Fun Tool: Dasher

I came across a program called dasher that I thought might have some application for RSI. Though it turned out to be impractical, it is lots of fun to play with.

Dasher is designed to help people who cannot enter text into a computer with a keyboard but who can use a pointing device. Dasher works by streaming letters across the screen and you use the mouse to ‘catch’ the letters you want to type. The more likely a letter is to be next based on what you have already typed, the larger it will appear on the screen. You can feed dasher a sample of your writing so it will guess better the letter and word frequency particular to the way you write.

After using it for a little while, it gets creepy, especially if you train it on your writing. It anticipates what you want to type before you actually type it, leaving you questioning the nature of your own free will.

While I can’t recommend it for daily use, it has found one particular specialist job in my flat. On the weekends I tend to wake up earlier than my girlfriend. She gets grumpy if I leave the bed too early so I work next to her while she gradually wakes up. Inevitably, she wraps herself around one of my arms, rendering it useless. If I need to get some typing done and my one-handed position is just too impractical, I’ll fire up dasher and let the letters fly across the screen.

Download dasher here.