Nine-fingered Frodo

[simont]

Bah. Onion-chopping incompetence last night has left me trying to type without using my left index finger, at least for a day or so until I'm sure healing is well under way.

Most of my typing style has adapted reasonably well (I often think this sort of flexibility is an advantage of having learned to type simply by typing a lot instead of doing one of those formal home-keys courses), though it's slowing me down noticeably so I have more of an incentive to engage brain before putting fingers to keyboard.

The really hard thing, though, is passwords. Everything else I can think about how to type if in doubt, but passwords are mostly stored in my brain as muscle memory, which isn't directly applicable so I have to painstakingly translate the stored muscle movements back into characters.

Comments

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

When I damaged my left hand a while back (I burned myself), I found that I couldn't edit easily. Emacs keystrokes were so hard-wired in muscle memory I'd forgotten what I was typing. As the fingers to do it were unavailable, I had to think so hard to recall the keystrokes that I ended up forgetting what was trying to do. I ended up falling back on heavy mouse use.

[simont]

Mmm. Yes, I'm also having some trouble with hot keys that I hit almost unconsciously. I think in general bucky-combinations – ctrl-alt-thingy and the like – are demanding in terms of needing several LH fingers at once, and therefore more of a problem...

[samholloway.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I've had eczema on and off over the years (it's on at the moment) which can sometimes leave a particular finger too sore to use.

Another example of muscle memory. When I was given a guitar for Christmas as a child, I couldn't use my index finger on my left hand. As a result, I learnt to play several chords without that finger - and I still often use those fingerings today.

And whenever we're forced to change our password at work (every five minutes, it seems), the use of muscle memory is clear as the old password gets entered for the first few times - it's so automatic.

[fanf]

You should point your IT policy people at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-c02.pdf in particular section 2.4, page 18 of the PDF / 34 of the book :-)

[samholloway.livejournal.com]

Yup, we protested along those lines, but sadly these things are dictated from afar - i.e. the USA - where such subtleties are not understood.

Having said all of this, it appears that the mandatory reset frequency has been reduced recently, which is most welcome. (Although as there was no announcement, it's most likely this is a configuration error rather than a positive decision.)

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the single reference that cites supporting the argument matches up to some bibliography which isn't included in the PDF.

[fanf]

You could always look at Ross's home page to find out what other chapters of the book are available for free. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-biblio.pdf

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

[1008] B Patterson, letter to Communications of the ACM v 43 no 4 (Apr 2000) pp 11 – 12

Unfortunately, that's not a good, peer-reviewed study.

(I did jump up a level on that URL, and got an Apache directory listing in the face.)

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Due to a disagreement between myself and a road surface about which one of us should get out of the way (despite my velocity, the road surface won), the palm of my right hand is quite mangled at the moment, so I feel your pain. I can type fine, but holding a knife is difficult, which is awkward when you have 5kg or so of bruised apples waiting to be made into chutney, and washing up is completely out of the question. This last is a lot less good than it sounds, since all of the various coffeemaking equipment in the house is now dirty and my housemates don't like washing it. I might have to try my hand at left-handed washing up for the sake of sanity.

[simont]

Yes, I'm probably going to have no alternative this evening but to attempt one-handed washing up. (Unless, I suppose, I can find somebody who would accept a portion of yesterday's lamb-and-my-finger casserole as a bribe for coming round and doing it for me, but that seems unlikely :-)

[fanf]

Rubber gloves!

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Improvise a splint? One that's longer than your finger, so the splint does the typing?