Post the ugliest keyboards you've seen!

[savantstrike]

Women love the bad boys

Lifelong experience tells the opposite

I agree completely! The few women who like bad boys usually have baggage or are young and naieve and think they can reform them.

My wife was upfront about who she is, who she was looking for, and we both treated each other with respect from the start. This is why she's my wife, and as a bonus, I can "get away" with things like putting a pair of 4 cu feet (each) 15 inch subs in my first floor offiice.

[andrewjoy]

Women love the bad boys

Lifelong experience tells the opposite

I agree completely! The few women who like bad boys usually have baggage or are young and naieve and think they can reform them.

My wife was upfront about who she is, who she was looking for, and we both treated each other with respect from the start. This is why she's my wife, and as a bonus, I can "get away" with things like putting a pair of 4 cu feet (each) 15 inch subs in my first floor offiice.

Well its more they like the bad boy that they CAN tame not ones that are just assholes .

You know the story its a classic , the puckish loveable rogue that settles down with the girl of his dreams and lives happily ever after.

Well unless its in modern cinema , then they would be estranged after a few years because the classic family unit is like so offensive and not at all inclusive.

[Blaise170]

[davkol]

Well unless its in modern cinema , then they would be estranged after a few years because the classic family unit is like so offensive and not at all inclusive.

Classic offtopicthority.

I'll just leave a link to the Wikipedia article on family here.

In the Western World, marriages are no longer arranged for economic, social or political gain, and children are no longer expected to contribute to family income. Instead, people choose mates based on love. This increased role of love indicates a societal shift toward favoring emotional fulfilment and relationships within a family, and this shift necessarily weakens the institution of the family.

Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.

[savantstrike]

Well unless its in modern cinema , then they would be estranged after a few years because the classic family unit is like so offensive and not at all inclusive.

Classic offtopicthority.

I'll just leave a link to the Wikipedia article on family here.

In the Western World, marriages are no longer arranged for economic, social or political gain, and children are no longer expected to contribute to family income. Instead, people choose mates based on love. This increased role of love indicates a societal shift toward favoring emotional fulfilment and relationships within a family, and this shift necessarily weakens the institution of the family.

Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.

Well, when you think about it, it's only possible to yammer on about keyboards for so long before a topic drifts into something fairly universal to the human experience. Since we're spread out all over the world, the weather isn't as popular a topic as it might be.

It's raining today in greater metropolitan Philadelphia if anyone cares.

[fohat]

It's raining today in greater metropolitan Philadelphia if anyone cares.

Sunny and hot here in metro Atlanta.

I posted the G-Point mouse for the sake of humor and to see who would go on a search to see whether it actually existed (unfortunately, it doesn't). I did not expect it to set off a desktop porn critique and exegesis of the institution of marriage.

[Dingster]

It's raining today in greater metropolitan Philadelphia if anyone cares.

Sunny and hot here in metro Atlanta.

I posted the G-Point mouse for the sake of humor and to see who would go on a search to see whether it actually existed (unfortunately, it doesn't). I did not expect it to set off a desktop porn critique and exegesis of the institution of marriage.

Kind of reminds me of reddit, people getting butthurt over a joke

[depletedvespene]

Thank God no one has posted any penis-shaped "artisan" keycaps, then...

[scottc]

Don't worry, depletedvespene. I got you covered.



Edit: Christ on a fucking bicycle Elrick, you have got some problems that you need to figure out.

[depletedvespene]

Ew. EWWW. EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. What a hideous colour scheme for the keyboard. ಠ_ಠ

[Blaise170]

Ontopicthority.

[savantstrike]

Ontopicthority.

How did they manage to get the keycaps to look like they are glowing.

Radioactive fuschia of doom.

[digital_matthew]

Ontopicthority.

<Radioactive "Keeb" Picture>

Radioactive fuschia of doom.

In their defense that magenta is a bear to photograph. Still. Yikes.

[Blaise170]

REKT

[vometia]

Kind of reminds me of reddit, people getting butthurt over a joke

I suspect more a case of facepalming than butthurt: it wasn't especially offensive, just a bit crass. Maybe learn from it and move on instead of saying "butthurt over a joke". Shurg, etc.

Back on topic, as much as it pains me: all these fugly keyboards actually aren't so bad. Well okay, some of them are bad, especially the one with the willy. ew. But at least they have some personality. UK types of a certain age may remember the Elan Enterprise (as I believe it ended up being called: it certainly went through a lot of names) from around 1983. It was a weird-looking thing and I was ambivalent about it at the time but I eventually "got" its designers' point of view: aesthetically, which is the relevant bit, they were concerned about the future being a sea of beige. And they were right there: early '80s computers were quite beige but at least they still had nice spherical keycaps with centred legends and often in interesting colours. The BBC Micro I think being a good example of "beige done right". Worse was to come. But they got in there early and shaped their computer like a cowpat. I always thought it was fugly, but... at least it had personality.

Technically they were also firebrands, saying "look, guys, you don't need to go up to sixteen bits and dozens of megahertz, the Z80 will do plenty if you just do it right!" And again, ambivalent: a bit backward-looking in some ways as this really was on the threshold of 8-bits doing all they could, and indeed the aforementioned BBC Micro probably pushed the boundary as far as practical (indeed the ARM is its spiritual successor: apparently Sophie Wilson incorporated a lot of the 6502's Way Of Doing Things™ into the original ARM design) and as ambitious as the support chips were, there's only so much you can do to make up for its limitations, and 64KB of addressable memory was always going to be a headache. DEC had already BTDT with the PDP-11 which is why the Vax was a thing a good 6 or 7 years earlier. But I digress even further.

The world of beige, though... I think their worst nightmare did happen and early '90s PCs were the absolute nadir of computing interestingness for me. That gives me a slight amount of pain with my beloved SSK: I love it to type on but that sea of beige is a throwback to worse times. That's in spite of me actually finding cylindrical profiles more comfortable to type on, they just look arse compared to sphericals. I would almost kill for a keyboard with the same awesomeness as my Model M (or better still a Model F SSK... even though I don't think there's that much of an improvement) but which had some of that old aesthetic.

So yeah. All those gaudy keyboards out there. Their contribution to good taste may be subjective, but at least they aren't beige.

Edit: this may take some correcting to prune all the typos and random examples of my concentration wandering off.

[kbdfr]

Interesting review

As a matter of fact, I now have a hard time trying to find computer stuff which is not black but sticks to the nice beige understatement of times long past and gone.

After all, you wouldn’t want to eat from black dishes on a black table in a room with black curtains and a black carpet, would you?
Oh, you would?
Time for me to pass away, I guess. This world has been taking a rather strange turn…

[Blaise170]

I like black. A lot of what I own is black, whether it's clothing, electronics, or whatever else. But on the other hand, color is nice to have as well.

[andrewjoy]

Its gloss black that i don't get, shiny horrible plastic that scratches when you walk within 10 meters of it.

[depletedvespene]

Interesting review

As a matter of fact, I now have a hard time trying to find computer stuff which is not black but sticks to the nice beige understatement of times long past and gone.

After all, you wouldn’t want to eat from black dishes on a black table in a room with black curtains and a black carpet, would you?
Oh, you would?

I suppose you mean to use this setting for eating black beans — what's the point of all of it, otherwise?

[vometia]

Interesting review

As a matter of fact, I now have a hard time trying to find computer stuff which is not black but sticks to the nice beige understatement of times long past and gone.

After all, you wouldn’t want to eat from black dishes on a black table in a room with black curtains and a black carpet, would you?
Oh, you would?
Time for me to pass away, I guess. This world has been taking a rather strange turn…

I like beige for dinner plates. Or white with blue detailing. But I like my computer gubbins to be black. As much as my favourite computer systems are Vaxes and they are unremittingly greige.

I admit I don't even wear totally black any more in spite of being an ageing goth (by which I mean a hairsbreadth from my 50th... and still listening to the Sisters of Mercy) but I just can't get into the cylindrical beige keycaps with the legends in the corner: proper keycaps are spherical, not-quite-black and with big, centred legends. Except for special keys that are in random colours, but still with almost-white legends. Double-shot, of course.

Edit: argh, concentration, or lack thereof. If only I had slept.

[kbdfr]

Interesting review

As a matter of fact, I now have a hard time trying to find computer stuff which is not black but sticks to the nice beige understatement of times long past and gone.

After all, you wouldn’t want to eat from black dishes on a black table in a room with black curtains and a black carpet, would you?
Oh, you would?
Time for me to pass away, I guess. This world has been taking a rather strange turn…

I like beige for dinner plates. Or white with blue detailing. But I like my computer gubbins to be black. As much as my favourite computer systems are Vaxes and they are unremittingly greige.

I admit I don't even wear totally black any more in spite of being an ageing goth (by which I mean a hairsbreadth from my 50th... and still listening to the Sisters of Mercy) but I just can't get into the cylindrical beige keycaps with the legends in the corner: proper keycaps are cylindrical, not-quite-black and with big, centred legends. Except for special keys that are in random colours, but still with almost-white legends. Double-shot, of course.

Obviously computers and peripherals simply have to be beige (I’ve even been considering whether to dye my wihte RollerMouse), and real keyboards do have beige cylindrical keycaps printed in the upper-left corner.

Anything else is just a concession to modern bad taste.

Spoiler:

[andrewjoy]

You must have loved the late 80s and early 90s

[Dingster]

Kind of reminds me of reddit, people getting butthurt over a joke

I suspect more a case of facepalming than butthurt: it wasn't especially offensive, just a bit crass. Maybe learn from it and move on instead of saying "butthurt over a joke". Shurg, etc.

Back on topic, as much as it pains me: all these fugly keyboards actually aren't so bad. Well okay, some of them are bad, especially the one with the willy. ew. But at least they have some personality. UK types of a certain age may remember the Elan Enterprise (as I believe it ended up being called: it certainly went through a lot of names) from around 1983. It was a weird-looking thing and I was ambivalent about it at the time but I eventually "got" its designers' point of view: aesthetically, which is the relevant bit, they were concerned about the future being a sea of beige. And they were right there: early '80s computers were quite beige but at least they still had nice spherical keycaps with centred legends and often in interesting colours. The BBC Micro I think being a good example of "beige done right". Worse was to come. But they got in there early and shaped their computer like a cowpat. I always thought it was fugly, but... at least it had personality.

Technically they were also firebrands, saying "look, guys, you don't need to go up to sixteen bits and dozens of megahertz, the Z80 will do plenty if you just do it right!" And again, ambivalent: a bit backward-looking in some ways as this really was on the threshold of 8-bits doing all they could, and indeed the aforementioned BBC Micro probably pushed the boundary as far as practical (indeed the ARM is its spiritual successor: apparently Sophie Wilson incorporated a lot of the 6502's Way Of Doing Things™ into the original ARM design) and as ambitious as the support chips were, there's only so much you can do to make up for its limitations, and 64KB of addressable memory was always going to be a headache. DEC had already BTDT with the PDP-11 which is why the Vax was a thing a good 6 or 7 years earlier. But I digress even further.

The world of beige, though... I think their worst nightmare did happen and early '90s PCs were the absolute nadir of computing interestingness for me. That gives me a slight amount of pain with my beloved SSK: I love it to type on but that sea of beige is a throwback to worse times. That's in spite of me actually finding cylindrical profiles more comfortable to type on, they just look arse compared to sphericals. I would almost kill for a keyboard with the same awesomeness as my Model M (or better still a Model F SSK... even though I don't think there's that much of an improvement) but which had some of that old aesthetic.

So yeah. All those gaudy keyboards out there. Their contribution to good taste may be subjective, but at least they aren't beige.

Edit: this may take some correcting to prune all the typos and random examples of my concentration wandering off.

I said it reminded me, not that it is. Huge difference

[snacksthecat]

Hey guys, just a single mouse here looking for my soul mate. Hmu if you like frapachinos and Coldplay

Wow, I really created quite a stir posting a mouse in a keyboard thread. Lesson learned!

[vometia]

Wow, I really created quite a stir posting a mouse in a keyboard thread. Lesson learned!

Let this be a lesson to you: no more of the User Interface Device From Hell!

I dunno. I hate mice. I liked computer interfaces from the days before they existed. But as a gamer, there's really no alternative to the seemingly absurd keyboard-plus-mouse combo. I've tried to like game controllers but I hate them, and when not gaming I dare say I would just get annoyed and tired with proddy screen controls, which worked so well on the Psions but probably not on a 26" monitor.

[davkol]

There are other pointing devices too.

[vometia]

True, but I never really got on with analogue joysticks, the switch type lacks much subtlety and trackballs are definitely not for those of us who have that bad habit of eating at our desks. I also imagine there's some sort of Kinect-like contraption for that sort of thing but that's too newfangled and scary for me.

[depletedvespene]

Hey guys, just a single mouse here looking for my soul mate. Hmu if you like frapachinos and Coldplay

Wow, I really created quite a stir posting a mouse in a keyboard thread. Lesson learned!

Yeah, THAT mouse was the problematic one.

Sadly, I know a couple women who'd happily use it. And another woman who'd happily use the other one

[depletedvespene]

And whenever I think this thread has peaked, that no one could possibly make a keyboard that's worse than what's been posted already, someone ups the ante with something even tackier:



But, hey, at least their corresponding villains don't have their own keycaps.

Yet.

[Blaise170]

To be fair, the lightning is kind of cool.