Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Just watched the inauguration address on youtube.com. The man is an excellent speaker, for sure. My heart wants to hope for the best while my head is concerned about the reality of his presidency.
I discovered TypeMatrix keyboards while surfing the other day and I'm going to get one at work. It's a little bit of a story. Switching to the Dvorak layout recently forced me into real touch-typing because the labeling on a regular keyboard is, of course, for QWERTY, and therefore useless once the keys are remapped. It's coming along just fine and I find that there are many more words that roll off the fingers nicely. I find a single thing that is a minor irritation: The location of "f" on what is the "y" key on a QWERTY layout. It's a long reach as reaches go on a keyboard and "f'" seems more common than "y". TypeMatrix keyboards have the keys vertically aligned rather than staggered, making the reach to "f" the same as the reach to "b". For the other hand, the reach to "x" and "y" ("b" and "t" on a QWERTY layout) will be the same. At any rate, it will be interesting to see how it feels. Better, I hope.
As an aside, the usual staggering of the keys has its roots in mechanical keyboard design. There is no reason at all for it on a computer except that "it's always been that way", in other words, there's no reason at all.
I discovered TypeMatrix keyboards while surfing the other day and I'm going to get one at work. It's a little bit of a story. Switching to the Dvorak layout recently forced me into real touch-typing because the labeling on a regular keyboard is, of course, for QWERTY, and therefore useless once the keys are remapped. It's coming along just fine and I find that there are many more words that roll off the fingers nicely. I find a single thing that is a minor irritation: The location of "f" on what is the "y" key on a QWERTY layout. It's a long reach as reaches go on a keyboard and "f'" seems more common than "y". TypeMatrix keyboards have the keys vertically aligned rather than staggered, making the reach to "f" the same as the reach to "b". For the other hand, the reach to "x" and "y" ("b" and "t" on a QWERTY layout) will be the same. At any rate, it will be interesting to see how it feels. Better, I hope.
As an aside, the usual staggering of the keys has its roots in mechanical keyboard design. There is no reason at all for it on a computer except that "it's always been that way", in other words, there's no reason at all.
# posted by goldpython @ 9:28 AM 
