Happiness Is…
Posted on January 29, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 28 Comments
Being sufficiently competent at touch typing that I can type on my laptop in a completely unlit room and still make only about the same number of typos that I make when I can see my keyboard perfectly. It’s finally happened at age 37! I can die happy!
That’s pretty much how Jonathan Franzen wrote The Corrections, you know, so you’re either about to get picked for Oprah or win the National Book Award!
Yeah, try typing while not seeing the keyboard or the screen, as I do during writing comments as Voice Sythesization doesn’t work well in comment mode.
But I’m not bragging as you’ve seen my lousy spelling and typos on these comments. So you’d probably be better than me at it because I highly suspect your internal editor far surpasses my own.
The problem is that your pen-writing skills will slowly deteriorate to make up for your new l33t keyboarding.
You’re using a mac with a backlit keyboard. ‘Fess upon Johnny boy!
Maybe he’s not, but *I* am. It is “teh awesome” as I hear the kids these days like to say.
Hoe lonf afi edtd yon thos bad?
That was “How long ago were you this bad?” with my eyes closed.
Why do people sit typing in completely unlit rooms……..?
Byron, that backlit keyboard “teh awesome.” Not using it now (as I’m at the office), but it sure gets a workout at home.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
Apple finally (after fixing my G4 five times) accepted that maybe they’d sold me a lemon. I get my new backlit keyboard (and the rest of the macBook Pro) sometime this week. Wheeeeee!
I typed this with my eyes closed.
I can type reasonably well with my eyes closed–as you can see, since that’s how I’m typing this comment…
The odd thing is that I sometimes make typos, realize that I’ve made them, backspace and correct them, even when I can’t see what I’m typing.
One thing I can’t do, though, is find the “Post” button with my eyes closed.
Do you find yourself reflexively looking down at the keys even when you can’t see them, and does it ever help? Probably just me…
I notice Van Gogh has been swapped out for an astronomical background…
I wuv my bakklit keyboard.
I type so badly in broad daylight that in darkness it makes no difference.
Nathan, congrats.
My problem is not typing without seeing my hands (I use Dvorak anyway, so it doesn’t help) but without seeing the screen. I have so many typos if I can’t see what I’m putting up there.
THIs is me typing without looking at the keyboard. I think I’ve done pretty well.
Isn’t it funny how many Apples turn out to be lemons? I’ve had three pass through this house so far and now my significant other has a PC.
Actually the percentages are not that much different that any other PC manufacturer (I think Apple comes in 3rd behind Lenovo and Sony for fewest defects. Apple’s laptops tend to require better tolerances due to things like latch design and relatively narrow screen bezels, which probably accounts for that). Apple users just seem to be more vocal about problems. None of this should be surprising since there aren’t actually Apple plants off somewhere, all laptops are made pretty much by some combination of about 4 companies in China (Acer, Quanta, I forget the other two).
*shrug* I like Apple’s hardware, it looks nice, but really I’m in it for the software. Windows XP came out and I just couldn’t take it anymore (and I have a set of Windows 1.0 floppies in a draw somewhere… for posterity).
That happened to me too, John. It’s ironic because in high school, typing class screwed up my GPA. And I developed it completely unintentionally while in college.
When I was in grad school, I would freak out teammates on team projects and papers with my ability to look at them while transcribing what they said onto the computer.
I’m another one of those mutants who will realize through the fingers that I’ve typo’ed something, and automatically reach up and hit the backspace the correct number of times to undo it, and then keep going. All while being able to look at other people at the same time. ;)
As for the quality of Apple hardware in recent years … it does seem to have gone downhill. I still love my Powermac 8500 (bought in 1996, upgraded to a slow G3)… it just keeps chugging away.
Man, I would always lose at “Typing of the Dead” because I never could learn to touch type.
I was a pretty good touch typist on a QWERTY from a very young age, thanks to a grandmother who apparently sidelined as a dominatrix. Then I went and screwed it all up by converting to Dvorak last year. I’ve got it back now, though. This was typed with my eyes shut.
when i was taking typing in school (no keyboarding at the time), there was a humiliating system in place (i mean, it was school, after all) to track your speed typing progress. everyone would get a raft to start with, all rafts were on the shore (it was a big chart attached to the side blackboard). if you got your speed up to 30 wpm — the absolute minimum acceptable — you got a sailboat; 40 wpm two sails on your boat; 50 wpm you got a speed boat, etc. etc. ad nauseum. i never got past a one-sail boat. never. i hated typing with a passion. when i went off to college, i got two gifts: an electric typewriter and a book of Fred Allen’s Letters. FA, a great radio writer, ranconteur and curmedgeon, wrote all his personal letters is small type. i found his humor and mine to be compatible and started typing letters home, all in small type. and of course, started doing term papers. pretty soon, i’d moved up to the computer, but my speed now is such that Ms. Lowe (she of the big, lacquered hair and banging chalkboard pointer) would have to give me a *yacht*! although i still type my personal stuff in all small letters, my regular typing speed is somewhere around 85 — 95 wpm. thank you, Fred Allen.