In what seems like 20 minutes after writing my last post, I managed to get 41 wpm, which broke my record of 40 wpm that I managed to get a week ago. Well that certianly is quite interesting, and I hope I’ll be able to do that consistently.
Hey everyone. There has been a lack of updates since I did not want to type in QWERTY, and wanted to type as much as possible in Dvorak (the last post took me a while). However, I have met a problem, and that is that I can’t seem to type any faster. since last week, my wpm has increased by 3. It has increased very little, considering that it usually increases by 1-2 every day at least. I can not comfortably type in Dvorak, especially since it is still to slow for my liking. I still have to think about every movement I make at least a little bit, while in QWERTY it is very natural. I can not type in Dvorak if I have to type anything more than a paragraph at a time, since it starts to get frustrating how slow I am at typing.
I like Dvorak, I think it actually is a better keyboard layout. I notice now, as I’m typing this sentence in QWERTY, I so far hit about only 18 home row letters in this sentence. Meanwhile, that sentence I had just wrote, it contained around 27 letters not on the home row for Dvorak. There were so many letter on the home row, it was easier to count those not on the home row. Of course it’s not very accurate to use only one sentence, but Dvorak is still as good as ever for almost anything you can type.
Well, this blog has not been getting any updates for a while since I wanted to not type in QWERTY, but then no one would visit and those few readers I have would go away. So, I’ve given up on my QWERTY boycott. This doesn’tmean I’ll stop practising Dvorak, but to use Dvorak for all my posts would take too much time and become frustrating quickly. So, if you are a long term reader that has almost given up, don’t despair, more updates are coming!
Since I’m trying to learn Dvorak, I’m trying to keep the amount of qwerty typing to a minimum. I wanted to show an article I wrote about why you should use Linux, but I could not find it.
As for Dvorak, I’m now up to 29 WPM. I still have to use qwerty from time to time, when I have a lot of typing to do or need to typing quickly. I have noticed that at times I forget for half a second where the keys are, and I stumble a little bit. I should have started a week earlier when I had more spare time, however, I’m determined to learn and use Dvorak every day as my standard layout. I did a test and I wrote 65 words per minute.
Oh, and if anyone knows any programs that could help Dvorak users , such as perhaps on that changes the shortcuts to ctrl+j and ctrl+k for ctrl+c and ctrl +v, or anything else for that matter,tell me in the comments.
More blog posts will arrive as soon as I can write without much thought and much speed. By the way, this was all written in Dvorak!
I always knew that there was a supposedly better layout for the keyboard than the standard QWERTY. I never payed much attention to this, as I knew it would take weeks before I was able to type at a pace that was fast enough to keep up with my current work. Well, since it was Easter holiday, I decided to try. what would I stand to loose? if it didn’t work out, I would slow down a little with QWERTY, but I would regain that quickly. This java applet was the selling point for me:
(Click to enlarge)
Well, I got myself a typing program called stamina. I like it a lot, especially since it is free, and the creator has a sense of humor. You can have playlists for music when you’re practicing, you can change all sorts of neat stuff, the help file is really funny, and you can’t beat the price. I’ve never used this type of program before, so I don’t know how this compares to others. I must say, it does have a pretty nice interface, and it helped me a lot to learn where all those letters are. I’m not writing this post in Dvorak yet, as what I’ve written so far probably would have taken 30 minutes. However, I know where every letter is mostly, and I can type at 11 words per minute. Not very fast. Hopefully, by the end of next week, all future posts will be written in Dvorak.
Now if you want to know why Dvorak is better, here is some info.
Now to see whether or not Dvorak is any good, I’m going to post my with QWERTY and Dvorak:
I can write 63 words per minute with QWERTY
I can write 7 words per minute with Dvorak
It took me around 3 hours to learn by memory where the keys are. I can type without looking at the keyboard.
This was an informal test, and there a many factors that could have affected this, but it seems pretty close to what it really is. As I practice more and more, I’ll have to stop using QWERTY, as this will slow me down. I’ll be posting my results later on throughout this and next week. For those willing to switch to Dvorak, here are some useful resources:
keybr - I used this to see how fast I was at typing. Not that great for learning where the keys are, but it seems useful for practicing.
siteuri - analyzes text and gives statistics such as how often the same hand is used.
colemak - a website with another keyboard layout. Less sophisticated but easier to understand than the previous analyzer.
wikipedia - Background history for those interested.
Stamina - Software for helping you learn and type faster.
I stayed up until 2 am trying to get my computer to work 2 nights ago. and I thought I finally got it. I bought a P5E, and I had to transfer all of my stuff to another motherboard. Perhaps I should have heeded the words of warning among many reviews. I thought I had finally fixed the random BSOD’s I was getting, but after a day of usage, installing all my programs I needed, I got one. Then another. And another. So close! And it also turned out the front panel for my sound card had a slight problem.
As it turned out, the sound card drivers were causing problems, and trying to fix the issue then caused a insta BSOD on startup. I ended up having to get old drivers, and then update those. That seemed to work for now, but I don’t know if it’ll stop the other BSOD’s I’ve been getting, which I have been unable to pinpoint the cause.
Now, the problem with the front panel. When I hooked everything up, and started my computer with the motherboard for the first time, there was a small pop, and a strong smell of plastic. However, everything worked fine. Just a couple of hours ago, when I tried to plug in my headphones to the front panel, I noticed it didn’t work. The speakers worked, so what could be the problem? I pulled out the front panel, examined it, and I found the problem. The picture is a bit dark, and since it’s a fresh reinstall, I couldn’t brighten it up with photoshop.
This was very puzzling. It appeared to be burned off, since if it was broken off, it would have not actually been broken past the plastic. What was even more puzzling, was the connector.
The rightmost hole had a pin inside, which was taken out before the picture was taken. It must have melted off, since the connector melted slightly as well. But why would it have done that? And further more, why is it in the rightmost hole if the pin was not meant to go to the one next to it? I realized the mistake I had done. I accidentally shifted the connector by one, meaning it was only connected to three pins. The small pop and the burned plastic smell when I first turned on my computer was explained. It only made contact with the 2 ground pins, and the +5 voltage pin. I took out my trusty solder, and I managed to fix it using the broken off pin, which I extracted with tweezers. And now, the finished product:
So, now It’s fully functional, and I’m going to watch out more BSOD’s. If it’s stable, I’ll start configuring everything, and I will no longer have to use this horrible computer I’m using right now (seen on the edge of the picture of my monitor).
