Issue 198 / Week 35 / 2025

Weekly typing practice: ZippyWords is a burst typing trainer by FroyoAbject. Get one word at a time, prep, then hit it as fast as you can. Boost your typing speed, accuracy, and rhythm with quick practice sessions. Actually, I like this a lot.

Shift strategies. A thread with lots of good advice. I'm still struggling with a proper Shift implementation though… :)

Simon's Afterburner layout features a magic key (plus skip magic key) to drastically reduce samefinger keypresses.

Fresh photos for the exploding keyboards post. Swollen battery of a Keychron K2 – used in wireless mode(!) for about 3 years. Epicguru wrote up a guide for you about how to replace the battery.

These horizontal roller encoders make so much more sense than the classic vertical knob. Simple 75 by Astro. Now $20 off with the KBDNEWS coupon code.

Weekly wood: NULL65 by Null Design Co.

An S112B and handwired RC128bm – daily drivers of piercejennkins.

JokerPad by Rain2. (I can't embed the video, check it out in the original post.)

I'm not a big fan of gamer caps with the characteristic translucent legends, but I almost like this font featured on the Neo65 Sonic He+. Much better.

Kevin54. A handwired monoblock by SfBattleBeagle – in a nice 3D-printed case.

A Boardwalk tribute by RadioactiveHop.

Sneakbox's mujimanic is working on some keycaps with strange sizes nobody asked for.

Keyformers. An ergo split made from a dissected standard keyboard. We've already seen something similar, but this one has thumb buttons on the opposit side as well.

Bull Questar 200. Found by knesha.

Hehe. A Cherry catalogue and coupon for a switch sample from 1976 – pre-MX times. Shared by TheAwesomeTrain.

Retro-Revival-EU went to a computer museum and shares some photos.

1977 Key Tronic keyboard with 2u numpad keys. Photos from ebay, shared by Ready_Independent_55.

Jeez. Splitty Kitty [GB] is a 6kg(!) aluminum split. Eehh, ookaay… (the KBDNEWS coupon code should work and it's worth a 7% discount if you have a penchant for unreasonably heavy cats)

Marble 60. A 60% keyboard sculpted from real marble. An IC by ElecFox.

Viking Antiques Thor Copper metal keycap set by Awekeys.

Apiaster build by CaptLynx.

Stickerbombed mouse between Velvet halves. By IntelligentTruth96. It's always nice to see kbd.news referenced. ;)

This is the bottom of a BGKeeb, turned into MX wireless by KaoticKalukumara. (Original artwork: Gustave Doré illustrations from Divine Comedia.)

PiXeL161616 posted a nature slideshow for ZMK and nice!view. With AI art. Then u/pgetreuer and u/bin_chicken_overlord pointed out that something similar exists with human-made pixel art.