Andrew's Journal

Does your brain works fast enough to know what the heck are
ASDF, ASDFG, QWER, QWERT, ZXCV, ZXCVB…

If you can’t, just focus on
ASDF, ASDF, ASDF and ASDF.

or

QWER, QWER, QWER and QWER.

No, these are not alien language. You encounter them almost EVERYDAY. And when you are reading this post, they are right at your fingertips.

Get it?

It’s the characters arrangement on your keyboard!
Have you ever wonder why characters on the keyboard are so screwed up? I have been playing computers for more than 6 years. I have also played with my mum’s stone-aged typewriter. I asked my mum that time, she had no idea. I think my mum is bored on his son who like to ask questions like “Is Superman more geng-chow (kuat! powerful!) or Spiderman is more geng-chow?”, “Is crocodile more geng-chow or shark more geng-chow?” (After watching Steven Spielberg’s robot shark in “Jaws”)

I asked a lot of people why the keys on my keyboard are so screwed up, no one have a clue (maybe people I meet are idiots, as idiots always stick with idiots). Wahahaha.

People don’t care much about this, just like people don’t wonder why when we talk with our mobile phone our voice can fly from Mentakab to KL. We don’t care because if we need to know how everything works before we can use it, we can’t do a lot of things. We can’t drive a car (Quiz: your car got how many cylinders?), we can’t switch on the light (Quiz: How many electrons are required to emit 42.5Watt of Fotons to light up your room? Answer: around 5,451,265,895,154,156,582). So, like other people, I keep on using the keyboard without knowing why the B is not next to the A!

Today, I am so happy to find out who screw up our keyboard! The story go like this…
In 1873, they invented the typewriter (1873 - I’m not born yet, my mum not born yet, my grandpa not born yet, and sorry I don’t know who is my grand-grand-pa). The problem with the typewriter was if you typed too fast, the keys stuck! So the boss said, “No one will buy the typewrite if the keys stick!” So he asked his R&D team to solve the problem.

[I hope you are old enough to touch a typewriter. The typewriter can only accept 1 key at a time, if you hit 2 keys together or type too fast, the mechanic parts of the 2 keys will stick/jam and you can't type anymore until you un-stick the keys manually]

“No, it’s still the same. But we can keep the keys from sticking by forcing people to type slower!”

“Apa Tahi You Cakap?” (What do you mean?)

“All we have to do is hide the letters on the keypad. We’ll put A up here, B down there, we’ll stick C up here, we’ll put Q there… like that, no body can type fast! Because they will need to hunt for the letters before they can type!”

That is how our now keyboard made.