More Colemak (now with bonus new hardware!)

The adventures continue. At home, I’ve now made the switch to 100% Colemak, and I’m back up to a respectable 45-50wpm and while not back to my usual gait, it’s enough to keep me going and not be an impediment. A few observations and some bonus stuff though:

After just going hard into it and stumbling and fumbling, I started using Keybr in a more focused way. I didn’t understand right away about how to use the WPM targets to my advantage, but at the start of last week I took the dial down to about 30wpm and let the algorithm analyze my mistakes and allow me to target the letters that were giving me the most grief (generally it was f, p, j, and q). I’d notch up each time I unlocked the entire keyboard and repeat the process. In general, my target is about 10 minutes per day on Keybr, though I have discovered it takes me more like 20 to level up. Since I’m fairly self-competitive, I’ve of course been exceeding this total.

In between the bouts of just smashing out words on Keybr I have also been using MonkeyType to get a more rounded experience of sentences and passages. One thing I’ve really noticed is the connection between the visual and the fingers as it relates to how fast I type. As I watch the characters I’m copying in Keybr and MonkeyType, it’s easy enough to whip through them but when I’m having to deal with the words that I’m generating in my head there is still some fumbling and stumbling as I go. It’s definitely getting better and as I think back to my first few writings in the new layout it has gone from smash and peck to something that is way more manageable and less frustrating.

In terms of the bonus content, I pulled the trigger on an ergonomic split keyboard that I am absolutely in love with. I got a Lily58 MX with Gateron Baby Kangaroo switches. The ortholinear layout took a couple days to get used to, but it is easily the most comfortable I have ever been with typing and I can’t recommend it enough.

There is also a ton of discovery to be made with this keyboard in programming layers, something that will definitely be a part of my music creation process. I can definitely see so much value in remapping the keyboard specifically for my use cases through layers (eg. separating note names and articulations on one hand and note lengths and other stuff on the other side). The beauty of the mapper is that I can still keep all my regular QWERTY layout stuff for the times I don’t have the ability to use my fancy keeb and can revert quickly to my old layout.

This won’t be my only ergo keeb. Seeing how it’s constructed and knowing the options that are out there, I will be exploring other options, maybe something light and ultra-portable for on-the-go use, as well as wireless options.