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Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 90

Complaints, shops closing, donors leaving, new vendors, new meetups, etc.

dovenyi
Published August 12, 2022
Creators! Feel free to tip me off about your keyboard related projects to bring them to 140K readers.

Hey y'all,

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Welcome back for another edition of Keyboard Builders' Digest (this time Issue #90), 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.

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Last Monday, for the first time in 20 months, there weren't enough posts to make up a full issue.

I decided to publish the next one once I have 10-12 entries. Friday would make more sense to post these newsletters anyway, so I may shift the cut-off day permanently. Or even better, I won't stick to a predefined day at all.

But the lack of content was only part of the reason for the short hiatus.

Honestly, I felt quite downbeat and unmotivated, which was triggered by seeing all the shops closing (see below), some donors leaving (below), renowned people in the scene moving on to new hobbies, etc. Also, I came across this video (intro) by the great Rick Beato at the worst time… (I'd played the guitar for 20 years before putting it down for good.)

It was pretty clear by last Friday that I won't be able to send out issue #90 at the usual time. First I desperately tried to get some content, but once I accepted the fact, I suddenly felt totally calm and relaxed. It was a disturbingly good feeling. I had probably the first "normal" weekend in 20 months without staying up late and worrying about the newsletter.

I kept thinking about this and if running this blog and putting the insane amount of time into it makes sense at all.

I better won't write down my final conclusion and the long rant I put on paper.

The point is, I'll take a look at the trends (donations, visitor stats, etc.) in a few weeks/months and choose the path accordingly.

If you'd like to help and keep this project going, I put together a page for supporters.

Quick news:

Vendor database

Some sad news but also some good ones:

  • lemonkeebs closed
  • 3Dkeebs closing
  • Zap Cables closing (last day: August 19) (source)
  • mecx labs's Jackie offered you a permanent 5% discount (KBDNEWS) and also a temporary 10% one (KBDNEWS10 - 8/10/22 ~ 8/16/22)
  • Contrakey added and Felipe offered you a 5% discount (KBDNEWS) – in stock items only.
  • Tomocaps added
  • Zepsody added
  • Capsmiths added
  • zuiver.one added

New meetups

Some recently added meetups:

Check the meetup database for upcoming events.

Donors

Another regular donor left. Hm. Two weeks, two donors.

Well, if you take a look at the list of donors (e.g. in the sidebar), it may be deceiving. I'm very grateful for the handful of people who support the blog regularly. However, many of them donate $1 monthly (about $0.6 after deducing the PayPal fee) so the long list may be misleading.

And regardless if the donor leaving is big or small, it still spoils my mood.

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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

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Published on Fri 12th Aug 2022. Featured in KBD #90.


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