An unconventional LEGO Technic beam sandwich keyboard case | Hacker News Reader

An unconventional LEGO Technic beam sandwich keyboard case

dotat.at

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Off topic, but your email address is awesome. It's even worse than my real estate agent's which was this company:

https://www.atproperties.com/chicagoland

I imagine when they first went to set up the email on their domain their IT guy, "What have you done?!"

Reminds me of this Fatboy Slim song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1SpFt7zJUM

Also it’s so familiar now but that was the joke with slashdot.org

i had to read your comment three times before i realized what you meant: /..org, of course.

That’s “aitch-tee-tee-pee-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org” for the full URL

Wow thanks, that Fatboy Slim track is a new one for me, great fun :-)

I'm actually surprised they are allowed to hold onto that domain name as I was under the impression that Austria requires .at holders to be in Austria.

There are workarounds for most restrictions like that, e.g. there is a shell company in New Caledonia that owns `rya.nc` on my behalf.

They are open to anyone, see under “delegation rules” towards the bottom of https://www.nic.at/en/good_to_know/legal-backgrounds/domain-...

I once came across a short list titled "email addresses it is hard to give out over the phone". I only remember this one:

one1firstthenumberthentheword@gmail.com

M3 rivnuts can be press-fit into Technic holes!

>I’m using M3 rivet nuts and machine screws. The outer diameter of the rivet nuts is 5mm; the inner diameter of the Technic holes is 4.8mm. Fortunately the beams are made from flexible ABS, so the rivet nuts can be squeezed in and make a firm press fit. They can be pushed out again with a brick separator.

That was fun to discover and I am pleased with the result!

Oh, and the M3 wafer heads fit almost perfectly into the recess at the end of a LEGO Technic hole. The imperfection is the head is about 0.1mm too thick so it does not fit flush. https://dotat.at/graphics/lego-screws.jpeg

Very nice! I'm definitely going to use that.

> what’s your email?

> dot at dot at dot at

> ಠ_ಠ

It would be sort of workable on my country. Where it would be something like:

> dot snabela dot at punktum at

“Snabela” (maybe its snabel-a or snabel a) means “trunk a” trunk as in an elephant’s trunk.

Punktum is just the Danish word for period.

Now I’m really regretting not getting a domain to utilise this fact, as I’ll only ever say my email out loud within my own country, and it would be hilarious to have a way that’s just as messed up as the authors. I guess it’s not too late.

that's cute! in polish we say "monkey" (malpka)

now i realized maybe other languages use other 'looks likes':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#Names_in_other_languag...

I'm tempted to get an email address of dot@dotatio.io, but I know that'd be setting $36 on fire.

Aaand it's gone. :D (Not me.)

Of course it is :(

Sounds like the pink panther theme.

I've seen a couple of these keyboards that I assume are mechanical in the last couple days or weeks here.

Serious question - do they not have function keys because that's just the models shown? Or is it normal for keyboards like this to not have them and if so why?

A subset of the keyboard hackers aim to imitate the happy hacker keyboard, which was sized to fit inside a 19 in rack slide out.

This is one of them. Function keys are reached vi a modifier.

There are others: https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/product/classic-style-f122-m...

F24 for life!

Yeah, see also the recent discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37004633 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37003963

One annoying thing about macOS is that it has a very limited collection of key codes. I tried using F24 for window placement but it was ignored, so I had to back off to F16.

I seem to recall being able to use an add on utility to get access to the higher scancodes - mainly to prevent some from being “the same key”.

They must not be using Excel (and certain IDEs).

thank you - I appreciate it.

The idea is that reaching for F keys, the numpad, the arrow-keys etc., takes too long. It breaks your flow and slows you down. Or, it is just much more ergonomic avoid them.

So instead they usually have more modifiers and utilize the thumb for way more than the spacebar. The varieties are endless.

Arrow keys are right on your home-row, it is just a thumb-press away, as is F-keys and the numpad (numpad works better if you have an otrholinear layout rather than the staggared keys normal keyboards have).

> more modifiers and utilize the thumb for way more than the spacebar.

This is true of keyboards like the Moonlander, or the Planck (which is even smaller than OP's keyboard).

But, OP's keyboard has a big spacebar.

I reckon there are two families of "small keyboards": those with a big-spacebar, and those with multiple thumbkeys.

With the big spacebar, I feel vindicated to see the replies linked to say "I don't need F-keys because I don't use them frequently".

Whereas with the Planck, the Planck is as small as it is (as stated on the video on olkb.com) in order to minimize hand movement/stretching from home row.

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