Showing posts with label colemak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colemak. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

I just could not sit it anymore

Len Weincier opened my eyes to the possibility of a standing desk a couple of months ago and I've been pondering it ever since.
Recently I found myself in much pain when having to sit and work for extended periods of time (Since my baby son started sleeping in his own room about a month back I can't work in his room lying on my back any more).
It is so distracting that I'd rather stop working and go to bed.

Well tonight I could not sit it any more and I decided to try it out. I was thinking about all the things I'll need to move around if I want space in front of a wall in my study and how much work it will be, then it dawned on me I have everything I need to build a prototype and try it out.
My standing desk version 1.0 (to my wife's dismay I'm sure when she sees this in the morning):



Long-running preparations:
  • Learned to touch type (with the help of learning to type using the Colemak keyboard layout)
  • Got a proper usb keyboard to try this out.

Next steps:
  • I'm still googling to find out if its a good idea in the long term, but for now this seems much nicer.
  • Get some stickers to put on the index finger home keys. I saw Gary van der Merwe had them and I think it will help me a lot because this new keyboard has really tiny dots for feeling the where your index fingers should go.
  • See if I can come up with a better design with a higher spouse approval factor. It would be cool to have something that can easily convert between standing and sitting to avoid over-standing it.
  • Get a LCD screen so I don't have to balance my laptop so tenderly.
  • I can already see that my touchtyping skills will go to a next level with this because my hands are now under my laptop and thus it is much harder to steel a quick glimps (especially for seldomly used keys)

Sunday, 21 December 2008

colemak

I have some time off from work and decided it is time to
finally learn and use the colemak keyboard layout.
This is one of my new year resolutions, and I cannot
explain how exited I am about this. I'm actually typing
this post using it, but its still slow going.

I had some trouble getting it to work in ktouch, but I figured it out:
http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=4378#p4378

I also had some trouble convincing kubuntu to handle the capslock key
as a backspace key. The final solution for me was to make a little script,
and get it to run when kde starts up.
script:
#!/bin/bash

#setup capslock -> backspace (nice for colemak)
xmodmap -e "remove Lock = Caps_Lock"
xset r 66
run it automatically:
system settings -> advanced -> autostart

I practised for 30-45 minutes per day and I learn more keys every day.
Some of the nice things about Colemak for me are:
  1. You learn the common keys first, so you can actually start typing quite soon. (You can type a lot by just using the home row.)
  2. You are forced to touchtype, because looking at the keyboard doesn't help (assuming you didn't swap your keys, which I recommend.)
  3. Most of your short cut keys are in the same position.
I found these finger stretches quite handy:
  1. http://ergotrading.net/officeathlete/ergonomics/Nine_Stretches_and_Alternative_Instructions/FingerStretch.htm
  2. http://www.rsiwarrior.com/stretches.html
  3. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stretching/WL00030