Posts about geek

Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts

I have been typing in the Dvorak keyboard layout for 22 years (since 2003). This is since before Colemak was invented, and significantly longer than I had ever been typing in QWERTY (15 to 18 years, depending how you define "typing"). Now that Colemak is a widely available, built-in alternative — it's in macOS since 2011, and Windows since 2024 — I feel that I would advocate for it over Dvorak to anyone who is considering abandoning QWERTY. I may even decide to switch to Colemak myself.

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MS-Windows focus-follows-mouse Registry hacks

I like the "focus follows mouse" window-focussing model from X11, because

  • I don't have to click on the window, just move the mouse and the window it's over is focussed
  • I can focus a window without bringing it to the front, which is sometimes handy. If I want it in front, I can click it.

However MS-Windows follows the old-fashioned, Macintosh/Smalltalk style of having users click on a window to focus it for the keyboard. How do you make MS-Windows behave more like X11?

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Pretty-printing XML with Emacs' NXML-mode

Did you ever get a stream of XML out of a log file, or in a data stream, and it's all mashed together without line-breaks so that it just appears as gobble-de-gook? If there's a data error (not an XML parsing error) then you have to read it so that you can find where the error is, but you don't have XML-spy and NetBeans is overkill or takes forever to fire up...

Emacs to the rescue! Benjamin Ferrari wrote this increadibly useful (and simple) elisp function to pretty-print a block of XML code:

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Microsoft Vista keyboard?

I spotted a "Vista compatable" keyboard in K-Mart the other day, which set me thinking... what would a Vista keyboard actually do that a "non-Vista" keyboard can't?

Then I Googled for "Microsoft Keyboard Vista" and found this ad from Microsoft (Google Cache).

What the? "Designed to make it easier than ever to control PC media from your desk, your lap–or even from the comfort of your couch". So… if I use this keyboard's Play button to try and play media that Vista's DRM system thinks I shouldn't be playing, does it administer an electric shock? What if I have the keyboard in my lap :-D  Ouch! No so comfortable now…

Thanks, Microsoft, but … ahem, no thanks!

Mystical jargon

This post was originally published at sinewalker.wordpress.com on 4 April 2006.

I'm sure this observation has been made elsewhere, but I can't find reference to it online.


Have you ever noticed the prolific use of mystical/fantastical words in computer jargon? I'm sure there is a significance, or at least a tongue-in-cheek pointing to the wizardly ways of early and contemporary computer experts. It is funny I suppose, and when you look at how wide-spread it is, it may be revealing of the hacker psych.


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Dvorak keyboards

This post was originally published at sinewalker.blogspot.com.au on 27 March 2006.

I prefer Dvorak keyboards to QWERTY, which confounds my work colleagues no end :-)


I've been typing on Dvorak for about 3 years now [ed: That is, since 2003]. The main reason I use the Dvorak keyboard layout is because, after 15 years of six-finger typing on QWERTY, I decided to learn to touch-type, and Dvorak is very easy to learn (I learnt it in 2 weeks, back to my old typing speed after a month).


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