Exactly my use case too! Blender is unusable without. In case you'd not seen there's a cool iOS app which replicates Blender's keypad functions - great when you're on a Macbook or similar: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blender-keypad/id430784289?m...

You can get a lot of it from the Pie Menus addon. Holding q pops up a menu, you push the cursor slightly toward the one you want and release the key:

http://i.imgur.com/zDdbrER.png

It's what I use on my laptop, but I still prefer the keypad when I can have a full keyboard.