Dvorak Day 2009 & New Dvorak Comic!

Don't forget, this Thursday will be the second annual Dvorak Day! Dr. August Dvorak turned in his original patent for the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard Layout on May 21st, 1932, so now each year on May 21st, we try to get people to spread the word about Dvorak. Tell at least three of your friends about Dvorak on Thursday! You can also print out some of our simple flyers or print out your own copies of our zine, to give to people!

In other news, Alec has drawn another Dvorak comic, which was recently published in the Syncopated Comics Anthology. This comic includes the rest of our Dvorak research, which we could not fit into our original zine, and it revolves around Robert Parkinson's 1972 article about Dvorak. The book is available from Amazon.com and you should be able to order it from your local bookstore as well. It's full of other great non-fiction comics, so please check it out!

Know your limits...

Frunch, GCB and I have been talking recently, trying to figure out the future of The Dvorak Zine and DVzine.org. As we get older, we are all becoming very busy guys, and we need to keep the scope of the project small and manageable, instead of expanding it into too many new areas which we will not be able to maintain.
One area we found, where we can cut back, is the idea of translating the Dvorak Zine in a variety of languages. We had created a rough draft of a French Dvorak Zine (which we mentioned here on the blog) but after a lot of thinking and discussion, we have decided to cancel that project. It opens a door to more translations, which we do not have the time to create.
We are deeply honored that so many people across the world, want to spread the message of our zine, but we no longer think that a direct translation is the best way to do so. Our zine is very specifically about an American invention, and American inventors dealing with the English language in a very specific way.
We encourage others to create their OWN zine, dealing with the specific history of their language's version of the Dvorak layout. If anyone wants to use our zine as a reference about the history of the keyboard, or as a template of how to use comics to get across this information, that would be great! But we no longer wish to try and port our zine internationally.
We will of course continue to list links of international sites in the International Section of our site.
Our main goals, as they stand now, are: 1) to spread the word about Dvorak with our site and zine 2) to help new Dvorak typists with their transition into the world of better typing by answering their questions via email 3) to use this blog to point people to new Dvorak resources as they become available. Those are responsibilities we can handle!

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it!"

Well, the first Dvorak Day was a success! Many people wrote in to tell us about passing out flyers, or copies of the zine and hopefully we convinced a few new people to give Dvorak a try! We'll have more time to plan out NEXT year's Dvorak Day, so start thinking up some new ways to spread the word.
The title of this entry is a line from Han Solo, when everything is going wrong on his ship (the Millennium Falcon). This is a bit how we feel here at DVzine.org this summer! While there have not been many updates recently, we are still fighting the good fight! Recently Alec exhibited at the 2008 MoCCA Arts Fest where he passed out many copies of The Dvorak Zine and heard from people who had picked up the zine years ago and are now happily typing Dvorak! Alec is also working on a new 12-page Dvorak comic which will be in the next volume of Syncopated Comics. ALSO Gabe and Alec are preparing to be interviewed for an upcoming documentary about QWERTY.
This is all to say that there are still many updates in the works and we will get to them as soon as we can. We appreciate your continued patience. Soon enough we'll launch back into Hyperspace!