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Keyed in
October 06th, 2020
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I just received my Keyboardio Atreus in the mail today, and I am typing out
this phlog post on it right now.
It's amazing to me how much I have improved since even just an hour ago when I
first started using it, though by the number of times I still fumble to hit
backspace or shift with my left thumb leads me to think about how much further
I have to go. (And how much I wish to type in all lowercase right now to avoid
shift misses -- I must learn somehow!)
As much as I continuously hit z instead of shift like on my other keyboards, I
am appreciative of how this new thumb cluster has made me mindful of my typing.
I am used to my Preonic v3 and my split ortho Iris with a relatively normal key
positioning for most of the important keys (things like + and brackets and
parens are on a special layer, but most other things are similar to someone
used to the layout of a normal keyboard.)
This Atreus is different, though, especially since ' and " are now in a very
different place (as they're down on the thumb cluster now) as well as - and _.
I'm also used to having a numeric row and their shift varients at the top of
the keyboard, so it will take a little getting used to to use the numberpad
layer for numbers and the left hand layer for symbols.
Unlike with my other keyboards, though, I want to try to leave the default
layout for a while to use this time for focus and to try to rewire my brain to
something new. I remember when my mappings with my other keyboards really
'clicked' and the feeling that came with that effortless creation -- seeing
symbols appear on screen without having to think about what my fingers were
doing was powerful. That is a feeling I'd like to try to recreate with this
keyboard.
It will be interesting to see how getting used to this keyboard will change my
other keymaps. Will this mean that I won't be able to type on a normal laptop
keyboard anymore? Perhaps, but the feeling of these keyboards is so amazing
that I'm not sure I'd ever want to go back.
