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(This post originally appeared on Jesse’s blog in April of 2013.) It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about my keyboard hacking project. Since I wrote up the Mark 1 keyboard, I’ve made 5 more keyboards. I’ve learned a bunch about soldering, I’ve learned how to operate a laser cutter and I’ve learned a bit about 3D printing. I’ve also learned a bit about ergonomics and keyboard design. I’m going to take this chronologically, even though that means I’m going to tell you about stuff that I later discovered was…not so right. So, bear with me through some clunky keyboard prototypes....

(This post originally appeared on Jesse’s blog in January of 2013.) I’m starting to play around with what my first fully-homebrew keyboard design might look like.  This is my first pass at the left half of a keyboard: February 18th, 2014 9:03am

(This post originally appeared on Jesse’s blog in January of 2013.) Your pinkies are not exactly your most…adept fingers. I don’t mean to imply that I’d be happy to lose mine, but I’m also not exactly happy that the standard QWERTY keyboard sticks keys like Shift, Return, Delete, Tab and Escape out of the way where you need to stretch your pinkies to whack them. If you’re an emacs user and have remapped Caps Lock to Control, things don’t exactly get easier for your poor left pinkie. As I’ve been starting to research keyboard design, I came across a tidbit about the...

(This post originally appeared on Jesse’s blog in December, 2012.) An explanation of what I’m trying to do by writing this up When I started in on this project, I was a complete electronics newbie. I had no memory of holding a soldering iron. (Though as soon as that rosin core got hot, I recognized the smell. I’m pretty sure I must have soldered as a kid or in a past life or something.) I made…a number of mistakes as I built my first keyboard, but in the end I have a fully working keyboard. I’m attempting to recount, from memory, everything...

(This post originally appeared on Jesse’s personal blog in December 2012.) I’ve been typing since 2rd grade or so, when my parents bought an Apple ][e. I started taking notes on a laptop in 8th grade. I tried to take a keyboarding class in 9th grade, since I’d never learned to type properly. Unfortunately, I typed well enough that I actually got kicked out of class. These days, I spend a lot of my time writing software. When I’m not doing that, I spend my time making trouble on the Internet. To say that I spend much of my time at a...