New Steno Game: Sentence Sprint!

My Plover table at the New York State Court Reporters Association Mini-Convention

So the amazing Mike Neale of QwertySteno has done it again. Joining the Tetris-like fury of Cargo Crisis is a new steno game, Sentence Sprint. Set your speed, turn on Plover, and write the sentences as quickly as you can. If you don't get them all down before time runs out, you'll enter Word Mode, which will give you a chance to practice the words in the sentence slowly to help identify your slowest words. Upon completing Word Mode, you will have three more attempts at the same sentence at full speed.

I know a lot of people have been clamoring for more full-sentence practice, so I think this will be a very welcome addition to the stock of drills and practice material on hand for Plover users. If that's not enough for you, QwertySteno's new MyPractice feature lets you upload customized material for a less competitive but more directed training option. In other news, PloverDojo has tweaked its color settings to offer more visual contrast, after an accessibility survey by the fantastic Svetlana Kouznetsova, a longtime friend and ally to The Plover Project. And the work on Learn Plover! continues apace, with several chapters added and tweaked since the last time I posted about it here. The home stretch is in sight, and once we're finished, we'll investigate print-on-demand options for people who want a hard copy version of the book, though naturally the online version will remain free and open to everyone who wants to access it.

What else? Well, as you can see from the picture at the beginning of this post, I attended a mini-conference put on by the New York State Court Reporters Association (held at my old steno school!). I gave out lots of Plover and Stenosaurus brochures, demonstrated Plover with both my steno machine and the Sidewinder, and encouraged all the court reporters there to show Plover to any friends, relatives, or acquaintances of theirs who might enjoy a low-cost, no-risk introduction to steno. It was a really good time, and I enjoyed blowing their minds when they asked me how much Plover cost. "Free," I'd say. "Wait... Free?!" they'd say, blinking rapidly. "Yep. Free," I'd say, and grin my smug little Open Source grin. It was awesome.

Learn Plover!

Back in May, I was contacted by Zack Brown, a professional technical writer and open source aficionado, with a life-changing offer. He'd had some RSI issues and was frustrated with the inefficiency of qwerty; Plover, he thought, might be just the thing to make his day job easier. He proposed that I tutor him in steno, and in return, he'd turn our tutoring sessions into documentation that other newbies could use to learn with on their own.

Five months of fantastic dinners from a variety of West Village restaurants, late night sessions full of fevered debate, and a great deal of collaborative pedagogical floundering later, the first volume of Learn Plover! is available online. It's written in Zack's trademark lucid, friendly style, and is a whole lot more accessible to beginners than the Steno 101 lessons it supersedes. It presents a step-by-step method of learning the keyboard, with lots of practice material to help build the all-important muscle memory that lies at the root of steno. Part 2, which is coming soon (we mapped out the scope of it last night over fish and chips), will go into higher level steno concepts such as brief building and avoiding word boundary errors, but Part 1 offers a complete overview of the stenographic system, and anyone who studies it thoroughly should be able to write virtually any word in the language. Eventually we're hoping to release Learn Plover! as a book, in both online and print-on-demand formats. For now, enjoy the lessons, and feel free to send feedback about it either to him (zacharyb@gmail.com) or to me (plover@ploversteno.org).

I can't express the extent of my gratitude for the staggering amount of thought and work Zack has put into this project. It's one of the best things anyone has ever done for me. Thanks, Zack. You're the best.

Introducing Plover Dojo!

Two exciting Plover-related blog posts in one day! Partly because I've been falling down on the job a bit and not posting news items as quickly as I should, but partly because the Plover tutorial scene is kind of exploding! We've got QwertySteno and Cargo Crisis, StenoTutor, the new steno textbook I've been working on with the tech writer I mentioned a while back (coming very soon!), and now an amazing new comprehensive resource for beginning stenographers: Plover Dojo!

JR and Jay, the creators of Plover Dojo, go way, way back with The Plover Project. They made the Plover Demo, coded the first iteration of the Plover Wiki, and more recently devised the Plover Community Survey. What I'm saying is: These guys got cred. And now there's Plover Dojo, an absolutely gorgeous implementation of interactive design. It's still not completely finished, but there's already a wealth of tutorials, drills, and an ingenious steno keyboard filter that lets you practice lists of common words made up of whichever key combinations you specify. There's more to come in the future, so feel free to drop them a line about any bugs or feature requests at the Google Group, or email ploverdojo@gmail.com.

If you've been wary about trying to teach yourself steno due to the intimidating initial learning curve, please give Plover Dojo a try. It's fantastic.

New Online Steno Game: Cargo Crisis!

Mike Neale, creator of the amazing QwertySteno.com, has done it again! He's made a fantastic new Tetris-style typing game called Cargo Crisis, which uses the 500 most common words in the English language (most of which only require one stroke in the Plover dictionary) to drill that all-important fast-twitch muscle memory into beginning stenographers. It's got a devilishly simple mechanism and beautiful gem-like colors -- two surefire elements of an addictive online game. You can play it through the website using just a normal keyboard with n-key rollover, or you can click the "use with steno software" button, which will let you use it with Plover or proprietary steno software (or even just with your qwerty keyboard, if you want to see how well your qwerty skills match up to other people's steno skills). In the video above, I used Plover with my Infinity Ergonomic steno machine, and I think I did pretty well. (Oddly, I didn't realize that I was zapping the words boustrophedon-style until I watched the video. Funny how your brain comes up with patterns it doesn't see fit to tell you about.) You'll notice in the last part of the video that sometimes words will stack up in a single line, causing me not to get credit for them. It happens either when I misstroke a word or when I stroke a word that's recently been transformed and is therefore no longer on the board; the words I write subsequent to that aren't counted until I press the asterisk several times and get myself back to a blank entry line. That's something Mike's thinking about changing, since it makes the game considerably more challenging and jerks the player out of the lovely reflexive flow state that this sort of pure arcade experience can propel them into.

The other great thing about this game is that it's got a high score table! I'm hoping that the competition will be addictive, and will help motivate people to practice longer and harder than they otherwise would. I can't wait to see what other games Mike will come up with. It would also be worthwhile to collect a list of online typing games that are designed for qwerty typists but that also work well with Plover. The main criterion there is that they can't penalize for errors, since Plover frequently transmits and then deletes characters on the way to arriving at the correct translation. They also can't penalize for automatic spaces, have a character sending speed limit, or place too much emphasis on the individual keys of the qwerty layout, as opposed to actual words. And, as always, I'm looking for suggestions of Creative Commons-licensed songs that we can collect and apply timecodes to for the next version of Steno Hero. Steno and video games, two of life's greatest pleasures, together as one. More, more, more!

Plover Community Survey Results

The Plover Community Survey results are here. Check 'em out!

Some of the more interesting questions and answers:

What is your current steno level?



Absolute beginner - I'm very fresh.
The very concept of steno is new to me, and I haven't tried it yet: 18%
Beginner - I know what steno is and have tried it: 33%
Intermediate - I'm fairly good, but steno isn't my best way to input text: 40%
Advanced - steno is my primary mode of text input: 10%

What do you plan on using Plover for?



What theory are you using?



Have you enrolled in a formal stenography program?



No - nor do I intend on enrolling: 75%
No - but I intend to enroll: 5%
Yes - but no longer active: 10%
Yes - actively attending: 8%
Yes - completed course: 3%

The survey's still open, if you want to add your two cents.

Thanks again to John and Jay for making this happen!

Hands On with the Stenosaurus!

Josh flew in from Oregon today, and he brought the physical prototype of the Stenosaurus with him!



One of the most common questions when we announced the Stenosaurus a few weeks ago was "Is this a joke?!" Nope! Hilarious name and logo aside, this thing is 100% legit. There it is on the table of the restaurant we had lunch at. This isn't the functional prototype, of course; the circuit board hasn't been designed yet and the firmware hasn't been coded. When you open it up, this is what you see:



Just the attachments for the mechanical keys. The real model will have electronics inside, and ports for the USB cable and SD card in the back. But this model was perfect for gauging the touch and feel of the device. Plus it was just so beautiful; far more than you can see from my blurry camera phone pictures. The bamboo and aluminum set each other off gorgeously, and the entire design was just so intuitive and sensible. I could hardly take my eyes off it.



The action was surprisingly smooth and comfortable, considering that it had the same sorts of mechanical keys I was used to from using my late lamented Filco Majestouch, which always left me a bit fatigued after an hour-long Plovering session. The action on these felt lighter and less clacky, which made for a lovely writing experience. Still not as featherlight and shallow as my lever-based Infinity, of course, but worlds above both the Majestouch and the Sidewinder. And the texture of those anodized aluminum keys? Heaven. This picture shows the keys at their highest setting, which was ideal. Josh tried moving them down a bit, so they were parallel with the bamboo of the casing, but that wasn't as comfortable; I found my thumbs hitting the sides of the bamboo when they were at their lowest point, which I think would have become kind of annoying after an extended period of writing. Set higher up, though, there's no interference from the case at all, so that'll definitely be the default.



Action shot! (Yes, I wore the T-shirt especially for the occasion.)

It was perfect for my (rather small) hands, but we talked about possibly beefing it up a bit to accommodate even giant gorilla paws like Josh's. And we talked about putting a set of magnets on the inside back cover to accommodate various accessories, such as a tripod attachment (it'll have a smooth back by default) or the flaps of a small protective case. We even talked about the possibility of making a special "steno laptop" case (following a suggestion by Paulo Paniago), which could accommodate a small tablet PC for all-in one steno action. That would probably have to be a stretch goal, but it's an incredibly exciting possibility.

I'm so delighted with this thing. You have no idea. It just felt so good to write on! Josh is hoping to get enough time off from his day job to be able to design the electronics and firmware in the next few months, and then we'll launch the crowdfunding campaign. I can't wait until this thing comes into proper existence. It's gonna be glorious.

As always, please feel free to sign up on the Stenosaurus email list.

Introducing QwertySteno

When I started The Plover Project with a dream of bringing steno to the masses, I knew it would require three elements in order to work:

* Free software
* Low-cost hardware
* Free, fun, and painless steno instruction

Plover itself is now very nearly complete. It's cross platform, has full control over the operating system, and allows for just-in-time dictionary entries -- my trifecta of must-have features. The hardware is looking pretty good at this point; the Sidewinder X4 has proven to be a great entry-level machine, especially with the laser-cut keytoppers pasted on. Within the year, the Stenosaurus will hopefully swoop in and accommodate all the people who aren't quite satisfied with the Sidewinder and want to upgrade to a purpose-built machine for just a little more cash.

The third part of the puzzle is finally falling into place as well. The textbook-style steno tutorial I've been working on with the tech writer I mentioned some weeks back is almost complete, and when it's done we're hoping to release it in both free ebook and print-on-demand paper book form. Along with Fly, 100 Most Common Words, and StenoTyper, StenoTutor has proven to be a great drilling tool, and in the near future Emanuele hopes to add high score tables to it as well, so Plover newbies from around the world can compete with each other on speed and accuracy while learning those crucial first thousand words. Hover Plover is still just a glint on the horizon, though I've been fleshing out the specs of what I want it to look like when we're ready to start looking for art and development resources. There are other steno tutorials and interactive tools in the incubation period as we speak. And now we have yet another fantastic entry into the field.

QwertySteno is a brilliant new browser-based tutorial and practice tool that walks you through the steno keyboard from the very beginning, giving you instruction and instant feedback starting from the key layout and going through chords to simple phonetic words and briefs. It's a perfect resource for a steno newbie who's starting from scratch, and I'm thrilled to bits with it. Many, many thanks to Mike for putting it together!

Mike says: "The purpose of the website is to introduce new people to steno, teach them some basics and most importantly give our community some practice drills to accelerate our learning! The main feature of the site is the practice exercises which have been designed so we can practice in a focused and measurable way and speed up our learning curve! There are a number of features in the pipeline for a future release including some games but in the meantime, give it a go and let me know what you think."

As all these tools continue to develop, I think they'll come to complement each other. People can start with one and use the other ones to supplement their practice material, or they can hop from one to the other until they find one that works best for them. When Hover Plover is developed, they'll be able to use it for the twitchy, addictive rush of speed building, but still have all these other tools and tutorials on hand to fill out their theory and brief-building principles. Meanwhile, QwertySteno is definitely in front of the pack as far as comprehensive information and instant feedback interactivity is concerned. I can't recommend it highly enough! But if you want to build a steno tutorial or drilling resource of your own, please don't think that QwertySteno's got a monopoly. There's plenty of room for more.