No Mouse for the Computer

 Last Updated: 9:05 AM 6/9/2024

NOTE: This is a work-in-progress. This page will be updated as I learn how to do this.

Many people are impressed by folks who can print a page[^1] or that they can copy/paste,[^2]: or just about anything without the use of a mouse. For people who use the computer for hours everyday using a mouse seems less efficient than just typing in a couple of key commands and being done with it. For some, like yours truly, just trying to find the cursor in all this visual real estate can be a chore sometimes. So I have decided to find out if using the keyboard for what I do on a computer is any easier for me. I doubt it will speed me up in any substantive manner as I don't know very many of the commands and will have to use reference materials repeatedly throughout this experiment.

Windows

Also of note, this experiment will be done using the Windows side of this computer and not the Linux. From the little bit that I know the commands are probably the same in Mac and Linux but I can not guarantee this to be true.

Emacs users, I am afraid you are on your own.

Stock apps

Also note that I want to use just the stock apps that came with Windows. So rather than apps that the cool kids would use, like VSCode and the Brave browser I will be using things like:

• Microsoft Edge, web browser
• Notepad, text editor
• Windows Media Player
• the on-board File Explorer
• the on-board utilities, like calculator

As I look at this list I realize that I am in for an education. I am not very familiar with the Media Player or Edge. I haven't been a Windows user since 2006 so this may be a fun project just in that regard.

Mouse Pointer

As a pro-tip take a look at How to control the mouse pointer in Windows 10 and follow it. Sometimes you may need a mouse pointer.

The page says Windows 10 but it works on my Windows 11 box as well.

Let's get started

Opening an app

In order for me to learn what to do I need to learn while doing it. I already have my computer booted up and Notepad is open. I am typing this out on Notepad already. Because this is one of my first times to do this sort of thing I need to open up a cheat sheet or three so that I can navigate around the computer in general and the app in particular. So I guess it might be a good idea to open Edge.

Simple enough- press the Windows key and when it opens up type in Edge, the press Enter. Et voila! Edge opens up.

Putting the window where you want it

You can move the window wherever you want it in your visual real estate by pressing the Windows key and using the arrow keys. This is easy enough. Easy enough on my setup with two monitors too. Just cycle through until you find the setup you like.

Ok Edge is up, now what?

If you already have something open on your computer, like I have Notepad up and running you can use Alt+Tab to select which window you want to work in. I used this and selected my newly opened Edge window.

Once there, I discovered that Edge doesn't open automagically with the search bar active so I typed Alt+d to activate the search bar. I typed in “windows keyboard commands” and hit enter. Edge took me to Bing (of course) and the very first item in the search results was “Help from Microsoft.” Let me scroll down using the tab key and see if I can select that one.

Ok, the tab button worked, but I couldn't see where I was on the screen and it was just doing stuff so I am going to try scrolling down with the arrow keys and select my link that way...

And we easily found and clicked our page. Keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I got that link by going back to Edge using Alt+Tab and when I got there I used Alt+d to get in the address bar and then hit Ctrl+c to copy the link. Upon returning to Notepad I simply pasted the link address into the link above.

Need a new tab in Edge

For this part of the experiment I want to have three tabs open in Edge all the time. One for Windows keyboard shortcuts, another for Edge shortcuts, and yet another for a page last night that lists keyboard shortcuts for several different Microsoft apps.

Now I am unfamiliar with Edge, but I do know that Edge is based on Google Chrome. In Chrome Ctrl+t will open a new tab. Let's see if that works. Ok, that worked and I managed to get Keyboard shortcuts for Edge and Keyboard Shortcuts in apps opened so that I have my reference material open while I do stuff here for fun.

Notepad

Odlly enough, in this world of fancified text editors, when I just need a text editor and not all the bull@#$% attached to a beast like VSCode I like to find the dumbest text editor that I can. I am talking about stuff like Nano, Gedit, Leafpad, and Notepad. One can get all twisted off and running down rabbit trails messing with all of that fluff. Sometimes, most of the time?, all that I need is a typewriter on a screen not a mini-os that can control satellites.

Keyboard shortcuts in Notepad

Ctrl+c, Ctrl+x, Ctrl+v, Ctrl+f, all work as expected in Notepad.

Ctrl+left-arrow and Ctrl+right-arrow move the cursor forward or backward by word.

Ctrl+home moves the cursor to the begining of the line. Ctrl+end moves it to the end of the line.

Once you move the cursor to the beginning of a word you can use the Ctrl+Shift+right-arrow or Ctrl+Shift+left-arrow to select the text you want to copy. Ctrl+c copies, Ctrl+x cuts, Ctrl+v pastes the selection where the cursor is.

Notepad has a feature that let's one add a time stamp to the text file. Just press F5 and you have a timestamp. I am nowhwere near done with this right now but the time is 9:00 AM 6/9/2024

[^1]: This would be CTRL + p. [^2]: CTRL + c to copy, CTRL + x to cut, CTRL + v to paste.

The Song

Right up here at the top let me go ahead and put a parental warning on this one. I do not think the subject matter is trashy or dirty but I do see how it could lead to some uncomfortable questions coming from younger children.

A song came on the radio today. Not just any song but THE song. This song is one of only a handful of songs that have a specific memory attached to it. It takes me back to a place and a time. When it happens I can hear the sounds, see the sights, even smell the same things that I did way back when.

This particular song: Open Arms by Journey. The Time: around 1983.

It was lunch time at the high school where I was going. It was early spring time. I had left campus and walked over to the student union and got into the serpentine line to get a smothered burrito. These things would keep the hunger pains at bay and they were cheap but eating them is probably why I have stomach problems today. I was towards the end of the line and being a bit of a loner I wasn't talking to anyone. As is my wont I turned around and just started watching people. This is a past time of the loner. Also good fodder for the burgeoning writer that I thought I was at the time.

Over at the pool tables the young hustlers were trying to rook the lower classmen. Little gaggles of girls pooled up in various parts of the union talking about whatever it is that young girls talk about. Various young men were floating around the room acting cool. Well thinking they were acting cool anyway. It was full of the noises one would expect from a building full of young people just living life.

Somebody had popped a quarter in the juke box and the opening notes of Open Arms by Journey began to play.

I noticed the line had moved up a few paces so I took my eyes off of the scene for a moment to move up so no one would get ahead of me in line. I only had 1/2 hour for lunch and it took about 20 minutes to work through this line.

When I turned back around to my survey a girl had walked out onto the dance floor. A good looking girl but no beauty queen by anyone's measure. She carried the rather heavily virgin moniker of Mary Martha. No lie that was her name. Mary Martha. Her mother must have wanted a nun.

Mary and I were in Newspaper class together. We were just classmates. I couldn't even call us friends in all honesty but we did know each other. She typed all of the homework that I might have had that needed typing. Back then no one really needed to know how to type. My how times have changed.

Now Mary was out on the dance floor all alone. I remember thinking how sad it was for a nice girl like Mary to be all alone on a dance floor. She wrapped herself in her own arms as if she was afraid someone was going to steal her blanket and she began swaying to the rhythm of the woeful and romantic stylings of Steve Perry and the boys.

As the song wailed on for what seemed an eternity, I really didn't care for this song then, Mary's whole tenor changed, all alone out on the dance floor. That didn't matter to her. She was completely absorbed in her own thoughts. The building could have opened up and swallowed a swarm of flying alligators and she would not have seen it. She was with her man, even though he was nowhere to be found. She swayed more intently and seductively to the music. Her every breath seemed to be dragging her man into the very fiber of her soul. She was in him and he was in her. He enveloped her in his arms and she sighed the comforted sigh of a woman satisfied. Her world was complete. Her love was simple, honest and passionate. With heavy-lidded eyes she looked around the room and didn't see anything but him. She was madly, totally, unrepentantly in love. She couldn't hide it if she tried.

I stood there with gaping mouth and wonderfilled eyes. In all my life, up to that point, I had never seen anything as beautiful, seductive, or erotic as this one girl swaying on the dance floor. There was nothing dirty or obscene about the scene or her swaying. She wasn't dressed like a tramp and she was alone on the dance floor. She may not have been a beauty that caused traffic jams but at that moment and in that place she was the prettiest and sexiest woman in the whole world. She was in love and satisfied being wrapped up in thoughts of her beau.

The world needs some simple, passionate love. Now, as a middle-aged man, I can say and understand that absolutely nothing in this world compares to the beauty of a woman in love.

   

Welcome!

 Welcome to my new(ish) Blog!

Looking back over this blog and all of it's posts I realized that I have had this blog since before 2011! Can you believe it? I have had this for over 13 years now!

I had a blog over at wordpress.com and I was going to reboot that one but they have managed to gum up the works so bad that I am not sure how to operate it. So, now that I am a point in my life where I want things to be simple I have decided to start using this one and see where it goes.

I say that I have decided but, for those that know me, I may change my mind here in a couple of weeks and find some other platform to use. But to tell the truth I kind of doubt there is any platform out there that will be as easy to use as this one.

Email

You see I want things to be so simple that all I have to do is send an email and have the platform do all the work. WordPress has borked their post by email function so bad that it is barely even usable.

Now as Google has a long history of fouling things up and deleting stuff who knows how long this platform will last.

Purpose

I believe that the (anti)social media platforms (you know the ones that I am thinking of) have turned the internet into a cesspool of rancor and divisiveness. I can hardly stand to participate in that world anymore.

On the internet of old everyone had a website of their own where they could publish whatever they wanted. It was democratic free speech at it's best. They commented and talked to one another via email and they followed each other via RSS. It was free, open, and democratic.

This blog is my small contribution to going back to those days.

Yes, I like Email

Email might just be the single greatest internet thing out there. I understand spam battles and how a lot of people spend their working lives reading email and don't really want to do it in their free time.

But, you know what, EVERYONE has email. By using email you are immediately in contact with over half of the world's population. It is simple to use, everyone has it, and it is federated.

I don't much care for text messages, Slack, or IRC, Whatsapp, or any other dang thing out there. Email is more than sufficient to do everything that I need.

It's Google, I know

Yes I know it's Google. I know that Google is part of the evil empire. I know, believe me. I have written 4000 word essays against Google. 

But...

I want things from here on in to be easy. I am too dang tired to work my butt off to make a blogpost or to set up an email server. I want the dang computers to work for me not me for them. 

Besides, Gmail has wonderful spam protection. It even questions if emails from my mother are spam.

And, because of the nature of this blog I doubt that a guy like me is any danger of the various nefarious activities of Google.

So there it is. Add me to your RSS feed reader and send me comments via email.

P.S.

I blocked comments on this blog for the simple reason that I don't want to give a platform to people who have an ax to grind with any little thing that is said. 

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