Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

“… turn and face the strain”

After many years of accumulating computer usage habits, configuration files, scripts, shortcuts, and key combinations, I have reached a point where I’d much rather wipe the slate clean than to go about fixing bits and pieces here and there. This does not sound like the thing to do, but I really would prefer to rethink how I handle computers rather than put time into fixing things. Maybe it’s time for me to work on madduck 2.0.

I have a lot of computer-usage-related headaches these days. For instance:

my zsh configuration has grown beyond me. I have used the same configuration for 7+ years (the CVS history only dates back until 1999, but I did not use CVS from the start) across a total of 113 machines, each with their quirks and problems, and I think it’s time to officially state that I’ve lost control.
my mutt configuration is patchy and many parts of it are ugly hacks that have worked in the past, but only because they are built on assumptions about the way I handle mail which may not hold much longer, because…
my mail processing is completely annoying:
```
egrep -v '^[#[:space:]]*$' ~/.etc/procmail/rc.* | wc -l | tail -1
8815 total
```
Since those 8’815 lines in the end still don’t do exactly what I want, I really have to rethink the way I do mail. Does anyone know of a way/system/approach to assign tags to email messages using statistic means (like Bayesian filters, or crm114) and how to get mutt to play along?
as an almost-first-day user of vim, and one of those “I use vim for everything types”, my configuration file collection is massive. I have all these macros and mechanisms in place, which vim can now handle in a much smarter way, but I just have not found the time to migrate, nor would I really know how to start. And the vim documentation, despite all its links and cross references, is hardly very usable for it always assumes you read it cover to cover.
I have the feeling that the way I use X (Fluxbox) is suboptimal, I find myself juggling windows too much. I’ve tried ion3, but could not get it to do the things I want. I guess this is mostly related to things I should be automating, and more consistent use of the 10 workspaces I configured.

Things have to change, and I might have to face the strain. But why am I bringing this up now? Well, some time ago I tried once again to make the switch to Dvorak and my Kinesis keyboard, but I (once again) gave up after only a day. I realise that it’ll take me several weeks to undo almost 20 years of QWERTY typing, but apart from a very slow typing rate (which is normal at the start), I found anything not related to authoring longer texts to be everything but ergonomic on this keyboard, and much of that is related to the configuration I have in place, and that it is geared towards a plain, flat QWERTY keyboard. It’s mainly the position of the two Ctrl and Alt keys, which I use extensively, and which have four different meanings (from left to right): Ctrl, Meta, ModeSwitch, Mod3 (I use Mod3 to quick-start applications. E.g. Mod3-t gives me a terminal, Mod3-f starts Firefox.). In addition, my Caps-Lock key has served me well as Mod5 for window manipulation ever since I switched to ion3 post-Debconf5.

It turns out that I need to use two hands or some non-ergonomic configuration of my digits for almost every operation: reading mail, even if only deleting all mail in a folder and moving on; writing mail; editing with vim; interacting with the shell; window manipulation. For instance:

Alt-tab requires me to lift my left hand completely above the keyboard, stretch both fingers, then make sure it finds the home row again.
Mod5-c, which I use to close windows, now requires both hands as the ‘c’ is on the right half with the Dvorak layout.
When in mutt, trying to just delete all messages in a folder and moving on can sometimes be a major pain (see the Dvorak layout on Wikipedia if you want to play along): hit ‘D’, which sometimes just ends up being ‘f’, which means forward. If unlucky in this way, I’ll find myself within vim, having to ‘ZZqn’, which isn’t that bad, but I first had to discover ‘ZZ’ to replace the awful ‘:wq’ (or ‘ZQ’ for ‘:q!’). Switching folders (‘c=foldername’) isn’t nice either, and sending an unsigned email that I don’t want stored (‘pff\^W\^W’ or ‘pff\’) gives me cramps on Dvorak.

All this in addition to the fact that I am still in the beginning stages of writing my thesis (I have started), makes me conclude that it will be better to further postpone learning Dvorak and adopting to the new keyboard until the thesis is well on its way (and the writing is flowing), because then it’ll be much easier for me to rework my configuration one-by-one with the new keyboard in mind, and start learning Dvorak when I’m half-way there and know what I have to type.

NP: Leech / Soundtrack to an Individual Emotion Picture Mindmovie