My Keyboard

This, interestingly, is now the trusty keyboard I use as my setup when working. I should probably mention I am not the type of guy to get a weird and cool setup just because it's weird and cool. I get the general appeal but I try only to go for things that I believe could geneuinely improve my productivity. So, how in the world did we get here??

My Pinky, My Back, My Neck

What do all those have in common? Apparently, a (ulnar?) nerve that runs the whole length and through a series of bad decisions, I managed to completely screw mine over - a crazy achievement, I know! Not only did I switch to a stiff pillow that gave too much support, but it was also a point in time where I was trying to refactor a relatively large file during my internship. The overwork and bad neck/back support from the pillow meant that within a week, I was basically crippled. The nerve along my arm and pinky hurt so bad I could hardly type with my right hand anymore and relegating that responsibility to my left hand only pushed similar symptoms to my left arm.

Modifications to my Lifestyle

I ended up going for some physiotherapy sessions throughout the semester of Y2S1 (with a very nice physiotherapist from UHC, thank you doctor!). He taught some exercises to slowly stretch the nerve to relieve it (while relishing it what was basically a really good short massage session) and also gave some advice on how I use my laptop while coding. The biggest help was finally identifying the key issue being the stiff pillow I had switched to. By then, I had already bought a wrist guard and this keyboard.

Not just a cool keyboard

You may think this keyboard just looks cool (which is also true) but it also helped to make my typing a lot less strenuous. In fact, while I was slowly recovering, I could only type with this keyboard with my right hand - typing on the laptop made me writhe in pain.

Miryoku

Since I was already using such a weird keyboard with a significantly different physical layout, keys already felt weird. Thus, I had also opted to completely change the keyboard layout and rely entirely on muscle memory to memorise the positions of each key.

Alas, another obstacle stood in my way. Another new language to understand if I wanted to tune the keyboard exactly how I envisioned with hold-tap configurations and mouse configurations. Needless to say, there was a lot of trial and error before I finally got the code right to do what I wanted it to do - there was one point I had to use a command on the terminal to capture and print all the key commands I received from the keyboard to make sure it was doing what I wanted it to do and not just mimicking it.

Another frustration I had were keyboard shortcuts. Using a Mac, I hadn't realised how many keyboard shortcuts I had inherently memorised without even noticing and used without even thinking (i.e. Spotlight, switching to the next or previous tab, going to the neighbouring displays, highlighting the next word/until the end of the sentence, ...). These were all shortcuts I had to think about and why my keyboard ended up the way it is.

After countless iterations, the layout I use now is a Miryoku flavoured keyboard layout based on the then "Glorius Engrammer".

My Layout

In particular, I took some time to actually properly configure the hold-taps of the command+shift and option+shift keys and had to make the delays just right to prevent all the misfires inherent with this kind of key.

I tried a few combinations for the symbol layer but none seemed to work for me until I realised I could, for the most part, bring the original symbols layout down to the home row and just set that as the layer - and that worked almost perfectly.

The keys outside of the home row for the symbol layer were custom positions for symbols I used often because of the code I was working with - Typescript - and thus, are symbols for which I may change the position of soon.

Now, all that was left was to memorise all these keys!

Learning a new Keyboard Layout

I used keybr to learn the new keyboard layout and improve my accuracy over time and after I had improved significantly, moved over to monkeytype.

All in all, it took me a grand total of; roughly 3 months to learn to type comfortably. I honestly thought I could learn this faster but I had to meddle with the keyboard layout multiple times before it felt just right for me to use comfortably. The biggest appeal for this keyboard I should mention is not that you'll be typing at BLAZING FAST speeds after learning this, but that while using this keyboard, the strain you feel on your nerves is a few magnitudes less than on a typical QWERTY keyboard.

This really isn't the conclusion because my nerve still aches from time to time as I slowly grow more aware of some bad posture habits and tune them properly while using the keyboard but the glove80 has been a real help along this journey!