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In at the deep end

  • Started by eviltobz
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  • Registered: 31-Jan-2013
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Mornin' all. I've recently started down the path of colemak, so thought I'd join in with the customary experience thread. I've been using qwerty keyboards on computers since I was a kid, something around 30 years, and the best part of the last 15 I've spent working as a computer programmer. However, most of that was as a non-touch-typist until I taught myself about 3/4 years back. I wouldn't say I was fast or accurate, but I was generally good enough for my needs. A while after that I saw piccies of the datahand and kinesis contoured keyboards which really grabbed my interest but far exceeded my budget. Around a month back I finally managed to score myself a (very old & skanky ps/2) kinesis on ebay for not toooo much money. Whilst waiting for it to arrive (international shipping can be sloooow) and searching for tips and stuff I came across the geekhack keyboard forums, and ended up getting drawn in to the Ergodox custom keyboard project too. As people discussed their layout plans I had my first sight of colemak and ended up here. As I'm already investing in ergonomic boards (one of which won't even have printed keys) I decided to have a crack at an ergonomic layout too.

I ran through the lessons on learncolemak.com over friday and saturday of last week, on sunday I moved to using it exclusively at home. At work on monday and back on qwerty I could already feel how much my fingers were dancing all over the place, even if they were far far faster and more accurate, so on tuesday I switched there as well. My kinesis finally turned up there yesterday, so with a little hacking that is now outputting colemak natively.

So, one week in and I'm painfully slow at it all - I get moments where it flows beautifully for a couple of words then blows up in my face with a stream of wrong characters or a 5 second pause to think what I need to press next. So I'm still running through lessons again in the evenings, or typing my story out for strangers on the internet ;) to build up that practice (more meetings than typing at work this week so that wasn't quite the boost it could have been) but I'm definitely liking it. Just gotta wait for those improvements to come. I think that the sudden change to my main keyboard probably through a spanner in the works too, as other keys have suddenly moved, sometimes in very radical ways, but she does feel nice :)

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  • From: Sofia, Bulgaria
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Welcome!

Glad you're liking it so far – as much as one can like the switching experience. Hang in there and you'll be a happy user like us in no time!

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pafkata90 said:

... you'll be a happy user like us in no time!

Isn't "no time" a tad optimistic? It took me months to achieve reasonable speed. But it's very nice when you get there :-)

Last edited by debois (02-Feb-2013 10:45:29)
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You must have missed the bit where I'm in my 30s. Months IS no time at this age ;) or should that be :(

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It took me 2 months to reach half my Qwerty speed, when I can type comfortably. From then on it would be very relaxing and beautiful journey.

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  • From: Sofia, Bulgaria
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I was encouraging with "no time" ;) And getting happy is all about getting to a usable speed (like 30-ish) and stop constantly thinking about the letter you're pressing, or at least they start coming easier. So I don't think it takes that long.. For me the most difficult part always have been around two weeks.

But it's very different with everybody, so as long as you're happy with your progress, and there is one, there's no need to bother comparing. Just after you memorize all the letter locations, try to build your accuracy along side the speed. Often accuracy is taking a back seat, and in reality, that's what gives you the comfort of typing and also higher speeds.

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  • From: Viken, Norway
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I was a happy user in no time. I didn't become a reasonably fast user until much later. ;)

Welcome, eviltobz!

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Colemak has made me want to poke my eyes out with meat skewers today.

Find me on:  10FastFingers, TypeRacer

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  • From: Viken, Norway
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Oh noes! Don't do it! Breathe deeply, and stay cool. ;)

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heh, colemaking is definitely slowing me down at the moment, doubly so with the kinesis in the mix, but happily i've not had that sort of feeling :)

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  • From: Viken, Norway
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I'll have you know that I'm rooting for you guys! Go team Colemak! :)

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Hehehe, thanks guys… today has been better.  I am also using a new keyboard (Truly Erogonomic) and the new positioning of keys has been challenging to get used to.  I think that's what's mostly been giving me the feeling of wanting to plunge meat skewers through my pupils.  Actually typing with Colemak I am enjoying more and more :)

Last edited by sgtkabukiman (08-Feb-2013 20:59:49)

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I think that my slow slow speed is gradually increasing, but accuracy is still something of a problem. If I make a point of really slowing myself down then I find that I can type pretty accurately (albeit with a chunk of stopping my fingers when they're just about to strike the wrong key) but the feel of typing some little clusters of letters at speed is so appealing when it flows correctly that it encourages me to try to type faster than I probably should whilst the muscle memory is building, and then things go wrong. And when things go wrong frustration sets in leading to me hitting a whole load of wrong keys whilst I try to stab at the right one. Bah.

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lol I can definitely relate, eviltobz.  In fact, I think you described my frustrations pretty well exactly.  Keep at it, you're not in this alone!

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:) no worries, I'm not going to be giving it up. I'm hoping things will get a bit easier when I get (and build) my ErgoDox so that I'm using a similar physical layout at home and at work, I sometimes mix up reaching for some keys not because I'm going for the wrong button, but because I'm expecting it to be in a different place. The straight lines on the kinesis layout are just sooo much better, but when there's all that muscle memory to overcome, and my home setup is keeping me on the old silly-angled design that really gets in the way.

I also feel a bit like switching to colemak at work makes me feel like I need to push myself to type faster because I know that I'm nowhere near as productive as I used to be when I need to churn out a load of text - which is something of a trademark speciality of mine ;) I need to force myself into doing some slower practice at home to build my accuracy back up so that the speed can follow.

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I totally agree, I find vertically aligned keys to be much nicer to type on.  I use a Truly Ergonomic (which just bricked yesterday >:|) and am now using a normal keyboard again and it's a bit of a bummer.  Then again the TE isn't perfect either, I find the modifier keys to be harder to use than a traditional keyboard (particulary for Mac which has four of them).

It's amazing to me how quickly I was able to adapt to Colemak, and just as if not more amazing, how quickly my Qwerty skills have deteriorated.  The other day I sat down in front of my fathers computer (Qwerty) and had to look down at the keys and hunt and peck.  What once felt totally effortless now feels foreign to me.  This wouldn't be such a problem if I was fluent in Colemak, but I'm not yet, so using the computer is just plain slower for me now and can be frustrating when I just want to get things done.  Must…  slow…  down…

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Modifier keys are where the kinesis and ergodox shine, the thumb clusters are chock full of awesome, not so much with the standard kinesis layout (doubly so with my ancient board which has the OS keys on the keypad layer on the top rubber buttons - yuck) but with some tasty remapping it becomes a dream. Shift on the thumb makes so much sense, it's even easy to type characters that are on the same hand whilst using it. I use macs at home, but I can't think of much that makes me use alt/option and nothing that I use ctrl for :) I'll likely end up with my home keyboard putting the command key in the same spot as my work windows box's ctrl for added simplicity.

I've made a point of staying away from qwerty as much as possible, and actively doing hunt-n-peck when I have to use one so I can get my colemaking up to speed without the old way interfering, but it's shocking how quick I am on my iphone's qwerty pad still. I can just type instinctively on that, whereas in colemak I find that I'm having to spell words out in my mind, then find the key. It's amazing how slow I am at spelling when I need to thing about it ;) Good luck with it all matey.

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I actually started out with the Kinesis before getting the Truly Ergonomic.  They are both still within their return policies and it's very likely I'll be returning both or hanging on to just the TE.  Despite all the rave I have read about the Kinesis, I find it really awkward with the modifiers.  I must be an odd-ball though because I haven't really seen anyone else have gripes about it.  For the most part people seem really satisfied (and I can't say the same for TE).

One thing in particular that makes the Kinesis not a good fit for me is that in addition to coding I do media editing which is pretty much all cursor and hot-keys.  Having my right hand on the trackball and needing to use shortcuts that need the right hand becomes an issue.  Because of the shape of the keyboard, I can't simply use my left hand to press those keys, which should have been incredibly obvious from the start, but it wasn't because I'm an idiot.

I think it's great that you're staying away from Qwerty.  At the advice of someone on this forum I did the same and it has made a huge difference.  (Surprisingly, like you, I have noticed that I am still fast at iOS keyboard, weirdly :-)) These brains of ours are quite the marvels.)

You, too!  Goodluck!

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Yup, I can see that doing shortcut heavy apps could be an issue, certainly when it's not an app that you're normally using from a touch-type position - it's also a bitch to do a bit of one-handed hunt & pecking when you're eating a sandwich at your desk or something. With my windows key still on the rubber F-key section (albeit brought up from the keypad layer, with printscr pushed back) trying to hit the ever useful Win-E to open a new windows explorer window is really really not comfortable. I might have to get around to sacrificing my page up/down buttons to the rubbers and wap the windows keys onto my clusters of love.

You thought about having a nice fancy ergonomic keyboard for the typing and a plain old flat board for the media editing? maybe even with the fancy keycaps or stickers that label up what all the functions are? For a while I did think that one of these bad boys would be nice http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H8300 … oduct-Feed

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  • From: Viken, Norway
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With my Extend layer (see my sig topic) I can hold Caps plus F9 for an internet browser window, and Caps+F11 for an explorer window (also, with F8 I get a media player and with F12 I get the Calculator or whatever I've set as "App2" in the registry). Quite useful, and alleviates the need for Win-# shortcuts which my Extend layer doesn't cater for (but it could if I wanted it to!).

Last edited by DreymaR (26-Feb-2013 10:35:39)

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Cheers for the tips. I've considered looking into a softwarey approach to getting some simulated layer stuff, but I have to remote in to different machines and VMs regularly and that has a nasty tendency to ignore a lot of the local keyboardy setup. That's one of the nice things about using the kinesis, I just have everything set to use the normal qwerty driver and let my remappings handle the sends and then all my typing pops up colemakified :)

My local machine is still the most important of the bunch though, so I may nick a few of those ideas at some point.

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This is very familiar.  Ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and problematic snowballs.

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

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On my virtual Windows or Linux machines I've just plopped down a Colemak install (PKL or XKB patch). Putting in a //PortableApps/PortableKeyboardLayout folder and linking to it in your users' Startup folder is quite simple on Windows at least.

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in a normal place, with normal circumstances I'd whole-heartedly agree, however my work is not a normal place :( we have an obscene number of boxes to remote into, all shared, and all using the same single account per box that is set up :( makes it very antisocial when you set up one of those boxes with your own personal preferences, some people who don't even work here anymore are hated by others who've never even met them for such things, and that's just fiddling standard shortcuts in one or two apps, let alone changing the way everyone's entire keyboard works :) sounds like one to save til my last day ;)

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Oh, that's a bit tougher then. You could still have the boxes autorun the PortableApps.com menu (should be unobtrusive) and select PKL from that whenever you remote in, I suppose? Or, if you're slightly more cheeky PKL could start up suspended (using 'startsInSuspendMode' in pkl.ini). You'd still have to copy that folder into your obscene number of boxes I suppose... unless you're a scripting wizard... ;)

The Extend layer can be used to sell PKL to non-layout people: It's easy to explain why you want such a handy tool at the ready when working with a computer!

Last edited by DreymaR (27-Feb-2013 15:27:38)

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