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Qwerty to Colemak: Daily experience

  • Started by Tony_VN
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Thx Nimbo for your encouragement.

Regarding your question about blind typing, I got the wrong habit of looking at the keyboard when I make a mistake, so now I try not to look at the keyboard at all. It is hard since I still not learn by heart the number row.

humortyping.gif

For hi-games records as its name suggest, it only records your highest, fastest typing session with alphabets only, not your average typing speed. I use Typing Tutor 7 to calculate the average speed for me, and it's only 53wpm (with occasional toprow characters).

typingtutor7.jpg

Typing Tutor 7 (Windows) allows you to drill on key, finger or row that have lowest speed or accuracy. I find it very useful. You can try to get it through torrent

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3348426/Typing_Tutor_7

Amphetype (Windows, Mac OS X) allows you to drill on specific words that have lowest speed and accuracy.
https://code.google.com/p/amphetype/downloads/list

For your catching me, I suppose you can do it since your Qwerty speed is higher, and changing layout does not change our max speeds much.

Cheers.

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 06:33:19)
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colemakspeed.jpg

Day 54: 54wpm (no pun intended!) with 97% accuracy.

I am about to reach my max speed of 60-65wpm in Qwerty. With good posture and improved typing skills, I hope I can reach 70wpm in a year.

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 05:47:06)
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typeracer71wpm.jpg

I reached 71wpm for first time in typeracer.com. For 5 mins typing, I reached 59wpm on hi-games.net

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 05:44:07)
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Excellent Tony, you have improved a lot this week. I have looked at your typing test at hi-games when it was 57 wpm and now. First I noticed as you said you were slow in the upper row, but now I don't notice it. I like your accuracy, and it's kinda funny cuz if I compared my test (55WPM) to yours, I can see that just in the starting 4 lines of the test I made around 16 typos while you made none, I guess I need to work more on my accuracy when I find time.

I have tried typeracer.com few days ago and I was very happy to see that I was beating a lot of guys. I actually won more than half of the races, where my max speed for one race was 68WPM, and I could really see that I was typing around 80s form very short duration at the beginning of the race then my speed would drop quickly  due to typos and adrenalin rush :), and I think we can reach 70WPM easily in less than one month not year with proper training and focus on rhythm, especially that there is some typos and a lot of discontinuities in our typing rhythm. Personally, I do not have much time to practice and focus on my week points now, but I home through regular using of the Layout and  matlab programming, I would be able to fixed the problem of accuracy that I am suffering from.

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Thx Nimbo for your praise. I am about to reach my max speed, so I decide to work on my accuracy for a change, since I find hard to type faster right now :-)

I see that typeracer is good for an adrenaline burst, i.e., to increase speed. For this aspect, you are very fast typist.

For rhythm, Amphetype has introduced viscosity, which is smaller number if you type every character with approximately the same time (i.e. rhythmic strokes)

Last edited by Tony_VN (31-Jan-2011 02:48:37)
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26c52e.jpg

My progress graph in Typeracer. The sudden drop of speed at the start is when I switched from Qwerty to Colemak 2 months ago.

Day 58: 56wpm (+2), with 98%(+1) accuracy.

Accuracy exercises finally pay off. I have enough confidence to type faster without making too much mistakes.

At this speed in Qwerty, I had wrist pain when my fingers were all over the keyboard. Now I feel much better, and I expect to increase the speed by 10-20wpm more in a year.

Last edited by Tony_VN (07-Apr-2011 04:16:06)
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typeracerspeed.jpg

Day 68: 58 wpm (+2) with 98% accuracy.

I am about to reach my peak speed, so I suppose this thread has served its purpose. Hopefully anyone who wants to try Colemak will benefit from my sharing experience.

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 16:40:03)
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4ec80b.gif

My Amphetype result. After several days working on accuracy, the speed also increase.

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 16:48:29)
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keep it up tony, I really envy you for that great accuracy :). Mine is still poor compared to yours!

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For me, that is pretty fast already. My hands are about to reach the physical limits.

I've seen your typing curve, Nimbo, you will get to 70wpm if you can increase your accuracy a bit.

Last edited by Tony_VN (23-Feb-2011 14:04:23)
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th_60217_fast_typing_122_190lo.jpg

Day 79: 60wpm (+2) with 98% accuracy.

Now I have reached my old Qwerty speed just in 80 days.

Hopefully I will be faster, around 70wpm in 6 months or a year.

My fastest speed is 84wpm in Typeracer.

Last edited by Tony_VN (23-Feb-2011 12:39:52)
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sexykeyboard.jpg

I have re-uploaded some of the imageshack pictures.

My speed and accuracy is fluctuating a bit. The progress is quite slow now. I suppose I have reached my physical limit in typing.

Last edited by Tony_VN (25-Feb-2011 15:41:19)
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Keep it up, you can always set new physical limits. Try some  games in mavis Beacon Delux especially Bubble pop, and car maze.
Maybe the figure below will encourage you to practice more :).   
race2x.jpg

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BlindfoldTypingCompetition.jpg
circa 1940, Paris, France - Blindfolded Typing Competition

What's your typeracer name, nimbo? I will try to outrun you next time :-)

Last edited by Tony_VN (01-Mar-2011 04:03:28)
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colemakspeed6Mar.jpg

Day 90: 61wpm (+1) with 98% accuracy.

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What's your typeracer name, nimbo? I will try to outrun you next time

I have not created one yet, but I plan to create it soon with the same nickname as in hi-games. and hopefully we can racer in two weeks from now. I think you have the advantage of experience as you have done thousands of races and you are familiar with a lot of paragraphs, while I am still not that familiar. Also, you have accuracy on your side, but I wonder if all of this will be enough to beat my speed lol. I think you can still take some races from me especially if made a lot of typos where it really depends on how I am familiar with what I am typing but on average I will still win :). The score is now  2 - 0 for me, but  we will start officially when I create the account.

One question though, I felt that the accuracy of typing the letter b has decreased from my qwerty and too many times I make mistakes jumping between b,d,g not to mention r and s. but for b,d,g I feel that my fingers are heavy when going for these keys which I did not use to feel in QWerty when reaching the e corresponding keys (t,d,b). I wounder if you get the same feeling!! I think it is because of the letter d placed above b that create this confusion while typing.

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brny3zhy0hquoqkd7.gif

OK then, nimbostratue. In my opinion you should not worry about speed or gain/lose, that put unecessary pressure on typists, in turn makes you mistype.

Mostly I care about my own speed graph, which I regularly posted here. The speed increase 2-3wpm each month, that's all I want.

Last edited by Tony_VN (11-Mar-2011 04:17:10)
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bs06os4pybtwyar2z.gif

I do not have much practice recently. Here is my recent Amphetype result.

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Typeracer24.jpg

Day 110: 63 wpm (+2) with 98% accuracy.

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Accuracygraph1.jpg

I have tried to increase accuracy for a change.

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btivku682c227a8pn.jpg

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I have been too busy haven't practiced at all in the last month, so no progress this time.

Last edited by Tony_VN (16-May-2011 05:01:00)
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Nice job. Wow, I was expecting there will be a higher speed gain after making a switch. I am starting Colemak too. Right now I'm about Qwerty 60 wpm average on Typeracer. I really hope I can get to atleast 90 after the switch in a month.

Last edited by Jin (19-May-2011 04:53:41)
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To any and all who may be reading this: Never EVER expect a high speed gain after making a switch! If that's your only motivation for switching, you're most likely barking up the wrong tree. Switch out of interest or comfort reasons, fine, then learn and enjoy and marvel for a while! After a while your speed will build up of course - but switching to become fast fast is just silly imnsho.

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

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@Jin: You can always hope, but 30wpm gain is quite unrealistic. Your speed depends on the coordination and the speed of your fingers and your nerves, but not the layout at all.

Bad layout like Qwerty only affects your fingers, which is more tired after typing a long time. Switching to Colemak make you less tired because your fingers move less.

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Tony_VN said:

@Jin: You can always hope, but 30wpm gain is quite unrealistic. Your speed depends on the coordination and the speed of your fingers and your nerves, but not the layout at all.

Bad layout like Qwerty only affects your fingers, which is more tired after typing a long time. Switching to Colemak make you less tired because your fingers move less.

Right. But, I don't know, it does kind of makes sense though in a way. If the distance travel between keys are reduced and the avoidance of awkward strokes it would ultimately increase your typing rate I would think. But I don't know, it's all good. I'll challenge you on TR in a month and we shall see!

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