Dvorak’s Wonderous Layout

Friend, I come to you today with a proposition.  Apparently, there are all sorts of life changing things going on in my life, and I want to share one with you that could change yours.  Imagine yourself back in the era of typewriters, where hitting a key actually caused a metal stamp to fly out and hammer a piece of paper.  Those were the days in which “backspace” wasn’t even a dream in Bill Gates’ mind.  Have we come so far as to forget our origins?  I was so young back then, I hardly remember it.  However, I remember the smell of the machine.  It was metallic and oily. I remember trying to press five keys at a time, and only jamming the machine.  Therein lies the problem, and the proposition.

When the typewriter was first invented, the arms that held the letter stamps were not spring loaded.  The keyed letters would fall back into position using nothing but gravity.  That is to say, the mechanism that made the typwriter useful was slow.  The original inventor found that when he layed out the keyboard in alphabetical order, he would press certain keys too quickly and end up jamming everything up.  In order to fix this problem, he studied how words were formed, and rearranged the keyboard so that there were fewer errors.  This was long before anyone knew anything about typing, so he might be called the father of the keyboard.  The same QWERTY keyboard we use today is the one he devised so long ago.

Soon after pitching his ideas to Remington, the original typewriter was redesigned to have spring-loaded arms.  This made the letters snap back into place no longer jamming except when the fastest typists were goin’ to town.  Now that the typwriter was more capable, the inventor realized that the keyboard could be redesigned to be more efficient.  He attempted to show the people at Remington his new idea, but they turned him down for the fact that everyone was already using the QWERTY keyboard, and they didn’t want to be the ones to bring typists to a screeching halt, let alone change a perfectly good design.

At around the same time, another intellectual named Dvorak was designing his own efficient keyboard layout.  Dvorak’s design was based on the idea that your fingers should rarely have to leave home row.  Therefore, with the Dvorak Simplified Layout you can type more than 3,000 words without ever leaving the comfort of the home row.  As a matter of fact, the left side of the home row only contains vowels, while the right side only contains consonants.  This forces the typist to alternate hands more times per word, crunching out words at amazing speeds.  After perfecting his design he tried it out on some people who had never even touched a typewriter before.  These new typist learned the Dvorak Simplified Layout much faster than others learned the QWERTY layout.  Also, Dvorak tried his design on some people who were seasoned QWERTY enthusiasts, and after some painful reworking of fingers, they were much faster and more accurate than they were before.

Sadly, news never spread of the new Dvorak layout because people simply don’t like change.  Just imagine you touch-typists having to completely relearn all that you know about using a keyboard.  AHA!!!

I challeng you now to rewire your brain.  Become a child again, cover your keyboard, and figure out just what this Dvorak thing is all about.  That’s exactly what I intend to do.  I already have the home row down, and I am about to move beyond it to the more obsecure letters of the alphabet.

You don’t have the resources you say?

REJOICE, FOR I AM THE BEARER OF THE GOOD NEWS!  READ THE DVORAK ZINE AND REJOICE!


——–> http://www.dvzine.org/ <——-

Now, go forth and spread the good news.  Read the zine, give the zine away, do the tutorials, and become a better typist.

Classified: Chapter 5

Here is the next installment of Classified.  Yet another round of silly antics, and of course… Clinton slander.

Refer to chapter 1 for an explanation on why this story is silly and juvenile.  For the previous installments of this saga:

Chapter 5 – Government Conspiracies

We stepped inside to the rather tropical atmosphere within The Dock.  “Hey, how about some drinks before you head to the basement,” the bartender said.  We were still piling into the restaurant as he spoke.

“No thanks, we’re in a hurry.” Eddie said.  Dimwit came up beside me, popped a piece of gum in his mouth and put his arm around my shoulder.  We stepped into a larg room that had nothing in it.  Dimwit looked at me and smiled.

“Woah!  We’re takin’ the service elevator!”  He ran up to Eddie and asked if he could push the buttons.  I looked around and realized that the Spiffies were all lining up along the walls as if they were in the marines or something, except that they all had their arms crossed.  It was also perfectly quiet except for the clicking and tapping of their shoes as they filed into place.  Dimwit stood up perfectly straight with his hand on the switch.  “You are about to embark on a mission into the depths of the earth.  Your assignment… please stand as you are and don’t flinch no matter what happens.  If you choose to, you may look into our viewing window which lies beneath your feet.”  I looked down and almost jumped onto the ceiling.  I was standing on a thick glass window and there was nothing but a shaft that went straight down.  “What lies beneath you is nothing, and so you shall boldly travel to there.”  He pointed down to the nothingness that sort of captured all of his attention.

“Woah! This is the part that Dimwit thinks is DA BOMB!”

He flipped the switch and dove face down for the center of the room.  Before he could hit the floor, we became weightless.  His dog tags floated up, and as his sunglasses floated away from his face, he quickly pushed them back on.  Suddenly he twisted upwards and hit a button on the ceiling.  Some rock music came on at full blast.  Dimwit hit the ceiling with his feet and started break dancing in mid air.  All of the Spiffies came out of their ghostly postures and started to hoot and holler.  I figured, what the heck and pushed off to the center of the room and started to do the same thing Dimwit was doing.  Before I knew it, it was the end of the ride and we slowed to a stop.  We stepped off into a huge cave.  I mean, this place was huge!

Eddie came up beside me with Dimwit.  “How did you like my service elevator?” he said as we stepped towards one of the many tables filled with laboratory equipment.

“I loved it” I said smiling at Eddie and then Dimwit who had a huge grin on his face.  I decided that I should finally start asking questions.  “What is the case?”  I said to Eddie.  “Why are we down in the depths of the earth with a bunch of spiffy guys?”  He smiled and sat in a chair next to a table.

“We are a part of this world’s government which is fighting against your exiled government.”  I opened my mouth to speak but he held up a finger to silence me.  “We are the good, they are the bad.  They are a group of Clinton wannabes from your city who followed Clinton here.  They are a group that will stop at nothing to destroy your world and dominate mine out of greed and anger.”  I wrinkled my forehead and thought for a minute.

“So why is there a Clinton back on my planet?”  I asked intrigued at this bit of information.

“Why else do you think they perfected the cloning process?”  he said and started typing on a laptop on the table in front of him.  “Okay how about that monster that tried to attack you the first night we met?”

“That was Imsotite, he’s Dimwit’s arch enemy.”  We both looked at Dimwit who was on another computer with headphones on.  I could almost hear the blaring lead guitar from where I was.

“What about the compound we found in the car?”  I asked looking at the lab equipment.

“I’ve got it here and it consists of all substances found in golf balls.”

NaNoWriMo – First of Many

On November first, writers from all over the world go insane.

They put their writing hats on, sit down at their writing tool of choice and just go to town.  This wonderful event is called National Novel Writing Month.  Even now, writers are thinking about it and cringing at sore fingers and shameless word padding.  I have never been a part of it, but I have heard that it is one of the craziest deadlines you will ever have to meet.  I know it will be for me, since I doubt I’ll ever have a publisher, but one can dream.

I’m telling you about this annual pandemonium so that I can have accountability.  I have signed up on the official NaNoWriMo site, and will be participating this year if it kills me.  I have honestly never written a novel, let alone a 10,000 word project, so I’m a little scared.

Okay, I’m a lot scared.

Overall, I think it will be a fun experience.  My work will not be published if I win, nor will I get any money.  There will be no prize other than the privilege of knowing that I made it.  However, people keep coming back to this bloody match between their flowing thought and their pounding fingers.  This should be interesting.  I’ll keep you updated when the month draws closer, and hopefully I can bang out a few posts during the month of November to keep you informed.

Flying

Yesterday, my friends and I decided to go to the 2009 South Plains Air Show in Slaton. It wasn’t really a planned trip, I just wanted to see some planes and I asked my friends to tag along. So we headed out to Slaton and found our way onto the concrete runway, where the show was already in progress. They were reenacting what a bombing run would have looked like at Pearl Harbor. It was very exciting to watch the Japanese Zeros and our own American fighter duke it out over the airfield while explosive charges detonated on the ground. There were quite a few acts, but one really stuck out to me. Bob Carlton and his jet powered sailplane put on a dazzling show of aerobatics that would normally cause a sailplane to take a nosedive.  Apparently, Bob Carlton decided one day to mount a Super Salto jet engine to the top of his plane, just behind the cockpit.  I can only imagine what it would feel like to have that much power just behind your noggin.  That act got me thinking.

A few posts back–read: months ago–I wrote about how I wanted to experience longboarding down a nice, sloping hill. The movement seems so graceful and peaceful.  I love the accessibility of it.  As long as you have a hundred dollars for a board and a decent sized hill, you can jump on and carve your way down.  Well, here I am months later with no board, and not a single hill in sight.  I guess that’s what I get for living in one of the flattest places on earth.  So, in this venture, I had absolutely no success.  While it’s still a dream of mine, I might wait until we go somewhere more hilly like Austin *crossing fingers*.  While that dream gets set in the ‘I’ll do it sooner or later’ pile, another dream has risen from the ashes of my childhood.  I want to fly.

I am not just saying that I want to fly, I really want to get a license, get a plane, and become a recreational pilot.  I want to…

(oh no, here he goes again)

I want to…

(dear lord, make this poetic crap end quickly)

I want to feel the vibration of the turboprop as I zip down the runway and into the sky.  The power of the 1.5 ton aircraft will be at my fingertips.  The flick of a wrist would send me this way and that, no roads to direct me, and no cops to tell me I’m flying too fast.  I would practice stalls, just to feel weightless and watch the world around me tumble.  I would jump to the skys and be anywhere I want to be in mere hours, even minutes.

(and what does your wife think of this nonsense?)

Well, I would say she’s not too keen on flying in single engine aircraft, but she is more than supportive.  When I mentioned to her that it has always been a dream of mine to fly, she told me I should do it.  At that, my eyes got wide.  You see, it takes a lot of cash just to get off the ground, and then it costs even more to maintain the aircraft.  I didn’t think it was realistic to even dream about, which is why I have suppressed it for so long.  But instead of agreeing with me, my wife just said “let’s do it!”

So, here is my goal.  In 10 years, I will at least have a pilot’s license, and I would like to be well on my way to owning an aircraft of some sort.  My dream would be a single prop fixed-wing, with enough room for at least me and one other passenger.  I’ve priced some of the older used models, and they appear to be about 20,000 USD, which ain’t too bad when you’re rollin’ in green.  However, that is still pretty far in the future.  For now, I will focus on a pilot’s license, and take the rest as it comes.

Classified: Chapter 4

Here is the next installment of Classified, filled with Drudgery and Dimwittedness.  The story just gets more and more exciting.

Refer to chapter 1 for an explanation on why this story is silly and juvenile.  For the previous installments of this saga:

 

Chapter 4 – To be spiffy is to be good

I got some highly caffinated coffee and got dressed. I had to find out where Eddie was. When I got down to the lobby I asked if there were any messages for Drudge. The lady said no, and I was out the door. I wished that I had my spiffy gadgets car with me because at the moment I was lost. Suddenly, I spotted Crazy Dog’s car. The car was surrounded by men with cell phones and spiffy suits. My guess was that they were the FBI. I walked up to them.
“So where are you taking the old man?” I asked, trying to act nonchalant.

“To Altacraz; he belongs there.” said one of them. I looked at them suspiciously.

“You know that there are other things that you can be doing… like getting a doughnut,” I said grinning at them. I don’t know why, but I just felt like I had to get to crazy dog’s car.
“ha ha! You don’t think we’d fall for that one do you?” said on of the spiffy guys. I was getting annoyed with their stupid spiffy remarks, their stupid, undeniable, remarkable, unbearable resemblance to each other that…

Suddenly I was interrupted by a familiar voice. “Drudge!” Someone from behind me ran up. I whipped around and saw Eddie running towards me. He ran up beside me, out of breath. “Guys… he’s…. with me.” Each word out of his mouth followed by gasping breaths. He turned towards me and straightened up. “He’s our new detective, perfect for the job.”

I wrinkled my forehead and turned back to the spiffy dudes. I decided that it would be best to try and keep my mouth shut.

“Thank goodness you cauth up with this man, we were about to arrest him for asking too many questions,” said one spiffy dude. “My name is Pops Maloney. I’m from the S.D.I.” He whipped out a professional looking I.D. card. He was about to say something but I interrupted him.

“Excuse me for being inquiry-like and such, but what is S.D.I.?”

“It stands for Spiffy Department of Investigation.” He said it like ‘I’m a part of it and you aren’t’. I didn’t like it one bit, but I pushed it aside.

“Let me see the car,” I said to Pops. I opened it up and stepped in. There were roll bars galore. It was a reinforced frame with the engine crammed into the dashboard so that it didn’t get smashed. “This was built by a genius who probably new Crazy Dog too well,” I said glancing at the handy work. A spiffy dude crouched and looked in.

“This was made by Crazy Dog,” he said very quietly. I found nothing in the car except for a vial with an odd colored liquid in it. We decided to study it back in Eddie’s lab, which would allow me to meet Dimwit.

When we got there–after some strenuous back seat driving from mister spiffy himself, who had to bring all of his one-hundred S.D.I. officers with him for argument of security and… other reasons. Dimwit ran out to meet us. He was kind of skinny and he was wearing dog tags. He had an expression of confusion on his face. You wouldn’t think that at first glance, but he really does. He had a pair of green sunglasses on.

“Woah! It’s the spiffy dudes!” he said as we climbed out of the vehicle. When I stepped out, he jumped back. “Woah! You’re new!” he said in amazement. I stood there trying to find his eyes through the plastic lenses of his glasses. Suddenly, Eddie came running around the side of the car and put his hand on Dimwit’s chest to hold him back.

“First off, this is a humanoid and he is not an enemy,” he motioned towards me, “and second of all he has a reason factor of 100%, a memory factor of about 95%, and a knowledge factor of about 100% in mechanics.” Dimwit eyed me over as he was computing all of the information.

“Woah! That’s cool, Drudge humanoid has cool reasoning factor. Dimwit thinks Drudge humanoid is cool,” Dimwit said in an enthusiastic tone. Eddie slowly took his hand off and walked towards the group of spiffies gathering at the front of The Dock.

Flash Fiction Prompt: Green

Here is my attempt at a flash fiction prompt from http://www.onerealstory.com/

————————————

Cleopatra sat staring at the tall, opaque obstruction in front of her.  Somehow, she would find a way through, even if it meant begging.  She had begged at first with little to show for it.  The people she lived with seemed content with letting her suffer in this confined space.  They would come and go as they pleased, but if Cleo ever took a step towards the door, the people would bar her way with swift movements.  She would look up at them and ask nicely, but they just furrowed their brows and scolded her.  She then resorted to begging, emphasizing her need with frantic scratching.  Sometimes she would reach up as far as her body would stretch, and find that she couldn’t even reach the extruding knob to operate it herself.

They would sit and stare at the lighted box, mumbling to each other and eating their food.  Every once and a while, they would look down at her with their ugly faces and start making sing-song noises.  Noises that mocked her voice.  She didn’t hate the people, she just didn’t understand why she had to live inside a box when there was so much more beyond the walls.  I love you, but you don’t seem to love me the same,  she would think to herself.  You should know by now what I really want.

During the day when the people were gone, Cleopatra would sleep.  Most of the time when she slept, she was so comfortable that she would wake up hours later and not remember a thing.  On those days, she tried to sleep because the people weren’t there to scratch under her chin.  All sides of her personal prison had been explored.  Every nook and cranny, every piece of cloth the people left had been sniffed and catalogued.  At times, Cleo felt that she could recite the location of every piece of dust in the whole enclosure.  I have needs.  Needs that go beyond eating and sleeping.

Some days, though, a fever would overtake her.  She felt like running as fast as she could.  Her food tasted bland on those days, and sleep was out of reach.  The fur on her back stood on end, her tail and back twitched with agitation.  The rug under her feet felt foreign, unnatural and unnerving, as did the artificial light from the ceiling.  On those days, there was something tickling the back of her mind.  A feeling ran throughout her body; bristled the tip of her tail.  Her eyes could see it as if through a haze.  It had been so long.  The memory would fade after a while, and she would lay her exhausted body on the floor to fall into a fitful sleep.

————————————

Opening her eyes, she could see that the walls were not there.  She had been fully expecting to just roll over on that uncomfortable floor, glance towards the obstruction to see if the humans were home yet, and go back to sleep.  Instead, she twisted her upper body awkwardly to get a level look at what appeared to be an open field.  It was green!  The grass was green, the trees were green, flowers bloomed above green-leafed stems.  She had to blink a few times to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.  She leapt to her feet and sniffed the air with a renewed vigor.  She had forgotten what green smelled like;  what it felt like on her footpads.  Her tail twitched and she crouched down, using her keen eyesight to look for her first target.  Not a single second could be wasted.  The green made her feel wild and savage.  She wanted to sink her teeth and claws into something.

A green grasshopper alighted on a long blade of grass, causing Cleo to flatten the whole length of her body further into the lush foliage.  She could feel her back twitch once, twice, legs tensing, ready to pounce.  Just before she could attack, a breeze lifted from behind her and brushed across the field.  The grasshopper took the rush of wind under it’s wings and leapt from the blade.  Energized by the green rustling around her, she attacked, pouncing on the airborn bug with elegance and ease.  With a quick swipe, the grasshopper was back on the ground, stunned and floundering in the weeds.  Cleo was on it in a split second, pinning it down and nipping at it to cripple.  The chase did not have to end, but she could keep the odds in her favor with some well-placed bites.  The romp continued with Cleo finding a couple of field mice and some unsuspecting butterflies, which she followed to all corners of the wide field.

After the last critter had breathed it’s last, Cleo could feel her energy coming to an end.  She had forgotten where she had come from, and didn’t care where she would end up.  The green still called to her.  Playtime may be over, but the grass felt cool on her feet.  The sun was beeting down on her back, warming her and making her feel joyful.  She could sleep for years under that yellow warmth in her bed of green.  As she closed her eyes, she knew that she would never want to forget the green again.

After what seemed a long, warm sleep, Cleo awoke to the humans stepping into her white walled prison.  She could not help but howl in dismay, knowing that she had only dreamed of the green.  The humans seemed to think her howling signalled her delight that they were home.  She humored them and showed her affection by rubbing her body against their legs.  She still loved them and wanted them to pet her, but she couldn’t forget the field of green again.  She would never forget the green.

Epic Scripts

One of the things I love most about movies is how every movie has a unique effect on everyone.  Sometimes a specific line from a movie can embed itself in someone’s memory when everyone else just disregarded it as an insignificant piece of the movie.  The reality to me is that every line, setting, scene, and prop has a significant role in the plot.

I have seen Independence Day at least 5 more times than I can even remember, which is about 20 or 30 more times than is absolutely necessary.  Any time it is on TV, I will usually sit and watch it because it still entertains me even when I quote each line in my head before they say it on screen.  One of the scenes in that movie that struck me recently was the scene in which Russell, the drunk pilot and alien abductee pulls over to the side of the road to let his sick son throw up on the side of the road.  While pulled over, he gets out and looks out at a vast landscape of campers, trailers, and vehicles creating a virtual refugee city.  He then beckons his older son to come over and take a look at the spectacular view.

Independence day is a huge blockbuster that you can either hate or love.  In the midst of aliens coming to earth, entire cities getting obliterated in huge clouds of fire, and America saving the day, it’s hard to remember small scenes like this.  To me however, the story of Russell and his kids is punctuated by this scene in which the future of the human race rests in the hands of the unlikely vagrants and seasoned travellers.  When I see that scene, it gives me a wave of hope that although the cities are lost, America survives.

That scene stuck itself in my memory, and gave me another insight into the plot of the movie.  A lot of people may have seen and remembered that part, but it may not have had the same effect on them.  If anyone is still reading, I would always like to hear about parts of movies that you remember in everyday life, or that made an impact on you while watching a particular movie.  Let me know.

Digital TV Transition PSA

A very informative video. Just plug it in before 2009 and you’ll be ready to go.

Before You Do Something Stupid

Watch this:


Curiosity from Si on Vimeo.

That Epic Asphault

Dear Santa,

I want a longboard.

No, really… I want a longboard.  I want to feel the wind in my hair as I get up on my deck and begin to swoop back and forth.  The gravel is my seaspray, the road is my neverending wave.  I would hike a mountain and find the gentle slope leading home.  I would glide back and forth.  I would do slides and spins.  I would walk the board, feel the wheels respond to every shift in my weight.  The road would never rise up to meet me.  I would reach my hands out and feel the heat from the blacktop.  Not a single car would ruin the high.  Somewhere down the road, I know my momentum would slow.  I would eventually feel the ride coming to an end.  But not in the moment.  Not while the board and I are one.

Do you think you could do that for me, Santa?  Lubbock is a very flat place, but I’m sure I could find a parking garage to shred… or just move to Austin.

Oh… and can I have a helmet, please?  Thanks.

Landyachtz Longboards from Landyachtz Longboards on Vimeo.

 

Yours truly,

The Great Dane