Checking in on the Dvorak front

My apologies for the long blog silence. It was in large part due to a major meltdown on the polyphasic sleep front in the fall (more on that later, in a separate post, when I don't have papers due). The Dvorak experiment, being in many ways smaller and easier to manage, was also less exciting, and therefore provided less blog fodder. (As I'd mentioned before, I don't want to turn into one of those people who blogs for the sake of blogging; I'd prefer to post only when I have something meaningful to say.)

It has been more than a year since I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak, and it was a great decision in most respects. The one real fear I had -- that I would somehow "unadapt from QWERTY", and thus never be able to use most anyone else's keyboards -- was not as big of a problem as it initially appeared. I'm on a laptop, so the situation usually doesn't arise in the first place, and when it does, my years of QWERTY usage, much like bicycling or swimming proficiency, tide me over quite adequately. That small inconvenience is worth the typing speed I've gained (most applicable in note-taking during lectures, and in my own writing).

Anyhow, in the way of routine checking in: 54 wpm, with 4 mistakes. By way of comparison, the last such test, taken almost eight months ago, yielded 42 wpm, with 2 mistakes.

The sample text, interestingly enough, was excerpted from Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man. I'm a fan of Paine (and I say that almost in the way one might say "I'm a fan of Tolkien" -- almost). I'm also taking a class on the French Revolution, and another on the history of (European) law, so I might just have a head filled with revolutionary sentiment and human rights this quarter.

In a similar vein, one of my typos turned "troubling" into "troubnits", which sounds like a particularly obstinate case of head lice.

I need a new experiment.

Whatever happened to QWERTY?

So, after three days in the office (summer internship), where we (naturally) use Windows and QWERTY, I decided to see how quickly I now type on a QWERTY keyboard. Using an office keyboard (a desktop keyboard, which is substantially better, methinks, than that of a laptop), I got 42 wpm, 2 mistakes. That's the same exact time as my most recent Dvorak trial, with fewer mistakes, even.
Incidentally, I find that the keyboard itself makes quite a difference. I should have realized this earlier, but then again, I have not used any keyboard save my own since the beginning of the Dvorak experiment, at least until now. The fact that my laptop keyboard has both layouts printed on its keys (the standard QWERTY with which it came and the Dvorak stickers I made, if you recall) has probably been slowing me down. It definitely doesn't help when I try to type QWERTY; I just took another typing test in QWERTY, on my computer, and got 15 wpm, 2 mistakes! I reckon, not only am I more used to looking at the Dvorak stickers (as opposed to the printed keys), but also, the physical printed letters on the office keyboard's keys and those of my computer are different. Here are some pictures to illustrate the point.



The keys of the Dell keyboard have their letters printed in the upper left corner (where I have the silver Sharpie on the Macbook), whereas those of the Macbook have their letters printed in the center of the key. When typing, the QWERTY layout of the Macbook is therefore completely obscured by the fingertip when a particular key is pressed, whereas the Dell's QWERTY and the Macbook's Dvorak are still visible. Not to mention that having the one in that particular location accustoms me to looking there.
Once my touchtyping in Dvorak improves, I intend to switch my office computer to Dvorak. I would do it now, seeing as I much prefer Dvorak, but I have no desire to pry apart the keyboard, or else make a set of stickers for it.

An aside, because it has become habitual: the first excerpt was taken from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, who is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, and I intend to read this one too, at some point. Unfortunately, it will be later rather than sooner, as I have a very long list of books to read, and this one's closer to the bottom, I'm afraid.
The second passage was from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Ah, classic scifi. I have read this one more than once (which makes my 15 wpm all the more pathetic). Great book. It also occurs to me: what an unfortunate name! What parents would ever name their son Aldous, when there are better names to be had? It sounds more like an adjective than a name, and reads far too close to "odious" than is healthy in a name.

Cleanup Post/Dvorak, Day Whatever (I really can't be bothered to count.)

You may have noticed a whole slew of older posts cropping up. It's just a bit of cleaning up that's long overdue; I had a bunch of half-finished posts languishing on the blog dashboard.

In Dvorak news: 42 wpm, 3 mistakes. This may not be an accurate measurement of my current typing speed, as the text was particularly difficult. It was taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula, which opens with Jonathan Harker's journal, kept in shorthand and therefore naturally staccato and full of numbers (dates and times), locations, and punctuation.

On the other hand, good choice! (Fie on you, Stephanie Meyer!)

Oh, and I can't believe no one got the reference in the title of my most recent post. The Great Hiatus refers to the three-year interval between Sherlock Holmes's "death" in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House".

Dvorak, Day 59

40 wpm, 4 mistakes.

Today's passage was from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four. It brought back a small piece of my childhood. I grew up on Sherlock Holmes, so that canon in particular makes me happy. I actually recently acquired a Complete Sherlock Holmes for Kindle, for all of sixty cents (It's wonderful how the e-book versions of classics cost so little -- the miracles of public domain!). I could have gotten it for free off of Project Gutenberg (which is a miracle in itself), but the smooth formatting and table of contents are worth sixty cents in my book (no pun intended).

Dvorak, Day 47

37 wpm, 5 mistakes. I am making an effort to touch-type, hence the increased number of errors.

Today's text was taken from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Huzzah for early SciFi!

Dvorak, Day 38

33 wpm, 0 mistakes. Today's excerpt came from Shakespeare's Henry V. It was the "once more into the breach" part -- a great bit, methinks. This typing test has good taste, I must say.

Dvorak, Day 29

30 wpm, 2 mistakes. Today's passage was excerpted from Thackeray's Vanity Fair.

I'm posting increasingly infrequently simply because there isn't much to report with this sort of experiment, except for the relevant data point. My apologies for... well, being boring, I suppose.

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.)