Why I Use The Dvorak Keyboard Layout And Love It

So everyone in the English-speaking world uses the qwerty keyboard. It's a huge seemingly universal standard. And it has been for ages. But one day, my friend Michael (aka Seze) showed me the Dvorak keyboard and explained why he uses it and loves it: It's comfortable, it makes a lot of sense, and it's just amazing. One does not simply go back to qwerty after having used and learned Dvorak.

What in the world is a Dvorak keyboard? It's this:

Compare that to your keyboard.

Notice how lots of stuff got moved around. Before you call this stupid or weird or whatever, consider the genius of its design.

Qwerty was literally designed to be awkward. It was designed in the days of typewriters such that the chance of two adjacent key hammers sticking would be as low as possible. It was by no means designed to be ergonomic or fit well with comfort and ease of typing. It's just so your typewriter doesn't jam.

But now, No one really ever uses typewriters. Everyone uses computers. So that problem is now irrelevant. But the keyboard layout has never changed. Because no one likes change, even if for the better and for comfort. It's just too inconvenient, I guess.

Dvorak was actually designed to not be awkward. It was designed for maximum comfort and speed and minimum finger movement distance. All the vowels are on home row. All the most commonly used consonants are on the rest of home row. Therefore, a huge amount of legitimate English words can be typed on home row alone, without ever moving off it. Then from there, all the other letters frequently used are close by. The design totally minimizes two-row jumps (look at qwerty, at how you have to type words like decade, because, but, deceased, etc. then look at Dvorak how those would be typed)

To me, It just makes sense. It's just so comfortable to type on. Every time I try to type on a qwerty computer keyboard, it just feels so awkward and wrong and horrible.

I use the Dvorak layout on all my devices that support it. Basically, everything that isn't an Apple device. (Mac supports it, but for some reason, iPad, iPod, iPhone do not.) My Netbook, my Chromebook, my Nexus 7.

Trust me, It is very worth it to learn this layout. And the best way to learn it is to just permanently switch to it and practice it. Force yourself to use it. Your brain will get used to it and once you're used to it, it's a dream to type on. Try it, and once you are used to it, you'll love it. (check out this website) You'll wonder WHY in the world does ANYONE still use qwerty?

Samsung Series 3 Chromebook

So. Chromebooks. I replaced my old trusty ASUS netbook with the new Samsung Chromebook.

At first, I thought the idea of the Chromebook was stupid. I mean.. Who would want a computer that can only run a browser and nothing else? Who would want it if its entire usefulness depends on being connected to WiFi? WELL I went out and bought one. Here are my thoughts on the Chromebook after having had it for a couple months:

1. It's AMAZINGLY affordable. $249 USD is a really nice price for a laptop.
2. It's VERY portable. Its form factor and even appearance is very comparable to MacBook Air.
3. It's FAST. Boots in seconds. Literally, after having powered it down and closed it, I open it and it automatically starts booting. I don't even have enough time to unravel and plug the charger in the wall before it's at the login screen. It wakes up from shutting the lid after like a half second. win.
4. The keyboard is very good. It has great support for input languages and layouts. I was VERY HAPPY and even a little surprised to see the Dvorak layout supported. (Why I am weird and use Dvorak among other things in another post.) 
5. The trackpad pretty much just reminds me of Mac except it pretty much only recognises up to two finger gestures. That's all I need really.
6. It really IS useful. Two words: Web Apps. And some of them have capability to work offline. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Google Drive + Docs/Sheets/Slides works without an internet connection after going into my Google Drive Settings and enabling that feature. So I can write documents, edit spreadsheets or presentations offline. At this point, for me, this thing is literally every bit as useful as my netbook. Which honestly isn't super useful outside the internet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has a file manager pre-installed and that it works nicely with NTFS external hard drives. I was able to watch videos and look at photos on the hard drive easily. And there is a torrent app (JSTorrent).
7. The battery life is good. I can use this when I'm out throughout the day without even worrying about running out of battery before I get back home.

So basically, for $249 this thing does everything I need it to do. (Especially since I used a cool little script Crouton to install Ubuntu. More on this later) And it basically just runs Google Chrome. I'm surprised at how much I can do with a browser. It's for most consumers basically a functional laptop. The only programs I miss from my netbook were Skype and TeamSpeak. Google+ Hangout has been working ok as an alternative, but not everyone has Google+... Cool thing is, a friend of mine sent me his used netbook, so I actually have one again. :)

So yeah, if you are looking for a cheap laptop and you're on the web a lot, look no further than a Chromebook. If you already have a Chromebook, I suggest checking out the following links if you have not already. (From the Chromebooks Community on Google+)

• [Official] Support Forum
• [Official] Support Centre
• [Official] Contact a Ninja
• [Official] Release Announcement Blog
• Current Channel Versions
• [Blog] Chrome Story
• [Blog] OMG! Chrome!
• [Resource] Find Alternative Apps

Hello, World!

Hey everybody what's up? 

I just figured I'd check out Blogger again to see what's going on and maybe get back into the blogging scene a little bit. So this will be a place to organise my random rants. Feel free to comment and discuss. Just know I won't put up with trolls.

Some random stuff about me:

• I'm 22, male, straight and happily taken. 6'1", ~200lb
• From Baltimore, now living near Houston.
• I don't smoke or drink. I have before but not anymore. It's not really as cool as the manufacturers force us to believe.
• I'm a big fan of languages, science, maths, and tech. Therefore, I'm a nerd. Or something. 
• I love Sci-Fi. James Cameron's AVATAR and Doctor Who. 
• Generally speaking, I'm on #TeamGoogle and/or #TeamAndroid. But I don't hate on Apple. Not seriously, anyway. 
• I'm always on Social Media checkin stuff out. Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Facebook. (Not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I'm kinda stuck using it.)
• I'm a Linux user and support Free and Open Source software. 
• Speaking of which, though I'm not particularly amazing, I like to write code. I know Java, XML (I like to play with Android sometimes), Python, Javascript, and a little of some others. They're all interesting.
• As for spoken languages, I'm only truly fluent in English, But my Na'vi (from AVATAR) is pretty good (seriously. I love teaching it to people. It's actually easy. Nerdy to the max, I know, but whatever) and in general, I can understand German. I'm familiar with some stuff in other languages too, like alphabets of Russian, Korean and Greek. I need to brush up on Japanese. And then actually learn it. I can also understand Spanish, but for some reason can't speak it very well these days. 
• I want to travel the world but I'm broke.
• Just because I think tech is kinda cool does not mean that I think nature is uncool; I totally think nature is beautiful and fascinating. I like green stuff. Going green whenever possible is cool.
• I totally appreciate wide varieties of art both visual and auditory though I cannot create super awesome stuff myself. Or at least I think so anyway. My girl begs to differ.
• I play guitar and a little bass. I have a history of hard rock and metal, but I like the soothing stuff too. Especially these days. I guess I'm either getting old, or mellowing out or both. meh.
• Modern stuff is cool, but I respect the classics.
• Not too keen on sports. I'm also terrible at every single one I've ever played. Might have something to do with it.
• I'm almost always calm and chill. I'm not much for violence. Or hate. I'm just not a violent or hateful guy. Equal Rights supporter. 
• I consistently wear jeans and T-shirts. Sometimes I go crazy and do cargo and Polo. I don't actually care what I look like or wear as much as other people do, or as I should, probably. Oh well.
• I've got TL;DR syndrome. 
• This post is getting kinda long

Okey so some of these things will get their own posts or series later on. Hopefully I'll find the time to post things here. I may come off as a bit ranty, but that's just natural for me. I'm not holding back. And yes this is how I actually talk in real life. Anyways, that's about enough ranting for today, I think you guys get the general idea here. Seeya around. Hopefully on Google+.