deskthority

Different folks, different strokes
That's why we're all here in the first place, right?

Muirium wrote: Caps Lock is a mod. It doesn't type anything. And every same person has it mapped to Control or Fn anyway.

Eyup, got it in one.

I originally did it as an experiment, then turned out liking it.
It might just be me getting used to it, but i can often just brush a finger against a red modifier, whereas having them all tactile requires a more deliberate keypress.

Maybe i'm just a sloppy typist...

Just a lowly, humble modded Quick Fire TK.
Finished modding it (for now), thought i'd post some shots...

(NB: all of the above pulled out of my arse - meaning based purely on personal opinions and with 0 citations.)

You explicitly stated that efficiency doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Both speed and comfort are only consequences of efficiency though.

No, they are not. They can affect one another, but they are not coupled by default.
They do not map 1:1.

Speed/accuracy is easy to measure ...

davkol wrote: If a layout promotes awkward motions or overloads certain fingers, it can be neither very comfortable, nor particularly fast as a result.

The bold part is relevant.
Speed is not.
That was my point.

Leaving the grumpy side, there is one aspect I always think is completely under-estimated when weighing pros and cons of diverse layouts: the fact that almost nobody will type in a continuous flow for even minutes on end.

This is why i could never understand layout nazis (pardon my... french ...

You could add an egg incubator in front of the keyboard too!
Talk about a spacesaver!

What about IR-reactive phosphors and an IR emitter mounted on top of the monitor (think ThinkLight, just not visible)?

Not feasible. IR photons don't have enough energy to excite most (if not all) paints to emit visible light.
You could use "blacklight", i.e. deep violet illumination + usual ...

One thing i forgot to mention (that's crucial) is - good tweezers. Can't do a thing without them.

With good ones (angled, sharp, with properly closing jaws, so not bent, dulled or otherwise deformed) it's a piece of cake - you keep the part in place with them, you get a little bit of solder on the ...

Random examples.
Hand soldered, worked on first try:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1702513/Xproto.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1702513/Chrono_shield.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1702513/Chronoduino%20(1).jpg

I break out my soldering iron maybe 6 times a year.
If ...

In this universe.

This attitude is exactly what i'm talking about.
It takes you literally 10 minutes max to learn how to solder SMDs by hand. And it takes very little practice once you do.

Sure, fine. But anyone with an SMT oven who wants to etch and drill their own PCBs and buy all the surface mount components from Mouser (or scrounge them from their own part bins) can probably also handle a bit of PCB design, no?

You really *really* don't need an oven to solder SMD boards.
And ...

Hmmm. Interesting.

I was thinking more along the lines of applying latex to the bottom of the switch, between the bottom and the plate, and between the cover and the body (where the sticker's are usually put). The former should dampen the vibration transferred to the plate (as per OP's idea), while ...

I get my best ideas on the bog.
Don't judge.

Sorry for the necro, was searching for something, found this thread and it occurred to me that no one (to my knowledge at least) tried this as a possible noise suppresant:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vallejo-28850-Liquid-Masking-Fluid/dp/B001JJT6QA

It's essentially liquid latex, nothing complicated ...

Goop buy?

Flexi PCBs instead of cabling, delrin bearing sleeves and mechanical encoders that scrape their traces off after a while don't exactly scream quality to me

You can't trigger an invoice by email, you have to write a PM to 7bot. 7bot sends invoices from time to time without trigger when prices or available products change, maybe it was an "incidental invoice"that you got.

You misunderstood me.
I've said i've sent it my e-mail, not sent it an e-mail ...

jefferai wrote: Indeed. And the cool thing is that if you send it something strange and random you get an invoice back!

Tried that, didn't quite work.
Actually, i sent my e-mail, as that previously worked to get the invoice, but now i'm not receiving anything (yes, i've waited).

I guess i'll give it another try.

Dumb question.
How do i check if my (Paypal) payment's gone through and was correctly matched to my order?

True. I never had much luck with the spade tip either.

Oh, and count me in for 1

If "hard to solder" means SMD, that's probably just the common fallacy of SMDs being hard or impossible to solder in action again. I've soldered plenty of SMDs by hand, with a soldering iron, without any problem. Even some QFN packages.

Here's an example: http://chronoduino.orcinus.me/index.php5 ...