this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Mechanical Keyboards

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Mom, can we have battleship?

We have battleship at home.

The battleship at home...

Okay, so technically this battleship is still in drydock, but I soldered 117 keys/buttons. I get to put the keycaps on early if I want!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

The big dumb button should run the command sudo rm -rf /*

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Good thinking. I dual boot. Maybe just to be safe I should also have it run an elevated privilege command prompt and run del C:\Windows as well.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 19 hours ago

Don't forget --no-preserve-root

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Do you have two tiny space bars?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Yes. I’ll set up the Fn key and right Alt key to be spacebars as well, unless I’m holding them down. It ends up working well, I get extra keys, and I don’t have to deal with fiddly stabilizer assemblies for long keys. A few other keys are also shortened or split into two.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

Double F rows are always a good choice

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What's the big dumb button going to do?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (10 children)

I don't know yet. I just know I wanted a big dumb button.

There's so many normal dumb buttons on this one that I'm running out of ideas. You got any?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It plays a sound that says, and displays a popup which reads: "Please do not press this button again. Thank you."

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've found that mapping a big dumb button to "Enter" works nicely for adding drama when invoking a big old batch script process.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago

This is the kind of low hanging fruit I’m after. Why do two Enter keys when THREE Enter keys is 50% more?!?!!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

If you work from home, maybe something along the lines of: closing all work apps and opening steam (or youtube, or netflix, just what you're doing to decompress). I just imagine a glorious end-of-day button press meaning I'M DONE, TIME FOR SOME ME TIME!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Minimize all windows and open a spreadsheet

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Was legitimately thinking Win+L to lock Windows or Kubuntu.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

You could also have it type out, "$USER is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Triggers automated trap door or nerf gun by your desk.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I do still have the 3D printed flywheel assembly I made last year...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Plays Crab Rave 🦀🦀🦀

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

The Cheat is grounded! We had that light switch installed for you so you could turn the lights on and off, not so you could throw light switch raves!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

Launch a random retro game to the title screen.

Or any game that doesn't have a client/launcher like steam. No clicks. Button, controller, start.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

It should launch the Hamster Dance page.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Exit to normal mode?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Open the system shutdown menu? Like restart, shutdown, log out, etc. Or maybe open a fullscreen browser window that navigates to your favourite white noise site, like a relaxation button.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

How about Delete, since I don't see it on the layout.

Or the Most Scroll Lock Ever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

that's SICK!! I LOVE this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I love the style on this one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The yellow part is actually stacked on top of an identical laser-cut plate that's painted black. I need two for the right height, and I could change without too much work, but the yellow one felt more fun for this board, which is entirely unnecessary and verging on meme territory.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

What does menu do? Also I think I hate function smack dab in the middle of the space bar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago

Menu just does what menu always has, pulls up the equivalent of the right-click menu with a single press. I guess I could repurpose it for Copilot, LOL.

I like to make these boards with short keys both to pack more buttons in, and so none of them need stabilizer assemblies, which add complexity and have to be "just so" to work without negatively affecting sound or feel. I've also discovered "Hold-Tap" functionality, which I'm using on the bottom row. The two mini-space bars, plus Function and Right Alt are all spacebars if you tap them, but the Fn and RAlt do their labeled job if I hold them down. Even just making them all a touch bigger than normal (i.e. "1.25 units") is good enough to keep me from hitting more than one at a time.