I learned touch typing with the website monkeytype.¹

It's a nice website, but it's full of surveillance-capitalism crap, like Google's Firebase. Its developer is a twenty-something five years out of college. He started monkeytype in 2020 while still being in college, so I presume he doesn't know how to achieve his idea in a different way and maybe isn't even aware of the problems that using Google's technology entails.

Users can already be uniquely identified by their typing patterns.²

I am thus sceptic of storing extremely detailed information about my keystroke dynamics (like which letters I misspell the most, which of my fingers are strong and which are weak, how many milliseconds lie between certain bi-grams such as 'th', 'ng', 'he', 'lo', et cetera) in a database on Google's infrastructure.

Knowing Google, they might someday use that information to track me. So I don't want to give it to them in the first place.³ I don't think I'm overly paranoid here.

Has anyone already thought about this?

¹ https://monkeytype.com
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics
³ I use monkeytype only while being logged out and blocking all Firebase-related network traffic.

#moneytype #TouchTyping #MechanicalKeyboards

While waiting for the new keyboard to arrive, I am going to take an online typing test each day to see how I do on the current keyboard (Apple extended). Definitely off from a few years ago. I seem to average about 72WPM and bracket at 68-78WPM. This is day one. How well do you type?

https://www.typingtest.com/

If someone knows of better typing tests, please share.

#typing #touchTyping

Making progress.

#touchtyping #typing

Agony Aunt: “Are keyboard touch typing skills ATTRACTIVE!?” ⌨️

Some human males delude themselves into believing certain actions are attractive. Today’s human male has decided his brilliance on a keyboard should be enough to impress even the most attractive dame.

Amy Adams? Sandra Hüller? Sandra Bullock? Other women called Sandra? All should be dropping before his most attractive typing might. Is this so? Let us explore the typing topic.

Touch Typing is the Secret to Great Romance?

Agony aunt,

I am in agony. I’ve just spend the last 72 hours touch typing my way to the annual Touch Typing Championship 2026. It was the most competitive year I’ve ever taken part in, but I fended off a young upstarter whom tried to STEAL my crown by thrashing him with a touch typing speed of 230 WPM (words per minute) compared to his PATHETIC 215 WPM. What a pathetic boy, he should leave competitions like this to MEN like me.

However, once the event ended and I was crowned the deserving champion I turned and looked around me, rightfully expecting very hot women to begin hurling themselves at me for a date and/or marriage.

But… nothing.

There was one chick there who glanced at me and I glared at her expectantly, but she just wandered off and got a hotdog from a hotdog stand. Try to comprehend that. SHE WANTED TO EAT A HOTDOG INSTEAD OF DATING A TOUCH TYPING CHAMPION. What is the world coming to? That is feminism. This is the wokeness and it’s ruining society.

I can’t possible be wrong. What could possibly be unattractive about someone being able to have this God-given skill that others can only dream of? It shows:

• Tenacity
• Intellectual genius
• Versatility
• Emotional intelligence
• Wit
• Charm
• An enjoyment of keyboards
• Dedication

How can women look me in the eye (me, admittedly not the best looking guy ever, but a touch typing genius) and think this isn’t worthy of their time?

On my Tinder dating profile I lead with it: DEREK, 33, TOUCH TYPING GENIUS

I then list out my many championship victories and link to an article that was written about me, in which I make confident (not arrogant, confident) claims about how superior I am to everyone else. And yet in the last three months I’ve swiped on over 10,000 women and only three have swiped back. One ended up being a guy pretending to be a woman, the other two were scammers thinking I’ve made a tonne of money from my victories. I haven’t. I’ve actually lost money because it’s £100 to enter the competitions. That and the keyboard investments and I’m down about £500 over the last decade due to all of this.

AND NO HOT WOMEN.

Please. Advice needed. Is it my keyboard?! It’s all black, do I need a more feminine one or something to show off my sensitive side?

Yours,

Derek

Hi there, Derek! To help you out, we went out onto the streets of Manchester city centre and randomly began demanding answers from women we encountered: “WHY WON’T YOU DATE, DEREK!?” We roared, “HE’S A TOUCH TYPING WORLD CHAMPION!”

It turns out (from the ones who didn’t run away, at least) they’re more interested in personality traits such as kindness, humour, compassion, intelligence, and an interest in the arts.

None of them were impressed or interested in the typing thing. One of them said it was “weird”*. Sorry about that! Maybe take up a new hobby.

*We have subsequently learned Derek had a stroke after reading that someone found the touch typing thing “weird”. Although he’s since recovered from that, he’s quit his day job and entered a deep, dark depression of marathon touch typing sessions. Derek… for GOD’S SAKE, man. This is not the answer. Take up golf, or something.

QuickQWERTY 1.2.2 is now available! This release comes with two changes.

First, it fixes a rather annoying bug that caused the 'Restart' link to send the learner all the way back to Unit 1. This has been fixed to restart the current lesson.

Source code management has moved to Codeberg. Links and documentation have been updated accordingly.

Try it out here: https://susam.net/quickqwerty.html

Source: https://codeberg.org/susam/quickqwerty

#opensource #technology #programming #html #javascript #qwerty #touchtyping

Clavirio just got a little better - and a little more addictive:

- Random Words mode
- Timed mode
- WPM sparkline

Homepage: https://www.clavir.io
GitHub: https://github.com/alexylon/clavirio
Crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/clavirio

#rust #rustlang #TypingTutor #TUI #freesoftware #OpenSource #Terminal #TouchTyping #ratatui

Added lessons and progress tracking for the Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts, all bundled with the installation.

https://www.clavir.io
https://crates.io/crates/clavirio
https://github.com/alexylon/clavirio

#rust #rustlang #cli #terminal #typing #opensource #touchtyping #Dvorak #Colemak #tui #ratatui

do u use #keybinds / #hotkeys / #shortcuts?

and do tell whats ur setup!

#keyboardshortcuts #vim #emacs #neovim #productivity #developers #linux #keyboardonly #touchtyping #design #art #powerusers