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I had spare PCBs left over from an earlier project. I got the Signature Plastics DSS Honeywell keycaps on sale from a vendor who was closing down. I made the plate design using online tools, then cut it and the bottom plate on my home laser. I designed the 3D-printed case to look like the original terminal keyboards that inspired the keycaps. I used black switches because a heavy linear feels right for something like this. Firmware is QMK/VIAL. More info here. There's much that could be better, but I'm pleased with how it came out.

Obviously an insanely imperfect analogy, but kind of fun to noodle on, after having the initial thought actually in the shower. At the simplest level, do you need to cram multiple epic adventure tales, liberally dosed with didactic religious content, into a single human brain? Meter and repetition and tropes become your best friend. Beyond that though, there are still ways that poetic techniques pack more meaning into fewer words than prose, which gets described as "poetic" when it effectively does the same things.

If you find the right turn of phrase, the combination of sound, connotation, and (hopefully) shared cultural touchstones (""Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"?) means you can describe an entire scene effectively without the multiple paragraphs otherwise needed to set out every morpheme of intended communication. Now, as pages of writing become cheaper and more accessible, they also take over the use cases where efficiency of communication was imposed rather than sought, but the toolbox remains there for those who simply like the exercise, or where there is still value, such as in verbal communication tied to a musical arrangement that needs to wrap things up before the audience loses interest. Also like compression, there are libraries that need to be installed and processing overhead involved to decompress the meaning that has been encoded into fewer words than strictly necessary.

Limitations to the analogy I'm already thinking of: Subtext exists regardless of how wordy you are. It might be a false dichotomy to think you can separate poetry from music at all.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/52235058

Keyboard from 2010 built by TG3 for a Siemens chemistry analyzer. I cleaned it up, added some weight to the bottom, and converted to USB. Cherry MX Black and PBT Dye-subbed DCS caps. Take a peek at what should be F9 and F10 (and are after conversion), as well as some of the keys above the numpad, which, tangentially, now has 5 keys that do absolutely nothing related to what's written on them.

Keyboard is one I first made a year or so ago, but recently upgraded a little. DIY with laser-cut Masonite plate, 3D printed sides, Outemu "mid height" Black switches, and JWA PBT low-profile keycaps with DIY legends. KMK firmware on an RP2040 dev board.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35772689

Putting the cart before the horse a bit here, as I haven’t been writing much lately, but I got this education market ARM Chrome tablet pretty cheap and followed some instructions to get it fully converted to Linux. ChromeOS is gone. It’s running Debian Trixie via the “velvetOS” project. I could’ve just used the Linux container in chrome OS, but everything has such high guardrails that even the most minor of customizations got very frustrating. Anyway, I specifically picked the 10E because it was known to at least mostly support Linux.

Some limitations, as the camera doesn’t work, I don’t think the external speakers work (could be specific to this particular boot image), and on full boot I have to manually rotate the screen to make sure the touchscreen coordinates stay aligned with the display. Otherwise it works surprisingly well.

Firefox is probably too slow on this old MT8183 with 4 GB of RAM, but it is much faster on the EMMC install compared to the USB, and it was not torture to go online and grab a couple of files directly. The word processor is Focuswriter with their green theme tweaked to amber and it runs perfectly. Suspend/resume is working well enough with auto-login that I can just leave Focuswriter up. Battery life is an open question, but before I wiped it, Chrome OS reported it had 96% battery health 🤷. With a mobile-grade SoC, and with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned off, I’m optimistic it won’t be too bad.

I also fixed up one of my DIY mechanical keyboards, and I think it’s a pretty nice little writing setup. Right now, I just have Wi-Fi turned off, but I could theoretically strip out the drivers altogether, or (if I remember correctly), even take the Wi-Fi module out of this one. I opened it briefly to short out the hardware write protection on the firmware, but forgot to look for the Wi-Fi card. As an aside, this was by far the easiest I could imagine a tablet being to service — zero glue connecting screen to case.

Putting the cart before the horse a bit here, as I haven’t been writing much lately, but I got this education market ARM Chrome tablet pretty cheap and followed some instructions to get it fully converted to Linux. ChromeOS is gone. It’s running Debian Trixie via the “velvetOS” project. I could’ve just used the Linux container in chrome OS, but everything has such high guardrails that even the most minor of customizations got very frustrating. Anyway, I specifically picked the 10E because it was known to at least mostly support Linux.

Some limitations, as the camera doesn’t work, I don’t think the external speakers work (could be specific to this particular boot image), and on full boot I have to manually rotate the screen to make sure the touchscreen coordinates stay aligned with the display. Otherwise it works surprisingly well.

Firefox is probably too slow on this old MT8183 with 4 GB of RAM, but it is much faster on the EMMC install compared to the USB, and it was not torture to go online and grab a couple of files directly. The word processor is Focuswriter with their green theme tweaked to amber and it runs perfectly. Suspend/resume is working well enough with auto-login that I can just leave Focuswriter up. Battery life is an open question, but before I wiped it, Chrome OS reported it had 96% battery health 🤷. With a mobile-grade SoC, and with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned off, I’m optimistic it won’t be too bad.

I also fixed up one of my DIY mechanical keyboards, and I think it’s a pretty nice little writing setup. Right now, I just have Wi-Fi turned off, but I could theoretically strip out the drivers altogether, or (if I remember correctly), even take the Wi-Fi module out of this one. I opened it briefly to short out the hardware write protection on the firmware, but forgot to look for the Wi-Fi card. As an aside, this was by far the easiest I could imagine a tablet being to service — zero glue connecting screen to case.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35448022

Belichick's pettiness reaches a new level.

TCU broke his last brain cell. Go Frogs.

My current project is a "Writer Deck," a low-powered computer that boots directly to a text editor or word processor (RPi Zero booting to Wordgrinder, btw). Being the weirdo that I am, I also want to use this as an opportunity to try a split layout again, and see if I can get myself used to something other than the "Advanced Hunt and Peck" that I do now and that tops out at 60 or maaaaybe 70 wpm. The deasign I've come up with is a split monoblock based heavily on a Corne, but with a very modest split angle and the thumb cluster (1) shoved a bit farther under the hands and (2) built around 1.25u keys because they can be adapted to switch-stabilized 2.25u or 2.75u (see the green outlines). The whole thing fits in the Pok3r/GH60 footprint.

So, ergo-mech people, is this a completely silly layout? I have always felt that "literally never moving your hands" isn't necessarily as ergonomic for the average typist as has been promoted, and I do like a good nav cluster, but I also wonder if I've compromised too much to hit that footprint, especially with moving the thumb cluster away from the center. The intended use case will be much more prose (journaling and other creative writing) than code, so I'm less concerned about optimizing for programming. I've never had major RSI issues myself, just needing to switch from a mouse to a trackball for a little bit every year or two.

NGL, Roll Call is often at least as good as Shorts these days.

Please pay no attention to the fact that Matt Mitchell confessed to being a Florida fan in an interview with PAWWWWLL. That is not relevant to my opinion.

It's only been a week, but I kind of hate them. Considering old-man bifocals now.

I am trying to put together my own take on a low-distraction writer deck platform. The brain will be an SBC, either a Pi Zero or a "Le Potato" Pi 3 alternative, partly because neither has built in wifi, but more because I already have both of them. I'm not quite to a point where I want it truly minimal, but I would like the word processor to be "the" app that it can run.

Software wise, I'm looking at two early leaders. MS Word 5.5 running on DOSBox, or Wordgrinder. That version of Word is oddly nice, but I'd prefer to have something run without needing the overhead of DOSBOX or an x86 emulator. With a tweak to the terminal's color palette, Wordgrinder could probably be good enough, and I thoroughly appreciate that it does in-line text styling, but it's still a bit more limited than I'd like. I am wondering though, if there isn't a solution that would run native on Linux in an ncurses terminal like Wordgrinder but have some of the QoL improvements something like that mature DOS version of Word would have (mouse support, spellcheck, easy color scheme changes, more comprehensive shortcuts).

I would love something like a rich-text editor that is simply markdown behind the scenes, possibly with a spellcheck engine. I don't need full WYSIWYG, but I do want that basic visual of formatted text without having to mentally parse the markdown code, so I'm not looking for a two-phase solution with VIM and LaTeX, a two-pane markdown editor with live preview, or a note-taking app. If I have to install a DE, I guess Focuswriter or AbiWord could work, but I'd like to avoid that if possible, especially if I go with the Zero.

More pics: https://imgur.com/a/epomaker-tide65-mods-cGhisks

I got this all-aluminum board very cheap, like under thirty bucks. It had some issues, but I've fixed most of them. Foremost was that Epomaker was hiding keys from me, and THAT WILL NOT STAND, lol. The PCB supports split-space, but the plate doesn't. My laser helped me fix that. It also had a garbage knob that doesn't go above the keys and had no knurling or texture to use it from the side. Fixed that. I also rarely use boards wireless, and then only because something temporary has made it convenient, so out with the battery and in with some steel wheel weights to replace the mass of the battery and then some. It also came with "Yet Another Light Linear" and for someone who types how I do, a light linear is more of a proximity detector than a keyboard switch, so I traded out the 40g-ish springs for 80g ones, making it equivalent to the heavier side of various companies' black switches. Finally, I traded out the gamer-font front-shine caps for some simple white-on-black. All in all, I am liking this board now, where immediately upon purchase I wondered if I should send it back despite the price.