My site has been out-of-date for too long. I will soon be replacing the home page with this blog, and try to organize the pages with some custom menu system.

For now, this is a test post.

2x2x2 with RSS icon stickers, rendered in POV-Ray

Dvorak

Why? I might as well learn to touchtype, and Dvorak is a sort of unofficial standard among cubers.

Here’s what got me to switch:

• A wiki link in an
  arbitrary post
  led me to Macky’s familiar site.
• I decided to peruse his Dvorak page.
• He linked to the Dvorak Zine. I was still
  unsure, so I decided to read it. If it didn’t convince me, I would just forget about switching.
• It was enough. :-)
• March 11, 2009, 20:35:33PM, #rubik on irc.ircstorm.net:

  “lgarron: shellie: This is the first sentence I’ve written in Dvorak. :-)”

  Forgot to ;tell, but who cares? Further lines from my first Dvorak conversation (selected, related lines from others in parentheses):

   20:36:48 <%lgarron> This is going to be messy for a while. :-/
  (20:36:29 <+Ethan_Rosen> lgarron, keep going)
  (20:36:34 <+Ethan_Rosen> never look back)
   20:37:24 <%lgarron> Ethan_Rosen: Tryingv
  (20:37:32 <+Dene> lgarron: YAY!)
  (20:37:38 <+Dene> JOIN US!)
  (20:37:49 <+Dene> Oh man all us dvorakers are such a good influence)
   20:38:55 <%lgarron> Hmm, keyboard shortcuts are going to be annoying.
   20:40:33 <%lgarron> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   20:41:04 <%lgarron> "The" is fun. :-)
  (20:41:30 < qq> it's like you make a mistake every time you type a word)
   20:42:26 <%lgarron> qq: I'm doing that right now. :-P

I haven’t looked back. I use “Dvorak – Qwerty ⌘”, which preserves he arrangement of shortcut keys like copy/paste.
I used Keyboard Viewer for a while, but since I’d memoed the Dvorak layout, I eventually dropped it
(I began this page as my first blind touch-typing practice). For encouragement, I also got two friends to switch.

I almost got sick of typing too slow, but to prevent myself from ever reverting (even temporarily), I decided to switch my keys around physically (see picture).
I can now cheat by looking at the keyboard, but at least I can get used to it before I gain actual speed.
I’m also trying Caps Lock for Delete,
especially because of frequent learning errors.

Most credit definitely goes to the Dvorak Zine for simple, entertaining inspiration.

Trivia:

• I did not switch because of this thread, nor had I seen the then-current xkcd comic yet.

I finally uploaded most of my songs into a songs database.

I will be attending Stanford University in the fall of 2008.

Thanks to UC Davis, UCLA, and UC Berkeley for also admitting me.

Small note: While the content may still be useful, this site is woefully out of date (hey, I can average under my listed OH PB!). I’m hoping to improve it this summer. I’ve still been cubing, though I do most of it sneakretly by posting videos, contributing to the speedsolving.com forum, etc.

It seems the time has come for Frank Morris Facts.

You know you’ve been cubing too long when…

I’m going to SUMaC.

Not sure how that will influence this website…

Added a counter to my site (again, got the idea from Macky’s page). Counting starts today (June 11, 2007).

Since I live in America, I suppose I should be patriotic… Well, I’ll use this opportunity to show off my cool Cube Flag! (Huge – 6000×4500)

Here’s an animation.
This is based on (actually, taken from) my animated US Open logo. Made with POV-Ray, of course. (Source code will be up in a few years. :-)