the darnedest thing

grokking koreader

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 08:37:40 EDT

i have sung the praises about the Kobo Libra 2 since purchasing it almost two years ago, shortly after its release—replacing my Kindle Oasis as my daily driver for consuming digital content. Both ereaders use a 7” eink display but it is Rakuten’s Nickel software that elevates the Kobo ...

current configuration

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 10:48:59 EDT

production environment platform Debian Linux Alpine Linux the darnedest thing Sinatra web application DSL kramdown markdown syntax converter Slim template engine XapianFu full text indexing library Magnific Popup lightbox comments processing Ruby Mail ...

koreader user patches

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 17:42:53 EDT

koreader is a comprehensive ereader app. There is very little to want for it. The degree of end user control it provides is so vast, many who install KOReader are quickly overwhelmed by the plethora of menu options, only to return to their device’s much simpler and familiar native ereader ...

hiding

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:51:23 EST

...

adrift font

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 17:31:10 EST

following hot on the recent cell width tunings for the serifless capital I and lower case l, comes the adrift font with cell width adjustments for the lower case hooked glyphs.. adrift is essentially the drift font with the descending capital I unique to the typefaces produced on ...

drift font duo

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 08:49:57 EST

tired eyes are an effective test of typeface readability. Even a favourite font gets more closely scrutinized under less than ideal reading conditions in the wee hours of the night. And so it was with the licht. i favour this font for its clean geometric simplicity and optimal air ...

mirrored asymmetric font

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 19:17:27 EST

the visual geometric minimalism and “flow” of the asymmetric lower case t propelled the grote font to the default ereading font with KOReader. Its geometric form invited experimentation with its orientation—counter to the convention for the glyph—well.. just because i could. The original glyph shape expressed an outward (right ...

asymmetric font trio

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:57:33 EST

“flat” fonts and the asymmetric lower case t have become my main focus of late—the increased air between lines taking precedence over earlier typefaces using extended/descending glyphs. A different feel that i have settled on for small font sizes on ereaders. tl;dr Typeface differences.. letter grote ...

2023-10-16

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 EDT

still more font changes. Though, it feels like the journey has finally reached an end, near full circle to a geometric sans serif font. While the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font played a large role in the various typefaces created here, it is the abandonment of the various hooks towards starker ...

word spacing

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 07:46:27 EDT

this topic will be short—a strong indicator that the dyslexic font variants presented on this site is coming to an end :) When the dyslexic font exploration began, a word spacing of Space 2x was used for maximum word separation. This spacing in subsequent font generations narrowed to 1.667x 1.5x 1.333x and ...

grote font

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 15:53:28 EDT

The asymmetrical lower case t of the groot and related fonts is, quite possibly, the final glyph substitution (available from the Iosevka project) to aid dyslexic readability. groot IMO is both a beautiful and highly legible font with its dyslexic glyph choices (though, some may prefer earlier glyph choice combinations ...

the holy graal

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 07:51:20 EDT

the groot font has recently found favour as my go to ereading font with its singular descending caps I flair—the signature glyph that dominates my reading and writing typefaces. It was only a matter of time before the single storey lower case a would find its way into this “flat” ...

groot font

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 18:48:20 EDT

with the addition of the toothless double-storey lower case a to the descending caps typefaces, i realized i lacked a font with non-descending caps. Enter the typograffic font variant.. the groot font with the toothless a and a number of other glyph embellishments inherited from the mu/umu typefaces.. ...

umu font

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 11:15:53 EDT

a grail font perhaps? As always, just when i think i am finally done.. The toothless double-storey lower case a of the mu font font and the single-storey a of the upsilon font produce two very distinctive fonts, the latter being the visually more “open” or less dense of the ...

font repos

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 10:30:57 EDT

this page was created to centralize OneDrive shared links (which i seem to be able to break periodically).. OneDrive Fonts Earlier font typefaces and variants can be found in the archive folder.. though i admit their organization may not relate in an obvious manner to their originating site references ...

mu font

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:23:32 EDT

descending caps, since becoming enamoured with the descending serifless I variant of the typograffic font (with Iota), had become the focus of the latest font development. The expressiveness rendered to the typefaces by these unique descenders combined with dyslexic readability instantly made these my favourite reading fonts. Much of the effort has been spent ...

ypsilon

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 22:12:18 EDT

from the Iota font springs the Ypsilon font.. which is its fraternal twin (or complement) with descenders applied to the vertical center strokes of the upper case T and Y—more easily discerned with fontmatrix**.. **The Iosevka font web page does not display the glyphs which are modified with fontforge for these ...

font trio revisited

Wed, 24 May 2023 08:37:26 EDT

Iota rapidly established itself as the default font on my ereader. It is a very unique yet highly readable font and sported the single-storey lower case a which i am drawn to for the added openness it renders to the page—further emphasized by the “open” glyph choices of the Iota font. articulate and ...

2023-03-04

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

it’s rare to have an entry here. But 2023 appears to be a year of changes. This all started innocently in 2022 with the acquisition of a Supernote A5X.. the intent, to delve deeper into digital journaling—eink reading being a primary driver for that thought. After a lifetime in technology i find myself ...

iota

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:09:55 EST

typograffic has been my favourite font of late.. the culmination of two years of font experimentation—beginning innocently with a monospaced facsimile of the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font (for coding) and expanding into (too) numerous variants as an ereader font with a dyslexic focus—arriving at a very unique and satisfying contemporary ereader font (in my humble ...

quasimono

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:26:47 EST

the Iosevka font is the source from which all monospaced fonts on this site have been created from. It is one of the most actively maintained fonts available today, whose source code origins have been further expanded to cover a variety of applications beyond coding. Update: The elementary font has been restored ...

extreme beakl wi

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 13:44:42 EDT

if BEAKL Wi-v is a variant of BEAKL Wi, then.. beakl wi-x is the logical extension of it to the extreme, moving the Z to the pinkie home row and the X to the ring finger reach of the pinkie top row. The Stagger key on this layout cycles through ...

monolexic timeline

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 18:17:06 EDT

for anyone who has stumbled upon this site’s discourse on fonts and readability, this page attempts to graphically summarize the evolution of these monolexic fonts. See also quasimono for the quasi-proportional variants. monospaced atkinson hyperlegible this whole journey began with the discovery of the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font developed by the Braille Institute. ...

dyslexic variations

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 12:19:16 EDT

among other things, this is an attempt to normalize the various MonoLexic fonts created on this site, removing redundant alias font naming and, instead, assigning custom Space cell widths to those font names—i still harbour a fondness for those names :) geolexic is now assigned to the former elementary font in ...

gotchas

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 17:07:05 EDT

a random collection of code fragments used to solve various *nix installation problems encountered over time, after upgrades, etc. I have been meaning to keep a journal of little fixes but, up until now, never have had the discipline to do so. That’s because most of these little fixes are ...

grotesk

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 07:24:44 EDT

completes the evolution of the monospaced dyslexic fonts and their unique set of asymmetric glyphs and double cell width characters—adding a tweaked cap height to the Unolexic font. By increasing the cap (capital) height—a very small amount without significantly affecting the monospaced character cell proportions—at small font sizes, with a line spacing ...

life list

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:47:09 EDT

birders are a broad community, captivated by the flight and fancy of feathered creatures and enchanted by their complex song. The number of bird varieties is endless yet we rarely are aware of their presence and beauty in the city. And often take them for granted in the countryside. I ...

typo' asymmetry

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:42:55 EDT

for the interested, this entry encapsulates the machinations and rationalizations that accompanied the development of the dyslexic fonts for ereaders (and my reading enjoyment in particular) as described on this site. design Typefaces such as OpenDyslexic address dyslexia by anchoring glyphs (with weighted strokes) to resist dyslexic rotation and reversal of the letter, along ...

unolexic

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 08:24:31 EDT

is an homage to the Universal Grotesk font—possibly the first geometric sans font. With Uno constucted from its name to echo its firm relationship to Monolexic. :) Monolexic, having long morphed from its original Atkinson Hyperlegible monospaced heritage—Iosevka Hyperlegible—coincidentally shares Universal Grotesk’s spurless lower case b and u (albeit in reversal, using ...

monolexic type

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 11:42:39 EDT

along the way, the consolidated write-up on the Monolexic font accumulated more revisions than i had anticipated as the original Hyperlegible Font was iteratively tweaked to address dyslexia. Having “arrived” at this final release of Monolexic (famous last words.. see unolexic and typo’ asymmetry), a less daunting and easier to comprehend description of the font ...

2022-03-19

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EDT

font creep. completion. It took awhile but, save for the title font (which is safe for now), all the other fonts used on this site originate from the work done on the Monolexic font and the font families subsequently derived from that for coding and writing. Of course, none of this would ...

arriving at the libra 2

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 19:49:13 EST

i have sung the praises of the Amazon Kindle Oasis. It is still the flagship ereader in the Amazon line-up despite the recent update to the Kindle Paperwhite. At the same time, Rakuten Kobo released the new Sage and the updated Libra 2. i jumped on the Sage—having always wanted to give ...

2022-02-22

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

it was inevitable.. from the development of.. my original monospaced coding font based on the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font for the visually impaired to the ereader variant of that font further enhanced for dyslexia that these cumulative enhancements to advance font legibility and readability, would be merged with ...

hyperlegible dyslexic

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 11:53:59 EST

this page consolidates the various font customizations applied to the Iosevka font used on this site, my Kindle and computers. Essentially, the configuration customizations elucidated in the various articles are relisted here in this single source for ease of reference and currency. tl;dr: see monolexic type Three major influences occurred to my original Iosevka ...

kustom watch face

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:56:04 EDT

klwp allows for endless customization of the android interface. More amazingly, once one becomes familiar with the tool, it is easy to trial changes in an iterative fashion. With the blank background of my particular wallpaper, it didn’t take long to decide to put a new face to the big black void. ...

monolexic

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:52:38 EDT

a recent thread on reddit piqued my interest and made me ponder how the Monolegible font might be improved for the ereader. The Kindle already comes bundled with the OpenDyslexlic font which, like many so-called dyslexic fonts, is not a font i could ever see myself using. In fact, i personally find the ...

monolegible

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 21:39:31 EDT

i have been living with my mock up of a monospaced Atkinson Hyperlegible font now for some weeks. First, by simply substituting the Iosevka character variants that most closely matched their Hyperlegible counterparts, then a much lengthier concerted effort to tailor their individual shapes as closely as possible—the ascenders and descenders, their heights and roundness. ...

quasilegible

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 08:00:20 EDT

a quasi-proportional spaced Iosevka typeface. This option has been available for the last several major versions of the font but i did not get the impression that all character variants were available—possibly due to an incomplete or incorrect configuration on my part with earlier attempts. With version 10.x all the character variants ...

chorded bigrams

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 15:25:35 EDT

a recent thread on reddit raised an interesting topic regarding same finger bigrams. While constituting only a small percentage of common bigrams—two letter combinations—the problem is exacerbated when the letter requires a weak finger double tap, notably the pinkie and to a lesser extent the adjacent ring finger. Normally this could be addressed with ...

minimal kustom

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 17:00:03 EDT

smartphones have become ubiquitous, penetrating the lives of everyone within the reach of cell towers. At least, eventually as i am probably one of the last hold outs to finally catch up with this century. i did not even own a lowly brick or flip phone for communication. Covid changed all that, ...

the look

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 13:08:59 EDT

for this site was originally inspired by a wiki based web app called Nanoki written in Lua, a scripting language I had been investigating at the time. The clean monochromatic layout of its original example site “Sputnik” (no longer hosted) aligned with my deference towards clean content focused layouts. This ...

2021-07-25

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EDT

with the focus on font type legibility satisfied (on my desktops, ereaders and web site), it was time to address the resultant aesthetic of this site. So, with some further CSS tweaking and server side magic.. a big face lift! First and foremost, the former outdented lower case lead in ...

2021-07-08

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EDT

my descent into all things fonts continues.. Unica One, a condensed unicase sans serif typeface which this site has used for awhile for subtitle headings, while adding a unique contrast to the Major Mono Display titles, lacked high legibility which had become the focus of recent musings on my use of the Iosevka font. Enter ...

split chords

Mon, 10 May 2021 10:27:33 EDT

waiting on 15g springs for the Splitography, porting the chorded home row layout to it was inevitable as i further explore this minimal finger travel layout approach and the power of DennyTom’s chording engine. While my own QMK libraries have been refactored over time to facilitate usage across the several keyboard types i ...

chording engine macros

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 05:33:33 EDT

in case anyone else gets the chording engine bug, this is another example of the M() macro for DennyTom’s chording engine adding some dynamic features to the left hand hexpad of the.. number layer toggle action Postfix G -> “ “ ...

georgi wi

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 05:29:24 EDT

this layout uses the Georgi keyboard and a (firmware) chording engine.. Edit: Added QUIKEY shortcut editing overlay layer Edit: Added Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right keys to Cursor layer Edit: Added Comma Period chord Edit: Swapped GUI (Super) and Alt key positions Note: Chording engine updated (see ...

chording engine

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 21:19:08 EDT

and how i have been won over by a 30% keyboard. The Georgi keyboard for steno is flashed with QMK software but with a divergent approach from most supported keyboards. Namely, it uses a “chording” engine associating actions to a chord of one or more keys versus the traditional serial key processing method ...

georgi'ous

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 14:30:55 EDT

keyboard and how i have become a chording engine convert. A couple years ago, g Heavy Industries introduced the Georgi for steno advocates using Plover. It is one of the few dedicated split steno keyboards and i am writing this review with it now.. i had been eyeing this diminutive keyboard ...

iosevka hyperlegible

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:53:18 EDT

iosevka is hands down my favourite monospaced font for programming, writing, desktop.. everything in my day to day computer workflow. It can be installed in many pre-built typeface flavours. But what i love most about Iosevka is its how you can make it your own, choosing the character embellishments that suit your personal ...

2021-03-19

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:00:00 EDT

the last entry was about fonts. Fonts for this site’s look. Covid continues to be a time in which reading books (when not immersed in the web) fills the day. More so i have found than media. Whereas streaming media content is largely at the mercy of social trends limiting one’s choices, the ...

an oasis

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 08:39:38 EDT

in the time of Covid-19, there has been a lot of time for contemplation and reading. Towards that, ereaders have been indispensable with the closure of public libraries, allowing access to a wealth of digital material from the comfort of our self isolating homes. from touch i was not an early adopter ...

beakl wi'd

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 06:52:33 EST

the main BEAKL development test bed platform for the past two years has been the Chimera Ergo 42 and Corne 42 key keyboards. They both share the same codebase including all the layers with only a single configuration file directive required to distinguish the keyboards for ROM flashing. The Planck and Splitography keyboards ...

hex keypad revisited

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:02:51 EST

it has just been a couple days since completing a facelift to the Number Layer to facilitate upper and lower case hexadecimal and Square, Round and Curly Bracket input. Fixing the rolling modifier key issues led to further examination of the hex keypad, the brackets and the Vim “goto” G in particular. The ...

daily beakl

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 07:20:15 EST

the current keyboard layout daily driver is BEAKL Wi**. This page consolidates information which may be ommited from the layout write-up, with inherited layers or features described elsewhere. It is presented so one doesn’t have to search the site for the remaining pieces of layout information. Newer layouts being evaluated will likely also inherit most ...

number pad

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 15:12:28 EST

BEAKL Wi saw the first changes to the Number Layer after a long history of BEAKL iterations, with the placement of the numbers in their order of frequency—by finger row and column priority. While a radical departure from the more traditional ascending keypad order, the resultant mapping turned out to be more easily adapted ...

lazy beakl wi

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 11:39:58 EST

or shortie pinkie Wi. i came across this keyboard design some time ago which had a distinctively heavier pinkie finger stagger than is commonly found. But as radical as the column stagger appears, i had noticed when typing with the keyboard on my lap tray—something i do a lot of these Covid days, ...

2021-01-02

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

fonts. Fonts. FONTS. Without them, the keyboard layouts detailed here would all be rather moot. At least for me. A sort of the chicken or the egg dilemma. Keyboard keys might caress the fingers but fonts! They seduce the mind**. This site has touched lightly upon fonts and the deliciousness of fonts on ...

beakl wi

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 11:48:26 EST

it didn’t take long! the changes introduced by the BEAKL Bi layout spurred on further explorations—the upper row QU roll, never quite feeling as natural as the familiar home row roll with BEAKL Zi. Returning to the new keyboard analyzer, tweaked finger weighting and penalty values, and some new layout ideas produced a.. break ...

keyboard layout evaluation

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:56:32 EST

there are a number of keyboard layout analysers, some web based, some desktop applications. The readily accessible web based analysers use a graphical interface to input a new layout for comparison against a predefined library of stock layouts—QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak are sure to be amongst them. Each analyser’s scoring algorithm reflects the ...

tt-rss dfm

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:02:51 EST

i am a massive consumer of syndicated web feeds. This allows me to collect and filter web content in digest mode without need for maintaining and visiting bookmarked pages of web sites of interest. Over time, close to 300 feeds have been collected spanning a variety of topics organized into categories. Tiny Tiny RSS or ...

beakl bi

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 11:50:09 EDT

i stumbled upon a keyboard analyzer app which took an interesting approach to testing layouts via a bigram corpus. This makes for a computationally efficient analyzer with the added advantage of a standalone app versus the common web based analyzers (and their hidden algorithms). Its convenience, once installed and modified to handle the ...

rolling qmk modifiers revisited

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 13:48:26 EDT

with Covid-19 time on my hands, i thought i would revisit rolling modifiers. since implementing my own mod_roll() library to handle rolling modifiers in place of the QMK mod_T() macros (SFT_T, ALT_T, CTL_T, GUI_T) due to issues arising from rapid finger rolls, the QMK library has since been updated to address this. Enter.. ...

beakl ji

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:10:51 EDT

covid-19 has seen a lot of our time on computers increase substantially in place of personal social contact. So, while monitoring a discussion on the BEAKL forum concerning hand tuned BEAKL layouts versus those generated with optimizers, i decided to revisit my BEAKL Zi layout, well.. just because! Attempts to modify the right ...

yellow corne

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 14:18:54 EDT

the Coronavirus had just been a serious news event that erupted shortly before i completed my first Corne keyboard build. Its threat was very real but it was half way around the world and still an abstraction. Now, almost three months later, the reach of this disease has impacted the globe, political responses, ...

corne

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 10:48:11 EST

with the unavailability of the Chimera Ergo 42 the past several months, i came across the Corne keyboard in the hunt to build another keyboard. While not wireless, it is another 42 key 40% keyboard which could be flashed with the Chimera BEAKL Zi layout without much effort—replacing only the hardware specific ...

duochrome gym

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 07:24:50 EST

my distraction free colorscheme search ended with vim-colors-duochrome and had become the only vim colorscheme i use for coding and writing. This duochromatic light colorscheme begged for a properly tweaked dark colorscheme counterpart and diff configuration replacement for the vim-quantum and vim-one colorschemes used for such. Tweaking the colorscheme was rote enough given enough ...

beakl zi revisited

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:44:05 EST

after the most recent fixes to the BEAKL Pi layout, the new navigation layer.. stood out for its natural thumb Enter (select) position after navigating menus—a common workflow activity on a keyboard driven desktop configuration. This led to re-evaluating the BEAKL Zi layout and the placement of ...

vim colors duochrome

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 10:34:30 EST

contrary to most vim (editor) colorschemes which emphasize syntax highlighting, vim-colors-duochrome is a minimalistic dual monochromatic vim colorscheme born out a distraction free writing preference. It is a fork of vim-colors-plain, which simply uses bold to highlight keywords and a contrasting colour for constant literals (string, numbers, tags, etc). DuoChrome ...

beakl pi

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:40:03 EST

is a subtle variant of the BEAKL Zi configuration.. shift punctuation providing alternate fingering by moving the Question and Exclamation marks from the thumb Symbol Layer to the Base Layer Shift Dot and Comma key positions.. The Punctuation* chords remain in their identical locations as the ...

rolling keys revisited

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 11:25:12 EDT

over the course of time, two rolling key corner cases surfaced from the QMK rabbit hole descended in the (highly personal) tuning of the BEAKL Pi keyboard behaviour.. rolling thumb keys rolling sequences leading with the I or Space may not register as desired because the thumb key momentarily raises their ...

conky qclocktwo

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 10:54:42 EDT

the statement design of QClockTwo was popularized on Linux desktops with mowgli-writes conky port. i adapted this as a screensaver with an opaque black background (and the much better looking Noto Sans Mono font which produces a squared presentation), centering it on my screen. where it is ...

2019-07-20

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 00:00:00 EDT

like the normalization of keyboard layouts across the various matrix and split keyboards used.. qcocktwo’s Major Mono Display font eventually made its way to the Tiny Tiny RSS banner theme.. and from there to this site, transforming the traditional large font URL banner to a much ...

rolling leader capitalization

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 09:04:18 EDT

until now, Punctuation chords providing leader (Space / Enter) capitalization shortcuts, lengthened the hold of the punctuation key which adds a subtle disruption to the typing rhythm— much like traditional shifting. Introducing the rolling key logic for rapid finger rolls makes these chords feel much more natural, especially as finger ...

rolling qmk caps

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 10:41:06 EDT

the original implementation of rolling QMK modifiers only allowed proper case words with leading capitalization during rapid finger rolls. While not a huge imposition—all caps can be typed by respecting the TAPPING_TERM setting or enabling the CapsLock—it is possible to implement rolling capitalization with a minor change to the mod_roll ...

planck zi

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 11:01:30 EDT

Split keyboards have been my daily driver for awhile now so the Planck hasn’t seen a whole lot of love on this site of late. Time to acknowledge this solid keyboard that opened up the world of QMK to me. For awhile now, it’s BEAKL Zi variant mirrored ...

rolling qmk modifiers

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 22:26:51 EDT

many convenient modifier macros for redefining keys as dual function key values and modifiers, notably the SFT_T, CTL_T, ALT_T and GUI_T toggle macros are part of the standard QMK firmware library. For several BEAKL layout iterations, the GUI, Control, ALT and Shift keys have been assigned to the left and right ...

chimera ergo zi

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 11:35:21 EDT

from concept to implementation.. with Cherry Silent Reds and SA Profile R2, R3, R4 keycaps, and SA R1 thumb keys. impressions as expected, the ergonomic key placement (versus straight rows) actually felt unnatural at first. But usage after a few days proved otherwise, both for lateral ...

chimera ergo 42

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 13:32:53 EDT

foregoing steno, a dedicated BEAKL Si layout can be applied to an ergo keyboard design with non-linear rows. The Chimera Ergo 42 is one such design that recently caught my eye.. The above stock image (to be replaced with my build soon :-) illustrates the more relaxed fingering ...

beakl si

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 00:00:00 EST

the keyboard layouts for the Splitography and the Planck on this site, applied certain personal thumb conventions—noticeably, the Shift modifier, the Space Enter Backspace Delete Tab Escape keys, and raising the various Symbol Number Fn Cursor layers. The thumb’s strength invited such responsibilities whose benefits aligned nicely with the ...

beakl ti revisited

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 13:48:48 EST

it didn’t take long. BEAKL Vi’s placement of the Enter key and its improvement to chords and sequences involving Enter was immediately discernible over BEAKL Ti’s use of the Shift Space for the Enter key, especially for common chord sequences . However, the loss of the Backspace on ...

2018-11-09

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 00:00:00 EST

changes fast and furious. The look continues to garner attention—influenced, in part, by my Kindle ereader font themes (Futura) and a desire to impart a less “technical” look to this site. On the keyboard layout search, I have finally settled on BEAKL Ti, finger memory being a deciding factor ...

searching this site

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:31:40 EDT

the search field can be found at the top of every page to the right of the site name by the faint colored magnifying glass icon and can filter for any article containing the search criteria entered. Search criteria may contain a list of one or more words of ...

beakl vi

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:33:58 EDT

restores the Enter key to the base layer with a swap of the Backspace key from the Shift Layer of the BEAKL Ti layout, resulting in simplified Enter chords throughout the keyboard design. The following updated set of Splitography keyboard layers for BEAKL Vi are annotated minimally with the ...

2018-10-28

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 EDT

lots of changes under the hood. First and foremost, the look, gets a facelift with more modern fonts and corresponding page layout changes. The site search limitations have been effectively removed. Not only were search results previously limited to ten entries, due to the sort order, these were also ...

beakl ti

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 08:26:46 EDT

the Thumb I or BEAKL Ti (titanium :-) layout advances BEAKL Mu’s left hand fingering by replacing the universal thumb key Space assignment with the alphabetic character I to lower same finger usage and improve finger roll combinations for the left hand. The following updated set of Splitography keyboard ...

thumb i

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 08:43:17 EDT

exploring thumb keys further, by applying thumb I (swapping thumb H with ring finger I).. shaves 1% to 4% off the +Effort scale across the board— despite the HY same finger bump—against the Thumb H layout on klatest for English prose. Swapping the pinkie Q and J further reduces ...

thumb h

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 13:27:29 EDT

the HIEA home row of the split thumbs up layout featured nice finger rolls and low same finger usage. But having come from the standard BEAKL layouts, the left pinkie finger H assignment always felt less than optimal and contrary to BEAKL’s minimal pinkie finger usage goals. Swapping the ...

split thumbs up

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 17:08:26 EDT

layouts with home row modifiers, latency issues aside, confirmed one thing: thumbs shift and switch layers with the least effort and pour moi, at least, feel more natural doing so. Thumbs just want to do it all, once your hands get a taste of their inherent strength and under utilization. ...

homed split

Wed, 23 May 2018 07:54:26 EDT

symbols in layout BEAKL mu are accessed via the index, middle and ring fingers of the thumb shift side hand. It is surprisingly effective but constrained by the range of keys comfortably reached by the hand in the thumb shift position. Larger hands can implement a larger shift layout but ...

beakl mu redux

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:46:25 EDT

mashes up the BEAKL mu layout further by applying the HIEA home row of BEAKL EZ to the left hand, thus, resolving the UAI same finger issue of BEAKL 8 in favour of finger rolls. The BEAKL mu (8+10) layout still reigns supreme on Klatest over this latest mashup ...

split redux

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:39:44 EDT

my new daily driver applying the Planck BEAKL layout to the SOFT/HRUF Splitography keyboard— though, this design should be effective with any keyboard layout. legend splitography beakl I have since reverted to the BEAKL 8+10 mashup layout to favour the finger rolls with the new hand ...

planck reduxed

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:31:25 EDT

defining the PERMISSIVE_HOLD and IGNORE_MOD_TAP_INTERRUPT config.h options enables applying responsive modifiers to the home row, for vastly improved accessibility. The redundant center column modifier chords are now replaced with layer toggles, freeing both hands for those instances when a switched on layer is convenient and allowing additionally defined keys. ...

splitography

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 14:58:57 EDT

production SOFT/HRUF keyboard layout.. comprised of layers.. legend base layer blue layer orange layer green layer numlock layer stenography layer dvorak layout base layer.. blue layer.. For an ...

kali, 2002-2018

Sun, 25 Mar 2018 23:25:14 EDT

destroyer creator divine mother ...

beakl mu

Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:42:49 EDT

where Colemak emphasizes finger rolls, AdNW models keyboard layouts to emphasize hand alternation, a la Dvorak. BEAKL, utilizing the AdNW optimizer, further minimizes pinkie finger usage, emphasizing the central home block comprised of the index, middle and ring finger keyboard columns. beakl 8 introduced an unorthodox left hand placement with the I ...

weechat + bitlbee

Mon, 12 Mar 2018 10:32:22 EDT

integrating XMPP instant messaging with WeeChat is available through community plugins, notably the jabber.py plugin. Until recently, it provided Google Talk access reliably. Whatever the source of recent connection issues, a more actively maintained project is available in.. bitlbee a more robust server solution which can manage several ...

planck redux

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 22:42:28 EST

is the ongoing evolution of the Planck layers. Notable is the refinement of the Shift Layer symbol clusters from a 2x3 to a 3x2 (row by column) layout emphasizing the stronger index and middle fingers with conditional operators available on the left hand and regular expression symbols on the right. The accessibility ...

planck history

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 09:49:53 EST

was originally part of the supposedly last write-up on this site’s particular Planck keyboard layout. The annotations grew, then became long enough to warrant being separated out into its own update page here! In chronological order, a long list of tweaks (whose number was thought to be an indicator of approaching ...

planck done

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 19:06:32 EST

plancks with Cherry “Silenced” MX-Black keyswitches with 62 gram springs and sculpted SA profile keycaps.. Planck constant was supposed to be the last word on this Planck. One glance at the change history reveals how far from completion the project was! Subsequent separate write-ups dated the supposedly forever current page. ...

split steno

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:44:07 EDT

an alternate right hand centric, thumb oriented TxBolt (default layer) implementation for the soft/hruf Splitography.. legend base layer cursor and mouse actions numbers and symbols function keys work flow short cuts qwerty layer QWTY key to toggle ...

planck constant

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:36:15 EDT

the current Planck (keyboard) state as documented on this site and dotfiles. This page is a continuously updated explanation and history of the keyboard layout iterations. Notes in the accompanying keyboard descriptions pertain to layout and firmware design. The coding specifics of some of the more unique features of this particular Planck ...

colemax

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 09:57:54 EDT

several steps removed from the Colemak Mod-DH layout with the Colemak CF key swap, a simple incremental optimization can be achieved with the.. pg swap The PG key swap is arguably a wash as their letter frequencies are similar, so much will depend one’s personal corpus. The change itself is ...

colemak mod-xvcf

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 09:03:36 EDT

the alternative layout Colemak significantly improves upon the widely used QWERTY. The Colemak community further refined the Colemak layout with.. colemak dh addressing the DH placement, D for its letter frequency and H for the HE bigram, whilst retaining ZXCV on the bottom row.. I subsequently ...

planck one shot

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 17:18:53 EDT

finding one shot modifiers very useful in relaxing the finger timing for key chords, I was interested in seeing if adding a Shift one shot modifier to the thumb row would make typing feel more rhythmic. Adding it to the right thumb balances out the thumb frequency a touch, ...

planck qmk

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 11:09:48 EDT

software easily allow programming the layers and key actions that make the Planck such a uniquely powerful 40% keyboard. For many, the robust QMK library of available keyboard macros is sufficient for constructing their ultimate keyboard. If that is insufficient, any shortcomings due to personal use cases or specific macro deficiencies, can be ...

ergo planck

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:46:29 EDT

it wasn’t long after settling on the wide Planck layout for a time, that a number of thoughts and observations came to mind (with input and inspiration from the Colemak community, ever in pursuit of perfection). Most glaring was the index finger reach to the centre columns for ...

wide planck form

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 15:17:14 EST

just when you think you’re done, there is always another idea to try out! The Colemak forum has long advocated a wide or extended key layout to further enhance the ergonomics of the Colemak layout by remapping the keys such that the left and right hand positions are shifted out ...

planck on

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 20:12:39 EST

just as I thought I was done, typing revealed one last(?) change! Double tapping on the number layer was a clever way to allow keying symbols that would have otherwise required either, shifting to the symbol layer or adding a Shift modifier to the number layer. ...

thumb plancking

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 14:31:22 EST

changes to my Plancks are incremental now. Without a totally different layout approach, it would be difficult to cram much more key overloading to the basic layout I arrived at. That being said, I did manage to implement a small but ergonomic application. The Escape and Enter keys ...

maxed planck

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 15:21:52 EST

no sooner said, than undone.. or at least revisited! Taking advantage of the QMK firmware, keys have been overloaded with complimentary modifier, one shot and double tap actions to increase the power of each layer. With redundant, albeit conveniently placed, modifiers accessible with the left and right hand pinkies, ...

planck refactored

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 23:33:33 EST

it didn’t take long to publish my original Planck layouts and then do some rethinking about the hexadecimal keypad and the symbol layers. Writing will do that. modifiers the outer left, right and bottom row keys double as modifier and layer toggle keys when held down. This ...

work

Sat, 08 Oct 2016 15:58:45 EDT

...

plancked

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 14:07:50 EDT

a picture can be worth a thousand words. keyboard-editor-layout.com is used to realize the Planck layouts described here. colemak dh the default layout (with V B key swap).. where my fingers rest most of the time. Thumbs operating the Space, Backspace, Tab, Delete and Shift ...

plancking

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 09:55:29 EDT

after using the planck ortholinear keyboard for only a few weeks, I am a converted user. Even a 60% keyboard now feels unnecessarily large, cumbersome and less ergonomic. The ortholinear layout provides left-right hand fingering symmetry, whilst the 40% form factor, minimal finger travel. It took very little time ...

ergo shift-dh

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:32:10 EDT

the flashed layout Colemak Shift-DH introduced left/right hand diagonal fingering symmetry which alleviates the left hand wrist twist of most keyboard layouts. Lately, I have been playing with optimizing the keyboard experience by changing the keycap orientation and layout to minimize finger movement and improve hand position even more! ...

colemak shift-dh

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 14:17:45 EDT

is an unorthodox twist on the ergonomic finger Curl mod introduced to the Colemak mod-DH layout. It is a (personal) user refinement achieved on the Poker 2 keyboard by programming it to.. Shift the upper rows of the keyboard above the ZXC row one key to the right. ...

planck ortholinear

Sat, 09 Jul 2016 19:58:44 EDT

the planck ortholinear keyboard is a 40% keyboard of 4 rows by 12 keys which, at first glance, would appear to be inadequate for serious keyboard usage. Like its 60% keyboard cousin, firmware configurability allows programming key chords and keyboard layers to make up for the “missing” keys. Arguably, home ...

patricia, 1948-2016

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 15:16:41 EDT

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze ...

macbook pro

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:28:49 EDT

intel based macbook pro’s make good Linux laptops. But some configuration is required to tune their installation. fan control out of the box, Linux Macbooks tend to run their CPU fans rather incessantly—it is not a subtle sound. To better sync the fan to CPU utilization, install mbpfan-git ...

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 18:16:05 EDT

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) ...

the only thing i know

Sun, 29 May 2016 20:54:24 EDT

is that my understanding is incomplete. Knowledge defines boundaries outside of which remains the unknown. Within is the comfort of mind and belief. But it is only in the space of the unknowable that miracles are born. ...

the miraculous thing

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 14:03:48 EDT

when the story no longer is, the most miraculous thing remains. No words can describe it because there is no longer any separation. Point of reference from which to make comparison. History or past to project forward. It is strangeness. It is the wonder of wonders that there could ...

herbstluftwm workflow

Sat, 19 Mar 2016 12:14:20 EDT

a lot of *nix users rice their desktops to personalize the look of their operating environments. A choice of wallpapers, GUI theme and careful window placements can look very artful. I am no less inclined, spending countless hours connected to the web and the open source community. A beautiful ...

distraction free vim

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 00:22:31 EDT

distraction free writing applications abound for Windows, Mac OSX and to a lesser extent Linux. Most, aside from a simplified interface and look, simply launch the writing application in fullscreen mode, thereby hiding any other application windows. Some add minimalist backgrounds and can even play contemplative background sounds or mimic ...

lvm disk partitions

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:54:31 EDT

filesystem netbook server boot drive 250GB 120GB /boot 200MB 400MB swap 4.1GB 8GB / 1GB 1GB /home 10GB 60GB /opt 1GB 1GB /srv 50MB 3GB /tmp 200MB 500MB ...

ricing

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 13:53:35 EDT

or customizing one’s computer desktop is more than just changing a desktop wallpaper or GUI theme for *nix users, though, it often begins with such. Ricing commonly includes matching the terminal colours and desktop information panels to the desktop background image or colour, choosing default fonts, mouse pointer styles, ...

2016-03-14

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:00:00 EDT

it’s a slow and methodical process. Step by step, extending an already feature rich window manager, molding it to one’s will. Fixing corner cases that invariably pop up over extended usage. Then adding visual flair with ricing scripts to enhance the user experience and keep it fresh. Distraction free ...

space vim

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 21:55:10 EST

leader keys allow chording command sequences. The two most powerful text editors (IMO), emacs and Vim, utilize chording keymaps. Recently, I came across a reference to an active emacs configuration called Spacemacs which uses the Space key for such. I had considered using the Space key as the ...

what is

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 15:16:43 EST

...

rofi columns

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

converting from dmenu to rofi, it turns out, proved to be just the beginning. Its extended dmenu feature set refocused attention on the format possibilities of the menu content—not that there was anything dmenu restricted. But ricing has its own lure.. columnar output the unix utility ...

reality

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

is a reminder of who we are. It is the inward projected outwards. What we perceive to be separate from us, to be affecting us, is merely our opinion in opposition to it. How can this be so? It is because we ourselves are conflicted. Conflicted by belief ...

weechat

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

anyone perusing this site has probably noticed that I do not subscribe to social media services. No facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and the like icon reminders splashed everywhere. I don’t even have a cellphone. I am definitely out of touch. This site does provide conventional rss and atom feeds. And ...

shell dsl

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

inevitably, shell scripting a suite of herbstluftwm window manager functions led to considering recoding the scripts, originally written in zsh to dash. The decision to move to dash for all user shell scripts was predicated on its superior speed. While zsh is feature laden and still used as my ...

fuji x100t settings

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

the Fuji X100T is a significantly different beast from its X100 ancestor. It not only sports Fuji’s X-Trans sensor versus the original Bayer sensor but has a completely re-engineered optical viewfinder system which has been augmented with a digital LED rangefinder overlay window. Add the Q menu system and ...

rofi

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 17:08:42 EST

refactoring the dmenu scripts afforded revisiting rofi, a dmenu substitute. It didn’t get much of a look previously as it didn’t work out of the box when simply dropped into my dmenu wrapper. Back then, all my dmenu scripts called a dmenu wrapper—actually 2 wrappers, one for a horizontal ribbon ...

path mangling

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 20:27:37 EST

user scripts are commonly dropped into the user $HOME/bin directory. Add this directory to the PATH environment variable with export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH in your shell script’s initialization file and all the user scripts and applications placed there can be located and executed. All you have to do when ...

grokking vim

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 13:00:42 EST

Vim is a modal editor—with insert (writing) and command modes—that persists despite the evolution of graphical editors, many of which are equally powerful and have become de facto standards on their respective platforms. TextMate comes to mind for OSX and Sublime Text another for that and other platforms. Sublime Text ...

2015-12-16

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

over the months, many under the hood changes have been made to the development server. Moving from zsh to dash for all shell scripts initiated a rethink of the standard way to organize scripts—namely, to go from a typical bin directory containing every manner of user script to a ...

colemak colours

Sun, 13 Dec 2015 17:13:01 EST

after several months of using my Colemak Shift-DH layout, I have finally arrived at a tri-coloured keyboard layout which highlights the modifier, home row and function layer—left number keypad and right navigation cluster (see Colemak Shift-DH for the function layer layouts)—key regions.. `~ = 1 2 3 4 5 ...

2015-12-13

Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

a subtle but significant change to this web site. The home page now shows the most recent articles posted for the various topic threads which comprise this site. Dependent on publication date, not all topic threads will necessarily be represented by their latest journal entry. Regardless, this should now ...

hooked on herbstluftwm

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 22:34:24 EDT

tiling window managers are often choices for “riced” computer desktop environments—the reason being, that the more popular stacking window managers such as Windows, OSX or Gnome, merely impose a standard look or appearance to applications which, for all intensive purposes, are randomly organized on the desktop. Tiling window managers, ...

xmodmap shift-dh

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 19:06:03 EDT

my Poker 2 keyboard travels with me everywhere so my Colemak Shift-DH layout is available to me on any computer I use. For those times it isn’t, the following .Xmodmap file allows me to emulate the layout on any ANSI keyboard attached to a *nix system.. .Xmodmap add ...

gateron pbt keycaps

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:39:50 EDT

seem like an unlikely topic. You have to be a somewhat of a “geek” to care about the subject. Most keyboards come with inexpensive ABS keycaps which are prone to wear over time—sometimes showing wear within months. PBT and POM plastics are more expensive to produce and are a much ...

compassion

Mon, 03 Aug 2015 11:47:02 EDT

is remembering that everyone is always doing their best. How is it possible to do otherwise in the enactment of the story we believe we are? We play our character to perfection, even the imperfections and limitations we think we have. It is hard at times when one feels ...

herbstluftwm tasking

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 18:31:58 EDT

i’ve been living with herbstluftwm for half a year now. It’s here to stay as I continue to fashion it to my workflow idiosyncrasies, including keybinds adapted to my Colemak Shift-DH layout. hide window has been further augmented from the window handling described here to add restoring ...

control

Sun, 28 Jun 2015 14:36:40 EDT

...

conditions

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:53:59 EDT

we constantly place subtle and gross conditions on reality. I will love you if.. I will honour my word if.. I will be happy if.. It is difficult to not have conditions. It is personal. It is what defines us, individually and collectively. They are our opinions of what ...

2015-06-19

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:00:00 EDT

colours.. Dark gray, light gray and beige. Cherry profile Gateron PBT keycaps are on their way for my Poker 2. The muscle memory from a month of Colemak Shift-DH layout usage has been fully established. But infrequent modifier key combinations are often keyed with a glance at the keyboard, ...

2015-05-14

Thu, 14 May 2015 00:00:00 EDT

well, it didn’t take long to return to a more classical hand positioning for touch typing (versus the flattened fingering I was experimenting with). With that, I have returned to the original Colemak Shift-DH layout after playing with the Shift-mod CV keymap swap—that it didn’t appear to impact typing negatively ...

shift-mod layout

Wed, 13 May 2015 07:15:10 EDT

favouring my index finger over the middle finger, I have now been toying with the bottom row of my Colemak Shift-DH layout, swapping the C and V keys of that layout. The original Qwerty ZXCV cluster which Colemak considered sacrosanct is now completely gone—with little impact to this *nix ...

2015-05-11

Mon, 11 May 2015 00:00:00 EDT

not the usual site specific announcement but I guess this must be the final keyboard layout which future content will be composed on. For the curious, the keyboard and layout evolution can be found in numerous articles in colophon The Colemak plus Poker 2 journey led to this.. ...

amphetype

Sun, 10 May 2015 19:58:55 EDT

there are many typing tutors available as web browser or standalone applications. Many are tailored to provide training for a particular keyboard layout, beginning with home row finger exercises and progressing to number/symbol row touch typing. Amphetype is not a typing tutor per se but a typing analyzer which allows ...

cherry profile

Tue, 05 May 2015 18:38:43 EDT

keycaps are about 2mm shorter than the “OEM” profile keycaps which come standard with the Poker 2 keyboard. This shortens the keycap stem accordingly requiring a reduction of the O-ring depth previously applied. The Colemak Shift-DH layout is now more simply tuned with.. key travel (max) no ...

poker 2 + o-rings

Mon, 04 May 2015 18:02:44 EDT

inserting rubber o-ring dampeners with clickety Cherry MX Blue switches improve the typing experience on the Filco Majestouch significantly, by mitigating the bottoming out of the keystroke, whilst shaving a hair off the keystroke travel. Cherry MX Red switches on the Poker 2 are linear switches with no tactile ...

2015-04-05

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 00:00:00 EDT

since getting the Poker 2 mechanical keyboard, it has been weeks of exploration—reviewing the merits of various keyboard layouts, and examining and unlearning the left hand impositions learned from classical touch typing. The possibilities of designing a more ergonomic keyboard layout are made practical with a programmable keyboard which ...

colemak mod-dh

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 08:08:13 EDT

is a Colemak mod that attempts to tweak the Colemak layout by reducing the lateral movement of the index fingers, notably for the D and H keys, so they are pressed by the index fingers on the bottom row instead. This allows moving the difficult to reach B key ...

thought

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 21:35:02 EDT

knows only itself and, even then, knows only the idea of it. Through this lens, reality is filtered, until it fits accordingly, thoughts’ idea of what it should be—re-affirming and entrenching its belief. ...

poker 2 + vim

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 12:53:41 EDT

allows for some additional keyboard mappings, in particular, for the keys most difficult to reach but often used. Remapping the Esc and Del keys is one experiment I have been trying out—the Tab key is one of the few keys that vim is unable to remap via its config ...

about healing

Sat, 07 Mar 2015 16:15:21 EST

my medicine box is comprised of homeopathics (shamanic elementals), breath/body (rebirthing, emotional body, myofascial tissue, energy) work and shamanism (feather work, tobacco, plant medicines, allies, ceremony). Much of my work is done through dream time and simple consults—over the phone or visiting. More formal sessions in the manner of ...

keyboards

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 12:51:18 EST

i have lost count of all the keyboards that I have owned and used. Ones I remember.. IBM Model-M with buckling springs numerous Logitech rubber dome keyboards Microsoft keyboards including the MS Ergonomic series (which are very comfortable to type on but, unfortunately, use rubber dome ...

poker 2

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 14:05:35 EST

configuration of the Pn layer allows mapping keyboard and function key combinations to provide the shortcuts necessary to emulate a full 104 key keyboard. Such a setup allows typing with minimal hand movement and actually, IMO, is more efficient to use! initial setup the Colemak keyboard layout uses ...

2015-02-26

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00:00 EST

a flock of cedar waxwings. Hundreds of them. I estimate 300 plus. All perched on the leafless branches of a neighour’s tree. Soaking in the western rays of the sun. Then all taking flight to return and land on the tree ten or so minutes later. Time and ...

dmenu2

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 08:43:24 EST

stumbling upon a extensively enhanced fork of a favourite applcation always raises my curiousity. dmenu2 doesn’t disappoint, including the available patches to dmenu plus adding several important UI enhancements. Of particular interest to me are.. vertical positioning of the dmenu prompt background dimming The ...

dmenu

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 23:03:02 EST

while tiling window managers are my preferred desktop environment to work in, it is dmenu that is the glue and allows my workflow to be completely keyboard driven. With simple keybindings defined in the sxhkdrc configuration, dmenu functions can be defined to select from a list and.. launch ...

herbstluftwm

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 22:31:39 EST

herbstluft is German for “autumn air” and a unique moniker for a tiling window manager. It differs from bspwm which I have been using extensively for quite awhile now, in that, it is a manual tiling window manager (as opposed to dynamic)—which, interestingly, bspwm is derived from. The term ...

herbstluftwm juggling

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 14:46:15 EST

the messenging aspect of herbstluftwm via shell scripts and herbstclient allow extending the window manager behaviour. One added benefit is that it is fairly difficult to bork the actual window manager—at least, I haven’t been able to do so. Illegal herbstclient commands just fail gracefully—no harm done. No recompilation required. ...

herbstluftwm hiding

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 14:46:15 EST

i find myself using the hide/restore window function outlined here often enough that it merited updating the Conky desktop in some fashion to reflect the presence of hidden windows associated with the desktop in focus. It didn’t take long to decide on simply highlighting the desktop (tag) number! ...

higher light integration

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 13:24:36 EST

...

unified chakra invocation

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:56:25 EST

I breathe in Light through the center of my heart, Opening the heart chakra into a beautiful ball of Light, Allowing myself to expand. I breathe in Light through the center of my heart, Allowing the Light to expand Encompassing my throat ...

contact

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:41:08 EST

you are encouraged to send your comments regarding the darnedest thing. Every effort has been made to make the commenting system as effortless and secure as possible should you have anything to add or ask regarding what is presented here. Personally directed correspondence is another matter. Unfortunately, my personal ...

now

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:19:50 EST

everything you have done, every choice, every turn, has led you to this now point. Nothing holds you back, holds you to the story you believe you are, except the refusal to let go of the past. Who refuses? None other than the story itself – that finely crafted ...

this story

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:11:04 EST

is about the ending of it. The ending of all stories and the freedom that comes from it. How do you know you are in the story? When there is resistance; when there is resistance to what is. Now, this resistance need not be the obvious railing against reality. ...

2015-02-19

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 EST

funny what a toy can bring. I’ve been adapting to a 60% keyboard for a month now and the finger memory has developed to the point that a 80% tenkeyless keyboard feels foreign and awkward. An even bigger collection of keyboards will be gathering dust. Adding the final bit ...

about

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 20:10:38 EST

each thread – the submenu titles below the the darnedest thing— has an about link which describes the thread, its purpose and intent. It is the starting point. And, by design, easily overlooked so as not to get in the way on future visits. A catch-22. The link is quite ...

suzanne, -2015

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:41:06 EST

i remember your footsteps in front behind always beside me your appreciative heart lighting upon everywhere It was a great honour knowing you, my Raven sister. To witness your courage and perseverance. See you on the other side. ...

dotfiles

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 14:32:49 EST

finally! The configuration files for the applications discussed on this site are now available at github. Like much of the colophon material, expect frequent updates as configurations and scripts are fine tuned.. and I hem and haw about what might be of interest to the community at large. ...

2015-02-15

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 00:00:00 EST

dotfiles are the big addition to this site. They reside, of course, on github, and have been a long time coming—the recent interest and requests for the bspwm and Conky configurations was the final nudge I needed. I have been a consumer of github content for a long time ...

readability

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:55:34 EST

was originally released by arc90 as a Java bookmarklet which reformatted web pages for reading, devoid of the increasingly distracting artefacts adorning web pages. Coined Readability, it spawned similar content applications, such as Readable. simplyread is a Javascript from suckless.org which can be integrated into vimb and other ...

vimb

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 12:36:06 EST

minimalist browsers seem to go hand-in-hand with tiling window managers. They are typically lightweight (memory wise), allow keyboard control, maximize viewing real estate by hiding the ubiquitous URL bar and other menu/bookmark bars, and are highly configurable. vimb came under my radar by happenstance. Up until now, luakit had ...

2015-02-09

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 EST

dates. Dates. DATES: the articles’. They get updated a lot on this site because I tend to go back and correct/amend material that has been written in an attempt to keep the content current and, as best as I can, accurate. In a way, it is too easy to amend ...

2015-02-09

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 EST

the browser landscape has been somewhat active of late, with the demise of dwb (the author embarking on a new browser) and the entry of qutebrowser—a PyQt Webkit browser not using the traditional WebKitGtk+ library—and lispkit. Luakit has been my go to browser for some five years but has not ...

2015-01-26

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 EST

lots of minor tweaks have been made to the content and presentation of the colophon. Most notably, the code snippets are now, I hope, more legible and better formatted (in particular, line wrap is no longer by word for a clearer presentation). I still do not present code in the ...

2015-01-25

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:00:00 EST

changes continue. Lots of them, both hardware and software. New Poker 2 keyboard, stabilized overclocked motherboard.. and, not least of which, a new window manager, herbstluftwm. The look of the colophon section, in particular, has changed significantly, for anyone perusing code. I still eschew the convention of scrolling code ...

bspwm framed

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 09:28:48 EST

bspwm, by definition, implementing a binary space partitioning scheme does not manage frames per se like other tiling window managers such as herbstluftwm. While there is a lot of merit in the dynamic gaps described here which grow the windows towards the edge of the screen (monitor) while shrinking ...

bspwm gym

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:31:38 EST

the messenging aspect of bspwm via shell scripts and keyboard handler allow a lot of clever desktop gymnastics. One added benefit is that it is fairly difficult to bork the actual window manager. Illegal bspc commands just fail gracefully—no harm done. No recompilation required. And you can test out code ...

bspwm not bar

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:30:57 EST

one of bspwm’s alluring features is the gymnastics it can perform with simple shell scripts. Status bars identifying the desktop in focus and displaying system information are common amongst tiling window managers because desktop information managers like conky would typically be hidden by opened tiles. Thus, in order to ...

bspwm

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 13:12:02 EST

bspwm is a tiling window manager whose messenging architecture accommodates window management gymnastics via sxhkd (or any other keyboard handler) and shell scripting versus the native language customizations which would be required with other tiling window managers, such as notion (lua) and xmonad (haskell), two tiling window managers I have used extensively in the past. Each ...

urxvt

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 17:37:58 EST

after having used gnome-terminal, terminator, xfce4-terminal, roxterm, lxterm, sakura and a host of xterm variants, I have finally settled on URxvt. I had toyed superficially with it over the years but never got it working to my liking—largely due to laziness and the seductive ease other terminal emulators provided for ...

mpd and pulseaudio

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 10:27:29 EST

mpd is a great music player daemon, especially when used with the ncmpcpp client. By default, mpd is installed under user mpd which prevents playing simutaneous audio streams within PulseAudio. To enable playing multiple concurrent audio streams with PulseAudio.. cp /etc/mpd.conf ~/.mpdconf And edit the following in ...

haskell

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 10:18:05 EST

there are expressive programming languages. And then there are beautiful ones. Haskell, a pure functional programming language, is such a language with its mathematical eloquence. Transitioning from imperative languages to Haskell can entail more than a brain cramp—the purity of the language lacks the common control structures that give ...

btrfs

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 10:15:52 EST

after using ZFS for some time, a recent move from Debian Sid to Arch Linux prompted a look at btrfs. While not as mature or robust as ZFS, along with a different approach to RAID implementation, btrfs is availble in the Linux kernel which allows easy installation of a btrfs ...

nginx proxy

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 08:18:23 EST

Sinatra web applications require a proxy configuration with the Nginx HTTP server. The configuration spec for this site is set up as follows.. server { server_name thedarnedestthing.com; proxy_set_header X_Real_IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X_Forwarded_For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_redirect off; location / { try_files $uri @proxy; } location @proxy ...

nginx passenger

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 08:14:03 EST

this site now uses the Nginx HTTP server with the Phusion Passenger application server. This simplifies the Nginx configuration considerably whilst adding the deployment benefits of Phusion Passenger, notably, being able to promote site wide enhancements without needing to restart the Nginx HTTP server. Adding Phusion Passenger to an ...

virtualbox 4.2

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 08:09:35 EST

as of this writing, has not been merged into the official Debian repositories but is required if you want to run Windows 8, which the “guest additions” for, are still somewhat short of full OpenGL video support which prevents usage of some applications like Nik HDR Pro 2 and Color ...

tt-rss and postgresql

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:35:21 EST

when Google killed its Google Reader service, the hunt for an alternate aggregator service began. I and everyone else who were used to Google’s free service were now scrambling to other providers, many whose servers were not prepared for the influx of new users. Further service disruptions and performance constraints ...

colemak

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:34:12 EST

configuration settings for.. debian linux reboot after modifying.. sed -i 's/XKBVARIANT=""/XKBVARIANT="colemak"/' /etc/default/keyboard windows 8 install Colemak for Windows. Then.. open Control Panel → Clock, Language, and Region → Language → Advanced Settings under “Override for Windows display language” choose “Use ...

btrfs check

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:10:45 EST

btrfs is not yet fully production ready, missing the auto repair functionality that most Linux users are familiar with other filesystems, such as, ext4. A kernel panic (not uncommon when tinkering with overclocking a system) can result in a number of (subsequent) “btrfs check” warning messages on the partition. These ...

2015-01-02

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 00:00:00 EST

it has been a meandering route to this place—starting out as a proof of concept with shell scripts cobbled together to massage vimwiki text files into html, to Ruby scripts and then to a Ruby Sinatra web application. Hardware upgrades, water cooling, overclocking.. all made the journey interesting. This ...

2015-01-02

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 00:00:00 EST

new year. New hardware. Lots of changes under the hood which only the very familiar will notice. The main change aside from presenting photo galleries on the site instead of using photo site hosting services is enabling journaling (blogging) per subject thread. The original site design enforced a single ...

services

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:19:46 EST

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Linji Yixuan, 9th century ...

2014-12-30

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 EST

more of a journal test entry than news.. but switching from my trusty Bayer sensor Fuji X100 to the new Fuji X-trans sensor X100T is no small upgrade. As the numerous reviews on the net reveal, this new rangerfinder from Fuji is as refined as it gets. It’s my ...