Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial
Last BTS of 2023
Quick news, in the mailbox, meetups, new vendors and discount codes!
Published December 24, 2023
Hey, happy holidays everyone!
Not enough content, time and energy for a proper issue, but I wanted to share some news anyway. This is just a quick roundup and PSA.
I may update this post later.
As many of you noticed, I've run out of articles for the advent calendar. Will post the remaining ones if I ever receive them. In fact, two of the missing ones is my fault: there's a WIP interview that I'll probably won't be able to finish before January, and the last one is my year-end write-up, to be published next week.
Otherwise, I'll keep bookmarking stuff, but won't be at home for most of the time, so don't expect too many posts.
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Stuff I thought is worth sharing:
- You loved Tim Van Damme's article who wrote about the design and manufacturing process of the Event Horizon keyboard. Here is a recent interview with him on Buttondown.
- As part of the calendar, Milktooth's Kevin compiled a list of seven key predictions for the mechanical keyboard market in 2024.
- Pseudoku, the self-proclaimed ergo madman, ranted about development of his ergo keycap profiles.
- Chris Trotter shared his detailed Fusion360 tutorial on how to design custom parametric keywells, used e.g. for his ArcBoard.
- Sha is a 50-key ortholinear keyboard with LED matrix – designed by skarrmann.
- A Dactyl Manuform with Cherry Ultra Low Profile switches: ULP Dactyl by jonbohz.
- Handwiring: John Fajardo released a case for a handwired numpad (github), Abtswiath for a 40% ortho. For Christmas, Joe Scotto decided to build his family members handwired boards: Scotto61
- Probably handwired too: ErgoBrick by BuzzL123 – with case file.
- Gamepads: GameKPD by SyracuseStan, and SideQuest by Dunwyvern (not available yet).
- New ScottoCaps (github) by Joe.
- Typing game: I don't really get space caret (github), a typing rhythm game by shoonie_, but maybe it's just me.
In the mailbox
The DR-70F has arrived. Thanks Daring Run team and also Divinikeys' Carl for arranging this.
Despite being an affordable kit (not available yet, but the wired version will start at $139), the DR-70F is probably my highest end board yet. So much attention to detail, I could write an article just about the carry case. :D Anyway, detailed review later – here are some photos in the meantime.
Being into splits and smaller orthos, I realized in panic that I don't even have a proper keycap set and enough switches of the same type for a relatively large board. :D Had to quickly order something, and Coffeekeys came to the rescue. Thanks Matteo.
Then I contacted some vendors asking for deskmats for a photoshoot, and a big shout out to Sage Crow Design, Zuiver.one, and 900mats (a shop which is not even open yet) for shipping me some cool mats for the photos. (On the way.)
A Weikav Record Alice kit is also in transit, with some Oil Kings and keycaps – thanks MechKeys! The CNC alu kit is available from $70 – what's happening here?!
Donations
- One recurring donor left, and a new one joined: Thanks Shnobble!
- And a new donation came from Ryan W.! Thanks everyone!
- As always, I'm grateful to everyone who helped this project thus far, especially to regular supporters.
For all the donation options check out the donation page!
Photo shoot
To reunite my collection, I hauled most of the keyboards to the attic for a year-end photo and learned that there's no way I can take a proper shot. Not enough light, not enough room, not enough ceiling height. ;)
This tight arrangement looks pretty lame, so I'll have to come up with something more ingenious.
The bottom row is fully cut off, and there are some boards which are not even there: my trusty Ergohaven Planeta, still unassembled Killer Whale, Bancouver40 and its ortho companions, some KBDcraft LEGO kits (as far as I can tell from the numbers, a lot of people will receive one of these for Christmas :D), early Keeb.io kits + typewriters…
Rafi switch
So I desoldered a switch of the Videoton keyboard to figure out something about this unbranded and undocumented rarity. The board uses the Rafi framework so the switch is probably Rafi too. I'll have to take it apart to figure out what's going on here, if it's magnetic or something more vanilla, but don't want to break it.
Meetup database
New additions:
- ClackyCon 2024, 2024 Apr. 6., The Netherlands.
- Iowa Keyboard Meetup, 2024 Apr. 6., Des Moines. (Thanks Jack!)
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.
Vendors & Discounts
New shops and updates to the database of keyboard vendors this week:
- Rationalkeys is a vendor located in Turkey. Ali offered you a 5% discount (coupon code: KBDNEWS). Thanks!
Developments
- Crazymitten's post was full of nested lists so it was time for the markdownization of lists in my basic DIY blog engine. I'm pretty sure I managed to break something on the way though. :D The logs are full of warnings but everything looks fine for me and I don't really know what's wrong.
- Also Daniel Beardsmore has apparently too much free time and noticed that I display the wrong IP addresses (probably ever since I use Cloudflare). Since I don't use IPs for anything, and probably left that in the footer after some debugging, I took that notice down. However, this lead me to some geolocation tests and now you can see your country (and not that of a nearby CF server) if I'm right – for no particular reason.
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Still with me?
How do celebrities stay cool? They have many fans.
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That's all for today. Thanks for checking by. As always: Keep learning and building!
Or let's have some fun outside!
Until next time (year?),
Tamás
Published on Sun 24th Dec 2023. Featured in KBD #148.
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