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Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

stavros.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#201

Post by a1369209993 »

ravi-delia wrote: post #90
jnwatson wrote: post #11

This is called a chorded keyboard [1]. Like seemingly everything invented in the following 40 years, it was introduced by Douglas Englebart in the Mother of all Demos in 1968. Englebart had a iOS app that allowed you to chord type as well. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

Douglas Englebart is the proof to me that even if you could go back in time, it isn't necessarily true that you could leverage your knowledge of future technology. Poor guy messed up the timeline so much that even his stock market knowledge was useless!

> even if you could go back in time, it isn't necessarily true that you could leverage your knowledge of future technology.

Relatedly:

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard H. Aiken

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#202

Post by type0 »

KMnO4 wrote: post #26
throwaway744678 wrote: post #23

Falsehoods programmers believe about hands: - they have 5 fingers Joking aside, that's a really nice project: congratulations!

Well, digits; a thumb is not technically a finger:)

And koalas have two on each paw, thumbs up to that.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#204

Post by wtallis »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #161
skinnymuch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure which way your email joke is going. Is it poking fun at some HNers who go out of their way not to use common services or devices, or, are you joking that changing your username isn’t worth any effort? Edit: oh. Likely a 1984 reference. Never mind now. Leaving comment as it is though

I’m not sure why people in this thread keep thinking my comments are jokes. What is causing that? I literally do not use email.

A lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously, because it's just plain bizarre. A complete refusal to use email for any purpose is pretty unusual to begin with, and even more so for a participant on a technical forum like this. Publicly complaining about the consequences of that decision is another layer of strange behavior. It seems like you're putting a lot of effort into not communicating effectively, so you really should expect people to have trouble taking your statements at face value.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#205

Post by jedberg »

StavrosK wrote: post #17
praptak wrote: post #9

This is a simpler version of Twiddler: https://twiddler.tekgear.com/

Have you ever used that? It looks interesting.

I've had one since the early 2000s. I never learned how to type on it. I tried it for an hour and it was really hard for me to learn (although I was trying to do it in my non-dominant hand). I really should try to find that thing and learn it again.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#206

Post by jedberg »

StavrosK wrote: post #55
mcshicks wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one I bought maybe 8 years ago. It's the wired version. There was some pretty good tutorial software for learning to type but I could never really get the Ctrl key combos to work which made emacs hard to use. But for just letters and spaces and tabs it worked surprisingly well. You can change the layout also.

I would imagine that the main use case is texting or typing documents, so it's encouraging that it worked well for that.

The use case I bought it for was note-taking in class. My thought was to learn how to use it on my left hand, keeping my right hand free for drawing diagrams in my notebook or anything else that was hard to type out via just text (like math formulas).

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#207

Post by StavrosK »

jedberg wrote: post #206
StavrosK wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that the main use case is texting or typing documents, so it's encouraging that it worked well for that.

The use case I bought it for was note-taking in class. My thought was to learn how to use it on my left hand, keeping my right hand free for drawing diagrams in my notebook or anything else that was hard to type out via just text (like math formulas).

What, simultaneously?

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#208

Post by CyberRabbi »

wtallis wrote: post #204
CyberRabbi wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why people in this thread keep thinking my comments are jokes. What is causing that? I literally do not use email.

A lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously, because it's just plain bizarre. A complete refusal to use email for any purpose is pretty unusual to begin with, and even more so for a participant on a technical forum like this. Publicly complaining about the consequences of that decision is another layer of strange behavior. It seems like you're putting a lot of effort into not communicating effectively, so y…

> A complete refusal to use email for any purpose is pretty unusual to begin with

I don’t know if I would say I “refuse” to use email. I simply opt not to because I am privacy conscious. I also do not browse the web with cookies or JavaScript enabled. If that’s “bizarre” to you well then I guess I am a bizarre person but I deserve a bare minimum of respect just as all humans do.

> Publicly complaining about the consequences of that decision is another layer of strange behavior.

I literally never complained about anything. Someone else initiated a question at me about my communication with dang and I shared the results of that communication. I am not bothered at all by not being able to request a name change nor have I ever expressed resentment towards anyone for not being able to request a name change. My screen name is not very important to me. I feel like I am being unfairly judged here.

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#209

Post by jacquesm »

StavrosK wrote: post #162
jacquesm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in good company :) Great write up. Question: why does the one keycap on the 'behold' photo look like it is so much less high? (on the other photo they seem identical)

Oh shit. I made another (full) keyboard the other day and I was missing four keycaps, and looking at the photo now I realized where I put them! One of the keycaps is from a different row, so it has a different height on one side, but on the other side they're the same height.

Heh! You're welcome ;)

Re: Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard

#210

Post by jacquesm »

JshWright wrote: post #197
jacquesm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice dictation and transcription?

There are a few challenges I can think of there. The most obvious is that there are things that are accurate and relevant, but I might not want to point out to a patient in the moment (a combative drunk patient might take offense to my documenting the presence of multiple empty liquor bottles, for instance). Obviously this information is part of the patient's medical record, and available to them in the future for re…

Ah good points, totally did not think about the environment where you are taking notes. But then again, you could do that quite subtly:

"Those are some nice empty whiskey bottles there, wow, let's see..."

maybe you could use time as an input factor as well wait for a while counts as a linefeed wait for a longer while counts as a 'tab back'

that way with some practice you could indent without doing it explicitly

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