The SurpriseBox Worldwide Trip 2

[fifted]

Looks like wolfie's still recovering from said Halloween drinking. Go easy, man!

[Evilcamels]

I am in no rush, glad to see people were interested in adding stuff to the box right before me

[jacobolus]

Hi everyone, very sorry for the delay. I got 3 other people to add fun things to the box, and I put a whole bunch of stuff in. Finally shipping it out today. (But it should have been 2 weeks ago; I really dropped the ball here.)

I removed 3 keycaps from the box. I can’t remember if they were all from 'grab bags' or if the GeekHack cap was in the swap bag. I’ll add a picture momentarily.

In any event, between me and the other folks here in SF, we added ~5 things to swap, some parts to DIY, and several fun things to the grab bags too.

I refactored the box to have two halves with a taped-in cardboard divider, because the ziplock “swap bag” was already at full capacity when the box got to me, and adding more ziplocks didn’t seem like the most scalable solution. Now there’s a “swap side” (with rules as the swap bag from before, and with the original ziplock swap bag inside to hold small items), and a grab/diy side. I put plenty of bubble wrap in each side, so if anyone down the road wants to add delicate stuff it should be pretty safe.

[jacobolus]

The stuff I took out is the 3 keycaps in the middle here:


Also, another guy took out another hammer & sickle cap and another smiley face cap.

[brdrgz]

The stuff I took out is the 3 keycaps in the middle here: http://i.imgur.com/11152mE.jpg

Also, another guy took out another hammer & sickle cap and another smiley face cap.

Is your R4 Alt/meta (clear) key on backwards?

[jacobolus]

Is your R4 Alt/meta (clear) key on backwards?

Yeah, that’s a flipped DCS row 1 key.

In the picture the keyboard has:
F row: mix of the original caps (approx. like DCS row 1) and some SA row 1
number row: DCS row 5
QWER row: DCS row 1
ASDF row: DCS row 2
ZXCV row: original shift keys + DCS row 4
bottom row: mix of original keys + flipped DCS row 1 + flipped original spacebar



See here https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=66044 and here https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=62444

[Muirium]

The point of a sculpted profile is to create a nice consistent curve. "Thumb keys" are a cult! Well, besides actual thumb keys on ergo keyboards. That trick's just inviting bad posture (typing with your wrists plunked down) and awkward looking caps.

I like the lighting in your photo, though. Soft and natural.

[jacobolus]

The point of a sculpted profile is to create a nice consistent curve.

WRONG! The point of a sculpted profile is to make it easier to reach and press the keys. IBM figured out a pretty reasonable compromise shape in the 70s (or late 60s?) with their Selectrics and beam spring keyboards, and a bunch of other people copied them. Unfortunately later designers of keycap shapes didn’t understand the original design criteria or wanted to cut corners to save costs, and the keycaps we have today are less effective that those Selectric caps. Even makers of ergonomic keyboards like Maltron and Kinesis miss some important features of how fingers move, and it has led them to a less-than-ideal design.

Personally, I want keycaps that are sphericalish on top, and are even more aggressive with their height step from the home row to further-away rows than the ones on Selectrics. That’s the point of this exercise with the DCS row 5 caps on the number row. Even this is not as aggressive as ideal for a standard-layout keyboard IMO. The QWER row in my picture above is pretty good, but the number row could still be taller.

Consistency/aesthetics/whatever could be nice extra benefit to a carefully sculpted shape, but that’s totally subjective, and for me personally, something better to type on always beats something that looks better.

"Thumb keys" are a cult!

Pressing a standard “row 4” shape Alt key with a thumb is awful, because it has a sharp corner at the bottom and it’s not angled a very nice direction. What I want for my thumb is a tall key that’s relatively flat on top, and slightly convex. The bottom row keycaps from the Wang 724 are great for pressing with a thumb, and the ones from a Dell AT101W are alright (but both could be taller).

Personally I think a standard cylindrical-keycap-set spacebar and a flipped spacebar are both quite bad. The angle is wrong either way, and they all tend to have annoying sharp edges. The spacebar should either be displaced half a key toward the body, or should be 1.5u wide, like certain rubber domes have, or like Matias’s new spacebars.

Flipping the spacebar and bottom row keys brings the keytops slightly closer to the body, and that’s actually a noticeable improvement. Still far from ideal though. A flipped OEM-profile spacebar is actually pretty good when used on a keyboard with Cherry or DCS profile keycaps.

As a quick sketch, I would prefer something like this:


Anyhow, I tend to place my keyboard at a height such that my forearms are tilted slightly downward, my wrists are straight, and the near end of the keyboard is tilted upward, such that the switchplate has about a -5° tilt (as seen in the little diagram in my previous post). No “inviting bad posture” about it.

(Of course better still is to entirely scrap the standard keyboard layout, but that’s a bigger commitment w/r/t learning something new.)

[jacobolus]

Here’s a comparison between my sketched profile and regular DCS (rows 1, 2, 3, 4, spacebar):


Or with 3 overlayed, black = my proposed profile, green = profile on the keyboard pictured a few posts upthread, purple = standard DCS.


This would be especially good on a column-staggered keyboard such as the Ergodox (or similar); however, I still think it would work quite well on a regular row-staggered keyboard. It might need to be toned down just slightly to work on a regular keyboard, but I find that the row5, row1, row2, row4 profile works quite well, and I think we could certainly get away with being at least a bit more aggressive than that.

Anyway, that’s enough off-topic stuff for this thread.

Isn’t there someone who still needs to take pictures of what they removed from the box?

[Evilcamels]

Got the box today, took the Space Invader keycaps for my 8255CW+ and the Cherry switch tester to show around the dorm from the swap side of the box. Took the diamond modifier for my dad's Novatouch, he needed a cool FN key. Put one big thing in the swap side and am planning on putting in some more stuff to both sides when I get home for Christmas. I won't be able to ship it to pr0ximity for a week, with finals I am just too busy.

Onto the stuff I took!

Here is a shot of the keycaps for the NMB. I know they are not in the right spots, I believe the multipliers should be on the left side, but I was too excited to put them on my board. The home/end/insert/delete were also jumbled. The NMB is one of two keyboards I actually brought with me, so it was amazing to see the keycaps in the box. Brought a little joy to a tough week of studying.

Spoiler:

The Cherry tester is also perfect, all the guys in my dorm already know me as the keyboard guy and a lot of them are interested in Cherry boards but they don't know what switches to get. I may eventually hook up a Teensy and turn it into a real board.

Spoiler:

The diamond keycap is nothing special, but a perfect little gift to complete my dad's Novatouch.


It was really fun to have a look around the box, can't wait to see what people do with whats inside.

[Muirium]

Fancy. I wonder where those came from? NMB caps have a great shape to them, amusing to see a whole video editor's suite turn up from the blue! Nice catch.

[Evilcamels]

The profile is amazing, very rounded. I wish I could have put the spacebar on too, but the split spacebar wasn't going to let that happen.

[mkawa]

it's actually an audio editor's cap set; it came from a particularly old avid board from an unknown and long forgotten avid workstation. the source board and others like it may or may not have come from the place where dream(works audio masters) are made

[Evilcamels]

Just dropped the box off at the post office so it is off to Pr0ximity.
Still getting compliments on the new keycaps in the dorm!

[pr0ximity]

Just got the box after a bit of a scare, it was marked as delivered yesterday, but didn't show up at my door until today. Have some holiday errands to run but I'll be looking through it shortly!

[flopix]

Happy new year to you all!

[pr0ximity]

Happy New Year! I'm going to be shipping the box out either late this week or early next week now that the holiday craziness is coming to a close. It has not been forgotten!

[jacobolus]

Pics of the stuff you took out?

[Compgeke]

Just a heads up my shipping won't be for a couple weeks. We're working at getting pay solved as they decided to short the check 13 days since them getting their paper work done on time would've made sense.

[Ascaii]

Compgeke, that really isnt cool. We had discussed a shipping fund last time to prevent these weeklong intervals in case people have trouble with the finances and I really wish we had just all tossed a few euros in a pot for these cases. How about one/all of us spot you the cash to ship now and you can repay once you get your check? The box must go on!

[7bit]

Just a heads up my shipping won't be for a couple weeks. We're working at getting pay solved as they decided to short the check 13 days since them getting their paper work done on time would've made sense.

There is only one way to solve that problem:
You must become a Paypal and Google Wallet proxy, so until SP finalised
their production or starts with Round 5a, you will have a lot of $$$ to play with!

[hoggy]

Compgeke, how much is the postage? I'm happy to chip in if it helps.

[Compgeke]

It's alright, I got it covered now as I'm getting rid of one of the many worthless Core 2 Duo towers sitting around. After moving I guess people actually want them.

[pr0ximity]

It was great looking through all of the stuff in the boxes! Really enjoyed getting to see some things firsthand that I've seen online. There're some awesome items in there! Here's the stuff I took out:



White play cap, metal gold Esc cap, and some switch stickers so I can give them a try. Never typed on stickered switches before, so that will be a fun little project. Threw in a bunch of DIY and swap stuff to add to the fun

[Muirium]

I must try metal caps sometime. Been talking about them for years, but haven't got around to it.

[pr0ximity]

I must try metal caps sometime. Been talking about them for years, but haven't got around to it.

It's my second, I had a stainless steel BroBot for a while. It's interesting how the weight affects the force required to actuate the switch they're on. They make MX Reds even lighter, and they have a great sound when they bottom-out on a plate.

[DanielT]

I see the package is one person closer to me
Can't wait to get it, I have a lot of stuff for the box

[Ascaii]

I am preparing the box to add to the box as well, oh wait... xD

[gogusrl]

Since it's coming to romania, any way I can get on the list ?

[Compgeke]

You can see if Mrinterface checks this thread and if not you can send him a PM asking.