Behind the Scenes of Issue 121

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 121

Quick news, new shops, discounts, meetups, developments, etc.

dovenyi
Published May 4, 2023

Hey y'all,

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Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #121), a weekly 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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New achievement unlocked

This rabbit hole is full of surprises. After many milestones during my journey (e.g. first keyboard built, first donation, first keyboard offered for review, etc.) this week I've managed to unlock another achievement: first keyboard received out of nowhere while I was walking. :D I mean, I was innocently leaving my office without even thinking of keyboards, but somehow arrived home equipped with a new acquisition. :)

A kind elderly lady from our wider neighborhood stopped me on my ten-minute walk. We talked about health, general neighbor stuff, garages and attics full of useless junk, how to get rid of junk online, and a few minutes later she offered me an old Commodore C64C for free. ;) Still in its original packaging, in mint condition.

Quick news

Ergohaven moved their abroad operations to Kazakhstan so they are able to accept PayPal again.
Ryan reported that v1 of his rhytm game dubbed Typing Tempo was released on April 21. Players can now try out a free demo of the game, or purchase the full version, which includes over 30 songs and 100+ levels.
There were some notable projects without enough details for a post: quirk's Chaz (a Choc-spaced QAZ) and the Frigate by keyboarddweebs (also here).
And I stumbled upon an old article by Barry Sanders, American writer and academic: Bang the keys swiftly. A long essay on early typewriter evolution with lots of well and lesser known references.

It may be mere accident, but one moment in the history of mechanization in this country makes clear the great hold that death has on writing.

Vendor database with 500 shops!

Hey, ClackX was shop #500 added to the database. Well, some stores have been closed in the meantime, so there are only 493 active shops listed right now, but regardless, this is another milestone.

New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week:

Pragmatic Inc. (Taiwan) added.
Uniq Meck (Vietnam) added.
K33B (Croatia) is selling custom Dactyls, and Matija offered you a permanent 5% discount (code: KBDNEWS) – however, the 10% "REDDIT10" coupon code is still in effect for some days, so try that one first.
ClackX (Portugal) added.
Zap Cables (WI, US) is back in business.
MKUltra discount removed.

Meetup database

New entries to the meetup database:

Coffee & Keyboards meetup in Glastonbury, CT (July 8).
Chicago meetup added (July 29).
This year's NovelKeys meetup will be held in Morgantown, WV (Aug 19).
Learned about the Leipzig one only after the event. Anyway, there are galleries with some cool boards, e.g. the Zilpzalp I featured in this issue after spotting it in a photo.

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

New recurring donation set up by Ergohaven. Thanks Evgeny!
And many thanks to the regular donors plus everyone who supported this project in any of its development stages.

As I wrote 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.

Developments

New developments:

I started to put together a kbd.news dashboard. A new interface packed with useful info crammed into a singe HD screen – as an alternative to the home page which has to be responsive and mobile friendly. The dashboard will be for desktop folks like myself who aim for sheer info density. ;) Still work in progress, I have to implement a decent caching mechanism for this one.
Revamped the top bar with the discount suggestions. Instead of a static randomization of a hand-picked few, the occurrence of shops is more dynamic from now on, reflecting how many times visitors clicked individual shop links during the previous few days. So hopefully stores which are more interesting and useful for you will be overrepresented. And less useful links will slowly disappear automagically.

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

Cheers, Tamás

Published on Thu 4th May 2023. Featured in KBD #121.

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Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial