Things that make us go... hmmm šŸ¤”

Ha maybe that just means Iā€™ve had my phone for a very long time >.>

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Yeah, I just tried on my iphone and itā€™s the more recent, Drop logo

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Saw this a couple of days ago. There are still some open questions (not the least of which: why was an IC posted if the GB is supposed to be a week later). But I really liked how WS Cafe turned out: the novelty drawings were a bit thicker and less refined than GMK, but the set color was spot on. Iā€™ll probably wait for extras unless I can see some comparison photos vs GMK, Kat, SA, etc. before the end of the GB.

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Heh, the little ā€œmilkingā€ comic made me wonder which other colorways have been produced a bunch of different waysā€¦ Dolch comes to mind.

Not an IC nor GB, itā€™s manufacturers using GH and r/mk as their free marketing / advertising channel, IMO.

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He has offered Mizu all types of ways: aluminum mizu, retro pbt mizu, now regular pbt mizuā€¦ yet everyone just wanted GMK Mizu :man_shrugging:

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In that case, they should call it an ā€œIGā€, ā€œinterest generatorā€, which is also apt for the other thing known as IG.

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Yeah I donā€™t get it either, nobody asked for any of that but everyone interested definitely asked for another round of GMK Mizu.

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Which is evident by the fact that the resale prices for Mizu are still incredibly high.

My tin foil hat theory is that Rensuya must be sitting on piles of Mizu as an investment and is purposefully trying to their resale value high :joy:

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I got a good laugh out of that, but it is definitely not out of the realm of possibilities! :rofl:

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Forget about cash, the future is nearā€¦ Geeks using GMK keycap sets as currency.

Better jump on some leftovers on MyLeftovers ā€“ Oblotzky Industries

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Posted by Parker Lyman on CK Discord. Looking sharp so far.

CRP (Left) PBS (Center) GMK (Right)

MTNU (Left) PBS (Right)

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Iā€™m so excited for PBS!

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Decided to do a clean up & rearrangement of how I have my keycaps, KB parts, & KBs not on display stored. Took me the better part of yesterday & a good part of today to accomplish itā€¦ :laughing:

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Be cautious. Every time I arrange things and make space, I feel the overwhelming joy of being clutter freeā€¦ and then realize I have a bit more room than I thought so I might as well buy a few keyboards Iā€™ve been looking at.

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So true! Iā€™d lying if I said I wasnā€™t doing that already! :rofl: Literally just had a Neo Ergo all picked out & in my cart at Divinikey, but am trying to be a little more financially responsible right now so I managed to not buy it. :laughing:

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Iā€™ve specā€™ed out a Neo Ergo no less than four times already. Trying to resistā€¦

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Probably not really fair to put this here, since a $25 AliExpress listing for a boardā€™s worth of random SA keycaps that literally talks about the trash bags theyā€™re pulled from can hardly be said to be trying to trick anybody, but I did learn a few things:

  1. They are probably a PBT blend, and thickness ranges from 1.1mm on the BAE(!) to a sturdy 1.6mm on a couple of the spacebars, but most keys are falling in the 1.3mm range.
  2. Speaking of the BAE, I had wondered how those beasts were likely to be stabilized, and I would not have guessed that the top have would just a single lengthy stem meant to go through, maybe a dedicated hole in the plate. Interesting.
  3. Kitting is surprisingly fair and usable, especially given the 112343 row layout.
  4. That said, all the 1.25u are R3, so no proper R4 ISO shift. The only short spaces (convex) are 3u.
  5. There is a lot of gray, to be sure, but thereā€™s enough colors to play around with that Iā€™m not disappointed.
  6. The very obviously R1 backspace cap is labeled as an R2.

All in all, thereā€™s enough here that I think Iā€™ll actually try to arrange them in a fun way and laser some legends onto them to do a build or to re-do the caps on some previous one. I reckon the 6u spacebar will be my test piece, and Iā€™ll watch it like a hawk with the respirator on in case Iā€™m wrong about the plastic composition. I would like to come up with something other than an engineersā€™ monoline font (no offense to to Gorton Modified), but then again Iā€™m not sure what else would look right with the SA profile.

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Funnily enough I just switched permanently to an X-Bows Knight recently!

I will admit that X-Bows keyboards do have a real what-the-fuck factor when you first look at them. They almost look frightening because of how they follow the way your fingers would lay out if you spread them flat, so they have an uncanny valley organic appearance that almost has a gross-out factor. However, once I got used to the unorthodox layout, I started to think it looked extremely cool to be honest; and as far as its actual purpose (ergonomics) itā€™s actually extremely great.

My review of the X-Bows/rant about ergomech keebs

I tried a Keebio Iris Rev 8 which is pretty representative of the popular trends in ergomech keyboard design for a few days, and the difference was night and day (for me personally).

The biggest difference is the fact that the X-Bows has per-finger splay in addition to the typical column staggering, and in general the keyboard layout is a lot more spacious ā€” this meant that putting my hands on it and using it felt like a comfortable luxurious activity, like gripping something with both hands and working with it, instead of the cramped experience of the Iris, which made me feel like I was twisting my hands into claws the entire time I was typing on it. It also makes very clever use of variable key cap sizes and shapes in addition to the column stagger to make it easier to hit keys that are far away from the home row or that you might otherwise have to stretch your fingers to reach.

In addition, the fused thumb cluster means that it effectively has 12 thump keys, as opposed to the absolute maximum on most ergomech boards, which is 10 ā€” and usually a few of those 10 are unreachable by the thumbs, whereas the X-Bows makes such keys reachable with the index fingers. This means that you can do far more with your thumbs and index fingers as opposed to your pinkies than even most thumb heavy boards could!

Speaking of key count, it has 86 keys, which is just so much better for me than the limited keys of most ergomech boards, where it seems fashionable to aim for as few keys as possible. More keys means I can have all of my symbols and everything on one layer, but most importantly, it means that I can have plenty of duplicate modifier keys, which the cramped keyboard layouts of most ergomech boards Cans accommodate, especially when you consider the fact that they need layer switching keys in addition to traditional modifiers, unlike the X-Bows. Which means two really important things:

  1. With duplicate modifier keys, I can use whichever key/finger is most pleasant or ergonomic for a specific key binding (this is aided even more by the fused thumb cluster, meaning some buttons can be hit with either thumb or either index finger!)
  2. While Iā€™m still adapting to the layout, all the keys will be in the places I expect them as well as the newer, more ergonomic places. And then once I get used to the keyboard, I can remap those extra keys to more cool things.

I understand that you can regain those extra keys with layers, but I donā€™t want to have to remember multiple entire key layouts and what layer Iā€™m on, and/or perform even more key chords than I absolutely have to in order to regain basic keys, when a big part of my software choices (emacs with evil mode and god mode) is avoiding key chords because of how much they hurt my tendonitis. People will legitimately turn the experience of using basic keys like symbols on your keyboard into an experience similar to vanilla emacs key bindings and call it healthier lol. And you might wonder why I care about having stuff like page up and page down and home and end and delete and insert on my keyboard if Iā€™m using a powerful text editor most of the day. But the thing is that in some applications like Slack or whatever, Iā€™ll get stuck in a waste land without those editing key bindings and then having dedicated keys for these things can be very helpful.

The major downside of the X-Bows is that it is only a split layout, not fully split, so it can eliminate most ulnar deviation, but not all of it. The thing is, I like it so much better than basically all available split ergonomic mechanical keyboards for the reasons above that Iā€™m willing to give that up. Otherwise, Iā€™d be letting perfect get in the way of good enough. Especially since the X-Bowsā€™s effective split can be sort of adjusted by changing how far away it is from you.

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Many moons ago, when I was but a wee little geek, my roommate had an NEC desktop with a Microsoft ergo keyboard (circa 1997). It was the only computer I had access to at the time so I was ā€œforcedā€ to use the keyboard. I could not adjust and quickly decided the style was not for me. However, the older I get and the worse my carpal tunnel becomes (especially in the right hand), I realize that I may need to try this format again. Thanks for the review, it is an interesting looking board!

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