Typey Type's New Robots

Not a huge update in terms of content, but I just wanted to mention how big a fan I am of Typey Type's new Steno Robot friends, who cheer you on when you complete your steno drilling goals. Ain't they adorable?

Typey Type has new robot friends to celebrate your daily efforts! #steno https://t.co/mg2C9bCf4J pic.twitter.com/CJM9W8MkDl

— Diana MacDonald (@didoesdigital) October 27, 2019

Steno in a Cigar Box

From Hermes on the Plover Discord:

$5 Cigar box + OTG + 9" left USB + Android + TinyMod3 + Dotterel + DiDoesDigital = awesome Steno laptop. I love the OpenSteno community! Thanks!

I love it, and might make something similar for myself. I've actually been using my TinyMod a fair bit for work lately, both for offline transcription and for live classroom captioning. It's nice to be able to mix it up a bit, sometimes using my Georgi and sometimes the TinyMod. Certainly in portability the TinyMod wins hands down, as this picture shows. I've been wanting a clamshell case that can fit a phone or small tablet in the top half and a steno machine in the bottom half for a while now. The cigar box trick is very smart, though I wonder if there might be something even smaller that would fit the bill. Hm!

Nimble Numbers and Trackball Georgi

If you've been frustrated with the default system of writing numbers in steno, go read through Nimble's new system of stroking numbers more efficiently!. It looks very powerful, if a bit time-intensive to learn.

Also check out this picture post on Stenoblog.com of a DIY tripod-mounted Georgi setup with integrated trackball! Beautiful stuff.

Indicator for Multilingual Plover

Over on Martin's StenoBlog.com you can see a new article about switching between different language versions of Plover (using the Plover system switcher plugin) and letting the Windows taskbar show you which one you're in at any given time. Check it out!

Proprietary Steno Machine Teardown Video

From Shaun-Mahood on the Plover Discord, for any of you tinkerers out there who might be curious about the internals of a lever-style machine.

Picture Post Roundup

Have a few delightful images from the open steno community over the past few days.

First, Typey-Type for Stenographers now gives you confetti when you beat your previous high speed!


 Ted has a snazzy pink-accented Georgi at his desk.


 Curiousbirds has figured out a novel and low-cost way to tent a Georgi using cardboard and tape.

And finally, Stan has figured out how to get Plover running on a RaspberryPi! Can't wait to see what cool wearable solutions he'll turn this into.

Steno Progress Graph

Now, this is a pretty sight, posted on r/Plover:
MagneticDuck writes:

How fast do self-learners learn to use Plover? TypeRacer might be a good source of data to answer this question.

Via automatic scanning of TypeRacer activity, I found 23 Plover users who had recently used the site. Of the 23, many had just a few races completed, didn't evidence progress or regular usage, or had not logged races before they were proficient. Only six fit the profile of users who had used the site frequently over a period of 25 weeks, starting at a point when they were still getting average speeds of less than 60 WPM.

The graph above shows the median speeds of these six users over their first 25 weeks on TypeRacer in week-by-week windows. Weeks during which a user completed less than 10 races are not graphed.

Of these six users, only four have been on TypeRacer long enough to represent data points for long-term improvement. The following graph shows the median speeds of these four over 2-week windows for longer time periods, up to 125 weeks (a little over 2 years). Highlighted areas designate interquartile intervals.

While limited, I hope this data helps to paint a better picture of how quickly new learners can expect to get "up to speed." I think the conclusions are favorable; maybe someone will be emboldened to give Plover a try. If you want to conduct your own analysis, you may download the data I collected in the form of an SQLite database from https://mat.uc.pt/~mat1617/steno.db .