deskthority

Muirium wrote: Such reasoning about the authority of government sounds nice until you vote in a few elections and discover the pointlessness of the "democratic" process. Most voters vote as their parents did, and as their self-reinforcing news feeds reinforce every day. And the parties are optimised to play the zero sum election game, not to represent anyone's interest but their own. You have precisely zero say in whether customs are charged at your doorstep. And never will. For any change in policy to occur, it has to come from somewhere else. Like the EU, or Mr. Murdoch.

We rely on the humanity of our institutional self-selecting politicians just as desperately as with any other system in the world. They have the power. Not us.

The government I have the most respect for, globally, is China's. They don't pretend, they just do whatever it takes to push their country forward. We were the same way a century or two ago, but with so much more bloodshed.

I totally disagree to such general statements about citizens having no say (and even more to your appreciation of China's government), but this would be an utterly off-topic discussion.

Anyway, I had said nothing about how and by whom rules are made, just about them existing and civil servants having to enforce them and certainly not deserving to be insulted or threatened when they do their job.

I am more scared by the fact that in whole EU we don't have a company able to compete with SP. GMK is of course an alternative but with such high tiers and limited option it's hard to put them in the same league.

The lack of caps manufacturers puts us in the same powerless position here as the lack of viable political parties does in how our governments are run! Ideally, things would be fine. But in practice, they are very far from it.

We never seem to talk about the 3rd option: Tai Hao. Could be worth looking into their services, too.

http://deskthority.net/group-buys-f50/t ... t8012.html

China is a different story. You can't really compete with them price-wise. I recently bought some hardware in China and they candidly told me that it will come with some pirated software o__O

Literally costs more to take those XP installation CDs out of the box than to just leave them in…

Tai Hao isn't just cheap, though. They're alive! Who knows if we can steer them into lucrative, quality GBs. But it would be a tough call for them to suck donkey balls any harder than GMK does.

Enough of this politiconomic pontificating. Let's get this crazy thread back on its true course: celebrating these caps!

Here're some phone pictures of my Ergodox, because I haven't got around to taking quality pictures yet.
I'm not trying to show off my (totally awesome 55g ergo clear) switches: I broke that exposed corner switch's contact a while ago and haven't got around to repairing it yet, and since it isn't sitting flush, I left it empty. (Guess I didn't need that key!)

Through AHK, I have so far managed to make all my Greek and math keys output their actual characters (λ! ∞! α! μ(or Μ)!), but I'm still trying to get space invader to do something awesome. Ideas?

My package was shipped today

guilleguillaume wrote: My package was shipped today

Ditto! Guess ISO orders are finally getting sent out.

I had blank ISO return in mine, and it shipped two weekends back. It'll be those international sets, rather than ISO that makes the difference.

I ordered international so I gues it may be the reason.

I don't know. I also ordered international, but I've seen photos of the international set over on GH. Not many, admittedly, but at least one.

And Melissa's message did say that they only fabricated the ISO enters this week...

Perhaps the ones with legends. My blank one came with all my other kits. (Albeit to my proxy in the US.)

I wrote Melissa now, that some people here got off-centered legends, and asked her to check my keycaps in regard to this issue before shipping, since I set value on decent quality when throwing 100+ € for a bunch of keycaps. I recommend to do the same.

I'm sure she has nothing better to do…

The trouble is that SP needs Quality Assurance, and that's not just something you can do with a glance. Our orders are about a hundred caps each. That's tens of thousands of caps, overall. Checking all of those takes time. More than enough for a full-time assistant. One she surely doesn't have and will not get.

Perhaps we should pay twice as much next time so they can afford the extra staff…

In any other business, it's not thinkable to sell a product that isn't tested enough. If I would produce this mess, my company would fire me to hell, so I triple check everything i do. (Actually I produce code.. so its not that hard to fix )

They ship worldwide and they know we have to pay taxes. If they need extra staff for checking everything, why ffs they just dont hire anyone and let us pay for him/her? I don't think that will actually cost much more as it is now... How long does it take to test a keycap set (assembling and disassambling on a keyboard)? Actually they don't even have to get a real keyboard, a wooden board with a few stems would be fine... Perhaps an hour or two? 10 bucks/h, trololol. Every kid can do that...

Sorry for my impulsive tone... I just dont understand this kind of business philosophy.

I'm OK now, because Melissa is such a good person and SP understood that we are the people who run their business.
It just would be so much better if they would get more quality control and testing...
And beeing a geek would be fun again.

Funny. I thought software was the business that taught the world to fail fast, ship first, and that it's better to offer an apology than to seek permission. Maybe you write code for mission critical industrial stuff. But even NASA famously lost a costly planetary mission through failing to audit the code. Imperial vs. metric struck in outer space!

drrtyrokka wrote: […] If they need extra staff for checking everything, why ffs they just dont hire anyone and let us pay for him/her? I don't think that will actually cost much more as it is now... How long does it take to test a keycap set (assembling and disassambling on a keyboard)? Actually they don't even have to get a real keyboard, a wooden board with a few stems would be fine... Perhaps an hour or two? 10 bucks/h, trololol. Every kid can do that...[…]

No, not every kid can do that. Only someone who knows about keyboards. Even matt30 took a few lessons here

And do you really, really think if testing a keycap set was done by assembling and disassembling it on a keyboard or a similar device, then every disaligned, misprinted, blurred or otherwise imperfect legend would be reliably detected?

By the way, it is quite simplistic to assume that paying someone 10 bucks/h means this person's work actually costs 10 bucks/h.

drrtyrokka wrote: In any other business, it's not thinkable to sell a product that isn't tested enough.

It is not only thinkable, it is common practice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_recall
One of my favourites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80 ... le_recalls

And is it cool how it is? I write code for industrial machines which produce for bmw, mercedes, audi, ford, ...
Yea it is really important, that when the production starts, everything works fine. Thats our philosophy, and thats the point why those companies trust our machines and technology.

I know its common practice, but it shouldn't be guys...

drrtyrokka wrote: ... Actually they don't even have to get a real keyboard, a wooden board with a few stems would be fine... Perhaps an hour or two? 10 bucks/h, trololol. Every kid can do that...

Manually put every cap on a stem and check them for misalignments? For 10$/h? LOL! That kind of money is ok for flipping burgers but not for quality control. Anyway, that would easily double the price of the keycaps.

I got a glimpse of this when I nagged my brother over FaceTime (who has my caps until he's over here) to take some pictures of them. He opened up a bag at random (mono legends) and spilled them out on his desk.

"Argh! Why are they all upside down?"
"The centre of gravity in caps is high towards the top, where the legends are, so they typically land upside down. Turn them over."
"Grumble."
"What do they look like?"
"Huh. You've got two backslashes."
"No, spin one around, it'll be a slash."
"No, I'm sure it won't."
"Well?"
"Yeah, okay, guess it is…"
etc. for as long as he could be bothered, which was not long.

Caps are the boringest thing ever unless you're really into them. And I've still got to convince that bugger to shoot some pictures so I can check my legends before the end of July!

Buy a camera and automate it.

Well, he has a 5D Mark II!

Anyway, the best place for automation at SP would be a camera which checks every single cap, as soon as it is pulled from the dye sub process. They need more than just a camera for that, though. I'm no industrial process guy, but I assume there's a big machine of some sort that has a sweet IBM or vintage Cherry keyboard!

After happily paying my customs taxes and dressing my que MX blue with the set plus blue return, I have to say the satisfaction is huge. I think it's one of the nicest and more satisfying sets I own (personal opinion). I also like how the PBT dsa keycaps sound together with the MX blues.

Well, if a company got brains it knows that millions of customers wouldn’t care about legends beeing abit off: except keyboard enthusiasts organizing groupbuys! So you better take a closer look at the production process. And you don’t need to inspect every single keycap, spot tests on each charge are enough.

maxmalkav wrote: I also like how the PBT dsa keycaps sound together with the MX blues.

I'm looking forward to finding out for myself!

Just got my package, first time ever that DHL managed to deliver right to my doorstep and collected taxes for the Zoll.

Don't know how I will arrange most caps, but I guess I found a close enough representation of my symbol layer that will once again <sigh> lead to wondering if not pityful looks of my coworkers




The ones I tested were not off-centered, and with my unusual spacing that wouldn't matter too much to me. But the bottom edges are definitely rougher, unfinished and the sprue marks respectively the hole they leave when torn off are really huge in some caps! Worse: contrary to doubleshots they are not aligned all in one direction. But since the underside is only really seen once when fitting the caps, that does not bother me either.

All in all a nice looking set with some unusual keys, thanks Matt3o - personally I like Retro and especially Macross better, mainly for the colors, though. I hope I won't be tempted by further DSA designs in the near future, not enough boards for all those beautiful sets

That one asymmetric blank, next to heart, do something!

probably the best set i've seen. feel happy with this but now i need a custom keyboard for it

peachy

It actually works wonders on the Noppoo. Strong magic in this set.