Link

“Do profoundly deaf people who learn to talk have a voice in their head?”
— Heather & Allen Exby

“My best answer to this,” Hauser wrote, “is that the brain has a special capacity to develop phonological representations, even when it does not have auditory input. The representations might be dramatically different from what hearing individuals hear. Nevertheless, they function in the mind as ‘sounds.'” Deaf schizophrenics, he continued, have auditory hallucinations, and blind schizophrenics have visual ones.

This is a good link. I think thoughts are just what they are, thoughts. They don’t really exist physically but from our minds and apparently, 99% of them express theirs phonologically while we express with our hands visually in Sign.

Link

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Cool, nice to know that I’m not the only one having those thoughts. Thoughts are powerful. Oh yeah, he was adopted too. Cool.

Taken from herePaulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher, Harper Collins, which said that: “reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.” I went outside, looked up at the sky and thought to myself: “So, the book is going to be translated!” At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path despite all the voices telling me it was impossible.
(more…)

“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.”

-Wikipedia

Coding has a steep learning curve but once you get it working, the rest is gravy. That’s why I’m learning Django. :-)

Think I’ll go buy these. Much better than rubber ones!

It’s been a month since I switched to Dvorak keyboard layout for once and good. Dvorak is the name of a simplified keyboard that’s been remapped efficiently to ease stress on your hands in typing. It was created by this guy named Dr. August Dvorak, hence the name, who spent countless days researching keyboard layouts. God bless him.

I first heard about this layout back when I was in college. Boy, you get to learn a lot of stuffs in college. Three of my friends were Dvorak typists and they told me it’s better than Qwerty. So I tried to learn but it was too hard and I had to stay catch up with school and homework. I gave up shortly after attempting to switch.

On my first internship off college, I got bored so I thought again about learning how to type in Dvorak and this time, I lasted longer for about two weeks. I still struggled and was typing pretty slow. I gave up again.

Now, I’m in my full-time position as a webmaster for Google, I spend a lot of time typing and my fingers were starting to burden the stress. When I got a Kinesis keyboard, I thought it was a good time to learn Dvorak again and so I did and stuck with it. I’m happy I did and it’s so easy to type urls like google.com, evenly alternating fingers.

With this Dvorak layout, I learned two things about this keyboard. It focuses on alternating both hands wheras with Qwerty, there is a number of words that can be typed with only one hand. When I started to type in Dvorak, that was a bad habit to break as I wasn’t very used to alternate hands on almost every letter. Secondly, it actually uses all of your fingers, from your left pinkie to your right pinkie. I wasn’t used to engaging my pinkies as I used index, middle fingers and thumbs often on Qwerty and I wasn’t really touch-typing, although I could type pretty fast.

One other thing it taught me. My dad isn’t very computer literate and he couldn’t even touch type and would have to hunt and peck at every letter. I used to make fun of him about that as I couldn’t imagine how hard that would be. Touch-typing, that is, feels pretty easy to me, almost like writing. You probably feel the same way. Till you try to teach yourself how to type on Dvorak. And that is exactly the same kind of frustration that my dad feels when it comes down to typing. Computers weren’t around when he was born so I understood that now and I don’t make fun of him anymore.

One of my favorite parts about this keyboard is probably the period that’s above D letter on E letter. It’s so easy to hit that letter instead of awkwardly lifting your hand to reach period on the lower right bottom.

Since 70% of English words can be typed on home row, sometimes, Dvorak layout makes me feel like I’m typing on a piano, using all of my fingers almost equally, hitting most common letters on the home row with occasional reaches to other less frequent letters. Oh yeah, the record for the fastest typist in the world was accomplished with a Dvorak layout. :-) ‘enuff said.

For more reading on this keyboard layout,

Ma.tt » On the Dvorak Keyboard Layout
Kertong.com – The Dvorak layout
The Dvorak Keyboard and You
Dvzine.org/

Good luck!

Awesome video!

What’s so great about this video is it doesn’t use any voice so it’s a great presentation for people who are deaf like me.

And since I can hear a bit, great music as well. :-)

“You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.”

via Wired