Zelaron Gaming Forum - Thoughts at four minutes to Midnight.

I start this post at 23:56, but it'll be sometime later that it'll be finished... I'm feeling very slow tonight.

I'm sat at my desk (a dark brown veneered thing I bought from Ikea specifically for this year at University - I'm living in town, and the desks the Landlord provides are just about big enough for a laptop which, alas, are smaller in width than my keyboard...), in the dark, wearing sunglasses because I have a fucking headache and I've got work to do. It sucks, but what has to be done, has to be done.

So, I'm sat working, and in true working fashion, I've got Facebook, Google Wave and a few other sites open in Chrome on one monitor, and my work taking up the other (the reason for the sunglasses - I wish I hadn't bought a 24" monitor with such bright... brightness). At the same time, I'm marvelling at my typing.

Now I don't usually sit and marvel at my own typing, but today I am. I turned the backlight on my keyboard off whilst I was watching Doctor Who, and I've yet to turn it back on. And therein lies the sole reason for my marvelment (is that a word?).

The vast majority of typing is Java (boo! hiss!!). Recently I've been doing C as well, but it's still mostly Java. The programmers amongst you will know that typing code is a kind of disjointed activity, particularly with an IDE that autocompletes things for you (long live Eclipse!). So imagine my glee when I come to writing a document for my second year project, and find that I have to write in full, English sentences. I haven't had the chance to let the words flow poetically from my finger tips for a long time! I sit, and I type, and I don't even think about it - the only thing I need to think about is what I'm going to write next, and my muscles do the rest without me consciously thinking about it.

The reason it's different tonight is because I'm in the dark, and when you're in the dark you can't see anything (particularly when you're wearing sunglasses). I find myself typing away (part of me thinking about work, the rest of my browsing Facebook and Waving at people) and suddenly stop and think, "My God, I can't see what I'm doing!".

I can touch type, boviously. Anyone who has used [insert favoured IM client here] for more than a year can touch type with some skill. The reason I say "some skill" is because more often than not you'll find people stabbing away with one finger on each hand - it's touch typing, definitely, but it's not very... elegant. I freely admit that that's how I used to type; forefinger from each hand tapping out a sentence in staccato at incredible speeds. I don't know when the change came, but tonight I find myself typing very differently.

If ever you're taught to touch type, or you try to learn through software, you're told to put your fingers on ASDF and JKL; (which, for ye who be uneducated, is the reason for the bumps on F and J - they're the keys your forefingers are supposed to rest on) and move only them up and down, or across for G and H. Each hand takes care of one half of the keyboard, with each finger assigned a row or two.

Tonight, I find myself typing not only with six or seven of the fingers (my thumbs stay out the way, as does the little finger on my right hand - I blame playing the Trumpet for the latter - whilst the little finger on my left hand only sees a look in for the SHIFT button, or CTRL should I need it), which I find quite remarkable in itself, but with each hand sticking to it's own half of the keyboard (more or less).

I just thought that, having not really said much recently (University doesn't give me much time to waste online), I'd pop in and share a midnight thought.

For those who have skipped to the end to see if I had anything point to make, here is your summary (you lazy git):

- In the beginning, I had to look at the keyboard
- After a year on MSN I could touch type with two fingers
- Somehow that has turned into six/seven fingers, each on it's own half of the keyboard

On the one hand (bu-dum...), I find it somewhat embarrassing that I've only just got round to something this elementary, but on the other I find it intriguing how it has naturally evolved over what's nearly fifteen years (five of which have been serious - I blame Zelaron for that) of using a computer.

Can I just say that any typing errors in this are because I'm tired to the point of retardation, and not because I'm a retard who can't type?

Edit:

Populate this thread with shit and I will castrate you. If you don't have balls, then I'll just have to use my imagination.