A lesson from David Lynch Teaches Typing (image via rhinostew.itch.io, used with permission).
Have trouble typing? Perhaps this surreal typing game with David Lynch will help. Or perhaps not.
Super Mario tried to teach me how to type correctly when I was a kid, as did a required semester of typing at my high school, yet I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I continue to always look at the keyboard and only use about half my fingers (unevenly favoring my right hand). So when I found out there’s a new typing game taught by a pixelated version of filmmaker David Lynch, I thought this might finally be my chance to learn.
Available as a free download for both Mac OS and Windows, David Lynch Teaches Typing is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based filmmaker Luke Palmer — “no relation to Laura,” he clarified in a phone interview, ensuring me that Palmer is, in fact, his real last name. Palmer and his collaborator, developer Hyacinth Nil, used to work at an after-school program together, where they came across a ridiculous game called Cooldog Teaches Typing. Later, when Palmer spotted a video game where one of the levels took place inside the Red Room from Twin Peaks, he had an “aha” moment. Palmer and Nil worked on the game for about five months before releasing it earlier this month.
You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.
Never mind, I had David Cronenberg in mind.
Typing is one of the skills that I utterly loathed to learn in highschool, but in retrospect I am very glad that I was forced to learn it. Typewriters are gone now, but computers are a necessity today and me being able to type with all 10 fingers means that I manage to do a lot of my work much more effectively than I would otherwise.
Maybe this game would make the chores of learning more palatable back then. Typing endless repetitive sequences in order to gain the necessary muscle memory was a pain. A big pain. And it was boring as hell.
Yeah, typing was crazy boring. So tedious. But, I’m very glad I learned and can type with speed.
I had typing classes in junior high in the early 1970s. Most of the class used the huge manual typewriters with the bells to alert you to use the carriage return handle at the end of a line. So loud when the whole class was typing away! There were two electric typewriters at the back of the class that only the fastest typers could use. One of the students could type about 90 wpm. I was lucky to get around 35 wpm. Nowadays, they don’t even call it “typing” if you take a class, it is “keyboarding”, and it is a pretty essential skill for any technology job.
Heh, I had my classes freshman year HS 1971, and yep, a wealth of manuals, noisy as could be.
I remember manual typewriters.
Cast-iron Underwoods.
The mechanism for causing upper case letters involved lifting the carriage by pushing a key with one little finger.
I don’t miss that.
I took typing classes with electrics back in the early 80’s. We only had a manual at home for me to practice on so my speed didn’t improve much, and I never quite got the hang of typing with my eye fully on the paper rather than my keys. I have small hands and a weird form-- don’t hardly use my pinkies, indexes, or the ring finger on my right hand at all, but my keyboarding ability is still better, I imagine, than the chicken pecking it would be had I not taken the class.
This brings back memories. I too learned on a manual typewriter, and we were strictly not allowed to look at our hands. As a result my typing was less than accurate… I thought the mistakes were hilarious, the teacher was not amused. However I did learn to type! It’s come in handy, I must say. *And* I can type without looking at my fingers, plus these days I can _mostly_ type what I actually mean to type. Or keyboard, whatever.