Ben's Blog

Keyboard speed test results
KeyboardTrialWords per MinuteErrors per MinuteAdjusted Words per Minute
Apple197295
Apple299198
Apple388583
Apple41033100
Apple592290
AppleAggregate95.8 +/- 2.62.6 +/- 0.793.2 +/- 3.1
Mechanical187483
Mechanical290585
Mechanical387384
Mechanical489188
Mechanical590387
MechanicalAggregate88.6 +/- 0.73.2 +/- 0.785.4 +/- 0.9
Ergonomic195194
Ergonomic280179
Ergonomic392389
Ergonomic485382
Ergonomic51010101
ErgonomicAggregate90.6 +/- 3.71.6 +/- 0.689.0 +/- 4.0

Here are some quotes that I have found interesting.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Training is nothing, will is everything - the will to act.
Batman Begins

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
Philip Larkin, Aubade

In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains, On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.
J. Robert Oppenheimer

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


I’ve been using this photo as my Github profile pic for a while now. It’s actually a photo of an exhibit I saw at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. sometime in college. I’m not sure if the artist intended it as such, but it stuck with me as the simplest expression of my philosophy of life - that humans can find meaning, belief and happiness in the depths of absurdism by making a choice to do so.