Fink Different: Keyboards as counter-culture.
If you watched Star Wars for the first time, without seeing images of the Empire’s perfectly spaced thousands of goose-stepping minions in spotless white-lacquered armor. If you didn’t see the fleets of black and grey tie-fighters, the immaculately designed star cruisers, the evil moon-shaped flagship… you wouldn’t know that the rebels were rebels. After all, rebels don’t look like rebels if they don’t have something to contrast them against. They just look like normal people. That’s probably why when you see Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Finn (all rebels) dressed in stormtrooper garb, they somehow seem even more rebellious then they were before. It’s not what they’re wearing, it’s how they wear it. Dirty, scuffed, broken. Helmet missing or askew. An out of place, beat up weapon slung diagonally across their body. It’s the simple act of defacing the uniform that identifies them in our mind as counter-cultural. Funnily enough, it works in reverse. To the dismay of...
Oct 6, 2024
Layer 0 - Default Layer
Toggle Keys
Keymapping The is pretty much a default keyboard layout except for the layer toggles. Layer 1 - LED / Fn Layer
Colors
Keymapping
Layer 2 - VIM / Word / Outlook Layer
Toggle Keys
Colors The yellow and orange are kind of hard to distinguish in the photos.
Keymapping
Navigation
Vim
Word Helpers
- U = ctrl + page up (Beginning of paragraph)
- M = ctrl + page down (End of paragraph)
- W = ctrl + right arrow (Navigates to next word)
- B = ctrl + left arrow (Navigates to previous word)
- 4$ = ctrl + home (Navigates to end of line)
- 0) = ctrl + end (Navigates to start of line)
I tried to figure out a way to navigate sentences but I didn’t want to write VB macros. Excel HelperShortcuts
Outlook
Word
Layer 3 - Excel Layer
Toggle Keys The Drop configurator has an option to toggle a layer for one keypress. I use this to toggle this layer from the Default layer and the Vim layer. After I press a shortcut, the keyboard reverts back to the previous layer. Colors
Keymapping
Formatting
Excel Commands
Excel Navigation
Conclusion This set up as worked out really well so far. I will probably make a couple tweaks here and there but I’ve gotten used to the layout after a full day’s use. It’s worked out so well I’m considering buying another one for home to replace my dev keyboard, an Apple Magic Keyboard. At $200 shipped, the Alt Keyboard isn’t cheap but what would you pay to finally learn all the Vim keybindings?