The thing that I'm most often surprised about is how often I'm surprised about things that I should have known or already knew.
Poly Keyboard
Entry created on 2022-06-15 (edited 2022-06-25)
author:steeph (374)
cat:Computer (78)
cat:Displays (5)
cat:Electronics (16)
cat:Keyboards (10)
cat:Shared (17)
lang:en (253)
top:Projects:Ideas (8)
Here is another project idea I never really started working on: A computer keyboard that has a small LCD in each key cap. I'm convinced that there are legitimate use cases. After all, the function of the keys changes according to context. Different applications have different shortcuts, when I press and hold the Ctrl or Super key, the whole layout practically changes. Most people don't remember useful keyboard shortcuts, if they try to memorise them in the first place (if the learn about them to begin with). It would be nice to have the markings on the keys reflect their role. In some special applications, like video editing, a completely custom keyboard layout would be useful (a cheap alternative to byuing a custom video editing interface input device). In computer games, only the useful keys could light up, as well as display what they do (which depends not only on the game, your custom layout, the current situation in the game, as well as what happened earlier in the game, e.g. what items you have in your pockets). You might want to write in different languages and need different keyboard layouts at different times. You could have icons or descriptions of key functions be displayed whenever you hold a modifying key, to see which shortcuts are available. You could have a second keyboard with an additional layout to give you access to frequently used functions, and have the keys display the relative application icons or describe what they do. And it would just look cool.
The idea has been in my head for years. I even board the electronics to build a few keys to try it out. But I never build one because I think it would have been too much work on the side to get it done well, considered I come by very well without one. Now I learned that somebody else has built a keyboard very similar to what I had/have in mind. To be honest, I never really get very deep into the keyboard building community to know whether a keyboard like this already existed. I think when I had the idea I didn't even know how big the mechanical keyboard fan community is and that DIY builds are such a big thing.
The project I stumbled over is the Poly Keyboard by thpoll. Here is an article about it in the Keyboard Builder's Digest, here is the Github repo. Apparently (according too the article) it isn't the first of its kind. But it's the only one I've seen.
Entry created on 2022-06-14 author:steeph (374) cat:Linux (36) cat:Operating Systems (24) cat:Thoughts (71) cat:Windows (2) lang:en (253)
Why is the Windows Subsystem for Linux called the Windows Subsystem for Linux when it is a Linux Subsystem for Windows?
About entries about alternative desktop operating systems
Entry created on 2022-06-14
author:steeph (374)
cat:Computer (78)
cat:Operating Systems (24)
lang:en (253)
top:Software:Alternative Operating Systems (18)
When I decided to write about operating systems that not that many people know about, I did so after discovering a handful of small projects that I was unaware of up to that point. After starting to test and try them, I found more interesting projects. After I started to write about what I had already tried, I found even more projects that seemed worth mentioning, between a lot of projects that I thought I better not get into in order to not blow this up into an actual comprehensive OS comparison project. I thought I had a rough overview over the hobby OS world and commercial desktop OSs. I split my entry about alternative desktop operating systems up into many because I took a lot of time between trying out the OSs and wanted to publish the information piece for piece.
But the longer I keep looking, the more interesting (both in number and in interestingness) projects I find. I now see that trying out most of the interesting desktop OSs would be a huge project. Even just shortly trying those that supply a bootable disk image would take much longer than I thought. So entries about OSs that I've tried will likely be a continuous thing that just at some point will stop because i lose interest. I see now that it was wrong to assume that I could write a resume after a while.
With the number of projects worth trying and mentioning there also comes a variety that's far bigger than I expected. Just shortly mentioning an OS and my experince trying it out randomly doesn't do much good. A list with a one-sentence description would probably be more helpful to people looking to install and/or try an alternative OS. But a database that contains all the interesting information about every desktop OS out there, filterable and sortable, would again be a proper project that would require a lot of time and more dedication than I can currently bring up.
So, I just give up on generating interesting or even useful information about alternative operating systems and just continue writing short entries about them like I did so far.
Perception
Entry created on 2022-06-13
author:steeph (374)
cat:Communication (3)
cat:Interpersonal Communication (2)
cat:Neurodivergence (3)
lang:en (253)
There is a scene in the show "Louie that possibly demonstrates very well part of the source with my frustration from communicating with other humans. (This Youtube video is not the entire scene, but may be enough.)
Apparently the scene is an example of good acting in the show. Louis sits in a cafe, his girlfriend joins him at his table. He eats ice cream and doesn't talk much. She seems to be in a more lively mood and talks more. She says that she believes that, by saying nothing, Louie wants to break up with her. He contradicts that claim by stating clearly that he does not want to break up with her. But she ignores that and criticises him for breaking up with her in such a cowardly manner. He is more lively as well now and repeats and assures her multiple times that he does not want to break up.
Clearly, he could not have done anything more to convince her that she is wrong in her assumtion, without escalating the situation, e.g. into a violent direction. A claim that appears to be founded on nothing but the fact that he seemed a bit down while eating ice cream in a cafe. When I watched that scene, I didn't think about it again. She was weird, apparently wanted to break up with him but give him the fault (or whatever her motivations were, idk) and did so in a convenient moment. It could hardly be more clear of a scene to me. We saw the entire thing, he clearly said how he felt, but she insisted that she knew better.
But apparently I'm the only person who sees it that way. For everybody else it seems to be quite clear that she was right and he wasn't brave/manly/fair/whatever enough to admit that he wanted to break up with her. So he made her do it. I don't know how he supposedly made her break up with him, but according to everybody I ask, that's what he did by behaving like he did, by saying thing the way he said them, and also by not saying certain things. Can anybody explain to me what those things he didn't say were, or how he said things to mean the opposite of what the words he was saying mean? Can somebody explain to me what about his behaviour made him untrustworthy? So far nobody has.