Support for mobile is amusing to me.. practice cellphone typing!
Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
311–320 of 394 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#312This is a fantastic tool to put some wrote muscle memory work into classics of english usage. Fascinating and unexpected way to work through some classics. Can there be a custom text option or similar tool available? I would like to practice code snippets.
https://www.keybr.com/ go to setting Provide your own custom text
thanks. Works just like I was asking.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s an interesting idea that we still “need” typing practice. We do it every day why would we need to practice extra? To provide an additional use case, my wife just got me an awesome and completely configurable ergonomic keyboard for my birthday and I’m considering switching to Dvorak or Coleman layouts after typing QWERY my entire life. I NEED a long form practice like this instead of just typing nonsense short bl…
I practiced qwerty touch typing in school, but never really used it myself, rather using two-three fingers on each hand and letting them move around a lot across the keyboard. I switched to dvorak over 10 years ago and since the letters on the keys didn't match, and because it's designed to make it easy to touch type, I quickly learned. But after a year or so of dvorak, I grew tired of being extremely slow when I had…
I had a similar experience switching to the Kinesis. I mean I don't think as stark as yours.
I noticed the Kinesis Advantage forced my hands into a position that encouraged touch-typing, so I thought I'd give it a try and learn to touch-type while doing my normal work (Still QWERTY though) It worked! I can now touch-type greatly...
Sort-of, it really only applies to the Kinesis though, when I go back to a normal staggered layout keyboard I go back to my two-three finger pecking around the keyboard.
It's obviously still the same layout, so I don't think I experience it as bad as you do on a standard keyboard, but now I'm pretty much stuck on my Kinesis!
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#314Amazing idea. How did you figure out the licensing aspects since you are also giving out book content for free in the process?
They're probably public domain books.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#315[deleted]
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#316It reminds me of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Borges [1]. If I re-write Ulysses from scratch, line by line, is it still the same book? Is mine better than Joyce's? 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...
I love Borges, thanks for posting this!
His fiction always generates so many questions for me. Is the real writer the reader who constructs the story from the bare framework the author provides? And then is it possible for anyone to actually read the same novel?
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#317This is an absolutely fantastic idea. I have tried many times to sit down and train my typing but it's always incredibly boring. I'm a rather fidgety person too, so it's actually quite nice to have something for my hands to do while I'm reading!
Maybe try http://www.typingtom.com/ [1]. I found it broke up touch typing into just the right size chunks to engage me. At the start of Covid, I spent a week doing half an hour a day. My typing speed and accuracy improved out of sight. The whole process of acquiring muscle memory is quite magical. I highly recommend it. [1] This is the companion site to http://www.speedcoder.net/ , which is for coding, and presumes y…
Thanks, I’ll check it out!
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s an interesting idea that we still “need” typing practice. We do it every day why would we need to practice extra? To provide an additional use case, my wife just got me an awesome and completely configurable ergonomic keyboard for my birthday and I’m considering switching to Dvorak or Coleman layouts after typing QWERY my entire life. I NEED a long form practice like this instead of just typing nonsense short bl…
I practiced qwerty touch typing in school, but never really used it myself, rather using two-three fingers on each hand and letting them move around a lot across the keyboard. I switched to dvorak over 10 years ago and since the letters on the keys didn't match, and because it's designed to make it easy to touch type, I quickly learned. But after a year or so of dvorak, I grew tired of being extremely slow when I had…
I have a similar issue! When I learned Russian I installed the Russian keyboard layout on my computer. Because my keys (obviously) didn't match, I had to type by feel using a small diagram I printed as a reference, carefully placing index on f and j like you're supposed to. I just touch type in Russian now, but if I dare do that while typing English I stumble and lose track; I'm stuck doing it my normal messy (still faster than average) way.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 is something that's bothered me since my university put out a survey asking about time spent on homework. Suppose the following things happen: 1. A math class assigns a proof. 2. I look at the problem, fiddle around with it for 20 minutes, and get no…
I think about this in terms of how much clock time has elapsed versus how much working time I spend on something - i.e. I am very often able to trade an increase in clock time elapsed (taking more breaks) for a decrease in working time, and vice versa. As with most things, this comes with diminishing returns as you push toward minimizing one over the other. Sometimes, even negative returns, e.g. because of increased…
> I am very often able to trade an increase in clock time elapsed (taking more breaks) for a decrease in working time, and vice versa.
But this is the problem with a survey of "how long does the homework take?". The question isn't well defined. The answer doesn't exist.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#320"[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…
Agreed that you learn much about a work (I've retyped a few articles and books simply to get a usable copy). But copying is not the same as creating --- you'll see the finished product, and may intuit hints as to how it was created, but what you're not getting is the creation process itself : research (especially for nonfiction), structure, plotting and character (for fiction), editing, rewriting, restructuring and r…
> And you don't get this knowledge simply by copying out great works.
Well, I think the point is that you may get knowledge, but nt necessarily of the type that lets you make another great work. Doing is an act of learning, whether very small amounts of learning as you do something you've done countless times before, or possibly large amounts of learning as you try something absolutely new, or learning about yourself and what you like, what you don't, what you feel is worthwhile even if you dislike it, etc.
Ultimately, there's something to be learned from everything. Even the book you read that purports to teach you someething that you find worthless for the task should be illustrative of either what things are not useful for you in learning that, or how to structure something in such a way that it's hard for you to take away good meaning from it, and ultimately, some hints about what to look for next time that doesn't have the same problems.
So, copying isn't necessarily creating, but it should be an act of learning, and learning should hopefully help in creating, even if it's something totally divorced from what you were originally copying.