Dvorak, Day 14

My apologies for the hiatus. It is Spring Break, and I am home for a few days, since I am conveniently debating in the area this weekend. I have spent most of my time with my parents and sister -- it is good to be home.

My typing speed is now 25wpm (3 mistakes). Today's passage was an excerpt from Winston Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches" speech (delivered before Parliament during the Battle of France). Churchill was a wonderful speechwriter, a personal favorite, and this is one of his best, methinks. It calls to mind the valor of such men and women as Leonidas of Sparta, Boudica of the Iceni, and Roland of France, battling valiantly against insurmountable odds -- the stuff of legend.

Dvorak, Day 4

19 wpm, no mistakes. Huzzah for linear improvement! (Actually, it's not really linear, seeing as it's day 4 rather than day 3. We can call it linear with regards to taking typing tests, as opposed to day-by-day.) At this rate, I'll be back at my old (QWERTY) typing speed in a little over a week's worth of typing tests. Of course, that's tremendously optimistic; the curve will flatten, I'm sure.

Dvorak, Day 2

As you may or may not be able to see, I have taped a very small diagram of the Dvorak layout right next to the camera of my Macbook (the camera itself isn't visible), which should help quite a bit with touch-typing. One of the small benefits of the old black Macbook -- the screen of the new aluminum one (Caradoc uses one) extends all the way to the edge, and one probably wouldn't want to mar the glass by taping anything to it.

Today's speed is 14 wpm, no mistakes. An interesting aside: the typing test text was excerpted from Jack London's The Call of the Wild. Yesterday's was from Romeo and Juliet ("But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?"). I hope my familiarity with certain texts in the public domain doesn't artificially inflate my measured speed.

I do hope this learning curve keeps up. I had to write a two-page assignment today, but I will not have much time to practice in the coming days, as I have finals.

Dvorak, Day 1

First of all, a very happy Pi Day to all my intrepid readers!

This is my new keyboard configuration. The picture quality isn't great, so perhaps you can't see it very well (click on it); I wrote all the letters and symbols in the corners of little clear stickers and affixed them in the Dvorak layout. (By stickers, I really mean the adhesive portions of those sticky bookmark tabs -- they're sort of like Post-its, but plastic -- that I cut into squares.) The A and M stickers haven't fallen off or anything; those letters are in the same place in QWERTY and Dvorak.

Now, Caradoc just popped all the keys off his keyboard and rearranged them. I am hesitant to do so for several reasons:

1. Tampering with the hardware can void the warranty. (My computer is a year and a half old, so any warranty is probably out, but if I ever have to take it to the shop again, I don't want any trouble on that score.)
   
2. Having both layouts visible is more user-friendly for anyone borrowing my machine.
3. Eventually, I hope to be able to touch-type in Dvorak on a QWERTY (essentially a blank) keyboard. Not only will I be able to avoid the first consideration, I would be able to tell if anyone tried to use my computer. Anyone who wasn't well-versed in Dvorak wouldn't be able to do anything at any speed, including changing the keyboard settings back to QWERTY.

My Dvorak typing speed today is 10 wpm, no mistakes (that's looking down at the keyboard, though). You can only imagine how long this post took!

Experiment 2: Dvorak

My second experiment! I thought this day would never come! And the timing is quite nice, too. The polyphasic sleep experiment has become sufficiently routine such that it can no longer really be called an experiment. Incidentally, it was Caradoc (the friend who, as you may recall, chickened out of Uberman) prodded me into this one -- not that it took much prodding; I was looking to try something new anyhow. (On the sleep front, he is considering Everyman for next quarter. Finally!) Anyhow...

What is Dvorak?
The more appropriate question is, "Who was Dvorak?" August Dvorak (distantly related to the composer of the same name) created the eponymous Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, which is optimized for typing speed and ergonomics. The QWERTY keyboard, the current industry standard (and I write "current" in almost-futile hope that one day, Dvorak will gain widespread usage), was originally deliberately designed to slow typists down. Recall that the alphanumeric keyboard was originally designed for the typewriter, as the computer had not yet been invented. Typewriters, except for the electric models developed later, operated by means of mechanical hammers, sort of like the ones in pianos, with characters engraved on the striking surface of the typebar. These small moving parts jammed and tangled if too many of them were moving at once; hence, the keyboard was arranged to maximize the amount of time it took for a typist to move from one key to the next. Given that the advent of computers rendered such a system obsolete, Dvorak came up with an optimized keyboard. Unfortunately, because the QWERTY keyboard was already entrenched in the consciousness of the typing population, Dvorak never caught on.

Enough of the impromptu history lesson; I've probably bored you half to sleep. The experiment itself is pretty self-explanatory: I will try to retrain myself from QWERTY to Dvorak. I hope to pick up touch-typing along the way. (I never did learn how to type properly in the first place.) I'll track my progress using an online typing test; I think I like this one. I'm at about 57 wpm (words per minute) on QWERTY now. On Dvorak, it's liable to be 2 wpm.

Note: I typed this post entirely in Dvorak! (It took forever, but it happened.)

Days 43-45

Again, nothing particularly interesting has happened lately. It's the last week of classes before finals, so things are über-hectic (but not interesting, at least from a sleep perspective). This is really just a check-in post.

Short term memory tests
Numbers: 12
Letters: 12.15

Days 40-42

I had a great time with the tournament, but best of all, I got in all my naps but one! That's right, no recovery period at all! Ha!

I judged all five preliminary rounds, and both novice and varsity finals. Judging is quite fun (and apparently a bit of a power trip for some first timers). As one of the varsity debaters on my team observed, rounds are actually a lot closer from the judge's perspective. Debaters usually think they either crushed the opposition or got slaughtered themselves.

Also, Sunday was Daylight Savings. If I were on Uberman, there would have been a slight recovery period, but on Everyman, I'm absolutely fine. I'm so very glad I switched.

Days 36-39

Nothing of note has occurred these few days. Adjusting back from a monophasic night really isn't that bad -- I'm already over it. Ergo, I can probably take monophasic nights once in a while if I have need, so long as I don't have consecutive ones.

This weekend, we're hosting the college debate tournament. Don't panic -- it's not nearly as bad as the high school tournament was, thank goodness. I'll be judging, rather than doing anything administrative. Moreover, it's a fairly small tournament, since the schools in our league are all a ways away; there'll only be about forty teams (American parliamentary teams are two debaters apiece). I should have time between rounds to nap, since it always takes time to tab.

It occurs to me that, despite not naming names, I have written enough about myself to make my identity readily deducible. Does this mean I have to trust in the laziness of the various denizens of the internet?

Parents' Weekend: Days 33-35

I apologize for what seems like a bit of a hiatus. I have not died or anything. It turns out I had two (this is the third) saved posts languishing in my account; I'd simply neglected to post them. Happens. I'm a tad absentminded like that. Go read those first, I'd suggest.

It was a lot of fun. You really don't realize how much you miss your parents until you've been away long enough. Also, my father's been on campus before, more than once, so there was no need for the obligatory tour (conducted by me or anybody else). I took him to the various eateries on campus that I like, including this wonderful frozen yogurt place in the student union (the cashier recognized me, I'm such a regular). We went to some of the talks given by various Important People (or rather, he went to all but one of them with out me -- I was in class on Friday). We went to dinner with family in the city, and just drove around in the city for a while. Small things like this are the moments you remember.

I slept eight hours, from 3:00 am to 11:00 am on Sunday morning. I actually woke up at 7:30ish, and went back to sleep when I saw what time it was. It's a little strange to be awake for an entire day without napping. The whole, unbroken day felt really long. I like breaking it up into intervals.

Now, for getting back on track. At least it won't be as bad as after that tournament!