i see this as a good thing becouse my errors will be lower in number. On Qwerty a lot of times i type another word that resembles with the one i have in front of my eyes lol :D

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    When you reach your top speed, it takes a lot of effort to increase 3-5wpm more. So all the typists will come to his/her plateau in 6 months of practicing.

    For Ryan Heise, Micah Wine, Sean Wrona and other typists, they are still praticing, but do not make any more breaking records, so their current records remain static.

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    1 January 2011 - 13 June 2011 - Colemak experience.

    I trained almost just on Typeracer.com and here is the graphic of my races :
    FluxBB bbcode test

    Here are my statistics for Typeracer: Click where you can see month to month improvement!

    Here you can see my Qwerty Typeracer account : Click to have a brief history of my Qwerty speed.

    I think now my Qwerty and Colemak speed are almost the same, so i needed almost 6 months but trained pretty rare and keept using Qwerty .

    I still use Qwerty almost exclusively for everyday PC typing except when i train , and almost all of my training was on the typeracer site , i have few more races on other universes like accuracy ( This helps a lot to improve accuracy and in the same time speed).

    Fastest race ever with Colemak was yersteday on easy texts universe - 119 WPM for a pretty long text actually.

    Here is my Hi-games profile too : Click

    Last edited by lucageorge (13-Jun-2011 17:12:44)
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    It's great to see that you can maintain Qwerty and Colemak at the same time. Now I only use Qwerty when playing FPS games.

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    Here is my Typeracer report since i started Colemak.

        Month                         Average      Best                 (Words per minute)
    ................................................................
    September 2011            94.98     127.62                 (till now)
    August 2011                  93.31     121.82    
    July 2011                      89.83     125.17    
    June 2011                     88.18     110.92    
    May 2011                      83.00     106.63    
    April 2011                     80.14     106.38    
    March 2011                   74.08       90.60   
    February 2011               64.64       85.61    
    January 2011                 49.82      69.79


    I still use both layouts (Qwerty & Colemak).
    I use Qwerty on everything else and Colemak just for training most of the time.
    I can change the layouts instantly, and even if now i'm faster on Colemak than i was on Qwerty when i started to train Colemak, both layouts speed got up and at the moment Qwerty > Colemak a bit.

    I think Qwerty speed got up too becouse i use it when i participate on "MASTERS", Typingzone monthly contest, where i'm at place 12 for the moment.

    I did the 50 minutes test on Hi-Games.net and as you can see i scored 80 WPM and i didn't felt tyred.

    I typed the "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" in 1.888 seconds using Colemak, on Qwerty i'm a bit slower.

    Check This picture "Sweet picture" from 8 August :
    122_WPM_Qwerty__colemak_same_t.JPG?tsid=20110911-081846-51cf1a7a

    All in all i'll continue training Colemak but the gain gets harder and slower now becouse i'm at my physical speed limit for moving my fingers, but in time will increase if i don't give up.

    Last edited by lucageorge (11-Sep-2011 09:19:25)
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    chart?cht=lc&chs=320x200&chf=bg,s,FBFBFB&chd=t:39,45,51,55,55,58,62,67,69,72,73,76,76,77,78,78,82,81,84,82,81,85,88,89,89,88,84,91,89,89,91,91,89,89,88,90,93,86,90,92,90,94,94,94,93,95,91,94,95,95,95,97,98,96,98,93,97,98,100,112&chds=24,119&chtt=Improvement+Over+Time&chxt=y,y,x,x&chxr=0,24,119&chxl=1:|WPM|2:|1162|2324|3486|4648|5810|3:|Race+Number&chxp=1,50|2,18,38,58,78,98|3,50


    Isn't that Typeracer graphic sweet?, next are the statistics from SeanWrona's site for September complete and October till now.
    Yes I managed to type 141.31 WPM , one race, it's the well known " I know a bloke who knows a bloke..."
    I got my speed latety high by training hard on EasyTexts Universe from Typeracer.

    You must remember that i do no race selection like most of the people on Typeracer :D

                   Month     Average     Best     Races     Wins     Win %
         October 2011     97.30     124.73     370     193     52.16
      September 2011     96.18     141.31     710     331     46.62

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    Nice progress to look at. I suppose 100wpm Typeracer average is attainable for you.

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    chart?cht=lc&chs=320x200&chf=bg,s,FBFBFB&chd=t:39,45,51,55,55,58,62,67,69,72,73,76,76,77,78,78,82,81,84,82,81,85,88,89,89,88,84,91,89,89,91,91,89,89,88,90,93,86,90,92,90,94,94,94,93,95,91,94,95,95,95,97,98,96,98,93,97,98,100,101,100,99,97,98,98,98,95,96,94,99,99,106,102,102,101,103,105,104,105,108&chds=25,115&chtt=Improvement+Over+Time&chxt=y,y,x,x&chxr=0,25,115&chxl=1:|WPM|2:|1577|3154|4731|6308|7885|3:|Race+Number&chxp=1,50|2,19,39,59,79,99|3,50

    This is 14'th of December and i come back with news about my evolution.
    Up it's my graphic from typeracer, normal universe, from the 1'st day on Typeracer until now, the main place where i train.
    For anyone that wants to get some speed i recomand the monthly masters from this site, where most of the best typists in the world compete : Typingzone, and every month for few days 2-7, you can type the same text over and over and over again until you dream it, and feel that your head will explode, this way your fingers will get real speed, even if you can't control it yet.

    Last month i bought a new keyboard because from the many hours spend typing, and because my position at the keyboard( I type with the hands in this position | \, and it's tyring for my right one) i started to have some pain in the wrist so i bought the Microsoft Natural 4000(which it is one of the best ergonomic keyboards that still resembles to a normal keyboard, and i keep my hands / \ , i'm very happy with my achizition, was a bit slow at the beginning, but after 2 weeks i had full speed, bought it on 17 November, on my 24'th birthday, so i don't even have a full month since i have it and i can say that it's the best thing that happend to me in typing lately.


    So the new keyboard combined with typing a lot on the EasyTexts (which made me lose some accuracy but got speed in fingers), combined with typing on  AccuracyUniverse , i managed until now , this month December to have after 764 races (no race selection, and i finish 99.9999% of races i enter) an average of 103.59 Words per minute and a peak of 151.83 WPM on "I know a bloke who knows a bloke...." text, that compared with the last month where i averaged 98 WPM, like the month before, so this is a huge jump, from 98 to 103 WPM.
    Another thing that might have helped it's that for a while now, i started to use Colemak exclusively on my PC, no more qwerty.

    As a dual Qwerty/Colemak typist, that gets now 100 WPM average on both, i can tell you that it's a huge difference in the feeling i get when I use Colemak compared with Qwerty, for the same effort i get considerable faster WPM with Colemak, soon, when january comes i'll have 1 year since i started to type on Colemak.

    You must remember that i do no race selection like most of the people on Typeracer :D

                   Month     Average     Best     Races     Wins     Win %
        December 2011     103.59     151.83     764     352     46.07               Until now, 14 December 2011, month not ended yet.
       November 2011     98.15      148.53    1,022     422     41.29
         October 2011      98.55     137.82     655     327     49.92
      September 2011     96.18     141.31     710     331     46.62


    All my typing experience, race by race, month by month, day by day

    Last edited by lucageorge (14-Dec-2011 14:10:41)
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    Good to see you continually improve like that! Nice going, Luca.

    You may have heard of it, but to get the left wrist straight I don't use any special hardware but just an "angle modified" layout setup. Since I use an ISO board, it's easy: Just moving the ZXCVB keys to the left and the leftover key (the special ISO key next to LSHIFT) to the middle. Also helps your stretch to the B key, and doesn't require you to change your fingering but only the wrist angle! It's not so easy for ANSI board users, but I know some people actually move the Z key inwards to achieve the wrist angle effect.

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

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    Wow, so many races you have typed. I would have RSI if I had so many races.

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    Hi everyone,

    I remembered about the forum and here i am to share with you my progress.

    Today - Day0 = 2 years and 9 months of Colemak.

    I probably still can do 80 WPM on Qwerty even if i use it probably just once few months for few minutes on average on other PC's.

    Because of my hand position on Colemak and because i wanted to have the best tools to type as good as i can (that's why I chosen Colemak in the 1'st place) and keeping in mind my financial possibilities i bought this keyboard on 17 November 2011(said this in previous post):
    mk_nek4000v2_large.jpg
    It's a Microsoft Natural 4000, it is ergonomic(For real, no bullshit shapes that don't help) and it's one of the best Rubber Dome keyboards out there.
    I never typed on a mechanical keyboard, they are way too expensive and i wanted something to keep my hands in / \ shape, i type easier like this.

    Let's start with Typeracer:
    chart?cht=lc&chs=320x200&chf=bg,s,FBFBFB&chd=t:57,79,87,90,94,97,98,104,101,102,105,105,106,112,112,112,114,111,115,119,119,116,120,116,115,119&chds=40,128&chtt=Improvement+Over+Time&chxt=y,y,x,x&chxr=0,40,128&chxl=1:|WPM|2:|4898|9796|14694|19592|24490|3:|Race+Number&chxp=1,50|2,16,36,56,76,96|3,50
    I have typed until now 25,489 races on the normal universe + few thousands on Accuracy and EasyTexts.
    I repeat that I never quit a races on purpose, i type everything and i achieve AVG speeds on normal universe ranging between 110-130, and at the moment most of the times around 120+ WPM.

    To see the exact progress and every single race visit the database: Click
    PS: On June 2013 exploiting a bug on Typeracer someone took control over my account and did 10 races, all being 200+ WPM( Cheater obvious ), even if the races were removed from the Typeracer by Alex(Typeracer Creator) they remained of the Database hosted by Sean Wrona.

    Hi-Games.net now:
    This is my profile: Click.

    For me to be a good typist doesn't mean to type just fast, you must be constant and resilient, that's why from time to time i type on Hi-games the 50 minutes test.
    Fist time i managed 84 WPM.
    Almost every time i did it again after a few months i improved my speed.
    I even recorded it once and posted it on youtube because the site do not save such long tests, would eat too much space on the server.
    Me typing 50 minutes Test on Hi-games.net and achieving 96 WPM.

    To access this test all you need is to modify the link, where the number means the number of seconds
    For example:
    http://hi-games.net/typing-test,3000/    - 3000 seconds means 50 minutes test.
    http://hi-games.net/typing-test,30/    - The standard test of 30 seconds.
    http://hi-games.net/typing-test,60/    - The standard test of 1 minute.
    And so on, you can try practically every test.
    I even did 1 hour once managing 97 WPM, this was after the Youtube one, so as you imagine the link contains the number 3600 meaning 60 minutes * 60 seconds.

    At the moment my best is 105 WPM for the 50 minutes test, this is my true speed in my opinion, not things like my 199 WPM i achieved on Typeracer on EasyTexts on "I know a bloke who knows a bloke who knows a bloke. Now, I know you know this bloke. This is a bloke you know."

    The last site i often type on is 10 Fast Fingers: Click For my Profile
    I usually type the English and my Romanian test.
    Romanian best speed was 148 i think on the new words, in the past was easier ones and i was able to do 160 i think, at that point i was doing 130 best on English test which is the exactly one today is used, and on which i have 158 i think my best score.
    Here is a 157 one that i saved: Click

    Last night i took a picture when i had 133 AVG on Typeracer on the normal universe, probably my best ever:
    2013.09.05%20ora%2018.36.43.jpg

    I'll end this with my thoughts on how you can evolve in typing in an efficient manner:
    If you want to type faster, don't care too much for accuracy, just bang your head on lots and lots of http://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english to learn to type very fast the core words of the language. After that just train lots and lots of http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=easytexts, this way you have just few texts to type, easy ones, and all you build now it's RAW speed in your fingers even if you can't control it yet(which is what most of the people miss, raw finger speed).

    Now comes the part where you are just a mess and you do mistake after mistake(If you did too much of this, which is not necessarily bad in the long run, just at the moment), but you got speed built in your flesh.

    Do few weeks of training http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=accuracy and only accuracy, don't give a fuck about speed, do 60 WPM lower than your normal, but do it without mistakes, over and over again, in time you will notice that you will type faster and faster and keeping the accuracy to 99.99999%.

    Alternate this type of training: Banging your fingers on EasyTexts and 10 fast fingers to build raw speed then accuracy until you can control it better.

    ++++ After you do Maniac typing, to build raw speed in your fingers and not only this, TAKE 1-2 WEEKS break from time to time, stop training, let your body to recover, when you come back to training it might happen to be worse than before a bit, but it's an illusion, in few days you do it better than before.

    That's what we humans are, animals, and like all animals we got this incredible power to adapt, typing is nothing else than a skill, doing it regularily and having a good training program makes you better as the time passes, you can't hurry it too much, time is the answer, you just keep on doing it.



    All those words and what you see here comes from a guy that is very bad at typing naturally, i don't got "talent", i evolve very very slowly compared with the volume of training i do. I know this because i know and i talk with lots of Very fast Typists and i know how people train, i see kids starting from 20 WPM and they evolve twice as fast as i did and they don't even train as much.... but almost everyone that trained like me improved faster, except me :-)) i'm a special LOL.
    So all those words represent my conclusion to how to become better at "Typing", after seeing and speaking with lots of people, seeing their training, what they do, how they do it... and my own experience.

    Goodluck Everyone, i'm glad i remembered about the forum :-),
    Luca George

    Last edited by lucageorge (06-Sep-2013 13:32:45)
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    Thanks for the interesting write-up. Your efforts have paid off, obviously.

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

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    Brilliant :D!

    Posted without the aid of a rodent.

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