Mechanical Keyboards

The Wait

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned after joining the mechanical keyboard community, it’s that you need a lot of patience for this hobby. If you think spending about an hour changing keycaps on your full-sized keyboard takes up a lot of time, think again. Even the amount of time you have to spend desoldering (not that I do it) a full-sized keyboard feels like a few seconds compared to the amount of time you spend waiting for parts to arrive.

If you’re not ordering ready-made parts or a pre-made build online, expect waiting for months (and sometimes even years) for them to arrive. While I’m not an advocate for preordering (especially when it comes to video games), you don’t really have a choice in this hobby if you want to delve deeper into the custom scene. Sure, things take time to be manufactured and shipped – I understand it completely. That doesn’t make it any better though!

It’s been a few months since I’ve put down some monies for my upcoming build and only one part of my build is on its way to my house (switches). I still have to wait for the board and keycaps. Once they’re in my possession, it’ll probably take less than half the day for me to assemble it. I can’t think of any other hobby that involves this much waiting. Maybe growing plants would be something similar. Even then, it doesn’t take as long as waiting for a group buy to deliver. But in the end, you’ll have something pretty to show off to other people.

Fortunately, I already have some nice pre-built boards that I can enjoy in the meantime. I can’t imagine what my daily life would be like if I didn’t already have them to keep me satisfied. I probably wouldn’t enjoy writing as much as I do now.

Sometimes I don’t use copy and paste when working just so I can spend more time typing.

Also, I recently discovered Windows + M minimizes the window that is currently open. How cool is that? I’ve been using Alt + Space, N to minimize windows for years. And I learned this on accident.

Anyway, I think patience is something I have. Sometimes I do wonder – if there was a fee for an accelerated option, would I take it?

One of the best solutions to the problem I’ve heard is that you should keep buying stuff all year-long. Then you forget about what you’ve purchased and every time you receive a package in the mail, it’s a nice surprise. Unfortunately, I don’t have the funds to do that, yet.

Pertinent Layers

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After using my 40% keyboard for two-and-a-half months, I’ve managed to map out a layer that works for me. While most of you are probably wondering, why did I bother with such a small keyboard in the first place? I already have a standard sized keyboard on my laptop.

Well, when you’re spending so much time in front of the computer, wouldn’t you want to type on something that feels good? I know I do. The laptop keyboards if definitely sufficient, but it’s not great. Lack of travel, feedback and programmability. And of course, most importantly, a e s t h e t i c s.

The 40% board is great for traveling – I can’t leave my keyboard at work, so having something light and portable is important for me. It may not seem that much smaller than a 60% keyboard but when you have a tiny backpack like me, every cubic centimeter saved is important (gotta pack more bags of drugs in there).

For non-mechanical keyboard enthusiasts out there, you’re probably wondering how on earth someone could possibly use such a tiny input device. Well, after experimenting with many different layouts on the Vortex Core, I’ve come up with something that works for me and the work I do. It’s nothing fancy, but with it I can easily type characters like ‘ and / which weren’t mapped to the non-function layer by default. I’ve also mapped control, alt and windows to the HHKB layout (I’ve gotten so used to it) and moved escape to a function layer so tab is next to Q. I’d love to do a lot more, but I’m limited by the current functionality of the board.

I still miss the number row when entering passwords, but I’m dealing with it. I even put the number row key caps on my keyboard to help me out in that department. Eventually I will have them all memorized. After using this layout for a while, I’ve come to realize that I could even do away with 3 of the keys on the keyboard, which would make something like the Pearl usable for me (damn, those sexy blockers) – something I would have never dreamed of before using a 40% keyboard.

Anyway, here is a diagram of the layout that I currently use. Feel free to use it or offer any suggestions if you think that you can make it better! I didn’t put down the Shift + Fn1 layers since those can’t be changed (they symbols are mapped from !@#$%^&*() on Ctrl to L respectively).

I can’t wait for Vortex to make the Core completely customizable, I already have plans for how I want to tweak this board even more in the future.

Touch Typing

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Over the weekend, I was looking up for some tips to improve my touch typing skills and I learned something I can’t believe I had never thought of before: keep your index fingers on the home keys (F and J on a QWERTY keyboard) if you’re using your pinkies to hit keys like escape, backspace, control, tab or shift – this will allow you to quickly return to the home row and reset your fingers in the correct typing position. It was something so simple yet effective. This prompted me to scour the net for more tips that I could use. Turns out, there aren’t many tips available online that I didn’t already know. Unless there’s a hidden cache of advice hidden available somewhere on the internet, the only other thing I’ve managed to takeaway is that practice is everything.

Like playing the guitar or a video game, typing is very much all about muscle memory. Think about words you type very often: your own name, words like you, me, them, they, the – I’m pretty sure most of you can touch type them without any effort. However, if I were to give you a word like adscititious, it would probably take you a moment to type it out. But if you keep typing the word over and over again, you’ll be able to type it quickly. Basically, you have to practice typing until you are at the stage where you’re typing words instead of letters. It’s like being so familiar with a guitar chord that you can press it without having to look at the fretboard, or pulling off key combinations to execute a special move for your video game character.

While I don’t think I’ll consistently surpass 100 wpm anytime soon (I type fast enough for my current job anyway), it’s something I hope to achieve naturally in the long run – once I’ve typed the most common English words enough times to make them all muscle memory. But for those of you who are interested in learning how to touch type, here are some helpful sites.

Keybr– a site that helps you memorize where each letter is on your keyboard and analyzes which keys you’re struggling with.
10fastfingers – a great site for practicing the most common English words
Type Racer – a popular online typing game where you race against other people by typing out a passage of text quickly and accurately