* Some of the numbers for day 1 are too high because I was so tired I lost count a few times.

WordCampNYC – Nov 14-15

I’ll be speaking at WordCampNYC next month, which is exciting and scary. Not sure what my topic will be, but I think it will be in the Newbie track. The speaker list is full of WordPress rock star talent, so if you are in the area make sure to sign up and come out. The program has something for everyone.

In high school we are taught to type on the QWERTY keyboard layout.

QWERTY Keyboard Layout

QWERTY is what we grow up with and what we know. Every computer you buy comes with a keyboard configured this way. Did you know there are better layouts for typing? The most popular is Dvorak.

Dvorak Keyboard Layout

Quite a bit different isn’t it? What makes Dvorak better? The layout was designed for the following:

• Letters should be typed by alternating between hands.
• For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers.
• The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
• The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
• Digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
• Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.

List from the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard article on Wikipedia.

For the history and more details on Dvorak, take 15 minutes to read The Dvorak Zine, which is presented is a fun comic book style.

My first introduction to Dvorak came several years ago when I read Matt’s post about the Dvorak keyboard layout. I was very interested but didn’t want to devote the time it would take to learn typing all over again. I also worked tech support at a college where I might be on 20 different computers over the course of a day.

I’ve been to two Automattic company meetups recently and Matt talked about the benefits of making the switch. He handed out copies of the comic and decided to give it a try. Donncha and a few others from the company are diving in as well.

I bought MasterKey for $18 and started cranking through the lessons. It took 18 hours to get through all of them. At the end I was averaging about 35 words per minute. Here is a graph showing my progress. Can you tell where new keys were introduced?

Now that I know all of the keys, I’ve made the permanent switch on my computers so that I can put it to work in real situations. The biggest challenge isn’t learning the new layout, it’s getting your mind to forget the old one. I expect to be slowed down for a few weeks but think this is the best way to make fast progress.

One negative I can already see is that on QWERTY there were many keyboard shortcuts I could perform by only using the left hand, allowing the right hand to stay on the mouse. The Mac does have a keyboard layout that uses QWERTY for the Command key combinations and Dvorak for everything else. I can see how it would be useful but think it may cause unnecessary confusion.

As the weeks pass I’ll keep posting progress updates to Twitter.

If you are serious about making a switch make sure to check out the Colemak layout as well. It was designed with many of the same principles as Dvorak. The site has a great tool to compare all three layouts so you can determine what would be best for you.

Note: This entire post was typed using the Dvorak keyboard layout after only one week of training.

I posted a tweet soon after: “Shit, my MOXI died. I guess I’ll be making a trip to Charter tomorrow for a new DVR. Glad there is nothing good on TV tonight.”

A few minutes later I received a reply from @Umatter2ChtrG. At first I wasn’t sure if it was real or a spammer. Turns out it was real. George informed me that they still have the MOXI DVR, but they don’t carry them in the local offices. I would need a technician to come out and replace the device. This morning we scheduled a tech to stop by on Wednesday morning. Not 30 minutes later I received a call from the local office asking if a tech could stop by tonight instead. Hell yeah!

Now I have another MOXI and I don’t have to deal with the crappy Operating System of their newer DVRs. Chalk me up as a happy customer. If I hadn’t tweeted and Charter hadn’t been listening I’d just be another customer. Thanks Charter!

The ages in the new league ranged from young to old. We actually had one guy turn 80! It has been a fun crowd. In the first half of the season we finished in 4th or 5th place. During the second half we were near the top every week. We played the first place team last week and came from behind to win second half. Tonight we played the first half winners and ended up a little short. Bill shot a lights out 42 and beat his guy pretty good. I had a rough start with a 9 on the 2nd hole, but clawed my way back for a 45. It was disappointing to come up short, but it’s the best we’ve ever finished in a golf league.

Thursday we’re having fun day. Each player is only allowed to carry two clubs which should be fun. I’ve always wanted to try limiting the sticks in the bag.

I’ve moved from a self-hosted WordPress.org install to WordPress.com. I removed all the spammy ad links, ditched all of the plugins, and used CSS customizations with the Moo-Point skin for Sandbox as the design. I wanted to show what you can do with CSS. I’m showing different widgets for different areas of the site, made my own footer (which isn’t working in all browsers yet), and have more tweaks planned. It’s a work in progress.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups quick oats
• 1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk
• 4 scoops protein powder (I used chocolate)
• 1/4 cup flax seeds
• 1 cup sugar free maple syrup
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup natural applesauce (unsweetened)

Directions

1. Beat the egg whites in a bowl
2. Mix the egg whites with the orange juice, applesause, syrup, and vanilla
3. In another bowl mix the oats, dry milk, protein powder, and flax seeds
4. Add the liquid mix to the dry mix and stir until everything is completely worked together. It will turn out similar to cookie dough.
5. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
6. Spray a 9×13 baking dish with non-stick spray
7. Spread batter into the dish
8. Bake for 25-30 minutes
9. Allow to completely cool and then cut into bars
10. Store some of the bars in an airtight container and some in the freezer

Nutrition

I did some quick calculations for the ingredients I used and came up with a total of:

• 2240 calories
• 326g of carbohydrates
• 176g of protein
• 39g of fat
• 45g of fiber

I cut my pan into 12 bars which gives the following per bar:

• 187 calories
• 27g of carbohydrates
• 15g of protein
• 3g of fat
• 4g of fiber

Notes

You can easily leave out the flax seeds or add other ingredients to the mix. I plan to add nuts and maybe some raisins or dried fruit with my next batch.

You can cut back on the amount of applesauce if you want bars that aren’t as moist. With 1/3 cup of applesauce, the consistency comes out somewhere between cake and a granola bar. The baking time also probably has something to do with this. I had my first batch in the oven for about 27 minutes and the edges were just starting to become crusty.

If you try alternatives or have suggestions for improvements, leave a comment.

You will still see Quickie posts here on mtdewvirus.com, but they are automatically being posted from my Twitter updates. I’m using the Twitter Tools plugin for this. If you follow my RSS feed here and follow me on Twitter, you probably want to just subscribe to the RSS feed for the Entry posts instead of the full feed or else you’ll see the Twitter stuff twice.

Tweet Tweet!

The company has changed a lot in the short time I’ve been there. The number of Automatticians has grown from less than 20 to over 30. We acquired BuddyPress and IntenseDebate. One of our main projects, WordPress.com contintues to see incredible growth, so we decided to provide 24/7 support.

My title is Happiness Engineer, which isn’t an ordinary job title. So what do I do on a daily basis? I provide support to WordPress.com users and people running the self-hosted version of WordPress. I work with our VIP hosting clients, such as Fox News, CNN, NFL, NY Times, and many others. We review their theme, plugins, and any content they want to import from a previous blog. I fix some of the minor bugs and theme issues on WordPress.com and submit patches to WordPress.org if the bug is a problem there as well. I train all new employees who are required to provide support for their first 3 weeks. In general, I try to do whatever I can to make our users happy.

The problems and questions from users are always changing. Everyday is different and comes with new challenges. This keeps work interesting. I can honestly say I’ve never been bored.

When I started working for Automattic, it took some time getting used to working from home, keeping track of all of our internal information, and doing all communication with my coworkers online. Once you get in the swing of things, you’d be surprised how well online communication works for a virtual company. Would I like to have more face to face contact with the people I work with? Of course. Would I like to go back to a 9-5 office job? Not a chance.

Believe it or not, I’ve only met 4 of the people I work with and I had just met 2 of them a couple of weeks ago at Blog World. Next week most of the company will be getting together in Breckenridge, CO for a week long offsite. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and putting a face to the online personalities I’ve come to know.

I came out to Toronto this weekend to attend my first WordCamp and had a great time. Interacting with people who share the same enthusiasm and passion for WordPress makes work more rewarding.

My life has had some exciting changes in the last 6 months with the new job. I’m looking forward to what the next 6 months bring.