Typing speed update

I'm still on Dvorak. I guess that's really the big news, because it has been occasionally infuriating that I can't get words onto "paper" as fast as I think. But the more I get mad at this shortcoming, the more I'm reminded of how great it is to be a fast typist, and that's tho whole goal here.

I have taken the labels off five keys now, returning to their glorious and blank Das Keyboard state. I'm also still working on TypingHero, my Flex app that's supposed to make it fun to type faster. Gabe helped me out over the weekend to improve the wiring of my mxml views to their backing controller classes. It's great to work with true components, but it's frustrating that using best practices in Flex is so contrary to the examples and sometimes the language makes it awkward.

Sadly my speed has leveled out over this month, and is stuck at half my QWERTY speed...

1/7
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

1/21
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

I'll get a more useful and fun version of TypingHero soon, and of course I'll speed up my typing considerably using it. Of course!

Typing Heroism

I'm now two weeks into the post-qwerty period of my life. To celebrate, I subjected my laptop to the switch:



The paper clip method worked very nicely and never made me feel like I might break anything.

I feel a slight desire to proselytize. I'm not going to knock on doors with a book of mormon, but I would like to be scientific about gathering evidence to make my case.

Before the switch, I was pretty fast on qwerty:

typingtest.com - default settings, Zebras
Accuracy: 94%
Gross Speed: 58 WPM

Irrational side of...:
Accuracy: 96%
Gross Speed: 65 WPM

Then I changed keys, and my last blog post was 407 words in about an hour:

week 0:
6.8 wpm

Only 10 times slower... but I would forget the end of my sentences by the time I got there.

week 2
Accuracy: 100%
Gross Speed: 27 WPM

So now I'm up to half my original speed. This doesn't exactly make the case, but I'm getting there.

I also made a quick Flash version of the typing lesson I've been working through, and would like to make a real game out of it. It's at TypingHero.com.