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I'm running a similar stack, although I'm only using a Thinkpad T410 at the moment. Arch+Xmonad+urxvt+tmux+emacs+git and a lot of reading and tweaking gives me

by kaens 16y ago

I'm running a similar stack, although I'm only using a Thinkpad T410 at the moment. Arch+Xmonad+urxvt+tmux+emacs+git and a lot of reading and tweaking gives me a machine that is fine-grained for how I like to work, and allows me to be so much more productive than I've been able to accomplish with other stacks, it's ridiculous. I use OSX at work, and it's not too bad, but I'm still slower. I'm sure there's an argument to be made about how I'm just not using OSX to it's fullest, but frankly knowing that I can't actually change the way anything works if it disagrees with me makes me assume that I'm not going to be capable of maxxing out my productivity on that OS. I haven't run into RSI yet, but I've been thinking about picking up a Kinesis advantage when I start fleshing out my home-coding space. It looks wonderful. I too almost never touch the mouse. It's wonderful.

qixxiq 16y ago
I'm running my setup on a Thinkpad T510 :), its a great laptop. Since I move around quite a lot, and generally for months at a time - I really needed a laptop. This one has dual-screen capability, and to be honest you really don't need much power to run XMonad w/ FireFox (and the amount of power Vim and XTerm require are negligible). If you're using Qwerty now my best recommendation is to switch to Dvorak on the Advantage. Since its a completely different keyboard style, it doesn't mess with my muscle memory at all. I can jump to a plain qwerty keyboard at any point and still have 80% of my old typing speed, while I get to use Dvorak on the Advantage keyboard.
- kaens 16y ago
  The thing I'm going to be most concerned with when switching to the Kinesis, regardless of whether or not I also switch to Dvorak on it, is making sure that I'm actually using my fingers "correctly". Right now, I type mostly correct in QWERTY, but I know that I have some bad habits (using almost only left shift/alt/ctrl for one), and I haven't found myself very capable of breaking them. Do you have any advice for making sure that I'm doing the "right" things with my hands, either on the Kinesis, or on normal keyboards?
  - qixxiq 16y ago
    Not really :/, part of the reason I switched was because I was having the same problem. Just when you switch, "switch properly". Find a set of exercises for moving over and do them properly. I never finished every one because it got a bit excessive after a while, but my typing style would've been a lot worse without them. Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it.
    - kaens 16y ago
      Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it. That's a really good idea! I might bind some bad-habit key combos to system beep because I hate the system beep.

by kaens 16y ago

qixxiq 16y ago

I'm running my setup on a Thinkpad T510 :), its a great laptop. Since I move around quite a lot, and generally for months at a time - I really needed a laptop. This one has dual-screen capability, and to be honest you really don't need much power to run XMonad w/ FireFox (and the amount of power Vim and XTerm require are negligible). If you're using Qwerty now my best recommendation is to switch to Dvorak on the Advantage. Since its a completely different keyboard style, it doesn't mess with my muscle memory at all. I can jump to a plain qwerty keyboard at any point and still have 80% of my old typing speed, while I get to use Dvorak on the Advantage keyboard.

kaens 16y ago
The thing I'm going to be most concerned with when switching to the Kinesis, regardless of whether or not I also switch to Dvorak on it, is making sure that I'm actually using my fingers "correctly". Right now, I type mostly correct in QWERTY, but I know that I have some bad habits (using almost only left shift/alt/ctrl for one), and I haven't found myself very capable of breaking them. Do you have any advice for making sure that I'm doing the "right" things with my hands, either on the Kinesis, or on normal keyboards?
- qixxiq 16y ago
  Not really :/, part of the reason I switched was because I was having the same problem. Just when you switch, "switch properly". Find a set of exercises for moving over and do them properly. I never finished every one because it got a bit excessive after a while, but my typing style would've been a lot worse without them. Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it.
  - kaens 16y ago
    Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it. That's a really good idea! I might bind some bad-habit key combos to system beep because I hate the system beep.