No idea if this has been covered before, but here it is anyway. The fruits of my Sunday Afternoon.

I just tried out using my gamepad with Anki for fun, and actually it works surprisingly well. I have an old Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2, and out of boredom I decided to see if the Logitech Profiler software would work with Anki. (Using Win7-64bit.)

Lo and behold, it does. Surprisingly well, in fact.

I remapped keystrokes to the numbered keys on the controller (conveniently numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4), and I also mapped the spacebar to the 7 and 8 buttons (L2 and R2 if you're imagining using the controller on a PS2.) I even mapped the sync function to button 9.

It makes reviews go a lot faster, because all of the keystrokes are isolated on my right hand. That means no reaching for the keyboard at all, and no reaching for a mouse. Hand positions feel more natural, and I can get more comfortable when I review. I can just lean back in my chair, stare at the screen like a veg, and play this new "Anki" game.

No idea how it would work with other controllers, but there you go. You can just mash the 7 or 8 button (or whatever you want to map) as if it's the spacebar, and it will function just like it, so reviews go by pretty quickly.

I thought about using Xpadder. But my hand is usually right on the space bar, so I figured why go even bother.

That is an excellent idea. I think I'll try my hand at writing a Anki plugin that provides built in support

Of course this won't work as well if you're planning to do production cards.

If you use voice recognition, you wouldn't even have to use 1 hand

For production cards, it depends on how you handle them. If you still write everything out, then yes, this won't help you as much. But if you're like me, and to the point where you just trace only the kanji you're trying to produce in the air with your finger, then it works just fine.

Geez, just convert your remote, hack a beer holder onto it, and fasten it to the arm of your lazy boy, why don't ya. ;p

Personally while I can envision plenty of modes where incorporating muscle memory is unnecessary -- knowing most of the kanji in a session, being in a different mood, being in a different location--I'll never 'get to the point' of just using my finger (i.e. it's not a gradient from utensil to finger to visualization) -- either I'm using muscle memory for kanji I don't know well or I'm not and just sticking with the abstract visualization/etc. I've learned that the 'finger' thing doesn't work for me, it has to be a gesture related to how I learned the kanji or perhaps how I learned the strokes making up the kanji--i.e. w/ stylus or pencil.

Interesting. I'm different. For me, when I just try to visualize without doing anything else, it doesn't work as well as forcing myself to somehow physically produce the kanji.

So it's just a physical manifestation of a visualization. I suppose you could pretend to hold a pencil. That might work. Might not. The finger works well enough for me. Then again, I've been doing it this way for a few years now, so I'm used to it.

I started doing it that way when I got sick of writing it all out and wasting paper, but I still wanted a way to check to see if I could produce correct output. Hence giving my flashcards 'the finger.'

I personally still do writing for my Heisig deck; not for vocab though, it would take forever to get through the 700 or so daily reviews I have.

Anyway, I've started an Anki plugin for this, will probably be done in a week or two. I'm using the pygame library for joystick input, so it will be nice and cross platform compatible

Good, because Logitech's Profiler is kinda buggy sometimes. I had to dump the profile to play a game, and then redo it to use Anki. Not a huge deal, but slightly annoying.

I also thought about other ways to do my Anki reviews. My main concern was to avoid RSI (I did not like fixing my hand above the keyboard). When I was in the PC shop looking for a Powerpoint Remote (which I did not find), I came across a USB-numeric keypad, like this one: http://www.datanet-systems.net/resources...d-unit.jpg

Works like a charm for me.

kame3 Wrote:I also thought about other ways to do my Anki reviews. My main concern was to avoid RSI (I did not like fixing my hand above the keyboard).

I have a kensington expert mouse (despite the name, it's a huge trackball), lean back in the chair and use my feet :-)