Workout Keyboard

I'm sure we've all heard the story of how the QWERTY keyboard was purposefully designed in order to slow the typist down and thus prevent key jams on old mechanical typewriters. It's an anachronism which now has no place in this modern age, but still - try telling your fingers that. If you asked me what letter was on on the third row down, six buttons from the right on my keyboard, I wouldn't be able to tell you, but it's a sure thing my fingers would know.

And, chances are, if you're reading this, you probably already spend quite a bit of time hunched over your computer, fingers all a-flurry. Your digits are conveying boundless wit and wisdom, but your bum just grows number and number with each passing minute. Thus far, exercising your brain has resulted only in atrophy of the arse/ass. And uselessly dextrous fingers.

So, instead of a tiny finger-based keyboard, imagine a keyboard that consists of various pressure pads spread out over an entire wall or even a whole room. Instead of just a wee key on your keyboard, each letter and symbol is now an individual pressure pad, which, thanks to generous amounts of Blu-Tac or some other anchoring agent, can be placed anywhere you want. Each key is just a switch, after all.

Common letters, such as vowels, could be placed at about eye level on the wall, making it easy to pummel out a quick "aeiou (and sometimes y)" pretty quickly. Consonants would be more spread out, with the least-used being the hardest to hit - perhaps requiring a particularly impressive flying kick to nail a "z". It might be an idea to have many spacebar pads, interspersed amongst the other keys, just for added fluency.

If you want an especially high-impact workout - perhaps if you're writing a particularly angry email - you could reverse the positions, making the most commonly-used letters hardest to hit in rapid sequence. Suddenly you'll sweat over each and every word that you type, and thus your writing will become tighter and more focussed as you strain to hit each individual pad. Is it worth the effort of hammering out "lachrymose" when "tearful" will do? Suddenly your own stamina becomes your editor, and tortuous business double-speak ("I'll run this idea up the flag-pole and see who salutes", etc) becomes a thing of the past.

Smileys and other such pseudo-heiroglyphic monstrosities will each have their own separate pads, which will of course be situated in the most hard to get at corners of the room. Or perhaps even on the outside of the walls. A Zen-like physical peak of perfection would have to be reached in order to hit them; by which time, with perfect Zen logic, the user no longer wants to use them. Mostly because by that stage they're no longer thirteen years old, and they already have a hard-won knowledge of the worlds of grammar and actual spelling. 4 reel.

This would also have the added benefit of making poets and writers quite hard, because each word would be won by sheer physical effort. Useful in bar fights. "Hit him with a quatrain from one of Shakespeare's love sonnets!" A combination unrivalled in Tekken ensues. "Now a limerick to the chest!"

"That was a nasty pun to the face. Byron, as the winner of that bout, do you have any comments?"

"Well, he broke from the Iambic Pentameter when he made that "Yo Mama" quip on my ribs. After that, I saw red and went all CAPS-LOCK on his ass..."