A coworker introduced me to this layout. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Okay, okay, allow me to elaborate.

What if I told you that you can learn to touch type Dvorak and still use Qwerty on the side? Well, I was sold!

My coworker, let's call him Mr. O, explained that among other factors, he wanted to learn to touch type and used the switch to Dvorak as a vehicle to achieve his goal. By adjusting the position of his hands on the keyboard, Mr. O was able to help his brain differentiate between Qwerty and Dvorak. Standard home row finger placements meant typing with Dvorak, while Qwerty would still be his own self-taught way of typing.

I thought that was genius. I had read everywhere that switching layouts was always complicated if you wanted to keep your old layout around. I completely identified with that feeling of never learning to touch type properly. My Qwerty mental model was already full of bad practices from years of making it up as I went, so I thought it would simply not be viable.

During the first weeks, I used these two sites (

) to learn the new layout. I still used my regular keyboard at this point, and while I made decent progress, I thought forming a mental model of the layout would be easier if the keys were laid out like a grid. I knew of ortholinear keyboards (aka planks), but I never gave them enough credit until I found myself in this situation.

Now with a noble goal as an excuse, I handed my wallet to the keyboard goblin that inhabits the back of my brain and purchased the second cheapest option I found on Aliexpress—a show of my unparalleled financial restraint.

And what a difference! It all made so much sense. The keys were right where I expected, and learning them by their relative positions to the home row was so much easier! I felt like I could learn ANY new layout, a superpower!

Things were clicking into place, but I felt I wasn't as fast as I needed to be to use Dvorak with my plank for work. I still brought my new keyboard to work and used it for emails here and there, but I found myself jumping back to my laptop's keyboard (Qwerty) too often for my liking. Coding was the real struggle. Not only did I have to deal with a new layout for letters, but also a new layout for symbols, which absolutely killed my productivity.

I decided to put a leash on Dvorak and keep it at a safe distance from code until I leveled up my typing skills. You're probably thinking this is a bad decision, and I agree with you. I should have endured the suck for a couple of weeks, but I was weak, like our boy Isildur.

The next few months were a low point for Dvorak. I stopped bringing my plank to work and instead took my regular 60% keyboard and used Qwerty instead. Yikes.

It wasn't all lost, though. There was a small bead of hope in my heart for Dvorak. I was just hitting the snooze button harder than on a Monday morning after two weeks off.

Like Aragorn charging into battle followed by an army of green ghosts, something rekindled my passion, and I decided to finally give Dvorak another chance. The plank replaced my 60% keyboard at work once again, and I was determined to make the switch.

Something that really helped was another keyboard layout—a Qwerty one at that! I always enjoyed macOS' ABC - Extended layout. I switch between English, Spanish, and Catalan all day. I use all three for work and my personal life, and this is the first layout that allowed me to type in all three languages without having to switch between layouts. It has the same symbol placement as the English layout, something that's key for programming for me, and it allows me to type all the weird diacritic marks of the Romance languages. A match made in heaven! Using my plank configured with Dvorak on top of it was a delight. If only Windows had this layout available, I'd be free to use the ortholinear keyboard at home too...

So I searched for it, and sure enough, someone had replicated the macOS layout on a tool that Microsoft offers to create custom keyboard layouts for Windows. Not only that, but this person was kind enough to publish 

 so I just downloaded it and used it. It was almost perfect, I just had to swap two keys (because I use ISO keyboards, another rabbit hole) and fix an annoying issue I had when using CTRL combos on the terminal. Here's 

Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads

This is where I am today. From here, it all looks fantastic. I can use my plank at home and work with the same layout underneath. I feel like I can use Dvorak for work (even to program!), and I have renewed energy to keep improving my typing skills!

I'll make a note to write again about my experience in a few months to report on my progress.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading (and enduring my puns), and I hope this inspires you to think about that project sitting in the corner of your mind and give it another go. Do it, it's worth it! Even if it ends up failing, you should try it.

PS: The keyboard picture I used as the cover image is my fantastic plank. Please ignore the keycaps—they're a placeholder until I get something better. It's Dvorak under the hood :)

I use Dvorak BTW

Over the last few months I have had many interesting conversations around AI with people from completely different industries. Some of them are totally into it, others are understandably worried, while a few are against the use of AI in any context.

Let me clarify that I am mostly in favor of AI, in case you were wondering. The current climate around AI is far from perfect but also far from done. It has changed a lot in the past months and if we can expect one thing is that more changes are coming.

To be fair, I think all positions are understandable and have great points behind them. If I can talk to those that are against it, what I would say is "

AI is here and it is not going away anytime soon

". Whether we like it or not, there is no way to stop it. We cannot stop the internet and AI follows the same principle. 

People are going to use it no matter what and we have seen that already. Countries cannot block it. Services cannot ban it. Schools cannot forbid students from using it. However, attempts to restrict AI usage have often proven ineffective. I can only think of the famous quote from Jurassic Park "Life finds a way", us humans will find a way around all restrictions to use AI.

So it is doom and gloom then, right? Not necessarily, we can use logic, apply morals, and just be a reasonable human being and, for the most part, things will be okay. To use another famous quote "With great power comes great responsibility" and that is what we need to teach and spread.

We can only trust each other to use this new tool in the best way possible. There will always be bad actors but that is true with all and any tools we can get our hands on. 

Here is a simple example on what I believe AI interaction should be like:
When generating an email response with AI we should give it enough context, review the results, and update them as needed to make sure the response sounds like us before sending it to the customer.

Spending that extra time is a small thing but it makes a big difference. We still save a ton of time but we also ensure it sound like a human wrote. By doing that we are telling the customer that we respect their time.

We cannot (and should not) stop AI but we can (and should) respect each other. All the content we generate with AI is for another person to consume, so long as we are mindful of that, we will be fine.

Also, we have not addressed the perspectives of artists, programmers, and other professions in a similar position. It might be best to dedicate it a full article to that topic.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next one! 🚀

A 2024 Perspective on AI

Thanks for asking! I mostly didn't, this is a fork of 

. It had all I needed to get started: Next.js, Sanity (ofc), and TailwindCSS.

This is something I've always wanted to do but never allocated enough time to complete the project. Plus. my memory is rubbish so this will be a fun off-site backup.

Oh, I'm just a random nerd that currently does some programming and project management for a living. I play D&D with a group of friends, tinker with mechanical keyboards here and there, and lurk around Reddit, HackerNews, and GitHub. The usual.

What kind of content can I expect to see here?

Well, pretty much anything I mentioned above plus video games, maybe some music from time to time, and other geeky stuff. I watched the movie 

 recently and I might touch on that in an entry so let's say movies and TV are fair game too.

There's no schedule at the moment other than a handful of posts I have in mind. As soon as I find something interesting to write about and some time to do it! 

Thanks for making it so far, see you soon adventurer! ⚔️

A Long-expected Party

How did you build this website?

Why a blog?

Who are you anyway?

What kind of content can I expect to see here?

When? How often?

More Stories

I use Dvorak BTW

A 2024 Perspective on AI