Behind the Scenes of Issue 123

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 123

Quick news, in the mailbox, new shops, discounts, meetups, developments, etc.

dovenyi
Published May 24, 2023

Would you like to contribute to this year's MK Advent Calendar? Here are the guidelines for authors, along with last year's edition for reference.

Hey y'all,

Quick PSA: I'll be unavailable for a couple of days and won't be able to answer your emails, DMs, whatsoever. Thanks for you patience. Other than that, I have exciting news – which I'm not allowed to share yet. ;) Instead, here are some projects which didn't made it to this issue but are worth checking out anyway.

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Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #123), 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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Quick mentions

MTNU Pre-release update by Matt3o.
Flexible 3D-printed case by nodabod4sure. More on this project later.
Looking after the source of newsletter#123's image in the Keyboard art column (Parkinson, 1972, btw), I came across an interesting write-up by Vasili Shynkarenka. Unfortunately, with heavily agglutinating languages like my native Hungarian, full-blown steno or even the method described in this article titled How to type 3x faster is not really an option – which I really regret. However, you can give it a try if you are typing in English.
MUSE is a cyberdeck in a stylish retro case resembling some typewriters of the '70s.
JohnMLTX added a guitar pickup to his Model M. Follow-up post with sound test.

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever done and it makes me extraordinarily happy – John.

A beautiful statement many of us can relate to.

In the mailbox

Kemove K68SE & P10

Kemove sent me a K68SE, along with a nice P10 switch puller.

While I'm more into ergo splits, this board will be a cool toy for my daughters. I'll try to come up with a proper review, but very shortly: the K68SE is the little sister of the K68. A cheaper, non-wireless, non-hotswap version of the original K68 I wrote about earlier. Both are very massive and cool boards, especially for the price.

Pic:

It's absolutely ridiculous that you can have such a sturdy and well-built keyboard for about $30 (use the KBDNEWS coupon). The same sturdy housing, and the keycaps got even better imo.

In the box there was also a nice switch puller. I have to say I simply love it. Pulling out switches is a fun experience with the Kemove P10. Check out my P10 review here.

KAT Monochrome

Ordered on Sep 30, 2020, the KAT Monochrome set has arrived after just 965 days!! Holy cow.

No kidding, I'm very grateful for this long-forgotten group buy because it has prevented me from jumping into more GBs ever since (with the only exception of the MBK Legend Cherokee set which was simply too cool to not lay my hands on). As the months have passed, this KAT run made me much more conscious about the whole GB concept so much so that at one point I decided to not participate in any new group buys until I get this particular set.

Pic: KAT Monochrome – A Gentleman Set

KAT Monochrome – A Gentleman Set

Funnily enough, after 2.5 years, the market is full of readily available keycap sets, new profiles, and you may be into something completely different, e.g. MBK/CFX instead of KAT, which makes projects with long waiting times quite questionable…

Vendor database

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

Funkeys (South Korea) added.
KeyClicks (Canada) added.
Kemove's coupon code (KBDNEWS) is worth 30% now, and there's another one for their Amazon shop as well (KBDNEWS30).

And here are all the 100+ keyboard shops offering you various discounts with the KBDNEWS coupon code.

Meetup database

Yay, meetup #100 was added this week. Unfortunately, it was a post-event entry because I didn't know about the Seoul meetup earlier. Even worse, these Korean meetups are regular events, so it seems I keep missing them every couple of months.

~~So dear South Korean readers, please point me to the organizers or a relevant discord/sub/whatever so I can learn about them in advance.~~ Thanks pstlgrp_!

New entries and updates to the meetup database:

Seoul meetup (May 13).
Taipei Meetup (May 20) – missed it as well.
And there was a meetup flying under my radar too. In Toronto – without much info but a video.
The zFMeetUp 2023 meetup (Shanghai, May 20) was updated with a cool gallery. According to Carl, the organizers expected about 300 participants, but the headcount ended up at more than 2,000 people! Some of them came from abroad to check out the 20 brands/exhibitors and of course keyboards of fellow enthusiasts.

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

Hey, I asked you to support Ergogen's MrZealot last time but it seems you supported me instead. Thanks, but send some love (and possibly some bucks) to Dénes too.

New donations came from: Pierre, Charles Hamilton, and DROP is on board as well! Whoo-hoo! Thanks HoffmanMyster and Jyri for arranging this.
And many thanks to the regular donors plus everyone who supported this project in any of its development stages.

Maintaining this site takes much more energy and time than many of you'd expect, in fact, more than my fulltime job does. (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:

After some weeks or months I finally figured out that RSS subscribers can see my often half-baked, occasionally empty posts immediately, before it is shown on the front page… I'm not sure I want to do anything about it. That's my workflow. ;) Just check back after a few minutes if you see a blank page and there will be some content. Hopefully.
And I'm working on some new features and content these days. To be released later.

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

Until next time, Tamás

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Published on Wed 24th May 2023. Featured in KBD #123.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial