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authorFranck Cuny <franckcuny@gmail.com>2016-08-04 11:45:44 -0700
committerFranck Cuny <franckcuny@gmail.com>2016-08-04 11:45:44 -0700
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+I've nothing exciting to write about so I'll share a prank I did a few
+years ago (because I'm kinda proud of this one).
+
+To protect the innocent, I'll change all the names.
+
+I was working at a company named $LF. One of my colleague ($NG), always
+looks at his keyboard when he types. Some time he can type for a few
+minutes. Then he looks at his screen, only to realize that it's full of
+typo, or worse, that he had typed in the wrong window. This used to
+really bother me, because I know he's been typing for years, but I was
+not sure if he was looking at his keyboard because he needs to, or just
+because his head is too heavy to look at the screen.
+
+So one day, while everybody (except $GM) were away taking a break, I
+decided to conduct an experiment.
+
+The french keyboard uses the
+[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerty][AZERTY]] layout. $NG uses the
+[[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][best editor in the world]], where
+the /x/ key is /really/ important (try to do something without
+'Meta-x'). He also uses a laptop, connected to an external monitor and
+with an external keyboard. So I decided to swap the /x/ and the /w/
+letter on the external keyboard, by switching the caps. The actual /x/
+and /w/ were still at the same place, only the label on the key was
+switched.
+
+When he came back from the break, he starts typing as usual. Quickly he
+realized that something was wrong, and he did a lot of things to figure
+out what. Among them:
+
+- verify that the content of =xmodmaprc= was correct, and then tweak it
+- reinitialize the layout with =setxkbmap=
+- use a tool (maybe =showkey= ?) to see what was the actual code send
+ from the keyboard while hitting the key
+- probably recompiled a bunch of stuff
+- definitely upgraded his Linux distribution
+
+At this point, he understood that when hitting /x/, /w/ was received,
+and for /w/, /x/. He rebooted his laptop (because when in doubt, you
+should "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8][tried turning it
+off and on again]]"). But the problem was still there.
+
+If I remember correctly, that's when he decided to look at the laptop's
+keyboard and tried to use it, only to realize that it was working
+correctly! So he asked the ops guy, $GM, who was sitting next to me, if
+there was a spare keyboard somewhere. I slowly turned my head toward
+$GM, whispering 'noooo' to him, and he replied to $NG "nop, sorry, no
+spare keyboard, ".
+
+The other developers started to realize that something was wrong with
+$NG, but no one said or did anything yet. We were about 30 minutes in
+the experiment now.
+
+Because he still had work to do, he tried to cop with the problem, and
+every time he needed a /x/ or a /w/, he would type something, stop, look
+at the screen, sigh/grumble, and use the laptop's keyboard to fix all
+the /w/ and /x/. That was difficult to miss, and soon other people asked
+him what was wrong, and so that's when I revealed .
+
+When I explained what I did he was surprised, starred at the two
+keyboards for a while, and saw that, effectively, the keys were swapped!
+I'm pretty sure the rest of the team made fun of him but I don't really
+remember exactly how.
+
+I consider the experiment to be a success: I proved that he need to look
+at his keyboard to type, and I'm also confident that I can reproduce it
+with the same subject multiple time and obtain the same result again.