Mind-Manual

Keyboard Improvements

I want to make typing easier because I do it so much, so I am making small improvements to how windows recognizes my keystrokes. So far, I’ve turned the Caps Lock key into a backspace key (and love it) and just need to find some way to get the delete key in there. The reason I did this was that I had to move my entire hand to use my middle finger to hit the backspace key, too big a movement. I used a program called SharpKeys. To enforce it, I’ve also disable the backspace key to do nothing so I get out of the habit of using it. A minor interrupt.

I’m looking into Dvorak keyboard layout which has the most common keys on the home row so there’s less movement involved. In case you’re interested in knowing, the standard keyboard layout called QWERTY (cause of the letters on the top row) was created specifically to slow down typists because old typewriters were jamming. Last I heard, the current typing speed world record is using Dvorak.

I’m also looking into AutoHotKey scripts, there’s some interesting ones. For example, there’s a script that turns your layout back to QWERTY when you hit a modifier key like cntrl or alt. This is cause of shortcuts like Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-X (cut), Ctrl-V (paste), which are really made for the bottom row of the QWERTY key, but on Dvorak, those keys are all over the place.

I also found an onscreen keyboard someone made for QWERTY but I modified it for Dvorak. It shows a keyboard on the bottom of the screen and shows which key was pressed. Lemme know if you’re intested

I’m interested in a script that would take a modifer like Ctrl-Shift and use the JKLI keys for arrow keys cause I often have to navigate toe another part of the text I’m writing and I write a lot often. Found it.

There’s another issue that I think AutoHotKey could fix, which is that when my computer comes out of sleep mode, the wireless radio doesn’t turn itself back on and reconnect. I’ve discovered that the button on the front of my laptop to do that sends a specific key code to windows and then a program within windows handles it, so I could create a program to send that keycode everytime my computer comes off standby.

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I Crashed the Uncrashable Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the hot new Beta browser on the market. I downloaded this yesterday morning. The idea is that because each tab is its own process, if one tab crashes or breaks, the others are unaffected. Nope, I made everything crash.

Seriously though, I’m fairly impressed so far. I’d love to get some extension I use in Firefox into here and I like it. Perhaps now I can actually use an advanced browser to watch videos like YouTube!

So, give ‘er a download and post what you think!

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