R and S are going amazingly well!  I'm still slow, but it feels natural and I'm relatively rarely getting them mixed up (I get S wrong more than R -- I type an R instead of an S -- I guess everybody finds that?).

I probably shouldn't be, but I'm surprised how painless it is to "code switch" between the two layouts.  Ironically I was typing this fine with QWERTY until I typed that last sentence, and then I suddenly got a whole string of Ks instead of Es because I started thinking about it.

Now that I've got through my sticking point from last time, I feel it's inevitable that I'll make it to the end this time :-))

Tarmak4 here we come!  Just did my first stage 4 practice session.  Funnily enough Amphetype was at the time still prompting me to practice "below" from my last Tarmak3 practice session -- on Tarmak4 that actually became instantly much easier to type.

"RSD" from Tarmak3 is still not really solid, but it's a lot better than it was.  I've been on that stage 10 days, and I think that's enough.  I can't give a proper speed count because I've not really been testing myself properly, preferring to spend the time concentrating on learning.  I tend to still be making a few mistakes on every new little text snippet that Amphetype gives me -- once I've practiced on a particular text (on Tarmak3) I can get to around 50 wpm if I'm doing well by the time I get through it at 99% accuracy.

Since this is the last intermediate step and I'm through the worst of what I suspect is the most painful part for me (R and S), I'm tempted to just jump straight to Colemak proper at this point by moving L, U and I also.  I think I'll stick with Tarmak4 for a few days at least though, on the theory that good learning of physical tasks (and others) does seem to involve learning one thing before moving on to the next.  I think after I'm on Colemak proper there'll be another, extended, phase of the same thing at a higher level: going back to concentrating on particular letters / sequences / words and doing some deliberate practice there, before going on to the next set of problematic letters / sequences / words.

New slogan: It's a lot better to struggle with RSD than with RSI!  (b￣◇￣)b

Tip: To post lists I often use code [] tags, or maybe spoiler tags. That way it's easy to see what the list is and copy it. :-)

This is a list of words in tags okay so it's a short and really sucky list but at least it's in tags isn't it so shut up and get the hell outta here why are you critizing me stop that at once

It's nice and good fun that you're doing this!

65 WPM is a nice target. That's what I went for back then. But now I type closer to 75 WPM on Colemak-ⲔⲰ[eD] and it's sooo smooth and nice. Best of luck with the last leg of your Colemak journey! And thanks for the praise, much appreciated.

Would, could, should... did!  ♪♫ (＊ﾉ・◡・)ﾉ ♫♩ ┏(・o･＊)┛ ♫♪

I've been trying typeracer.com recently, and I got 50 wpm there today (after maybe 10 attempts today!).  In Amphetype after a bunch of attempts at a sample of text I'll usually get it to 99% accuracy, and I'll be on between 40 and 70wpm for the sample by then.  Fairly often I can now hit 99% on a text sample after 1 or 2 attempts, if I take it slowly (but without falling back to consciously thinking much about key positions).  Slow but steady progress.

I'm still training only in about 30 minute sessions rather than "real" use, roughly 2 days out of three at the moment.  Mostly training on a top 300 words file and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (came with Amphetype I think!).

R and S are still by far my most common error. I mix up I and E a fair amount also.

It's fascinating how particular phrases will 100% reliably trip me up the first time they pop up in Amphetype.  Today for example, I found myself entirely unable to fluently type:

of a slim

Either I had to type it very slowly, or I'd get the same set of errors -- of a tlim, of a sulm, of a tulm, of a shum -- every single time.  Whereas "of" by itself is no problem at all, and I could reliably type this until the cows come home:

a slim

WHY?  Either there's an explanation out there already, or there's a neuroscience research paper in it for somebody.

Edit: PS. it's the "f" in "of" that does it: "f a slim" was just as hard for me!

Thinking about it, I suspect the explanation for my typing error puzzle, as far as the "u"s go anyway, is that your brain naturally mirrors actions between left and right -- for example typing a "u" and an "f" both involve the same finger (If anybody here hasn't tried a one-handed mirrored layout -- you owe it to yourself to try it, just for the weird sensation it induces that you've learned something "by magic").  So just after typing an "f", there needs to be an active suppression of the other hand to *prevent* it from hitting the corresponding key on that side, which I haven't properly learned yet.
Perhaps the "t" errors there are also explained by the need for suppression of actions: maybe having just typed an "f" I need to actively get that finger out of the way to stop it typing the same key again.  If that sometimes ends up not getting that finger back down to the home row, but preventing it from hitting any key at all, I might get a "t" instead of an "s"?  Doesn't seem quite as convincing as the previous explanation, but maybe there's something in it anyway.
Regardless, I think a clear lesson here is that when you make a mistake, one valuable thing you can do is to repeat not just the last thing you typed, but the last few words.  When I do that I'll often find myself making the same mistake over and over again, which I think means I'm learning something!

I guess I should master ordinary Colemak first before trying to learn mirrored Colemak!

Very frustrated recently at two things:

1. Stubborn errors.  The usual suspects: R and S, I and E, but many other mistakes also.  Takes huge concentration to avoid these.
2. Despite clearly improving slowly on Amphetype, realising just how very slow I am on unseen text still!  If I try on typeracer for example, I usually get around 30 wpm.  20 if I'm doing really badly, 35 if I'm doing well.  Top speed ever there is 50.  Plus, no speed increase there whatsoever in 10 days.

:-((

Somebody give me some encouragement, please!  Have other people had similar experiences?

I can feel myself speed up and slow down on familiar words, so I suppose I need to do a lot more hard practice on high frequency words.

I've realised I just need to start paying attention to my Amphetype first-run scores on "Heart of Darkness" on a given text.  Going on today's 20 minute practice, that's probably somewhere around 40 wpm on average, not 30 (maybe 45 in fact?).  So that makes me feel better.

The other day I got 99wpm (on QWERTY!) on typeracer.com after letting my frustration and Colemak-induced confusion seep away, as compared with 20 or 30 the previous day (also on QWERTY!).  So:

1. I'm glad I'm definitely not losing any of my QWERTY mojo despite fairly steady Colemak improvement

2. I think a lot of it really is that both my Colemak skills -- and some days, my post-Colemak practice QWERTY skills -- aren't yet up to the stress of competition, no matter that it's totally consequence-free!  So I'll just stick to Amphetype for now.

I wonder if there's a way to see stats on your first attempts on texts in Amphetype?

In Amphetype I can always see the speed for the last run, so I pay attention to that when that last run wpm was for my first attempt at a given text, but I don't see statistics over multiple first runs?  For example, I don't see a mean or variance of first run speeds, nor a moving average chart of first run speeds.

I've noticed the past week that my R/S E/I confusions are definitely reducing.  As you suggest, I've been mostly doing book extracts rather than common word practice, to be honest mostly to reassure myself that yes I really have learned how to type arbitrary text and get reasonable speeds on my first run on that piece of text (around 40wpm -- big range though, up to 60s and down to 20s -- though the 20s tend to be when I decide hell no, even though this is an Amphetype "text" not an Amphetype "lesson", I'm going to type that word until it flows).

I think I usually don't retype just part of a word, for just the reason you mention: I most often delete at least that word, often multiple words.  I try to do practice both where I try to get a particular sticky word to flow nicely, and also slow and steady runs where I go for accuracy.  The things I try when practicing for flow on a particular word are -- not all at the same time, I alternate when trying to learn a word, often in roughly this order, but I go back and forth:

* Push the speed to the max on the word, in order to get the whole word out without my conscious mind having to intervene, or in order to get over sticky points
* Type just the first few letters of a word (and repeat a lot), then a few more letters (and keep repeating), until they get smoother
* Try the same but starting near the end of the word, or in the middle, or both
* Once I can type a small part of the word fluently, practice with a few more letters of the word -- or type the middle flowing on to the end of the word all together -- keep going until the whole word is smoother
* Once I can successfully type it without thinking, type the same word again and again a lot
* Type a pair of words or a phrase again and again (e.g. if I have two words I'm sticky on, I'll practice typing them alternating -- foo bar foo bar foo bar -- and that'll often trip me up usefully -- or Amphetype will turn up a pair of words that I find hard to type despite the individual words being easy on their own)

Interested to hear of similar things other people do.

Tip for peope doing Colemak and QWERTY simultaneously: when switching back to QWERTY (for me this is something I do a lot, and it sometimes takes maybe 15 minutes I suppose?  definitely haven't carefully measured and seems VERY variable) it helps a lot to look at the keyboard for the period where you're adjusting.
This may sound obvious, but it certainly wasn't for me: at the start I'd instead just look down to remember where some particular key was that I was reflexively typing in its Colemak position, then look away from the keyboard again.  That doesn't seem to work very well.  If instead you just look down the whole time you're typing for a while, that seems to help a lot.  Of course after a little while the need for that goes away again.
Sometimes I practice late in the evening, and then I don't find any need to "get back into" QWERTY at all if I don't type after that.  So that's another good reason for practicing in the evening, along with scientists telling us that that works best for training because sleep helps with permanent recording of motor memories.
Maybe, when I do practice in the day, I should also try taking a break between Colemak and QWERTY.

It should sort itself within a few days I think. But since you have a lot of muscle memory associated with that board I can't say for sure. Best of luck!
ε==/╲/( ͡°͡° ͜ʖ ͡°͡°)/\╱\