Moments of atavism

[elfs]

Last week, I wore my kilt out and about. At one point, I was in a men's room and reached for the zipper-- which a kilt doesn't have. It was the first time I'd explicitly forgotten I was wearing a kilt. It was a common article of men's clothing covering the waist, of course it has a zipper.

Today was even weirder. Seeking to save wear'n'tear on my laptop keyboard, I snagged a spare Apple keyboard from a pile of unloved hardware that collected in one corner of the incubator's office space. I wonder if that happens a lot at incubators: folks bringing their home hardware in and abandoning it.

I plugged it in and started typing, and couldn't type anything. It was so weird. I tried typing "cd" and got "je." I tried "ls" and got "no". Concerned, I watched my fingers, and they were going to the right buttons. And then it hit me: they were going to the right buttons. But I'm a Dvorak typist. Somehow, typing on this old keyboard made my QWERTY habits come back hard.

A few seconds of practice and I found the Dvorak module in my brain, but that was just weird. Of course I can type QWERTY; you have to in this world, where too many keyboards don't come with a remap option, like on a Palm. I just don't all that often. Very weird.

Comments

[mauraanderson.livejournal.com]

I'm not Elf, but I do use exclusively Dvorak keyboard layouts. I learned after having hand surgery last year.

I think my speed is about the same on Dvorak as QWERTY once was but I'm a very fast typist.

What I have noticed is that my hands are far less tired at the end of the day than they used to be. It took some dedication to switch but after about a month, I was comfortable.

I don't think it's as easy to write code with, though. But I write more words than code so I won't switch back.

It also has the side-benefit of making it very difficult for anyone to "borrow" your laptop. :)