Sunday, April 03, 2011

Out of 'Practice'

While working on a project that I am handling after a long time today, I realised that I have become tremendously slow at AutoCAD, and that I am slowly starting to just not like doing all this. I can think designs, sketch, but drafting on CAD is like hell. I just wondered only if I had an assistant, I could just sketch and tell someone to make the changes on the computer. Gone are the days when I would be on toes and do the finer changes jhatpat! I also have forgotten so much on Sketchup!! And I am feeling terrible about it!
Atleast practice keeps you up with your skill-speed, especially when you are skilled! But on the other hand, my typing speed has increased tremendously. I learnt typing from a typing institute after my 10th standard.

Typewriter fascinated me, more so, the sound and the tension on the keys. That's what I joined the class for. To feel the typewriter. I never learnt typing the right way. The right way is to look at the paper (where you read from to type in) and the fingers on the keys. I always kept looking at the keys while typing. After all, i wanted to see the mechanism of each printed word. Something going up when i pressed the key down - hitting the black ribbon and printing the letter - it had so much of character! The black south indian lady who was the supervisor would keep telling me: "idhar nahi dekhneka" - after she went, i again gazed at the lovely machine. Due to this, I never learnt the right way to type. As years passed by, I have learnt to correctly look in the paper and type - perhaps computer as a machine is not as fascinating as the typewriter. The keyboard is a softer interface though; as compared to the typewriter. It's too passive. I liked the older keyboards which made noise (tik tik tik), the sound made you realize how well you typed. Now they have all added these silencing devices to them, so you dont hear anything.

But well, AutoCAD has gone 6 years forward from where I started and it has become as complicated or organized as MS Office 2007. Sometimes I feel scared if I will be left behind. But may be this is a question of what I consciously want to prioritize...

1 comment:

Manish Mishra said...

have you seen movie kings speech...
Relate his context with yours?
A king having a voice but not really a useful one...
And a talented architect having ideas but not able to manifest em....