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    My joyfull experience after just over a month

    • Started by slipsnip
    • 8 Replies:
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    • From: Canada Eh?
    • Registered: 08-Aug-2020
    • Posts: 18

    Intrigued by Colemak and looking for a challenge I began learning Colemak end of July and one week later the Colemak-DH became my new layout.  I have been practicing at least five hours every day without fail on sites like ["www.typingclub.com", "www.typing.com", "first20hours.github.io/keyzen-colemak"] to name a few.  According to English Paragraph Typing Test I type 45 wpm, though I find this to be variable as on nitrotype I have achieved as high as 58 wpm usualy averaging 50.  While I have been happily maintaining an average accuracy of 97% (nitrotype) I wonder if this is good or is possible to improve.  My experience typing on Colemak is that I wish I had done this earlier in life, it should be offered to touch typing students as an option.  I will not go back to QWERTY unless I was forced to for a job and I would maintain Colemak at home.  I feel that it is a faster layout but cannot prove it, because while I have been successful in achieving much higher speeds, I too have been spending most of my waking hours doing deliberate typing practice.  Maybe its the challenge of learning something new or the joy I have from surpassing 40 wpm has given me the bug, of which I am unsure, I can say that I have been addicted to typing and enjoy the process now with Colemak.

    I seem to have lost the ability to type on Qwerty without deep thought.  I have heard that most people retain Qwerty but get slower at it, for me this was not the case.  I believe the reason is I consciously decided I was not going to waste brain space on it anymore and that Colemak was all I will ever need.  If I did not make such a decision and completely stop typing on it, I would probably be OK at typing on it.  But I don't feel lost without it mostly because I only use my own computer and keyboard.

    From just over one month of learning Colemak, I definitely recommend it to anyone who is willing to learn.  The first days up till about two weeks typing felt very exhausting, I was very slow, painfully so and it was a mental exercise to remember where the keys were.  My keyboard does not have any letters or numbers printed, so I cannot look down and I did not print any sheet to reference.  I would use the internet to pull up a reference If needed but I went cold turkey, all in.

    Question, is it possible to avg 100% accuracy?  What other sites should I use.  I have also been using keybr as well as typingcat.  Any feedback is appreciated.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
    • Posts: 5,360

    Thanks for the writeup!  ( =^・ω・^=)丿

    Obviously, no average accuracy can be exactly 100%. For that to happen you'd have to never type a single key press wrong, which isn't realistic at all. I'd go for 98% accuracy if I were you. I'm mostly fine with 97% myself.

    Last edited by DreymaR (03-Sep-2020 12:44:05)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    • From: UK
    • Registered: 14-Apr-2014
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    Nice report

    > My experience typing on Colemak is that I wish I had done this earlier in life

    Same feelings here

    >  I believe the reason is I consciously decided I was not going to waste brain space on [Qwerty] anymore

    This was also my perspective. Depending on people's jobs, there might be some who still need to use Qwerty from time, but for those who can avoid it, maintaining Qwerty for the sake of it is just a liability.

    >  is it possible to avg 100% accuracy? 

    Well, technically since even a single mistake will knock your average below 100%, this is not a reasonable aim. My accuracy isn't super great even now after 6 years, but I consider it to be "good enough" - especially compared to my pre-Colemak ability.

    Last edited by stevep99 (03-Sep-2020 12:55:39)

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    • From: Canada Eh?
    • Registered: 08-Aug-2020
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    Thanks guys.  I think perhaps its my OCD that makes me want the 100% it is good to know now that this is not a realistic goal and that 97% is good while I could strive for 98%.  It bothers me that I make errors because I know that I know where all the keys are and its difficult for me to wrap my brain around why these mistakes happen.  One thing I forgot to mention is that these stats are based on me typing letters and punctuation, but as soon as I try something like Zip Code Data Entry Practice I get 4140 kph or as measured on typing.com doing a Numeric Keypad / 10 key reinforcement skill builder on typing.com using the number row instead of the intended keypad I get 12 wpm.  So my next question would be is it at all reasonable to set a goal of matching my wpm alpha-punctuation speed with numbers.  I am thinking about getting a part time Job doing some sort of data entry and I know that would involve data like addresses, phone numbers and other data that includes numbers.  Is it normal for numbers and the symbols ['!', '@', '#', '$', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')'] to slow you down, I guess yes.  However to what percent of my typing speed should it drop to be considered reasonable.  Maybe I am over analyzing this and perhaps taking this from my experiences to more of a question what are reasonable goals.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    As I point out in my Amphetype topic, it can be nice to train yourself to use Ctrl+Back (I use {Ext+T+O}) to delete the whole word when you happen to make a mistake. That way, you'll retype the whole word thus possibly learning it better. Otherwise you may make the same mistake over and over until you learn the wrong way!

    Many typists have hang-ups like typing 'teh' instead of 'the'; these are worth removing. I'd make a lesson in Amphetype to practice the offending n-grams a little more.

    Interestingly, top typists like Sean Wrona (QWERTY) and Viper (Colemak) are very good at entering punctuation and real text. Viper trained Colemak by having books in front of him and just entering their content into a simple text editor! I do believe that not losing your flow completely because of punctuation is a valuable skill, but it shouldn't be a goal to type past it at top speed either. In fact, I believe that the ability to vary your typing speed on the fly to account for more or less text complexity is a valuable asset. And the top typists seem to support this.

    But yes: You may be overanalyzing this.  ( ͡~  ͜ʖ ͡°)

    Last edited by DreymaR (04-Sep-2020 10:10:58)

    *** 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: Canada Eh?
    • Registered: 08-Aug-2020
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    Thank you, that is very valuable feedback, I especially like your idea of deleting the whole word and retyping it as developing muscle memory on mistyped words would lead me to mistype that word again thus having a negative effect on my wpm.  I just did a search for "Amphetype" and found the write up you are referring to.  This word is new to me as I have never encountered it before. It would have been helpful for me if I explored this forum more as I overlooked "User Contributions" in haste.   I will start reading this and searching for more awesome articles you authored.  I also find your mention of Viper training with books, I think this is a great Idea that I will add to my practice.  Having a book would introduce natural typing instead of non-words like keybr offers or only the most common words that it seems 10ff focuses on.  I noticed that because I have poor spelling (my knowledge of how words are correctly typed) I end up having my muscle memory type what I am thinking but what is actually presented is different.  Perhaps I would do well to improve my spelling.  Thank you for the feedback.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    The links to all my articles that I think may have any interest, are in the BigBag that you can see in my signature below.

    I type-read books using Amphetype, as the article shows. I've enjoyed that quite a lot. I particularly enjoyed Lovecraft, while Carroll was a bit tiresome due to an abundance of dialogue. Typing double quotes, period and Enter over and over again isn't easy on the hands.

    *** 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: 29-Sep-2020
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    slipsnip said:

    Question, is it possible to avg 100% accuracy?  What other sites should I use.  I have also been using keybr as well as typingcat.  Any feedback is appreciated.

    Did you hear about monkey-type.com? There are three difficulties in there (normal, expert, master), blind mode and a lot of different settings which include training accuracy so you can play with it.

    Last edited by eyeVSeyeV (29-Sep-2020 12:30:03)

    100-130 wpm Colemak typer from Ukraine.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    I second that! I gave Monkey-type special mention in my Training Topic, and I use it for training now. It's clean, crisp and yet flexible.

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

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