The path to split keyboard fluidity

This weekend I bought myself a second-hand Kinesis Advantage 360 from Willhaben. The absolutely lovely fella I bought it from had recovered from his wrist problems (or rather I suspect that he had given up on trying to type accurately with this thing because the learning curve is STEEP).

I bought this keyboard mostly because I was jealous of my friend and colleague Bruno, who has had the 360 Pro for months now. I set up a watch alert on Willhaben 5 months ago, and it triggered for the first time on January 12. These keyboards are either not particularly popular, or everyone who buys one never lets it go. After some remarkably weak negotiating, I picked the keyboard up yesterday for €450.

The other reason I bought the keyboard is for the same reason I use either a vertical mouse or a track ball most of the time — RSI. I've not been suffering from it lately, but it reoccurs periodically and so I want to do everything I can to protect my wrists and my hands, given that the way that I make most of my income is through my hand modeling side-hustle.

The edition I got turns out to be a limited edition with linear Kailh Box Pink Quiet switches. I've always been a Cherry Brown kind of guy, but I am actually glad that I got these switches as they are a lot softer to type with, which I think should make it easier to type for long periods. The switches have an actuation travel distance of 1.8mm whereas the Cherry Browns are 2mm, which I doubt makes any practical difference. The difference is in the feeling of the tactile browns vs the linear pinks, with the latter being a smoother experience. I don't know what I'm talking about btw.

What follows will be a living journal of my experience learning to use the 360 regularly. I will type all of these posts with the keyboard and will not correct errors, as I transition from my current 20wpm with 3% accuracy to a split keyboard driven efficiency machine with perfect wrists.

The scene fades out, before transitioning to a shot of Jayphen struggling over a gigantic awkwardly tilted keyboard split in to two halves

Okay now I am typing waiath the 360. I'm finding it hardest to avoid squisjhing keys waith my pinkie (hence the extraemnneous a's), and also to re,ember that the backspace is under my thumb now.

I find it too tiring at the moment to write more words here, although I a, impressing myself with my lack of typos now that the pressure is on.

I have found keybr (thanks again Bruno) to be a great tool for practicing typing and will try that for 15-30 minutes a day. Today I got angry at "C".

'ok that is all I can stand to ttpe right now