Is that texture on the case from your build plate or the fancy new topside fuzzy skin algorithms?

Hi. I have largely settled in on a pattern for making my boards, which I admit will always reveal their DIY nature when you look close, and sometimes even from afar, LOL!

1. Design layout at https://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/
2. Import that information into the swillkb or ai03 plate generators
3. Edit the outside profile of the plate manually in 2D CAD software, and usually use that to also make a baseplate
4. Only done this once, as I usually hand-wire, but here is where I’d design the PCB and send it off for manufacturing, at least in the before-times when this wasn’t prohibitively expensive.
5. Import the plate into 3D CAD software and design a case around it. This is still a time-consuming undertaking for me, so a couple of times I’ve skipped it and just used standoffs to separate the switches and circuitry from the base plate.
6. 3D print the case and any other bits that need it, like feet or blockers or MCU shells.
7. Laser cut the plates from something that my cheap Diode engraver can get through, generally “Masonite” hardboard.
8. Install switches into the plate and solder it up; for handwires this takes an awhile.
9. Install and edit the firmware. So far, I’ve always used KMK, but at some point I’d like to move on to the more common QMK.
10. Assemble the rest of the keyboard.

I haven’t sold any DIY boards yet, but for the right customer, someone who understands the aesthetic limitations but still wants to pay too much for my time and needs something unique, I’d certainly consider it. I’m under no illusions that this is a large market, LOL.

The biggest issue is that the sockets were never really designed to be for enthusiasts changing switches all the time. They were designed for the factories to have multiple versions to sell with minimal retooling. If you are extremely diligent with removing the solder from the legs of the switches and keeping them straight, then yes, there’s nothing to prevent this from working. However, a little blob here and there will make it much more likely that you tear a pad when inserting the switch into the GMMK, and also more likely that the socket will be slightly deformed and never work quite right with any other switch.

WASD is dead. ZSA and Nuphy seem to be fine.

This one has Box Navy switches.

I said improving, not reducing! 🤣

LOL, it works for me, but undoubtedly part of it that I’m not a proper touch typist at all.

A major design element here is that no key is more than 1.75 “units”, meaning nothing needs stabilizer hardware. It’s a cheat to improving sound and definitely one for easing construction on my very cheap laser cutter (really more of an engraver, but it can get through some things). The open spaces are also meant to evoke the “HHKB” and its retro inspirations like the original Macintosh keyboard, and honestly it hasn’t been a problem. I have four “spacebars” of 1.25 u each, but two of them do something else when held down (Fn for one, Alt for the other).

The 3D-printed case could stand a little refinement, and if it ever actually cracks I’ll replace it, but so far it’s hanging in there, and I really like the typing feel.

Apart from the board itself, how do you like the G20 caps? I have a hard time imagining how laptop-flat with full travel would feel.

There’s always the Boston…

So, just in the past year or two they’ve finally released switches from new molds (“MX2A”) that are quite well regarded, but not special enough to make up for what must be very high operating costs. Unlike GMK, they squandered an early lead in the enthusiast space and never got it back. They just took much, much too long to relaize that the viable markets for mech boards are gamers and people with varying degrees of enthusiasm for the hardware itself, not just an aging cohort of office workers who refuse to put up with membranes.

QK100 if you can figure out how to get one without getting Trumped in the ass by tariffs.

The number is not precise, but yeah kinda. Usually they’re missing about 4-6 keys, and you’ll also hear “96%” thrown around. There’s a subset of them called the “1800” style after a board from the late 80s that pioneered the idea.

What they all share is retaining the numpad and almost all the other keys, but resizing and shuffling them around a bit so they fit in a narrower width, originally a drawer in a server rack.

I do sometimes think there is a bit of hand-wringing that happens where people glom onto the most visible sign of changing times and blame it for things that probably aren’t as different as the adults think, but by the same token most schools in richer countries have screens everywhere with school-related interconnectivity and even tools that are not unlike social media.

I see very little downside here, even if it may not result in some magic rebirth of older forms of social interaction. It seems like the major benefit from the French pilot programs was “improved atmosphere,” in which case it’s still better than nothing. Having a period when kids are learning to deal with small-group dynamics is not a bad thing, and neither is taking “dealing with phone bullshit” off the teachers’ plates.

I mean… fine? France always does things kind of top-down and there’s certainly no reason you have to have your phone readily available, and plenty of evidence it’s good to be away from it.

It’s not like they need to get to their phones to tell their parents there’s an active shooter on campus. 😐

I very recently made a shift similar to yours, though I don’t play anything MMO. I’ve been playing Minecraft (finally moved to Java) and Starfield, and both work perfectly well on Bazzite Desktop. I keep Windows for my CAD app and some other little garbage apps.

Between Steam and Heroic, most Windows games seem to install fine, though I haven’t dived into many of them really. Because of Valve funding Proton development, gaming has gone from a huge liability for Linux to a significant strength.

I get it. Personally, I can’t do ISO-style left-shift where it’s smaller and has another key between it and the nearest letter. I don’t use Right shift much, and when I do I land on it’s left side, so that wasn’t an issue, and it didn’t take me long to get used to curling my thumb a bit more on the numpad. Layouts that compress things a bit but retain a numpad are my sweet spot.

Agreed. Can we have this article taken off the internet? I don’t want it accessible from any of my connections.

It never was, but unlike the current batch of LLM assistants that are now dominating the tops of “search” results, it never claimed to be. It was more, “here’s what triggered our algorithm as “relevant.” Figure out your life, human.”

Now, instead, you have a paragraph of natural text that will literally tell you all about cities that don’t exist and confidently assert that bestiality is celebrated in Washington DC because someone wrote popular werewolf slash fanfic set in Washington state. Teach the LLMs some fucking equivocation and this problem is immediately reduced, but then it makes it obvious that these things aren’t Majel Barrett in Star Trek and they’ve been pushed out much too quickly.

They literally said that they don’t want to tell, because it will lead to users gaming the system. 😒

…Revolt is the FOSS alternate for discord right?

Yes, or for a more limited feature set, Matrix.

I recently had a dream that involved a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have never been to Green Bay Wisconsin. I know it as a rather small city that is the home to the Green Bay Packers, an administratively anachronistic NFL team that draws a large plurality of its fan base from the greater Milwaukee area. Off the top of my head, I don’t know if Green Bay has “suburbs” in the usual American sense at all.

I googled the name of this completely nonexistent community, along with the words “Green Bay,” and the AI very confidently hallucinated it into existence, describing it as a lovely shopping and residential area just over the bridge of the same name.