Ascended Nerdonometry: How I Interface With My Computer

Ryuzaki

お前はもう死んでいる
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This has been a long time in the making.

Hand Pain
Around four years ago the symptoms of arthritis and carpal tunnel finally started picking up. I even had a period where my entire left arm from elbow down was numb for a week straight. I've been putting in 8+ hours a day on a computer and since graduating high school more like 15+ hours. This has been going on since I was 9 or 10 back in the Windows 3.1 days. I'm now well into my 30's.

I had enough sense to get an ergonomic chair and hit the gym constantly. But when it came to typing I'd let my wrists sag and I'd pound the keys like a madman. It caught up with me and I slowly enacted the change that leads me to this post.

I started learning about mechanical keyboards and remembered how that was basically the default option when I was taking a keyboarding class in middle school. These new chicklet keys with rubber scissors and dome switches were destroying my hands. Yeah they look cool and sleek but are horrible for health. So I was determined to buy a mech and did, but I'll leave that chapter out because it gets better...

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The first real thing I did was start learning the Dvorak layout, the first one designed for efficiency instead of Qwerty, which was designed to demo typewriters and keep those key arms from binding up. There are more layouts now like Colemak but Dvorak has wide adoption.

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I've been at 100 words per minute on Qwerty for decades, so there was a lot of resistance to changing. I slowly practiced over the course of a year on and off. I'd skip a few weeks and it'd all come right back, so eventually I was at functional levels of maybe 30-40 WPM. I couldn't get myself to make the full jump though.

Mechanical Keyboard
After learning about the switches and whether I wanted a click, bump, and how much pressure and distance I wanted for each keypress, I finally ordered a Poker 2 keyboard. They're on #3 now. I used it till I destroyed the switches and had to decide if I wanted to fix it or build an...

Ergodox
I enjoyed Cherry MX Brown switches. They required more effort to push than chicklets but with a long enough travel distance to be able to train my hands to not bottom out. Ultimately I wanted more spring resistance and ordered 100 Cherry MX White switches.

I then ordered and waited for some printed circuit boards and a chassis to arrive from the Netherlands to the USA. Took forever. In the meantime I also got ahold of the electronics I'd need like the diodes, cables, Teensy board, etc.

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I'd share links but I can't even find the company because the name was in another language. (Found It: Fablatech.pl At some point I started collecting the keycaps I wanted too. I ordered solder, a solder gun and holder, and braided desolder, on and on. This took several months, lots of research, and at least $200.

After a couple of evenings of soldering, messing up, wiring jumpers, messing up more, breaking the chassis... I ended up with this:

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That's a look at some of the internals from behind. Here's the finished product before I added some tenting. I did some woodworking to make them both tilt outwards by 15 degrees. You can also see my custom USB cables I had woven somewhere in the UK.

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When I put this together, I tried to type Qwerty on it and it simply wouldn't compute. I don't know what it was, probably the independent hands. I figured if I had to retrain my brain I might as well connect those neural pathways to Dvorak. So I made the full leap.

Convenience, Speed, & Health
I have a mouse with four or five extra buttons on them that I tied to specific functions like moving all windows to see the desktop, minimizing all windows, and more. I wanted to do more of that with the keyboard, even replicating the mouse without adding a trackpoint, etc. Today I finally finished. I had to create a virtual environment, clone a github folder, write a keymap in C and then compile it into a hex file the Teensy could be flashed with.

I wasted at least an hour trying to find a missing comma. I forgot how annoying debugging in compiler languages.

R2s0NFI.png

This is what I ended up with. Cut, Copy, Paste, macros for screenshots, two extra layers, one for Qwerty in case someone else needs to use the keyboard, and one for the mouse. I can drive the mouse around and left and right click all without moving my hands from the home row.

There's so many buttons and layers that I've been having to make up stuff to put on the keys. You can see I have a blank key on the right thumb cluster. If you guys have any suggestions... I thought about a text expander for email addresses with modifier keys so I can pop them out in two key presses. Not sure though, it's blank for now.

I'm typing all of this on this keyboard. I'm probably up to 50-60 words per minute again. Within a few more months I suspect I'll jump up to 110-120 WPM, busting my old records.

_____

Anyways, this is half of showing off my creation and half wanting to help others make the jump to Dvorak or explore normal looking mechanical keyboards or even these whacky ones. If you ask, I have answers. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed the pics and concepts.
 
Now that's commitment. Nice job, and ballsy for taking the plunge.
 
This really resonated with me as I've been suffering much the same problem, for the same reasons. I'd get too frustrated dropping down to learn a new keyboard though during those months of being slower, but if you find yourself at 110 after a month or two more... that might be the inspiration I need to take a shot.

I tried voice recognition for a while, but I found not only was it too slow, the copy didn't come out 'the same' as if I typed it - it's almost as if my brain doesn't think the same way when trying to say the words into a mic as it does when typing.

Definitely going to see about getting a new keyboard either way, sounds like a positive change to move away from these ultra thin keyboards.

Thanks for the write up - that was really cool to see!
 
This is by far on the nerdy-ist things I have seen someone do.

btw, I have a mech keyboard.

I dont know what switches I have anymore, but I bottom them out and they go click click click... i love the noise
 
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Now that's commitment. Nice job, and ballsy for taking the plunge.

Thanks! It was fairly inconvenient but like anything new and worth doing, if you stick with it it gets easier and then the benefits surpass your last method. I feel like I'm at about 80% capacity of where I was. It won't be long before I zoom ahead!

Thanks for the write up - that was really cool to see!

Thanks, Steve. I agree. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking and there's definitely a psychological difference in the way we present ourselves and think when writing versus speaking. I'd say, even if you don't switch to another keyboard layout, using mechanical switches will help with health if you focus on typing technique.

but I bottom them out and they go click click click...

Sounds like Cherry MX Blues. Same as the Browns I had but they have the audible click, light resistance pressure, and the physical bump for actuation for biofeedback. Even with the bump I still was bottoming out hard which is why I got the Whites this time. Same as Browns but more resistance and travel distance after the bump so you don't bottom out so easily.
 
When I put this together, I tried to type Qwerty on it and it simply wouldn't compute. I don't know what it was, probably the independent hands. I figured if I had to retrain my brain I might as well connect those neural pathways to Dvorak. So I made the full leap.

A large reason why you had a hard time switching to the ErgoDox initially is the column layout. On a normal keyboard the keys are not vertically aligned like the ErgoDox is, this causes a lot of confusion with hitting the wrong keys. Most people have this issue when moving to the ErgoDox, myself included.

I went through a pretty long drawn out journey before settling on my ErgoDox. I bought mine through Massdrop with Gateron Blue switches.

I've tried most of the alternative keyboard layouts, colemak, dvorak, workman etc.... they never really pan out because of vim... I use vim pretty exclusively as a text editor and having to remap a bunch of keys has been too inconvenient to change.

Below is what's left of my keyboard collection minus my Ergodox and Corsair at work. I went through a lot of keyboards to figure out which switch type I liked and to try different layouts.
  • Top - Ergodox
  • Second row - RS84 and Planck Ortholinear
  • Bottom - WASD, Inifinity, Logitech Bluetooth

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symptoms of arthritis and carpal tunnel finally started picking up
Have you tried BPC157 & TB500 peptides? You inject them under the skin, like a diabetic would, they are brilliant for carpal. Fixed my carpal, arthritis, tennis elbow (from golf) and I recently sprained my ankle badly and had it healed in 6 weeks and not the 3 months the doctors told me it would take.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Peptides/comments/5muj4x/why_are_half_the_posts_here_about_bpc157/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Peptides/comments/oqex3f/peptides_for_carpal_tunnel/

And he's right about turmeric (curcumin) with black pepper for absorption. Great for any inflammation...
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Yo you said "wrists sag" I was wondering how you are not supposed to be typing and how you are supposed to be typing? I just wanna make sure my shit doesn't mess up I am on the computer a ton as well.
 
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