Sylf's rants

Dvorak layout pain

Ever since I learned to type twenty years ago, I was always fascinated by the idea of being faster on typing.  Several years ago, I decided to learn Dvorak keyboard layout, which ended in a failure.  About 20 months ago, I decided to pick up Dvorak again, with more dedication.  I did it.  And I loved it.  I was a slow typist for a while, but I was back to normal in about a year.  (Old age really sucks… I probably could switch faster if I were younger.)  I haven’t gained any on speed.  But it does feel easier to type with this layout.

Living with this typing habit does have its downside.

Downside #1  – most everyone else’s computers only have qwerty layout.  When I learned Dvorak, I had to force myself to forget Qwerty layout.  And when I have to work on any computer/keyboard with Qwerty layout, it’s a pain.  I can no longer touch-type in Qwerty.

Downside #2 – Most mobile devices don’t have alternative keyboard layouts like Dvorak.  This includes Blackberry and iPhone.  There is a hack for iPhone, but I’m not ready to unlock my iPhone yet.  I really hope that Apple will some day support Dvorak layout on iPhone/iPod Touch.

Downside #3 – Windows’ Input Method Editor (the language toolbar thing) doesn’t let me use Dvorak layout in Japanese input mode.  This one really bugged the hell out of me when I was learning to type in Dvorak.  There is a hack to get around this limitation, which I’ve used.  But this still is a minor pain, that I have to apply this hack every time I reinstall windows.

Downside #4 – Some keyboard shortcuts feel weird, including the often used cut/copy/paste shortcuts.  Now that I use the tiny Apple keyboard on Windows (which I love), I cannot do cut/copy/paste with one hand.

Downside #5 – My own name became harder to type.  My first name can be typed all with right hand on qwerty.  Now I have to use left hand to do the same task, with somewhat awkward key sequence.  Ouch.

There are some more minor downsides, but these are what bothered me the most so far.  But do I dare switch back to Qwerty?  Not in any foreseeable future.

(more…)

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Closing another project

It’s another “woo hoo” moment when we close a project.  I don’t know how successful it really was, but the whole Ippo project went without too much trouble.  The biggest slow-down came from me leaving the fansub scene for 3 weeks.  That is a huge improvement for me, as I’ve dealt with months of delays in the past, where I had so little control.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been on somewhat of a Gundam binge.  As we closed our Ippo project, people of Zeonic Corps finished their Gundam project.  This is one of the series I watched as a kid, just having fun watching all those robots fight.  As I rewatched the series twenty-some years later, I’m pretty pleasantly shocked how it hasn’t aged much as far as stories go.  It does show its age in the animation artistic technologies.  But it was actually fun watching it again from the beginning to the end, with older sets of eyes.

Also, I started watching Gosenzosama Banbanzai, in preparation to do some translation checking I’ll be doing soon.  Now, that is one weird anime.  Not the weirdest that I’ve seen.  But it sure isn’t my first choice of anime.  Kaiba was weird, but it was also good.  This one… I’m yet to see anything that really draws me in.  It’s going to be a tough one to work on.  We’ll see.

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