Keyyyyyyyys!
I have a friend, Josh. Josh is a literal superhero. He’s a boring, minivan-driving programmer by day, paramedic and firefighter by night. That’s already a much more plausible superhero premise than Batman (a billionaire who spends his time fighting street-level crime? Really, Bruce? Is that the best use of your time and billions?).
Josh showed me some notes he had taken while he was paramedicking his paramedic things. I say “showed”, it was more “asked me if I could make out what the hell the notes said”.
I could not.
The conversation then went like this:
- Why don't you type on a computer?
- A computer is generally hard to set up in the field, and you need to keep eye contact with the patient, so handwriting is more convenient.
- Why not have a special keyboard?
- I don't think that's very con
- It can be wireless, and one-handed!
- Yeah but still, how am
- It can have five keys, one for each finger, and you can chord combinations to type!
- That sounds slow and
- JOSH THIS IS HAPPENING STOP FIGHTING IT
After his outpour of encouragement, I was motivated to create a solution, no matter how hard. I had a rough idea in my mind, but it was going to be tough oh who am I kidding, it’s five buttons connected to a microcontroller, it would take two minutes.
It took four hours. Close enough.