2020-07-23 // keyboards!
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OK, so... I friggin' hate my ThinkPad X250's membrane keyboard. It
_works_, but it just doesn't feel that great. I've been a mechanical
keyboard user for some time, and the sloshy membrane keyboard is just so
bad. If I had a laptop with mechanical switches, I would be SET. Well,
that's not entirely true. My ideal environment is in front of a CRT, but
I haven't used one in ages. I miss those things!

Anyway, for the last couple of years I've been using this Vortex
Pok3r[0] keyboard with Cherry Brown switches. It feels a lot better
than a membrane keyboard, plus it's not machine-gun loud. My true love,
of course, is the keyboard I've plugged my laptop into for this post,
a Unicomp Customizer 104 [1]. It's about 10 years old now -- I had one
before, but I lost the O.G. one in a tragic coffee accident.

My wife, C., has loathed these buckling spring keyboards for their sheer
decibel levels, but now my desk is in my home office so it's not quite
so much a bother.

One thing that's been a bit frustrating with OpenBSD, at least when
it comes to plugging in USB keyboards, is that it seems to forget my
preferred keymap. I always tend to set the caps lock key as an extra
control key, because of vim, but no amount of invoking `wsconsctl`
seemed to make that stick.

So I've gone a bit nuclear and tossed "setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps"
at the end of my .profile. Dear computer, please stop making the caps
lock a caps lock! The only time I want all caps is when I'm telling you
I don't want all caps. ;)

Hm, speaking of ergonomics and ideal environments: this is the first
time I've sat at my home desk in quite some time. Maybe it's time to set
up a proper desktop again. This feels pretty dang great.

kvothe@SDF.ORG

[0]: http://www.vortexgear.tw/vortex2_2.asp?kind=47&kind2=220&kind3=&kind4=1006
[1]: https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/FeaturedProducts/UB4044A