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Comment by elliekelly | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever tried to label a blank keyboard from memory? Even though you know where all of the letters are and use them all the time without thinking it’s almost impossible.

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I’ve found it’s quite doable if you just “type” out different words on a blank keyboard and then use where your fingers land as the label. If you type “animal” you then know the position of all the constituent letters. So all you need to do is type a sentence with all characters, like “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Interesting effect though. This reminds me that it’s almost impossible to draw a bicycle from memory. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/04/can-you-draw-bicycle-f...

Or even just type out the alphabet. But labeling it from left to right, top to bottom, would indeed be tricky once you got past 'qwerty'.

I'm bilingual. My memory committed phone numbers and such are stored in one language only. To translate them, I need to write the number down and read it in the other language.

You can't visualize the numbers? Or translate the "audio" in your mind?

I can, but it's easier to write it, if I'm at a desk. Audio-translating is harder than it seems that it should be... especially if I"m struggling to recall the number. I suspect that recall and translation are like lead guitar and vocals.

For me numbers are stored in one language or the other, but are always recalled in the same language. For example, my SSN is in English but my garage door opener code is Chinese.

For some reason, I remember numbers like that as though I were typing them on a numpad. I automatically visualize a numpad and remember the sequence of numbers as distinct locations on it. Funnily enough, even phone numbers use this computer numpad rather than the number pad on a phone.

I had to re-key my keyboard recently and managed to get all keys right, EXCEPT for a swapped right alt/ctrl. I don’t think I ever typed on those two, so maybe it’s a blank in my muscle memory map :)

I realised a short while ago, that no matter which keyboard I'm sitting in front of, I simply do not use the right alt-gr, windows, menu, control or shift keys. They could just not be there and I wouldn't notice.

I also never use the numeric keypad, but I think that's more to do with being left handed.

Indeed! It is like entering a pincode on a keypad for the office door every single day. Then the new guy calls and asks you about the pin, and you have NO idea. This happened to me and I had to put my hand on something flat and see myself typing.

I suspect this is some part due to the arrangement of the numbers. Numbers on keypads in these kind of devices often has "1 2 3" on the top row. Whereas on the keybaords and calculators it is reverse. The top row there goes "7 8 9".

In the early days of card payment terminals my mum couldn't remember her PIN number to pay at a shop. Had to run over to an ATM and do a pretend transaction and take note of what she entered.

I'm like that with my phone lock pin. I use it visuospacially rather than numerically.

I can do it no problem (have changed all the keycaps on a keyboard a few times), but it is indeed a different kind of memorization. I can recite the qwerty letters all in a row, but for dvorak and workman, I didn't spend as many years with them (or actually ever see keycaps arranged that way on a real keyboard), so I would have to imagine myself typing for those.

I totally can do that with the Russian layout. Probably can with Latin too, but I won't be so sure.

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