funny fingers
So I'm learning a new keymap. Of course I expect a transition phase when my typing speed will be very slow as I retrain my brain to use the new keymap. I am still in this phase, but I am pleased with my progress.
But my fingers (or rather, my brain acting through my fingers) have been displaying some rather strange behavior.
I learned the entire keymap the night that I decided to learn Colemak - conciously that is. If I concentrate, I know where the keys are. From now on I will use "learn" to mean the subconcious learning of the key or key pattern which is necessary for typing with any practical speed.
Since my decision to learn Colemak, nearly everything I've typed has been in Colemak - every email, every blog post, every chat session. Only a few shell commands entered on my desktop before switching it to Colemak were typed in QWERTY. I am using KTouch ( a KDE typing tutor) to learn the new keymap.
As expected, my fingers want to go to the QWERTY key positions. This gets worse when trying to go faster and relying more on the subconcious. Familiar key sequences are particularly difficult. I have to hit the brakes pretty hard on my fingers or they will try to enter the sequence as an atomic unit without consisering the individual keys - in QWERTY of course.
One kinda strange phenomenon is that adding new keys confuses learned keys. The home keys T and N are learned pretty fast as are S and E. With these 4, I can cruise through the lesson extremely fast with very few mistakes. Going further, not only are the new keys more difficult, but the first 4 get confused quite a bit as well - this perpetuates through all the lessons which each add 2 keys. This isn't all that surprising though as I seem to remember the same sort of thing when I was learning to type for the first time.
Interrestingly, I picked up a few sequences in Colemak rather quickly - before even gaining any reasonable proficiency with the individual keys. These include "the" and "keymap" - the latter is quite surprising because I really suck with "K", but not too surprising because I've used it a lot in those blog posts and chat sessions I've been typing.
I expect my fingers to go for the QWERTY positions, but what's surprising is that they've been going for seemingly random keys - even when the right key is in the same place as in QWERTY. It seems that they know that the familiar position is not right, but aren't sure what is, so they just take a shot in the dark.
Perhaps the funniest thing is the feeling of surprise after hitting the correct key. The finger goes for a key and the brain shouts "Noooo..." 'cause it thinks the key is not the right one, but it's too late, the fingers were moving too fast to get the message in time. The key is pressed and - surprise - it was the right one after all. By the time this process completes, the fingers are a few characters past the one that caused the surprise. It usually happens a few times in rapid succession perhaps self-perpetuating.
It's an interesting experiment anyhow.
But my fingers (or rather, my brain acting through my fingers) have been displaying some rather strange behavior.
I learned the entire keymap the night that I decided to learn Colemak - conciously that is. If I concentrate, I know where the keys are. From now on I will use "learn" to mean the subconcious learning of the key or key pattern which is necessary for typing with any practical speed.
Since my decision to learn Colemak, nearly everything I've typed has been in Colemak - every email, every blog post, every chat session. Only a few shell commands entered on my desktop before switching it to Colemak were typed in QWERTY. I am using KTouch ( a KDE typing tutor) to learn the new keymap.
As expected, my fingers want to go to the QWERTY key positions. This gets worse when trying to go faster and relying more on the subconcious. Familiar key sequences are particularly difficult. I have to hit the brakes pretty hard on my fingers or they will try to enter the sequence as an atomic unit without consisering the individual keys - in QWERTY of course.
One kinda strange phenomenon is that adding new keys confuses learned keys. The home keys T and N are learned pretty fast as are S and E. With these 4, I can cruise through the lesson extremely fast with very few mistakes. Going further, not only are the new keys more difficult, but the first 4 get confused quite a bit as well - this perpetuates through all the lessons which each add 2 keys. This isn't all that surprising though as I seem to remember the same sort of thing when I was learning to type for the first time.
Interrestingly, I picked up a few sequences in Colemak rather quickly - before even gaining any reasonable proficiency with the individual keys. These include "the" and "keymap" - the latter is quite surprising because I really suck with "K", but not too surprising because I've used it a lot in those blog posts and chat sessions I've been typing.
I expect my fingers to go for the QWERTY positions, but what's surprising is that they've been going for seemingly random keys - even when the right key is in the same place as in QWERTY. It seems that they know that the familiar position is not right, but aren't sure what is, so they just take a shot in the dark.
Perhaps the funniest thing is the feeling of surprise after hitting the correct key. The finger goes for a key and the brain shouts "Noooo..." 'cause it thinks the key is not the right one, but it's too late, the fingers were moving too fast to get the message in time. The key is pressed and - surprise - it was the right one after all. By the time this process completes, the fingers are a few characters past the one that caused the surprise. It usually happens a few times in rapid succession perhaps self-perpetuating.
It's an interesting experiment anyhow.
posted by phil at 6:17 PM
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