Author Topic: Short story long, from somewhere south.  (Read 1466 times)

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Offline tecla.efe

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  • Location: Entre Rios - Argentina
Short story long, from somewhere south.
« on: Sun, 30 March 2014, 00:39:04 »
Hi. I really don't know how did I ended here. Actually I do: I was interested in Python programming, then I discovered IPython Notebook, which is a great piece of software for "literate computing". Similar things can be done from within Emacs, which was also a great discovery for me. Emacs is awesome, but not so easy to start learning, partly because of the intense use of keybindings. To alleviate that, I installed a package called Ergoemacs-mode, which I like a lot. Xah Lee's Ergoemacs webpage introduced me to the world of Dvorak layout and ergonomic keyboards (I bet Xah is around here). I started to learn Dvorak three weeks ago; at that moment I was typing at 10 wpm (down from 70 in qwerty). Today I'm around 23 wpm. At some point I realized that my arms were aching due to tension (increased by the learning stance) and bad position. After some reading I decided to try an ergonomic keyboard although I live in Argentina, where is difficult to find non standard items and is a complete pain to buy abroad (price more or less duplicate and you're never sure that a costly shipping will arrive). Doing research about keyboards, mechanical switches and keycaps I finally discovered geekhack (and entered a Massdrop group buy for an Ergodox). That's my story. Nice to have found this site, I've already read interesting posts here!

Offline Belfong

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Re: Short story long, from somewhere south.
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 31 March 2014, 22:03:59 »
I gotta applaud your courage to try a new layout. I don't think I could live with having the wpm going down. It's not easy when there are tons of emails and tweets and forums to answer. Let me know how it goes for you. I have a Code keyboard and it has DIP switch to change from QWERTY to DVORAK to Colemark. I just haven't had the courage to switch.

And welcome to GH!

Hope you enjoy it!
 

Offline tecla.efe

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  • Posts: 6
  • Location: Entre Rios - Argentina
Re: Short story long, from somewhere south.
« Reply #2 on: Wed, 02 April 2014, 00:12:41 »
Thanks Belfong, but courage is too much to say about this little change, haha. BTW, I encourage people to do the same (although choosing the timing properly, it might be better during holidays). If I was to start again, instead of Dvorak, I would pay attention to other layouts, like Colemak, which is better oriented to gain the benefits of Dvorak with lesser changes if you're coming from qwerty. I'm also concerned with the loss of benefits when writing in languages other than english (http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=56552.0)