I must have watched this GMMK Pro pre-sale build video from a YouTuber named IO Sam a dozen times before I pulled out my wallet and pre-ordered it. In retrospect, I learned a great deal about building keyboards from Sam’s straightforward, professional delivery. I watched and re-watched sections I didn’t understand, and certain phrases and moments in the video stuck with me in ways where I still think about them. Especially at 23:10, when he compliments the MT3 White on Black keycaps with an actual chef’s kiss, locks eyes with the camera and says “Perfecto.” (I still do that whenever I put MT3 WOB on a board.) In that video, IO Sam introduced me to DROP, when he referenced the MT3 WOB’s and the GMK Kaiju keycaps that he set the Glorious GMMK Pro up with. I was in love with the look and feel of the MT3 profile. (I still am, as you can read in my previous article “In defense of MT3”) As a life-long Godzilla fanatic, I fell head over heals for GMK Kaiju. In the latter parts...

Figure 1: Are these even long pole? I don't know, but they're really serving 'long pole vibes'. Something tells me I should probably be a little more rigorous about them than that though.. Honestly, I’m a tad bit compelled to kick off this article by once again hammering on the meme that everyone newer to the hobby loves to repeat in that “all linears are basically the same”. While my aptly named last article from Drop titled ‘Not All Linears Are The Same!’ likely did a good enough job of dissuading most readers of that age old falsehood, this one may help put it to rest for the remaining few of you who weren’t so convinced. Don’t worry to all of you reading this who don’t care that much for linear switches, either, as the idea of ‘long pole’ switches can also apply to tactiles too! Once an odd design quirk developed to help emphasize sharp, forceful, and pointed bottoming out sensations in BSUN and Tecsee switches back in 2020, ‘long stem poles’ have since morphed into a...

Typing out all the Harry Potter books would be crazy, right? What would be the point? Seems like a weird flex even by keyboard enthusiast standards. Yep, that's right. Typing it out once makes no sense. That's why I'm going to type out the books a few million times! For the benefit of humanity and especially of you, fellow keymap wizards. This demonstration of the power of alternative/custom layouts is a shortened version of the original article at kbd.news. Given the huge extent of this topic, we can barely scratch the surface here so consider this write-up a mere teaser. Imagine you are an aspiring writer with a brilliant idea, just about to start typing out your magnum opus, staring at a yet empty document on your screen. Cursor blinking, annoying orphan relatives locked up in the cupboard under the stairs. Your story, about a young boy who ends up saving the world, is quite complete. You "just" have to type out heaps of your manuscripts and notes: about 6.5 million...

Figure 1: Not even all of these (mostly) KTT-made linears are the same! After all of my years of collecting, reviewing, and obsessing over switches, I can say with certainty that linear switches are the most misunderstood of all of the switch types. No, I’m not talking about mechanically either, as all of the claims of them “just going straight up and down” are somewhat kind of true. (Not too much though, don’t get that excited.) The part that is often misunderstood, though, is usually in what is being implied when people say that these switches just go straight up and down – “All linears might as well be the same.” If the title of this article didn’t make that obvious enough to you, I find that sort of idea to be completely and utterly wrong. The people who make these implications wouldn’t say that a Cherry MX Black is the same as a Novelkeys Cream switch? They also certainly wouldn’t ever claim that every Gateron-made linear is the same as every fancy TTC one out there...

“Anne Marie? Do the interns get Glocks?” asks Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) in Wes Anderson’s classic The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. “No” she replies without pausing from looking up from sunbathing… “they all share one.” If you’re new to director Wes Anderson and his collection of artsy, charming, and sometimes problematic but otherwise entertaining films, The Life Aquatic is a good place to start. Not because it’s his best work (The Royal Tenenbaums) or even his most approachable (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) … but because it is all of the things I described above and is a perfect example of what a Wes Anderson movie is. The actors, who make up his all-star casts are reduced (if that term can be used this way) into extensions of Anderson’s creative mind and play their parts to perfection. The plot is funny and also tragic, the music in the movie is completely unique and also instantly recognizable (Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs) and the movie blends dialogue and...

As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project. Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole. Mechanical Keyboards Introductory Topics Mechanical vs Membrane Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi) Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek) Keyboard Layouts Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol) What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try (dovenyi) Keymap Layout Analysis (Keymap wizardry: Typing out the Harry Potter saga)...

Over the years of collecting mechanical keyboard switches, I’ve been lucky enough to have encountered dozens upon dozens of rare and unique ones that have stuck in my mind to this day. Prototypes, factory errors, and even a few switches so rare that there is literally zero documentation about them anywhere in the world all fill that personal list from top to bottom. However, I realize that talking about switches so far outside of most people’s reaches, and even sometimes my own grasp, doesn’t make for the most exciting of articles about switches. To this newest generation of keyboard enthusiasts, though, there is one pretty rare MX-style switch which has made its way to the top of everyone’s “must try” lists – Cherry MX Locks. These often undiscussed and even more rarely seen switches are something that few people have seen and even fewer have had the chance to try at a meetup before. However, the list of people who really know how these unique Cherry switches work is even shorter...