Keyboard Layouts

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(1) Tim Berners-Lee would be proud.

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QWERTY is not the final word on keyboard layouts!

The standard English QWERTY layout is very poorly designed.  When one looks at the letters in the 'Home Row' (A-S-D-F-J-K-L-;), it's probably not too hard to believe that less than one-third of your typing is going to take place on these keys.  This is significant, because these are the key that do not require you to move your fingers to strike them!  The result is that the English typing speed is significantly slower than it could be, if the keyboard had been organized to put the most-used keys on the Home Row.  This layout is purely an historical artifact, and was designed to conform to the needs of 1890's typewriter technology, which would often jam if two adjacent keys were struck rapidly in succession.

The best example of a keyboard that actually makes sense is probably the Turkish layout:

The language uses the Turkish Latin alphabet, and therefore requires its own dedicated keyboard.  The layout was developed in collaboration with the Turkish Language Institute with the goals of maximizing use of the Home Row, locating the other often-used keys in places that are anatomically easiest and fastest to strike, and evenly distributing the typing load between the left and right hands.  These design criteria have resulted in the most efficient keyboard layout to-date; the fastest Turkish typists regularly outpace the fastest typists in the rest of the world.

The English-language user has not been left out!  The Dvorak layout, named after inventor August Dvorak and commonly known as the American Simplified Layout (ASK), has sought to correct some of the issues with the standard English QWERTY layout.  The Home Row (A-O-E-U-H-T-N-S) actually makes sense, and maximum typing speed is increased.  The Dvorak layout is standard enough that it comes installed with most modern operating systems, so making the layout switch is fairly straightforward.  The downside?  You have to learn it, which takes time.  Websites like Dvorak Keyboard Training provide interactive practice to get you moving in the right direction.

What if you're learning another language?  You have several options: learning the obnoxious Unicode input codes, settling for 'ss' and 'ae' when you really mean ß and ä, or... changing your keyboard layout.  There are very many keyboard layouts currently available, so it's just a matter of figuring out exactly what you're looking for and changing some operating system settings (you do NOT need to buy a new keyboard!).

Take the standard German layout, for instance: it is based on the English QWERTY, but with Y and Z switched and quite a few changes to the locations of the symbols and other miscellaneous things.  It includes the German-specific characters (Ö-Ä-Ü-ß) and an increased number of dead keys (keys that change the function of the other keys, like SHIFT).  There are two dead keys for accented characters (á, ê, í); while these characters aren't actually used in Germany, a European German user is very likely to deal with Spanish, French, and other languages that do.  Not surprisingly, this layout comes standard with all operating systems, and making the layout switch to German is very straightforward.

...but I just said that QWERTY (or QWERTZ in this case) is slow!  Never fear; the Neo Users Group has created the German equivalent to the Dvorak layout.  This doesn't ship with most operating systems, but installation is pretty straightforward if you follow the directions on their website.  Can't read the website?  If you don't know German, why are you trying to install a modified German layout?!

Most modern operating systems allow for rapid switching between the different keyboard layouts that you have installed.  In Windows 7, for instance, you can rapidly switch between multiple input languages and keyboard layouts by clicking on the little icons that appear in the system taskbar:

Do you have any experience with alternative keyboard layouts?  Do you think keyboard layout makes a difference to typing speed?  Would you be willing to try a new layout?  Comment!

Laptop Overheating

My Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop has been getting slower and slower since I first purchased it new around three years ago.  I had assumed that this was due to the inevitable degradation of Windows Vista, but a fresh reinstall of Windows 7 didn't help.  When I burned myself on the bottom panel of the laptop, that was a pretty good indication that I should check for an overheating problem.

I installed I8kfanGUI, a handy little program for monitoring Dell Inspiron, Latitude, and Precision laptop temperatures, fan speeds, and CPU speeds and loads.  It allows you to manually control the speed of the laptop fan; I used this to max the fan speed, hoping to bring the processor core temperatures down to something reasonable.  Under high load, temperatures were still staying as high as 85C, and the laptop's performance was suffering as Windows automatically 'throttled' the processor speed to keep the temperatures from continuing to increase.

Time for more drastic measures.  Using this helpful guide to disassembling a Dell Inspiron laptop, I completely took the machine apart.  Inside: giant dust bunnies, completely clogging up the heatsinks at the end of the heatpipes that cool the CPU and GPU.  These could not have been removed simply by blowing some canned air through the external vents on the laptop; I had to use tweezers to dig out them out.  The fan was still spinning, but the air wasn't getting where it needed to go to keep things cool.

Success!  I reassembled everything, fired it up, and the load temperatures were down into the 60's.  Still pretty warm, but no CPU throttling and no performance loss.

Loss of computer performance over time is NOT normal.  If a fresh install of a stable operating system doesn't solve the problem, heat management may be the issue.  A computer is just like any other piece of machinery, and a little routine maintenance can make all the difference.  It can be a real pain to take a laptop apart and put it back together again, but an hour of effort can make it usable again.

Analyzing the global psyche with Google

{Query} [Google-Recommended Completion]

{How to}
tie a tie
kiss
lose weight fast
get pregnant
get a girl to like you
write a cover letter
write a resume
solve a rubix cube
make jello shots
make it in america

{How do I}
find my ip address
get a passport
know if im pregnant
get my work copyrighted
love thee
delete my facebook account
download youtube videos
look
delete my myspace
breathe lyrics

{What is}
my ip
my ip address
love
lady gaga's real name
a good credit score
chatroulette
the meaning of life
cinco de mayo
autism
twitter

{My girlfriend and I}
have nothing to talk about
fight all the time
are growing apart
are having communication problems
have nothing in common
are on a break
are bored
always fight
are going to different colleges
broke up

{My boyfriend and I}
fight all the time
have nothing to talk about
are growing apart
are on a break
can't communicate
are fighting
are bored
fight a lot
always fight

Summary:

The average internet user is most concerned about finding a mate, a complicated process which often involves ties, jello shots, and kissing.  To impress potential mates, the average internet user is: looking for a good job; traveling to other countries; losing weight; writing books; and solving Rubix cubes.  To avoid scaring off potential mates (and perhaps potential employers), the average internet user is considering closing their accounts on various social networking sites.  Perhaps the only thing the average internet user is as interested in finding as true love is their IP address.

Once they have found a mate, the average internet user is desperately unhappy.  Regardless, the average internet user proceeds to make babies (a poorly-understood process).

The Brewing Continues

Both fermenters are bubbling like crazy today; I don't have a rotameter hooked up, but I would guess that carbon dioxide production is peaking in excess of 100mL per minute.  Everything in the must is now suspended, buoyed by the bubbles rising from the yeast, which are now floating in a cloudy layer near the surface.

It's obvious enough that yeast produces a ton of carbon dioxide during anaerobic growth... but how?  Molecular oxygen is not present to act as the final electron acceptor in oxidative phosphorylation, so the TCA cycle (the source of the carbon dioxide produces by you right now) certainly isn't active.  For a closer look, we go to the basic (unbalanced) bioreaction stoichiometry:

C₆H₁₂O₆ (sugar) + CH_1.9O_0.51N_0.23 (protein) -> CH1_1.77O_0.49N_0.24 (biomass) + C₂H₆O (ethanol)

Most available protein is going to biomass (which has almost the exact same stoichiometric ratios as protein), along with some of the sugar.  Most of the sugar will go toward generating reducing equivalents (NADH) and energy carriers (ATP), in which it will be almost stoichiometrically converted to ethanol.  If you take a look at that stoichiometry:

C₆H₁₂O₆ (sugar) -> C₂H₆O (ethanol)

Glucose on the left has a 1:1 C:O ratio, whereas ethanol has a 2:1 C:O ratio.  Carbon dioxide has a 1:2 C:O ratio, so this is a likely solution for closing the mass balance!  Of course, this is all nasty global inference, which should be left to systems biology (fake science).

What really happens?  Pyruvate decarboxylase (using thiamine pyrophosphate [pictured] in an acid-catalyzed reaction) hacks pyruvate into acetaldehyde and carbon dioxide.  The acetaldehyde is converted into ethoxide by reaction with NADH, and is then protonated to yield ethanol.  This is 'Ethanolic Fermentation'.

(Isn't mechanistic biochemistry so much more satisfying?)

Let The Brewing Begin

Oh school - the more classes you've taken, the more doing well just comes down to going through the motions and taking the time.  Unfortunately, all of this fake learning has been keeping me from doing the stuff I really want to do.

I'm headed to Germany in two weeks, but I wanted to get one solid project going before I head out.  Fairly quick to set up with long wait times to product?  Brewing fits the bill perfectly.

I kind of feel like 'brewing' with store-bought malts is sort of a cop-out.  I'd rather go with something simple and straightforward, do it right (meaning without too much cheating), and expand upward as I get better at it.  There are many indications that mead was one of the first fermented beverages, even predating agriculture itself, so it seemed like the perfect place to start.

Setting everything up was very straightforward.
Follow this project's progress in my Brewing Notebook.