I'm back from a hiatus

[Harvey]

So I was away for a while because I was moving across the country. It took longer than I expected to move everything to my room, so I only got the steno machine back the day before yesterday. I was itching the whole time to get back to practice, and finally I'm back into it.

Not surprisingly, I haven't made any real progress since last time I posted here, but I am surprised to find that I jumped back into writing like nothing ever happened. I stopped for about a month, so I'm happy that I'm not out of practice at all.

Last I checked, my top speed is about 65 wpm, so I think that's actually better than my top speed before the move, but I don't know why that is. I'm going to start practicing to dictations soon, but so far I've just been writing normally to my friends, email, all that.

I'm glad to see that the Stenosaurus is coming along, and I'm happy to see that Plover is going to get an update soon thanks to a shift in management. That's really cool to hear.

A question for Mirabai: how was writing on the Stenosaurus? Is it comparable to writing on a student machine or a real steno machine? I'm asking because as much as I love writing on my current steno machine, it's bulky and it takes up a lot of space. I don't have a good place for it near my computer desk. I want to replace it if I can, except for maybe really serious jobs in the future.

I'll post here every so often so update about my progress.

[Mirabai Knight]

I haven't gotten to write on a production model Stenosaurus; Josh is still finalizing the hardware. I only got to write on the prototype from a few years ago, but that was before the Matias keys had been commissioned, and it had a rather deep, squishy feel. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Plover" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ploversteno...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Mirabai Knight, CCP, RDR
StenoKnight CART Services
917 576 4989
m...@stenoknight.com
http://stenoknight.com

[Harvey]

I've been getting back into steno practice slowly after moving across the country. Work cuts into steno practice quite a lot, but I've been using my steno machine a lot lately.

I just a couple of things to say before I head off to bed. The first is that I've improved quite a lot recently. My top speed has been around 83 wpm on typeracer, which is 20 more than it was before. I'm very pleased with that. My practice is just to have fun talking with friends and getting on typeracer, but I wanna get back into dictations soon. Anyway, my normal speed is still around 40 to 60 wpm, but I do notice a difference and it's better than it used to be.

Second, I'm having a lot of trouble with words like vicious. Lifting the ring finger is really hard to do, and it really slows me down. It feels like I have to really strain my hand to do it.

Well, it writing with this machine seems to get more fun the more I practice with it. I love being able to write this fast on it. It seems to take less physical effort than qwerty, and I love that. It's just fun, and really, other than what I said about writing certain words, the most frustrating thing it that I can't write faster. I just have to keep writing until I can.

[Mirabai Knight]

Huh. I've never had a problem with words like vicious. Would it work
better if you just straightened your ring finger out, so it was sort
of parallel along the keys and not pressing them, versus trying to
lift it really high up and curled?

[Rick B]

I came across this video a while back. After I saw it, I began to stroke chords without curling all of my fingers, especially the pinkie fingers. It's been a great help seeing how others, especially professionals, write. (Look at the level of effort they're exerting, especially the more seasoned writer on the right, perhaps because 180 wpm isn't all that fast for them!)  

I guess as long as you hitting the correct keys, it doesn't matter all that much.  I don't want to pick up bad habits if i can avoid it, so I'm glad Mirabai chimed in with the suggestion. 

https://youtu.be/1u_AHFyr79c

[Harvey]

It's insane how slowly it looks like the pro is going. I'm also kind of blown away that someone is able to write at 180 wpm after only 8 months of practice, but I guess he's also practicing full-time while I'm just doing it whenever I can. I've had this steno machine for about 7 months and I can't go anywhere near that speed. Maybe I should step it up. I do feel that I have a knack for it, but I just can't find the time to practice that much, so I feel my progress is stifled.

I know Glen from the last thread I made here gave me a lot of good resources for practice, so I'll look into that. I don't know if I'm doing something different since I'm not going to school other than simply not studying and practicing full-time, but I want to give this more of my attention seeing that kind of progress in someone, even in it's not that accurate. I could really use 180 wpm for my job; that would be a dream.