In the ongoing saga of QWERTY vs. DVORAK, I have come to the conclusion that I will, in fact, stick with Dvorak. I don’t feel like I can give it up. I still am learning, but I have discovered that, as mentioned before, it simply feels better. The couple of weeks that I was going back and forth have ended, and outside of a couple of programs, I will be sticking with the new – cool – way of typing. We are all winners.
It has been a full three weeks now since I started using Dvorak as my standard keyboard layout. I have become fully able to touch type at an ok speed. With that in mind, because I am a glutton for punishment, I have decided that I should switch back to QWERTY for a couple of days, just to see how that goes. I am currently typing this post back in the QWERTY standard and I really don’t know why we as a society have stuck with this antiquated, painful layout. It really is the pits, and I am not just saying that to justify my whole experiment.
While I am still nowhere near the speed that I was (or even as I am now as my muscle memory is returning) while using QWERTY, Dvorak simply feels better. There is little odd crossover of fingers, and you simply don’t feel as cramped. The whole convention of having all the vowels be on one side in the left hand and the consonants mostly in the right makes much more logical sense. Once my brain figured out that after most vowels I will have to hit a consonant (and vise versa) with the other hand, a nice flow started to develop.
With that said, I think I am going to go back to QWERTY for a day or two, just for funsies. At the end of the week, I will probably have a good understanding of which I will stick with forever (let’s hope Dvorak).
No, I’m not talking about this Dvorak and definitely not this Dvorak. I’m talking about THIS Dvorak. The keyboardy one. I have endured two full weeks of typing in this crazy style, and I am here with an update on how awesome (or not) it is.
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This year has marked the rise of services that allow users to “check-in,” or in other words, “update the internet about where they are.” The two big ones on the scene are Foursquare and Gowalla, both focusing on checking-in to shops around town, gaining points for doing so, and possibly getting some discounts for repeat business.
Recently, I have taken up a third, lesser known service called SCVNGR. I have been using it for a couple of weeks, but up until this point I have yet to figure out if I am actually having fun.
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So against my better judgment, I started to type with the totally absurd Dvorak layout. It turns out that I enjoy making my brain hurt a lot.
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I lay here in bed, slamming my fleshy stubs of thumbs onto the face of a brand new iPhone 4. The only thing keeping the poor machine from shattering under the scrutiny of my pounding is some so called “Gorilla Glass.” Whether or not this magical material is any more awesome than what was on older iPhones is not for me to say (I haven’t dropped it). But what I can tell you is that – coming from only owning the 2G iPhone – this new phone is pretty great.
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Hey, guess what? I’ve watched more of these crazy videos and I will share some of them with you.
The first of this list is a discussion by Jane McGoniga, who talks about how games can possibly help solve real world problems. Far fetched? Maybe. It is very interesting how she has used that idea to apply to games that interact with real life. I could use to hear the word “epic” less.
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If you’re not familiar with TED.com, it’s basically a repository for really amazing lectures given by people who are much more intelligent than you or me. That’s really all there is to it. I simply want to list a couple that I’ve watched tonight. And don’t worry, all of the talks are very interesting.
The first, which is what is shown above, is a fifteen minute talk with a math genius who can square up to five digit numbers in his mind. It’s really quite fascinating.
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