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Prediction Method Still Works; Dvorak Keyboard; Etc.

You may remember my July 2004 opinion piece titled Rooting for the Home Team?, which included—among other things—my method for picking Super-Bowl winners.

I am happy to report that this system has worked again. The Eagles were the underdogs, but the Patriots had them beat on both uniforms and mojo. Thus, my system correctly predicted the winner for a fifth straight year (read the column if that all didn’t make any sense).

Not only that, but people thought my joke article was real! Ah, what a good Super-Bowl this was!

In other news, I’m learning the Dvorak keyboard. Most people aren’t aware that the de-facto standard keyboard layout you’re likely using (called QWERTY for the order of its first row) was designed for one purpose: to reduce jamming in manual typewriters.

That’s all well and good if you are still using a manual typewriter, but for most of us—whether we know it or not—it is not ideal.

The Dvorak layout—named for its creator, Dr. August Dvorak—was developed for typing efficiency. I’ll let you get the details from the provided link, but it significantly reduces finger movement and usually increases typing speed (after a learning period, of course). I’ve been using it on-and-off for the last week, and while my Dvorak keyboarding is still slower than my long-practiced QWERTY keyboarding, I am quickly gaining proficiency.

Aside from all that, I’ve been pretty bogged down with normal day-to-day junk. When I’ve had free time, it has mostly gone to wedding planning stuff. After I get a couple of those nagging wedding and life things done (like getting updated addresses for invitations and an oil change), I’ll get back into my big outstanding project: the poetry reorganization!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.