Behind the Scenes of Issue 117

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 117

New shops, in the mailbox, developments, etc.

dovenyi
Published March 27, 2023

Creators! Feel free to tip me off about your keyboard related projects to bring them to 100K readers.

Hey y'all,

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Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #117), a weekly/fortnightly roundup of this DIY keyboard focused newsletter and blog from Tamas Dovenyi – that's me. If you are new to this, you can read how this started out and what this is all about nowadays. If you like what you see, subscribe to the newsletter (free) and donate some bucks to keep this otherwise free and ad-free project alive.

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Quick news

Elecrow's Nicole reached out to me. They have another promotion for mechanical keyboards featured on their front page right now – running from March 27 to April 27, with special offers on PCB assembly, 3D printing and laser cutting. Check out the details and feel free to get back to me with your cool projects!

In the mailbox

KBDcraft Adam R2, Memorex 88, Glove80, and a super secret (?) prebuilt split, yet unannounced.

I received a new R2 Adam kit from KBDcraft. Thanks a lot BoyU! This is the facelifted version in grey and with add-ons like pre-lubed stabs, wrist rests, sound pads, etc. Check out my related post here for all the new bells and whistles (and feel free to use the KBDNEWS discount code at KBDcraft for 5% off).

Pic: Adam R2 being built – showcasing the gaskets

Adam R2 being built – showcasing the gaskets

This weekend I had less time for the kit than I would have preferred, but I promise you I shall not rest until I hack this thing into my kids' Harry Potter castle. :D One thing I can tell you in advance: building a keyboard from bricks is a whole different experience. :D

Yeah, I know I came late to the party, but I'll try to write a detailed review on this kit. It's not perfect, especially the instuctions could be improved, but it's a lot of fun. Many of you should know this full well because seeing the sale numbers the kit is a huge success. Still, maybe some of you'll find my opinion useful.

Another parcel concealed a nice Memorex keyboard. I don't have much info on it but tried to make some photos while disassembling it. Check out my post here.

Pic: Memorex Model 88

Memorex Model 88

Other than these, a MoErgo Glove80 is on the way – thanks Stephen! And a new wireless split, in-house development of a well-known keyboard shop. I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it yet, but I can't wait to lay my hands on both of these keyboards.

Vendor database

New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors:

SoupKeys (Australia) added and John offered you a 5% discount (use the KBDNEWS coupon code).
And say hello to Vince who runs ZETTGEAR, a nice shop in Cambodia, offering you a 5% discount as well (except GB, audio, and already discounted items).

Meetup database

No new meetup announcement this week I'd know of, but as always, this meetup database is both a calendar and an archive so feel free to send me upcoming events or even ones from the recent past to make this collection as comprehensive as possible.

Donors

I guess it was the newsletter growing into paid territory and my call for support, but there were quite some new donors these days (in contrast to last week). In fact, your donations of the recent week made up almost half of the annual newsletter fee I paid. Thanks!

New donations came from Jaehee Moon, Gordon Giggs, Andrew Gates, Fernando Pazos Estévez, and Vince Satsong. Thanks everyone!
And there are some recurring donors: Schnoor Typography, and Chad is back after a short hiatus! Thanks a lot! I really appreciate these recurring donations which make the whole project more sustainable and donations predictable.

As I write it in my year-end summary, maintaining this site takes a lot of energy and time. (According to the Reddit Recap stats that's 100 hours per month on Reddit only.) If you'd like and can afford to help, here is the donation form.

And many thanks to everyone who supported this project in any of its development stages.

Developments

If I can believe the weekly summary of my CDN provider, page load times have decreased by 44% on average last week. Wtf? I have barely started to develop and set up the caching system, so this is mainly the result of caching the front page and the keyboard vendor database.

New developments:

Extending the cache system to boost performance: I'm working on the archive issue pages but it's harder than expected. Coming next: all posts. :) After I came up with this cache system out of necessity to be able to present the quite resource-hungry trending posts page, I'll keep on covering a much larger share of the many thousand pages worth of portfolio.
I discovered and fixed some age-old links, pointing e.g. to MailChimp on one older about page (now I understand why there were still new MC subscribers despite moving to BD almost a year ago)
Fixed an issue on the tags page, and at the tags section of every single post… (thanks for reporting the bug, Kyek!)

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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!

Cheers, Tamás

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Published on Mon 27th Mar 2023. Featured in KBD #117.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial