Dang! Frogger! You no behave right!

I am getting proficient enough with the black USB froggie to start doing some real work, but this bug that I finally uncovered make using it really painful. Whenever I use the ctrl-s combination on the frogpad, the ctrl key will lock, eventhough the ctrl indicator does not show it. This kinda makes everything you do after that difficult. No, this does not have the feel of a polished product.

Sigh... I like typing on the frog. But till now, I haven't been able to use it for my programing work because, while it is quite good for typing in English, it is lousy for typing programs. This is because symbols on the frog are a pain to type. You have to hit one key to go into symbol mode(it's modal) hit your symbol, and then another key stroke to go out of symbol mode. In most programming langages(except maybe COBOL), you alternate between letters and symbols quite often, this is why the frog may not be suitable for programming. Can you reprogram the keys? I don't know, haven't found any resources on it yet. I later found that the USB version of the frog is better in this respect because the symbol key is non-modal(like the shift key). No word yet on whether I can get my Bluetooth version to do that though. Keeping an eye on this thread.

So I've had my frogpad for about half a month now. I've been practicing on it about a hour every two or three days, and.. this is my first blog post on it! I still obiviously need a lot more practice, but it's coming along.
I tell ya, not having to switch back and forth between the keyword and the mouse does change the way you do things a lot. You'll find that you'll be able to use the mouse in a lot more situations where you normally wouldn't. This is cool! As for my normal typing, because I've been switch back to it for my normal usage, I've sort of overcome the skill deteriation there.

I've been training with the Frogpad now about a hour every other day or so. And I've found it's negatively affected my normal keyboard typing. Basically it's causing a confusion in the circuitry in my brain that responds to what to do when I want to type a certain letter. Whereas before it "hardcoded" on what to do, now it has to first know whether I am typing on a regular keyboard or a Frogpad. There's a term for it in cognitive science, but I can't remember it now. When I learned DVORAK I had the luxury that I intended to give up QWERTY completely, but now with the frogpad I am not sure that's the case. I guess right now I'll just try to learn the frogpad while still staying proficient with DVORAK by switching back and forth. Crossing my fingers...

Yea!!! Pictures to come. I love my shiny new gadget! Starting to practice...can type some sentences slowly now...

I ordered one of these today, can't wait to try it out!!