sudo make ./

While listening to quite a few Tech-Podcasts, I have found there to be a recurring argument about whether trying to optimize a certain way of getting things done is comparable with just getting the things done. And I think what each and every host always settled on was the following conclusion: No, it's very much not productive, but it's definitely fun and we will continue to do so.

So for me, especially since I do not yet have a job where I genuinely need to be productive regularly (not considering “school” as a job; despite it officially sort of counting as one), I can easily justify doing some obsessive optimization / configuration for quite a while before even I notice it might be unnecessary.

Even though it might not have been the initial instance this has happened, the first time I have noticed that I was hyper-fixating on optimizing specific work flows was when I wrote my own Neovim configuration after having used standard LunarVim and then AstroNvim for a long while. This post, however, is not going to be going over this instance. Instead, I'm going to be writing about the most recent try for efficiency.

For context a bit of background:

Quite a few years ago, I was really into gaming and everything that had to do with it. I think we all know that phase; everyone has been there once. During that time, I still went into the physical shop instead of ordering as much as possible online. Good times... I also regularly used to browse a local tech-store, which in retrospective was mediocre for an average rural tech-store in every way possible. All the tech inside was overpriced, if you asked the employees, they were telling you it's the cheapest price possible, and the actual tech was not special in any way. Nonetheless, my parents could never get me away from there. I wanted to try all keyboards, then look at all TVs, etc. I believe you can imagine me jumping around this shop; trying everything. One time I was there and trying all keyboards for the nth time this week, I decided I wanted a new keyboard (because my old one recently broke). Being into gaming stuff, I wanted the most gaming keyboard possible. And what do you think I picked? Obviously, it had to be the keyboard with as much RGB lighting as possible and of course it had to be clicky. What else could I have chosen? Fast forward roughly 4 or 5 years (wow, that keyboard really lasted quite a while looking back now) and we're in the present with me still using this exact same keyboard. It's old enough for the fake-leather the wrist support had, to have completely worn off so that there is only a layer of fabric left. But all keys still work and it still looks quite OK. Nonetheless, it is clicky, which by now, instead of making it fun to type, is more annoying than anything else, and also restricts me to mostly type during the day, because the clicks are so loud they would disturb anyone trying to sleep in my direct vicinity. Additionally, the old keyboard (which was a Razer Ortana Chroma, by the way) had a much larger key-travel-distance compared to laptop keyboards which I was typing on at other times. The logical conclusion is: buying a new keyboard. And since I birthday was coming up in a few months, I have researched a long time to find the ultimate, perfect keyboard for me.

I considered the ergonomics, the looks, the feel (which I just imagined, since I couldn't have tried it); basically everything. Looking at the previous keyboard, I wanted to rather spend a bit more money to get a proper keyboard for ergonomics which would additionally last a long time. I figured, though, that the ergonomics part should probably be the most important part, since I was already on some days experiencing wrist-pain and also I was spending many hours in front of computer-screens with a keyboard in front of me. Even a small improvement over such a large chunk of my time would result in a huge difference overall. The keyboards I finally considered over the period of research were the following:

• Nuphy Air75 –> A 75% keyboard which looks quite good and has very nice features like
  • wireless connectivity
  • long battery life
  • customizable switches
  • QMK/VIA support (A must for my new keyboard, since I needed something that works well with macros, linux, neovim and my general programming workflow
• Keychron K3 Max –> Also a 75% keyboard layout, looking a bit more standard than the Air75, but still okay
  • Also QMK/VIA support
  • lower battery life, but also wireless connectivity
  • customizable switches, but still a normal layout of the keys like on old typewriters

Then, I fell into the rabbit hole of highly optimized keyboard for ergonomics, like split keyboards. And the more I learned about it, the more I wanted one instead of any keyboard I had previously considered. The first crush I had was the

• ZSA Voyager

  • A split keyboard, but increadibly expensive; even more so when shipping outside of the US when one accounts for import taxes
  • normal price: 356$ (~300€), Price with import, shipping, etc all inclusive was closer to 450€. I just could not justify that amount of money for a “simple” keyboard. Therefore, I considered a more manual approach:

• DIY-Split-Keyboards

  • I felt right at home in this community. I have done some soldering and programming of microcontrollers before, so building my own keyboard did not seem too far fetched
  • Nonetheless, I was scared to short something and burn some really expensive part which would take weeks in shipping again, or whatever else could have happened. For my final decision, I considered the middle ground of the two worlds between prebuilt by a company and building a keyboard on my own:

• Custom-Prebuilt-Keyboard

  • Instead of building the keyboard myself, in this case, I chose the more economically friendly (I would have destroyed something for sure) route and looked for options to have a keyboard built customized for me but with the insurance that every part will work together.
  • In the end, I found a shop called Keebart. Funnily enough, the founder of that company wrote he faced a similar problem as me with the import costs of the Voyager and Moonlander being too high. Therefore, he decided to make his own keyboard and after that worked, he began to sell off the leftover parts which eventually evolved into a company.

I decided for the Corne Choc Pro (Wired) and configured it to my liking by making it smaller (40 key version) and choosing some mostly silent switches (Deep Sea Whale; tactile, much better than my old clicky keyboard switches). I chose everything I could to be white, because I thought mixing black and white wouldn't look so good and, additionally, I wanted to dial back the amount of black stuff I buy as it has been excessive in the past.

The keyboard arrived a few days after ordering (~3-4 working days later) and was packaged quite well. Nothing seemed to have been broken during shipping. Upon first opening the package, I was quite surprised to see a 3D-printed case. I guess I was expecting an injection molded case, but despite it being 3D-printed, the quality of the print was exceptional; there were (almost) no artifacts, just the corners on the print bed were slightly warped. Another point of critique are the thickness of the layer lines. I would guess (having printed some things myself in the past) a layer thickness of about 0.2-0.3 mm. It may not seem like much, but one can easily see and feel layer lines. When looking from a distance or just brushing over the sides, one does not notice it being 3D-printed at all.

Moreover, the fact that the case is printed does not necessarily need to be a negative one. That's because when I asked for them, I instantly got the files of the case. That means I am able to make modifications, print my own, or, which is my current plan, simply order a case made out of aluminum.

The keyboard in the stock configuration runs a standard, but slightly customized version of QMK/VIAL. It's usable, but not particularly optimized for my typing style. I was also unable to find the backspace and shift keys in the standard layout, but I might have been searching in the wrong spots.

Despite not having been able to test the keyboard too thoroughly, yet, I am very happy with it and believe it will help me reduce my wrist pain and improve my weird 7.5-finger-typing style into a real 10-finger one.

That's a good conclusion, I believe.

CUL8TR