Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Behind the Scenes of Issue 125
New realities, running into r/mk refugees in unexpected places, Snow White's coffin, Zombie Kitchen, imgur fame, etc.
Published June 26, 2023
Hey y'all,
Adapting to the new realities of the post-reddit era is still going on, but I'm getting there. The most important thing: feel free to contact me if you have a cool project to share!
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Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #125), a weekly fortnightly regular irregular 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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Hit play for this week's unwanted song suggestion. Dream Theater's Hell's Kitchen performed by PSMS. Read on to see why.
Quick links
- Mett3o's MTNU intro. I may write a post about this later, but I haven't had time to process the rather long video yet.
Hey just a heads-up, tomorrow I'll host a stream about everything MTNU. I'll talk about ergonomics, materials, colors, sound and all – Matt3o.
- Pekaso and Biacco, hosts of Keyboard News, the Japanese "almost weekly" streaming show (kbdnews.jp), celebrated their 200th episode. Congrats! See my interview with Pekaso from last year.
- Cicada60 put up a website to host his script generating two-tone keycaps for 3D printing. (Original post.)
And I was sent some other projects which I may feature next week. Thanks to everyone who contacted me with tip-offs.
r/ergomk, vote, lemmy, etc.
So r/ErgoMechKeyboards, one of my go-to subs to harvest cool keyboard designs went read-only indefinitely in support of the reddit API strike. (r/mk is locked too, however, it hasn't been that useful of a source for some time, in particular if you wanted to sniff for novelties and open-source projects.)
OBOSOB asked the r/ergomk community about the future of the sub, and most members decided that it should stay restricted. There's a new sister community over at lemmy: https://lemmy.world/c/ergomechkeyboards.
There are some glitches, but there's already a good atmosphere:
Make sure you check by and say hi.
In the mailbox: Siemens T4000
After the KBDcraft Addams (there wasn't a newsletter since I got this from BoyU so check out this post or my previous editorial if you are interested in LEGO-compatible keyboard accessories or hear of this for the first time) I spotted, bought and finally received a mysterious Siemens keyboard.
I haven't bought anything, not even vintage stuff, for some time, but couldn't resist this beauty with all the toggle switches – and an actual key.
As it turned out, it's a Siemens T4000, part of the T4200 word-processor/teletex system, manufactured in the '80s.
Beside the post I also uploaded my Siemens photos to imgur, and the gallery was seen by 4K people. Given my previous posts there resulted in zero upvotes and comments, and maybe attracted about a dozen visitors, this popularity was a pleasant surprise. It turned out that many r/mk refugees hang out there. (Now that I check my posts in incognito mode, I can't even see them although they are all set to public. This may be one reason for the inactivity and lack of feedback…)
I made a mistake though. Wasn't aware that temporarily hiding the gallery resets the comments. So after swapping two photos, many comments were gone. That's why I can't properly reference the commenter who misread the legend "Kombizeichen" for "Zombie Kitchen", which is indeed a great name for a garage band. I couldn't get this out of my head and ended up binge listening Hell's Kitchen by DT.
Vendor database
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week:
- Many thanks to Vadym (Vkeycaps) who, apparently having too much free time, checked all the 500 vendor links in the database – and identified about 50 unreachable urls and abandoned shops. In fact, he wrote a script to do the job, so hopefully this checkup will be regular. Many of the dead links pointed to shops already marked as "closed" and were kept for historical reasons only. Regardless, still dozens of entries will have to be removed. Give me a few days for this.
Meetup database
No new entries and updates to the database of keyboard meetups this time, but feel free to send me upcoming events or even ones from the recent past to make this collection as comprehensive as possible.
Donors
- Alex Havermale donated to the cause after I featured his Theseus75 (you don't have to do this guys, but thanks anyway!), and Spencer Dabell joined the ranks of regular donors! Thank you!
- And it seems I lost two regular donors so the balance is in the negative.
- Many thanks to everyone who supported this project in any of its development stages.
Maintaining this site takes much more energy and time than my fulltime job does. It really does. (According to last year's Reddit Recap stats that was 100 hours per month on Reddit only.) If you'd like and can afford to help, here is the donation form.
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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!
Until next time, Tamás
Published on Mon 26th Jun 2023. Featured in KBD #125.
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