Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Keyboards are nice things.
You know, the big, square things with lots of little square keys you use to enter emails and other things that you can't do with the mouse? Yeah, that's it, that's the one.
I think they're pretty nice, more so than mice actually (but of course I can't deny that mice are superior for some things). You have to admit that it's much cooler to be able to do things using the keyboard than to do it using the mouse. Plus it's often much faster as well.
I'm no real touch-typist, not even a half real one actually. But my hands can at least find their way around the keyboard pretty well without the supervision of my eyes, including lots of trips to the backspace key of course.
I've actually started thinking that it might be much easier to learn proper touch-typing if it wasn't for the backspace key. Having a finger ready in the general area of backspace sure isn't the proper position for touch-typing, but it's a place you need your finger to go so often that you have a hard time keeping away from there. Thus, I think my left hand is closer to being in the right position than my right.
But make no mistake, whenever I think of it it turns out that my index fingers see much more action than the others. If I concentrate on it, I can get into pretty good hand positions but it's not second nature and it makes me type slower and make more mistakes as well. When it works it's pretty damn cool though, like the keys just appear in the right positions when you lower your fingers.
And then, the magic breaks, you make a mistake and have to head for backspace, losing focus and position again :-) ...
My world of keyboards is roughly split into three categories; laptops, old IBM keyboards and everything else. And I like the two first much better than the third ... The second option I like so much that it's got its own page, and the first I like for being very much unlike old IBM keyboards. Small, quiet, compact and completely different in feeling. Sure, many keyboards feel compact compared to an old IBM, but laptops are the most extreme cases.