johndavidthacker

Weeks one and two of the Hundred Pushups program went well. Today I did 26 in a row. According to the chart, that means I should continue with column three, but I think it is a little unrealistic to think that I can do sets of 25, 17, 17, 15, and 25 pushups within 5 minutes when 26 pushups is the maximum I can do. So I am going to try column two. If I complete that successfully, maybe I’ll repeat this week with column three.

While studying German on LiveMocha.com, I have been stymied by my inability to type German characters like umlauts and the scharfes S. No longer! I can now type ä, ï, ö, ë and even ß!! It doesn’t end there. Typing Spanish? You’ll need é, ñ, ¡, and ¿. I can even type symbols like ©, ®, and €.

The secret is the “compose key.” On my computer, I have designated the right control key as the compose key. Now I hit R-CTRL then a two-letter combination to get my desired character. It is fairly intuitive: n + ~ = ñ
“compose” + s + s = ß
“compose” + u + ” = ü
“compose” + e + ’ = é
(Don’t actually type ”+”) A much longer list is available on Wikipedia: Compose Key.

This is much easier than Alt + Unicode code, which is impossible to remember and doesn’t seem to work in Linux anyway. As for designating a compose key on your computer, Windows users are on their own. In Linux/Gnome, select System/Preferences/Keyboard/Layout Options/Compose key position.

I’m very excited.

My goal of working up to 50 pushups stalled recently. I can do about 25 at one time. Then I came across a mention of hundredpushups.com on Lifehacker. This program promises to take us from zero to one hundred pushups in 6 weeks. Sounds ambitious, but if it is only half-true, I’ll reach my goal. So today I started Week One. Week One looks fairly easy, so I am doing the third column, the hardest. If anyone else cares to give it a try, let me know how it goes.