1) Dvorak typists: I’m sorry if the paper I relied on has some potential flaws. If you want to share your extensive rants on the merits of various keyboard layouts, send them to me at doctorow@boingboing.net and I’ll be sure to read them over carefully.
2) You know how sometimes trying to fix one problem causes a worse problem, which in turn causes a worse one, and so forth? This week, I was trying to turn off SafeSearch in Google Image Search (sometimes necessary to find things1). In trying to turn off SafeSearch, a setting on a web form, I rendered my system unbootable2. (The worst part was, everyone kept saying “oh yeah — there’s a comic about that; have you read it?”)
Any guesses as to how that happened? I have to go for now, but I’ll include the actual chain of events in my next blog post.
1 Like the Nate Silver Playgirl centerfold.
2 I’ve finally recovered it3 via a USB boot disk and some work, but it took several days and the help of a number of wonderful hackers. Thanks you, Decklin and sneakums.
3 And then promptly spilled milk on it, so the keyboard’s been through the dishwasher and is now drying4 in front of the fan. This is not a happy laptop.
4 Nested footnotes!
Well, I don’t know how Randall did it, but I do have a story of my own to present.
On Tuesday, I discovered that my secret key was missing (shit). So, I search around and find my backup hard drive. There’s even a cable plugged in!
I plug it in, mount it, and cd. Now, to check to make sure the key is there, I do something I’m not going to do again in a hurry. ‘HOME=/media/usb’. A quick ‘gpg -k’ shows my keys are there. Good. Now, to copy things over… ‘rm -rf ~/.gnupg’.
Yep.
Oh, and did I mention you can’t undelete ext3 stuff?
Fortunately, that last bit wasn’t entirely true, and after downloading the ext3grep utility and spending several hours playing around, I recovered my key.
Yay!
I did dvorak for a while. By the time I had caught up with my QWERTY speed, I had tendonitis (maybe from not having to move off the home row as often?). Added to the annoyance of using other peoples’ computers and having other people use mine, it was enough to cause me to throw in the towel. You can only type as fast as you can think anway…
Someone Was wondering wether Textine via a mobile phone keypad or via morse code was faster,
I do not know weither this is valid but they did a segment on Guinnus World records australia 2 years ago where they had The world record holding SMSer vs some group of WWII radio operators and and the radio operators won. (using Morse code.)
“Always turn safesearch on when image-searching your childhood memories. The internet feasts on them, and leaves only horror in its wake.”
Never have I read truer words on the Internet. Have any of you tried typing “Velma” from Scooby-Doo into GIS?
DVORAK and QWERTY can eat one. I use QWERTZ – a Swiss German keyboard. It also helps make damned fine passwords ;o)
[...] ***Nested footnotes! Posted in Trans, theory | Leave a Comment [...]
>footnote 11
Isn’t it fun reading through all the footnotes?
>footnote 12
This is the amazing self-referential footnote (Footnote 12)
>_
[...] Related BlogsRelated Blogs on Home typist to work off recorded copyA brief pair of notes « xkcd [...]
I found typing in Dvorak to be slightly faster (maybe 10% max) and retraining took me about 3 days of intense article-writing to reach my previous speeds. I can switch between keyboards pretty easily as well now.
Windows Remote Desktop causes issues for other users when using a different keyboard layout (Dvorak user (me) might disconnect instead of log off, QWERTY user takes over session and finds their keys all bungled). Because of the frustration it caused for my colleagues and because of the relatively insignificant speed improvement, I’ve given up when working. As Lily said above, it needs to be an order-of-magnitude improvement to be taken seriously.
I still believe Dvorak is technically superior vs QWERTY however I do not believe that the benefit is worth the costs of retraining. If anything at all (insignificant, remember?) it should be phased in over a long period of time as long as it doesn’t interfere with normal operations.
I think both Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards are hyped up. What ever happened to etaoin shrdlu?
Never have I read truer words on the Internet. Have any of you tried typing “Velma” from Scooby-Doo into GIS?
“Always turn safesearch on when image-searching your childhood memories. The internet feasts on them, and leaves only horror in its wake.”
Never have I read truer words on the Internet. Have any of you tried typing “Velma” from Scooby-Doo into GIS?
>footnote 11
Isn’t it fun reading through all the footnotes?
>footnote 12
This is the amazing self-referential footnote (Footnote
You know, that typing errors website really badly mis-characterises the economics of increasing returns.
Increasing returns is not about luck, it’s about the lock-in of sufficiently good systems. Windows/Intel outdid MacOS/Macs early because it was a sufficiently better standard in the beginning, not because it was first or lucky. If MacOS becomes much better than Windows now, because it costs a lot to switch standards, it may not attract as many customers as it could have by being the better standard originally.
Likewise, QWERTY outdid other typewriter layouts because it had a real advantage in the typewriter era when drum jams impeded typing speed. QWERTY wasn’t designed to impede speed to avoid drum jams, it was designed to distribute keypresses along the typing interface to avoid them, while still maintaining speed. Now that solution is locked in however, we’re stuck standardising a layout that’s meant to prevent drum jams rather than present an ergonomic and efficient keyboard layout in an era without typing drums.
That said, I thoroughly accept that Dvorak is not a significant enough gain for most people to want to switch for it, and that there haven’t been sufficient studies to prove any significant gain*. I switched because I figure I’ll be spending enough time typing that I might as well be comfortable while I do it. This is what the economics of increasing returns means: In markets where a standard is important, you don’t need to be the best product. Just a sufficiently good product that meets a standard, and continue to be good enough to discourage any significant switch. If Dvorak were really that good, we’d have all switched anyway despite QWERTY’s market penetration.
* I don’t think the gain has been sufficiently disproven, either. This question is ripe for further study.
If it wasn’t for qwerty the iphone keyboard wouldn’t work the way it does, because it was designed to avoid a mechanical issue, the statistical probability of you making a typo is reduced on touch screen keyboards too.
:)
Great post, i stumbled onto your site and really enjoy the posts. Keep em coming.
~ greg