Behind the Scenes of Issue 87

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 87

Quick news, Issue 86 follow-up, vendor database update, new supporters, etc.

dovenyi
Published July 18, 2022

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,

I was away for most of last week, got back from my trip on Friday, and tried to catch up with tasks on the weekend.

If you contacted me in the meantime and I haven't replied yet, feel free to send me your inquiry again.

On a similar note, there were some promising projects that haven't made it to this issue. Normally, I reach out to the poster/designer/etc. for more info. Since I was away from Internet most of last week, these projects may appear here a bit later.

---

Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #87), 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, you can subscribe to the newsletter (free) and donate some bucks to keep this otherwise free and ad-free project alive.

---

Quick news

On July 8, QwertyKey.ro opened a physical store/cafe in Baia Mare, Romania: "The first physical mechanical keyboard store in Eastern Europe." Some pics here.
Ads on Monkeytype (opt-out). Read Jack's announcement here. And consider supporting the developer if you use the app. I can very much relate to his problems – putting a lot of time and effort into a project and expecting some income from it. And sometimes dreaming of making a living out of it. ;)
CarlFabian updated and published the gurt-portable. I've updated the post with the link to the repo.

Issue 86 follow-up

Sorry, I successfully messed up the newsletter last Monday. :D

I sent it out before the actual issue was published on the site so the quickest readers/visitors couldn't see anything. I hope it wasn't too confusing.

Apparently, all this happened because of the odd timing. In my time zone (Central Europe) I publish new issues and send out these newsletters at about 14-15PM (morning hours in the US) but I knew I'll be driving the whole day so in a hassle and desperate effort, I published issue #86 the previous midnight.

The surprising result: All-time record in stats like pageviews, sessions, but also daily unique visitors…

Regardless, I'm not going to do this again. :D

Vendor database: New shops added

Cluster Cables, Gone Hacking Studio (thanks for the tip Sajith!) and Momokai added.

Meetup database

BREN Esports Keeb Meetup gallery added – thanks Mark.

New regular donor & supporter

Last week I got a new one-time supporter – thanks Per Weirauch. I really appreciate any help.

And Upgrade Keyboards became a regular donor. Woo-hoo – thanks Jeff!! This is my favorite form of support because it gives some predictability to the whole project.

So many thanks to all my regular donors!

Giveaway

I had no time for the raffle but the good news is that the prize pool is continuously growing. Some new offers have landed in the meantime and I contemplate on launching a dedicated page for the prizes. One more regular task, but it could encourage shops to offer more stuff by providing some extra exposure.

Anyways, feel free to comment anything you like to my Reddit and/or Twitter post. If you put your country at the end of the comment I'll know it was meant to be an entry to the giveaway.

---

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

Feel free to comment in this issue's r/mk thread, and as always: keep learning and building.

Cheers, Tamás

Do you like this post? Share, donate, subscribe, tip me off!

Published on Mon 18th Jul 2022. Featured in KBD #87.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial