Braille, Dvorak, (Qwerty) and Me

Sometimes, I just have an urge to take things apart. Usually, I want to take them apart to either figure out how they work, or make them work better. This go 'round, though, that's not so much the case. First, consider the names above. Both Dvorak (left) and Braille were real people who dealt with alphabets and lettering, and getting people to communicate; one could say that I have done the same. But Qwerty? Qwerty never existed, damnit! Why the hell should we be using it then? To that effect, my Qwerty keyboard was broken, and I had to fix it.

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Last Friday (I believe it was) I had many hours at my disposal and thought it would be a good time to work on my business plan. Then I thought, hey, if I'm going to be typing, but have no time pressure or even concept of what I'll be typing, I should take another go at Dvorak. But wait, I thought, idea! I decided to rearrange the keys on my keyboard so that they were in the Dvorak layout, since I already know the Qwerty setup and can't print the Dvorak setup to reference. Some of you might think this was genius, others are probably shaking their head. As I soon discovered, rearranging the keyboard keys would prove to be impossible.

One, each row of keys is slanted specifically for the optimum angle in association with the keyboard itself, i.e. they're not all flat and made the same. No, each row is a different mold. Two, not only is each row a different shape, but the F and J keys are an entirely other mold unto themselves--at least for my keyboard. Not only do they have that little bump that tells your pointer fingers they've found the home row, but on my Dell wireless keyboard (I know, it's not Logitech, I feel so trashy) the F and J keys have a different base, meaning that their vertical bottoms won't snap in to the horizontal spaces for most keys. Bummer.

So, I nixed that idea. Luckily at this point, I had not yet rearranged the keys, which I had removed in their entirety from the keyboard to individually clean (and to empty out the basin of food, dust, and cat hair that was once my keyboard). So now that I had all my keys removed, my board cleaned, and each key wiped off, what was I to do? I mean, I couldn't just let all that work go to waste. No, I thought, I have to paint them. Yes, paint the keys. That's easy, you think, I saw them do that in Hackers. But it is not so easy with me, especially since I have no spray paint, and don't like spending money [I don't have] to do impulse crafting. What did I have? Nail polish; bottles upon bottles of nail polish.

I used the underside of the space bar to test a few colours, and picked my choice: a transleucent metallic, glittery green called Lime Spritzer. With a pair of pliers to hold the base, I set about painting the sides of all my keys--well, at least that was my goal. I started with the Esc key and
by the time I reached the lower right Ctrl key, I realized that I would not have enough polish to also do the arrow keys, side function keys, and number pad. Hmm. Nonetheless, at the right angle my keyboard looks pretty snazzy, though it did reek like a Korean nail salon for a few days.

Now it is Monday, and I still want to do weird and useless things to my keyboard. I'll need to finish up the unpainted keys soon (which are all now safely snapped back into default position), though I'm still not sure what colour to use to compliment the green of most of the keys. So what does one do when one hits a wall? I personally find different things to do to that wall, as there are so many options with a blank canvas. So in my quest for Das Keyboard-ian, Dvorak madness, my plan is now to remove the lettering from all the keys, then use more nail polish to paint braille on the keys (in Dvorak layout) with a few choice symbols where needed. Okay, you can say it now: I'm crazy.

But I already know how much work it will take to evenly sand the keys and regloss them, as I did a row in a less than an hour. I also know my way around cosmetics, and have tested that the nail polish I want to use for the braille--a tiny bottle of long-ago thickened, glittery, grape-scented purple--will be easy to make raised dots with. And besides, not only will I be learning a faster, more efficient keyboard layout/typing system, but I will simultaneously be teaching myself braille as I search for that long lost letter. You say madness, but I say genius!

No, there is no reason for me to learn braille. I'm not going blind and I have no plans to do so, though I can't guarantee that it will never happen. No, there is no reason for me to learn Dvorak, except that it is efficient and ups my geek cred. And no, there is no reason for me to paint my keyboard, except that I want to. So :P. If my keyboard wasn't wireless, you'd better bet that I'd be adding some lighting to it as well! If ever I decide to settle down on a desk, perhaps we'll give it a go...