One-Handed Workarounds -- The Programmers Guide to Typing With a Broken Thumb

Perfect timing of this article! I recently broke my right index finger in a sword fight, so for the moment I am forced to type solely with my left hand. One thing that has helped a lot is that I have been using AwesomeWM and Vimperator for quite some time. That means I hardly ever have to use the mouse. Switching from keyboard to mouse and back again is a lot more tiresome with one hand than with two!

Maybe you should use a one hand Dvorak keyboard? Dvorak uses the same keyboard, but moves all of the letters around. So you could just take your keys off, put them in Dvorak order then use a Dvorak keyboard layout.

> I recently broke my right index finger in a sword fight...

SCA? Budo taijutsu? Kendo? Jedi? Olympic Fencing?

A fellow practitioner is curious.

Bob, I think he's about to confess that he went LARPing.

EDIT: Or that he is a viking reenactor.

Don't know about anyone else, but when I read "One-handed Workarounds" I had to snicker. In a not very nice at all manner. If you know what I mean, and I think that you do.

Quoting:SCA? Budo taijutsu? Kendo? Jedi? Olympic Fencing?

Western Martial Arts. We were having a full-contact sparring session with blunt steel longswords. I was wearing a steel helmet, gambeson and chainmail hauberk but I was only wearing training gloves, not steel gauntlets. My opponent didn't notice since he was wearing a full 14th century armour with pigface helmet. They have very low visibility. Anyway, I badly fumbled trying to counter his attack and he accidentally hit me full on my fingers. It wasn't the first time either. You wouldn't believe how he dented my helm! Oh well, that's what you get for taking on the trainer himself with only a few months of experience :-)

Quoting:A fellow practitioner is curious.

What do you practice?

Quoting:EDIT: Or that he is a viking reenactor.

Close. We're doing 1250-ish Knights Hospitaller.

Sander: Phew, you must be glad if you're done with the 13th century and move on to the 17th so you can use a foil instead!

Just like I did to Juliette, I'd recommend dvorak-l.

It's perfect for 'people who lost an arm in the war'!

Quoting:Sander: Phew, you must be glad if you're done with the 13th century and move on to the 17th so you can use a foil instead!

Are you kidding? I went 13th century so I could use a real sword instead of a toothpick! :-D

phsolide, me too.

"Western Martial Arts", neat. I guess you've already seen "Reclaiming The Sword".

I've done SCA, which is akin to what you were doing but without the steel (blunted or not), using rattan for the contact weapons and steel/leather/mail armor.

Someone recently pointed me to "Deadliest Warrior", where they talked about how effective the "shield punch" turns out to be. Clearly the SCA had had experience with that, because one of the first rules of combat told to everyone is that the shield punch is FORBIDDEN!

I've also done Olympic fencing and kendo, and even foil/epee in the context of the SCA for "late period" combat.

Which reminds me, I got DVD-RAM to work today. Something about "hard sectors"...

Quoting:I guess you've already seen "Reclaiming The Sword".

Not yet, actually. Someone from our training group was going to loan me his copy so I'm going to see it soon.

Quoting:Clearly the SCA had had experience with that, because one of the first rules of combat told to everyone is that the shield punch is FORBIDDEN!

Hehe. I know SCA. It's great. Different from WMA though, but pretty cool. My biggest reservation about SCA are all the people who build fantastic outfits and armours, only to ruin them with bar grills and blue foam padding. I know why they are required but I cringe everytime when I see a beautiful hand-raised bascined with a bar grill on it.

As for shield punches, at our group it's allowed. Depending on armour pretty much everything is allowed except thusts to the face and certain chokes during wrestling. Of couse, we don't hit quite as hard as SCA folk.

> I cringe everytime when I see a beautiful hand-raised bascined with a bar grill on it.

Historic accuracy gives way to physical necessity. At the same time, historic accuracy and scholarship are highly regarded.

> Of couse, we don't hit quite as hard as SCA folk.

"Calibration is high in Crown Tournament."

I broke my thumb once while skiing. It had almost zero effect on my typing; I just used the other thumb for hitting the spacebar. This was on both Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards.

I've also had injured fingers before. Again, no big deal; I just automatically use the remaining fingers. There was very little loss in speed.

One-handed operation would be quite a bit more difficult, however, than just losing the use of a single finger or thumb. For that, I recommend moving to the appropriate one-handed Dvorak configuration (there are both right-hand and left-hand versions). It probably helps though if you're already used to typing in standard Dvorak, because then you're more able to easily pick up a third keyboard layout, just like it's easier to learn a 3rd language than a 2nd one.

So don't wait, and switch your home computer to Dvorak today before you injure any digits. Even if you never injure any, your hands will thank you for the reduced RSI.

Lopped off the end of my left index finger last year, took me a day or so to train myself not to try and type with that finger. Negative feedback being a wonderful training tool OWWW!!!!. Took me a few weeks to train that finger back into my typing though. Still have to be careful, touch typing with that hand, it has become a little more challenging as while I do have the whole finger back, I do not have all the nerve endings any longer.

Quoting:Lopped off the end of my left index finger last year.

Ouch. What happened?