I know, I know, my posting rate is abysmal of late. Laziness, I guess.
My latest “Oh, I know, this’ll be fun, and a good use of my time” idea is learning the Dvorak keyboard. Why? Because it’s there, man.
Actually, I have no freakin’ idea why I’m doing this. I type at 60+ wpm on Qwerty. (Dunno exactly how fast. Definitely fast enough to impress a lot of people who’ve seen me in action.) Undoubtedly there is more than a little “I can learn anything!” ego involved. Only a little, I’m sure.
(And no, I am not doing my writing-writing in Dvorak. I switch back to Qwerty for that.)
Update: I took a typing test, the result of which was 75wpm in Qwerty. (Might have been faster, but the words in the test were random and I couldn’t get a flow going.) Going down to 10-15wpm is quite a downer.
You may be interested in this article debunking the notion that the Dvorak keyboard is innately faster than the QWERTY:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_248.html
Actually, that article I linked to at mwbrooks.com deals with that anti-Dvorak story in some depth: http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/dissent.html
I learned Dvorak several months ago (using Master Key) and got to 35-40 wpm, which is considered proficient, although by no means fast. But here are two lessons I learned in those three months I tried to use Dvorak exclusively:
1) you’ll learn much faster if you don’t switch back and forth to QWERTY and
2) this is near impossible if you’re working under deadlines
The frustration I had at only typing 35 wpm was overwhelming. I almost went with paper and pen for first and second drafts but the time it would take to do that and then type it…well, this is why I would switch to QWERTY. Which was also frustrating because this skill suffered the consequences of nearly mastering another layout (typos and more typos).