Ok heres some more on the EkaPad: what in my opinion could be done to improve it? First it would be good to have some sort of visual indicator of the current mode and any prefixes/modifiers in effect. Secondly some way of remaping the chords independently of the main keyboard perhaps by allowing a suitable device driver to switch it to sending raw chords after boot up.

Also good would be to replace the chords used for configuration with recessed switches and buttons. This would free up some chords for more regularly used charachters. It would also reduce the odds of accidentally reconfiguring by typo.

On the plus side I'm slowly getting the hang of the chords although it is still a lot slower than my two fingered typing on a regular keyboard. A lot of people get a chording keyboard because of RSI but that's not a problem I have although it doesn't hurt to stop it before it starts.

Although the keyboard is slower the constant checking of the cheat-sheet plus the orientation of the keyboard means I have to touch-type which is all to the good.

I've just got an ekatetra ekapad,this is a chording keyboard that AFAICT works by faking the codes generated by a regular PC keyboard. This has plusses and minuses. On the plus side I don't need a device driver. On the minus side some of the chords generate odd escape sequences when used with linux and a UK keyboard and I can't see how to remap them without breaking the regular keyboard which I don't want to do until I've mastered the ekapad. Another downside is that some of the chords for charachters commonly used in the shell and common programming languages require pressing two keys with the same finger or moving fingers off the home rows. This includes brackets of all sorts ()[]{}. This post was brought to you by ekapad and vi.

HSBC's online banking no longer allows me to make payments online using Firefox on Linux. The connection is dropped when I try. Konqueror doesn't work either. It just sits there. I had to use a copy of IE at work to make a payment today. Most annoying as it used to work..

Got myself a new EeePC 901 from dabs.com and as per my usual wont I've replaced the Xandros linux that came pre-installed with regular Debian. Luckily lenny has just been released so there is Eee specific support. Nevertherless it looks like getting the wireless to work with a decent level of security looks to be non trivial.

The keyboard is a little small and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to type a | symbol which makes it a little tricky to use the shell. I'll probably have to remap the keyboard somehow.