Phones and keyboards

[zub]

Hrm. Well, I really need a new phone. My Nokia 3310 is nice enough, but it's getting a bit dated. The main problem with the 3310 is that I need to charge it a bit more frequently than I'd like. I also really want something that I can tweak easily, which will also play Ogg Vorbis files. I might get a Neo FreeRunner (a.k.a. GTA02) but I'm not sure if that's at all risky... perhaps I should wait for a GTA03. OTOH, I could just carry on using the 3310 until the Openmoko software works reasonably well. I just can't decide...

Oh, one thing I should probably have ranted and raved about by now (i.e. I'm about to start being really boring!) is the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard. I had long wondered why keyboards had their keys placed in such a strange order. It turns out it's to slow you down. Ugh. Well, I've been using the Dvorak layout for about two years now, and aside from the fact that it's probably saving my from the dreaded RSI, I've found that it's just made typing effortless. Yeah, it was a fair amount of effort to switch, but we really shouldn't be teaching kids QWERTY. It's nuts.

A very quick example of how Dvorak is easier is the command "grep -i '^[asdfghjkl]*$' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l" which yields 154 on my machine — that is, 154 words (out of 74000) in the word list can be typed entirely with the middle row of keys. The Dvorak equivalent, "grep -i '^[aoeuidhtns]*$' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l", shows that 1969 words from that same word list can be typed entirely with the middle row — as 'AEOUIDHTNS' contains the eight most commonly used letters in English, this isn't too surprising, really!

Comments

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

This is, as I have surely explained, all communist lies. What makes the middle row special? All this 'home key' nonsense? Keys should live freely, without any regard to a designated state-controlled home.

[just got back from the pub, if you can't tell]

[zub.livejournal.com]

*laugh* — as far as I'm aware, August Dvorak was a decent, god fearing American, so I doubt it's a plot to contaminate our precious bodily fluids. :)

Actually, the "home row nonsense" supposedly exists for QWERTY too — except if you follow one of the tutorials on touch typing the way you're apparently supposed to touch type with QWERTY, you'll find that it makes no sense whatsoever with that layout. QWERTY typing lessons must truly suck, which is probably why most people have a sort of "evolved two-finger style".

With Dvorak, by having the keys that you use most frequently in the middle row, your fingers don't need to move to the upper/lower rows so often — so it actually makes sense for them to rest on the middle row.