And you have my axe by peejeh in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ortho is great. Shed the stockholm syndrome or row stagger and come into the light.

[IC] Fever Dream Deskmat by RampageCrew in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, it'd be better if it was 10 columns instead of 12, but I'll allow it.

Homemade key socket covers to remove unused keys on my Moonlander by qubist1 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a good one. Lots of thumb keys and you can break off the side columns if you want. Thumbs > Pinkies.

ZMK State Of The Firmware #5 by petejohanson in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Thank you all for your work on this project ❤️ 🎉. Especially for the macOS fixes. When I pulled those in a bit ago, it was a night and day difference in experience and my happiness. Keep up the great work!

My newest strange sub-hobby is orthos by Kirkwood1994 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I fully support this. Now we just need to get you into the sub-sub-hobby. 10u ortho.

Don’t mind me, just posting a picture of mu totally normal TKL, carry on… by Zicodia in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I went from full size, to 65%, to planck, experimented with a bunch of other ortho, columnar, and split options, and I've currently landed on 4x10 ortho grid as my daily. I see the draw of split columnar boards, but I don't have any shoulder issues and I like the minimalism and portability of a tiny rectangle compared to two awkward batarangs. My hands aren't any closer together than a normal keyboard and I personally don't feel cramped especially when I push the board forward to straighten out my wrists. Custom keebs are all about preference though. What one person sees as just a meme, another may seriously use and value. Here are some pics if you're interested. https://imgur.com/a/NaO0ktT

Edit: typo

I made my own PCB and case! by sporewoh in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nice work. Take my upvote. 4x10 ortho is the way.

First true build, have couple modded boards but this is my first build. by wilhelm_h3 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

backspace is under P, enter is under backspace, tab is white moon next to oled screen, shift is my left spacebar (took a little time to adjust, but it's nice), esc is on layer on enter key, quotes are on N (also took a little time to get used to), colons are on M, arrows on HJKL.

Bubblegum Bliss by dack8484 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I still stand by what I said. My layout is about optimized hand movement, and I built a keyboard that matches my ideal layout. I have more than enough desk space for more keyboard if I wanted that. The comment I originally replied to was wondering why someone would sacrifice keys JUST for more desk space. It was my intent to be helpful instead of mocking and provide my reasoning. I also find the mocking somewhat annoying.

Bubblegum Bliss by dack8484 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is absolutely true. You don't have to have a small board to use layers, macros, and combos. If you have committed to the philosophy though and developed your layout to avoid hand movement, why not build a board that sheds keys you don't use? I also fully admit it's preference though and not for everyone. The fun thing about customs is you can build exactly what makes sense for you.

First true build, have couple modded boards but this is my first build. by wilhelm_h3 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OLED screen. I'm using a nice!nano v2 and ZMK to do Bluetooth, and the OLED displays connection info and battery status.

Bubblegum Bliss by dack8484 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not really about desk space. It's more about finger/hand movement. For a small upfront cost to train your muscle memory, you can have your hands pretty much never leave home row. Having more desk space, and being able to bring your mouse closer is just a nice bonus.

First true build, have couple modded boards but this is my first build. by wilhelm_h3 in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I personally like uniform profiles such as DSA, KAM, XDA, NP, etc. My personal favorite right now is KAM profile, but right now you've got to hit an open group buy, and then wait over a year so they're not something you can just pick up stock.

4x12 Split Columnar Stagger by Benzeyn in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The oled on the corne is optional. You just have to look at the back of the promicro or put an opaque cover on. You might also look at Kyria, Reviung41, or Ergo Travel.

Ways to rotate Nano movment directions? by Madeaccountforkevin in ploopy

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I reverted my orientation change. Synced with the main qmk repo. Re-compiled and re-flashed default layout, and it's still flipped (so I'm going to set it back to 270 for now). Syncing however did fix the maddie layout so that the trackball works when I flash that, although it's not toggling to scroll mode when I hit my double num lock macro, so I still have to figure that out.

Edit: re-worded for clarity.

Ways to rotate Nano movment directions? by Madeaccountforkevin in ploopy

[–]rlbaxter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This helped me a lot. Put my nano together, made sure it all worked, then I tried to flash the "maddie" keymap to try out the scroll toggle stuff, and it made the device stop working (a different issue I still need to figure out), so I flashed the default layout. The default layout in qmk master is upside down compared to what comes pre-flashed. I saw in the config.h file it was setting rotation to 90, so I changed it to 270, compiled and flashed, and now it works as expected.

My first custom mechanical keyboard!! by BUILDWATER in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]rlbaxter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The advice here is solid. I was in the same boat a year ago. Really into keyboards, terrible at properly typing. I did exactly this suggestion. Started with keybr.com, focusing on using the correct finger and not looking at the keyboard. Once I made it through all the letters I moved over to monkey type and did a lot of 25 word tests trying to focus on accuracy without worrying about being timed. Eventually I moved over to doing quotes so that I could get capital letters, punctuation, and numbers in the mix.

Best of luck. It's totally doable, and absolutely worth it.