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Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

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Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#181

Post by 1-more »

zeta0134 wrote: post #160
fheisler wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I wonder if you could make a BodyChord or FaceChord setup using steno... Can you actually write code using a steno keyboard - as in, full access to all the usual symbols and modifiers - or would it just be for letters and basic punctuation?

Yes! Here is a really great talk on the state of doing so, with a fantastic realtime demo near the end. Mirabai live-codes using her Plover setup and narrates her thought process as she types out each command. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g

I saw her at a keyboard meetup in NYC. She blew my mind with her vim setup: chords representing commands meant that the keystrokes didn't exactly matter: you could have the chord represent an arbitrarily annoying set of keystrokes and have a correspondingly complicated vimrc to handle them. Very cool!!

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#182

Post by pstorm »

fheisler wrote: post #47

Author here! Pleasant surprise to find my project at the top of HN this morning with such positive feedback :) I'm happy to answer any questions or hear suggestions for future tweaks. Planning to make this into a customizable full-body game controller as well.

Have you considered adding an autocomplete? Maybe add in three most likely completions to your word and have three separate signals to select each respectively? Maybe that's cheating, but that could up your words per minute drastically!

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#184

Post by otikik »

fheisler wrote: post #47

Author here! Pleasant surprise to find my project at the top of HN this morning with such positive feedback :) I'm happy to answer any questions or hear suggestions for future tweaks. Planning to make this into a customizable full-body game controller as well.

Have you considered making a full body musical instrument?

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#185

Post by jxramos »

sethammons wrote: post #7

I was lamenting the use of "semaphore" but wikipedia supports them: > Semaphore (lit. 'apparatus for signalling'; from Ancient Greek σῆμα (sêma) 'mark, sign, token', and Greek -φόρος (-phóros) 'bearer, carrier')[1] is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore I was only familiar with: > [A semaphore] is a variable or abstract data type used…

same here with my initial first take on the name. I was doing a internet search for something recently and realized this spirit of taking an existing word and deliberately overloading it in a different context rather than coining a new term with a distinct phonemes is slowly mucking up our language to disambiguate by keywords alone. It's hard work to invent new words and I get it can slow the adoption or recognition of something if the name hasn't been settled yet and it's tempting to just skip over that whole process by leapfrogging out of the mental wrestling by coopting an existing word and append a new definition to it.

Earlier in life I used to lament the lack of uniqueness to words and the existence of synonyms but later began appreciate the overlap because having the ability to talk about something with a variety of phonemes seemed to help create some conceptual distance in a conversation that was otherwise obscured by close sounding words.

But this almost lazy reuse of existing words, I'm still not sure how I feel about it now that I'm aware of its costs.

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#187

Post by [deleted] »

samanator wrote: post #60
HopenHeyHi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions Semaphore signaling was invented by Claude Chappe and then proceeds to make fun of him for being French which I don't find acceptable.

I rewatched that part of the video and don't see where he made fun of him. Are you referring to when he mentions that Claude Chappe was "big-brained" and zooms in on his head? If so, that sounds like a compliment to me.

[deleted]

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#188

Post by SirLJ »

fheisler wrote: post #47

Author here! Pleasant surprise to find my project at the top of HN this morning with such positive feedback :) I'm happy to answer any questions or hear suggestions for future tweaks. Planning to make this into a customizable full-body game controller as well.

This is absolutely great! Thank you Sir!

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#189

Post by pjot »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #132
perilunar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing about programming semaphores but not visual semaphores seems quite bizarre to me. A bit like thinking flag or register or stack were only computer terms.

I don't know if they're on HN yet, but there's a generation for which "writing to disk" has nothing to do with disks of anything.

The “save” button is generally still a floppy disk as well!

Re: Semaphore: A Full-Body Keyboard

#190

Post by drusepth »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #132
perilunar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing about programming semaphores but not visual semaphores seems quite bizarre to me. A bit like thinking flag or register or stack were only computer terms.

I don't know if they're on HN yet, but there's a generation for which "writing to disk" has nothing to do with disks of anything.

I use a standard disk icon to represent "saving" in a popular web app I run. I very often see users referring to it with "click the square thing to save".
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