Bummer! I wonder if the clock just has a bad crystal. Maybe the solution is to instead use the gif mode to display something fun.

If you’re new to pcb design, I’d recommend learning KiCad! I haven’t designed a keeb pcb in a few years so my skills are rusty, but I learned the basics with this series on youtube called ‘getting to blinky’. There may be better or more up to date ones available these days, though. I’d maybe just take one of the side macro pads and just make that as a standalone to get the hang of it first before going hog wild with the whole thing. Honestly though, despite how tedious it is, handwiring a matrix isn’t too too bad!

Wow, that’s suuuuper custom. What firmware? Are you going to hand-wire it first to test? The only half size mechanical switches I’ve seen were alps, but I don’t know if they’d be available for sale anywhere these days. Nor caps. If it were me I’d probably just mock up the layout in cardboard with switches and stuff to see how it feels, then go from there.

I know in QMK you can set up different layouts that you can switch to. This is used for switching between qwerty and dvorak and stuff like that. You could set up layers that have the space defined like you want it in each condition. Check out PDF(layer): https://docs.qmk.fm/feature_layers#switching-and-toggling-layers

The Planck keyboard default firmware does this on an ‘adjust’ layer: https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/blob/master/keyboards/planck/rev7/keymaps/default/keymap.c

This is how I’d do it. But it’s not something that you control from the computer side. Also, having it baked into the firmware means you can use that feature on whatever system you might want to plug the keyboard into. I don’t know if that kind of thing is possible to set up with the VIA gui. But since you’re using arch (btw), learning QMK might be right up your alley!

There’s also this feature in QMK that I don’t quite understand called the ‘Programmable Button’ that lets the software interpret certain keycodes before handing off to the OS (I think that’s how it works? I might have that wrong): https://docs.qmk.fm/features/programmable_button

I hope that helps :)

Love it! Preonic style layout is my fave

Haaaahaha classic. Awful, but classic.

The N thing gets me too - it seems to be within the last couple years that it’s been an issue for me. I just chalked it up to the ergonomics of big phones, but now I’m wondering if there might be a software component. Like I don’t remember it being a problem at all in the past, but now I gotta be super careful with my typing to notndonthisnallnthentime

If they could just stop autocorrecting correctly spelled words to other words I did not intend, that would be great. Had to turn off the whole dang feature because it behaves so poorly.

Thanks for popping in the link! Wow, what a read. I hope it leads to better treatment.

Dang - please report back if you figure it out! I was thinking of doing a complete system reset but hadn’t gotten to it yet.

Awww, Lenny! I hope his third-eldest, Larissa is doing ok.

One thing I’ll say about the old model was that out of all the dating apps, Bumble was the only one where every woman who I met or even just messaged with could hold a conversation. That one requirement of them reaching out first set the bar, and I knew they were making the choice to speak to me out of all the other guys they were drowning in. I ended up with more dates through Bumble than any other app, and even made great friends with some people I didn’t romantically click with. Online dating is awful, or was for me, but Bumble was the least awful one of the bunch. The new model sounds not so great.

The same fellow wrote the Wired article, btw!

I just wanna listen to my audiobooks while on my morning walk without carrying my phone.

Yeah, that was my experience as well as a Pixel user. That said, it didn’t take too long to just finally switch to Firefox, Nova launcher, and Duck Duck Go. Mostly painless, and I’m over 40 👴