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Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

typelit.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#131

Post by whymauri »

bravura wrote: post #2

"[Hunter S. Thompson] chose, rather than writing original copy, to re-type books like The Great Gatsby and a lot of Norman Mailer, the Naked and the Dead, a lot of Hemingway. He would sit down there on an old type-writer and type every word of those books and he said, 'I just wanna feel what it feels like to write that we'll.'" HST: "If you type out somebody's work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it's like music…

This is how I first learned technical writing. Found a few exceptional papers in my field, sat down, and literally just typed them out.

The downside is that it's easy to 'overfit' and lose your own voice.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#132

Post by theLotusGambit »

So as someone who doesn't have a good grasp on copyright law, I'm not sure how 1984 is on this list. All the other books here appear to be over a hundred years old, making them public domain (I think), but 1984 was published in 1949. Pretty cool site, anyway.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#134

Post by simplegeek »

I congratulate you on launching this. Definitely an interesting idea.

Another thing that interests me is the approach that Benjamin Franklin described in his autobiography to improve his writing.

He would read writing that he liked, note it carefully, and then after a few days he would try to reproduce the writing. Finally, he would tally it with the original writing to correct mistakes.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#135

Post by rayrag »

I've used Type Faster and Sublime Text to achieve something like this but instead of books I've used articles/tutorials/documentation or articles in another language. In Type Faster I was creating new lessons with article I wanted to read. In Sublime Text I've used two panels - on left side I had article on right it was my typing space. While Type Faster shows you what word you have to type right now Sublime doesn't so I had to memorize as much words I wanted to type to avoid looking back and forth between panels. This is also useful when learning new language, if you are using Duolingo you most likely focus on speaking/reading/pronouncing words and not on writing so retyping articles in that language is very good method to memorize words.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/typefaster/

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#136

Post by grugagag »

mylons wrote: post #124
dmix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was explained by HST in one of his letters, which was collected in the excellent three book collection of letters he sent and received to his friends. Including many famous writers. HST was always great in small rapid outputs of writing, which is captured well in his letters (similar to how his collection of articles are his most popular works, but these deserve a similar look). He obviously had some sort of ADD…

I find this to be true with computer programming/work for me. I’m productive in bursts.

I'm productive in bursts as well. I have the feeling that in between bursts things are still computing in the background so it looks like you're not doing anything but the brain is still churning. This type of bursty productivity is very hard to account for in a corporate environment where one's productivity should be accounted for on a daily basis and laid down in cookie cutter time slots. I often wonder whether I have ADHD since I can hyperfocus when Im in a productive burst. Unfortunately/fortunately I don't tick other boxes so I'm in a limbo with the diagnosis

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#138

Post by spapas82 »

Hello, nice work! Unfortunately, since for now I am navigating through my keyboard only (not using a mouse because of lack of batteries) I can't really use it.

I am using linux and chrome with vimium and when I press f (to reveal the links) it doesn't "capture" any links for the books. I also tried it using tab to go to the books and it just jumped over them (!)

I presume you are doing some fancy JS things in the frontend that's why it can't understand the links, however I think it's a little ironic to not be able to use a practice typing site with only your keyboard :)

PS I am not trying to to be the "smart-ass" with my comment, it is honest; if the comment does not seem nice please forgive me, english ain't my primary language :|

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#140

Post by jkingsbery »

Octouroboros wrote: post #52
andretti1977 wrote: post #46

Nice work but i don't like when i miss a space: from that moment, even if i digit next words correctly, they result mispelled because caret is "behind" of 1 position

Hello! If you mean that once you make a mistake, than no matter what you type afterwards is wrong, that's not supposed to happen. If you don't mind me asking, what browser are you using? In the meantime, Chrome should work ok

I have the same issue in Chrome (85.0.4183.121). It doesn't happen if you type the wrong key, it happens if you accidentally miss or add a key press.

Really awesome site though!

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