deskthority

Thank you everybody for your inspiring words!

I find myself visiting less and less. I don't look for old gear much anymore and my perspective of "friendly keyboard community" has been rather ruined as of late. Less so of DT, but both Geekhack and Reddit make me feel like an outsider despite having been around for many years. Matter of fact, I'm planning on selling most of my collection in the coming days and weeks because the magic has been lost. If it wasn't for the fact that I was still proxying stuff for people, I'd probably have slowly faded away by now.

I have not lost the magic , i still love getting an old dirty thing and cleaning it up.

But most things i want i have, and the things i still want are ether super expensive or super rare ... or both.

I also miss the group buys for vintage hauls!

So i visit less as DT is less active than it was , and i don't like the other forms as i feel like an old grumpy fart over there as i dont understand half of the stuff on them.

andrewjoy wrote: So i visit less as DT is less active than it was , and i don't like the other forms as i feel like an old grumpy fart over there as i dont understand half of the stuff on them.

I think it's just a fact of life: with so much stuff moving to mobile phones, forums are old hat and actually I've noticed the traffic on all of them has significantly decreased. Of course in a lot of cases it's caused by ill-conceived attempts to appeal to mobile users (e.g. bethesda.net) but it does seem that there's been quite a major change over the past couple of years. Forums are experiencing the same fate as newsfroups, and BBSes before them.

vometia wrote:

andrewjoy wrote: So i visit less as DT is less active than it was , and i don't like the other forms as i feel like an old grumpy fart over there as i dont understand half of the stuff on them.

I think it's just a fact of life: with so much stuff moving to mobile phones, forums are old hat and actually I've noticed the traffic on all of them has significantly decreased. Of course in a lot of cases it's caused by ill-conceived attempts to appeal to mobile users (e.g. bethesda.net) but it does seem that there's been quite a major change over the past couple of years. Forums are experiencing the same fate as newsfroups, and BBSes before them.

It can also be a good thing.

All the normies can move to facbook and mobile apps and give the internet back to the original internet nerds of the 90s.

Wait, what? The end of Eternal September??

If only.

Normies spoil everything.

I have 9 desktop computers and a laptop computer, but I don't have a mobile phone and I seldom use the laptop. From the time I was in grade school, I always worked at a table or desk. When I am not at my desk, I enjoy being disconnected from everything. I feel like an alien watching people constantly thumbing away at their smartphones.

Currently I feel grateful for the gamers who are keeping the desktop industry alive. In particular, the gamers' continually escalating demands for greater visual realism has helped drive the video card industry, and I can put the cards to work doing GPU computing.

However, when the gaming industry starts making use of direct neural interfaces, desktops will probably breathe their last gasp. As for now, I continue to enjoy working from my desk and typing on one of my many mechanical keyboards.

Enjoying the moment...

I'm one of those people who will be thumbing away at my phone if I'm not doing anything, but I can't stand being at an event of some sort and people blocking my view with their giant iPads just to get cool Facebook cred.

Oh no! My cover is blown! Yep, there I am on the front row, just neuroxing the scene while everyone else is grabbing it on their smartphones!

Forums and blogs are both suffering these days. A lot of writers have turned to podcasting instead, for better and for worse. I like the warmth of chitchat, but I miss the deep dives that the indy web was so good at. Things ranging all the way up to Siracusa’s Mac OS X reviews. Podcasts are no substitute. Let alone Twitter.

I think it’s a cohort thing. Younger people are getting into video and (air quotes indeed) “social” instead of text and pictures. Those of us who got into things earlier, in the time before Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, are ageing together as a cohort, getting on with our lives. As Webwit says, September only lasts so long. The chill wind is already here in Scotland!

We can do our thing if we want to. And new folk are free to join in and play with us. Time is always what will tell in the end. Whether this was a thing that happened, or carried on beyond us.

I'm just old enough to have experienced the rise and fall of MySpace; before then I was quite active on forums and I think the first forum I ever joined was Gamewinners back in late 1999 or 2000. On most forums I've never been quite as active as here though, I can only count a handful where I have more than 1000 posts and only one website where I have over 10000 posts (where I have 26000). You definitely get a sense of nostalgia when visiting old sites like that, especially when many that were alive and well 15 years ago are all but gone today.

Last year my department brought in some consultants to provide advice about recruiting students. We were told that we should work on formats designed for social media accessed on phones and tablets, because desktops were dead and even laptops were for "business people and old guys".

We were also advised that the attention span of today's "students" was somewhere between 30 seconds and 15 minutes.

Our current course scheduling favors 80-minute class periods, and study time outside of class ought to be several-fold higher than time spent in class. Moreover, our graduate students should be spending many hours per day doing research.

Upon seeing the consulting advice (along with various other depressing trends), I decided to forget about recruiting and tender my resignation. A year from now, I will be a freelance researcher (although I will maintain an unsalaried affiliation with the university).

webwit wrote: Wait, what? The end of Eternal September??

Escúchanos, Señor, te rogamos.

Hypersphere wrote: Upon seeing the consulting advice (along with various other depressing trends), I decided to forget about recruiting and tender my resignation.

More time for keyboard projects, perhaps.

Blaise170 wrote: I'm one of those people who will be thumbing away at my phone if I'm not doing anything, but I can't stand being at an event of some sort and people blocking my view with their giant iPads just to get cool Facebook cred.

Even worse- people in the restaurants sharing videos across the table, blaring loudly, without regard that someone else might have wanted to have a peaceful meal. I remember when I was in India, it was terrible- we went to a restaurant and the people at the table next to us were handing phones all of over the place looking at videos, without a regard for the other people that didn't want to hear their videos.

Fast forward 2 years, and it's that way in the US now too. Phones and devices of media consumption are the wave of the future, I guess.

Maybe it feels like you lost a bit of yourself, and that saddens you, the little newbie Green Squid who was obssesed AF with keyboards. But you don't have to worry about that, because all the magic didn't come from the keyboards at all. The magic, the passion, the love and effort you put on every post came from nowhere else than you. Maybe you're not anymore the Green Squid who used to love keyboard, but still Green Squid at all, right?
Never lose that enthusiasm, no matter what you're obsessed with, mature women, cars, homemade beer, whatever.
And if you ever find yourself lost, remember this quote:

If I ever stop believing I'll always find the strength to dream.

Lately I've been giving away mechs to my neighbors, parents, and friends. It is quite satisfying to see a former rubber-dome "normie" using a Wyse or Matias-refitted AT101 as their new daily driver!

abrahamstechnology wrote: Lately I've been giving away mechs to my neighbors, parents, and friends. It is quite satisfying to see a former rubber-dome "normie" using a Wyse or Matias-refitted AT101 as their new daily driver!

Yes, indeed! I put an industrial gray case from Unicomp on a refurbished Model M outfitted with an Orihalcon/Soarer converter and gave it to my son. He is now using it at work. Very gratifying.

I suggest you to try on a new hobby related to keyboards, to expand your horizons

Hypersphere wrote: I have 9 desktop computers and a laptop computer, but I don't have a mobile phone and I seldom use the laptop. From the time I was in grade school, I always worked at a table or desk. When I am not at my desk, I enjoy being disconnected from everything. I feel like an alien watching people constantly thumbing away at their smartphones.

Currently I feel grateful for the gamers who are keeping the desktop industry alive. In particular, the gamers' continually escalating demands for greater visual realism has helped drive the video card industry, and I can put the cards to work doing GPU computing.

However, when the gaming industry starts making use of direct neural interfaces, desktops will probably breathe their last gasp. As for now, I continue to enjoy working from my desk and typing on one of my many mechanical keyboards.

I also tried laptops and tablets and what not and came to realization that if it isn’t a desktop computer I really don’t want to interact with it. Luckily, at work they pay for my need of a new top of the line desktop every three years and multiple monitors setup, and I can also maintain the same at home.

As to the OP, I am in the same boat. I was heavily into keyboards for years, but the passion has died down for a while now. I now try out a new board maybe once a year, and rest of the time I’m using my trusty HHKBs.

The amount of people having their interest killed has convinced me NOT to try HHKBs.

That’s the spirit!

Do love my HHKB. And my Kishsaver. And my Realforce. Aaand… See, they’re all different, which is the point. I wouldn’t want to surrender everything besides Topre, or everything besides 60% for that matter, despite these being my overall favourites, and the HHKB the only board that embodies the both. It would be so dull to turn the others away. I’d lose something, just as I would if I lost my HHKB.

Nah, enthusiasm is its whole own thing, for all aspects in life.

HHKBs are silly little things, and I don't know if I'd enjoy them as much if I didn't spend a significant amount of time in terminal environment. But as it stands, I do enjoy my completely outdated mintty environment in cygwin with my HHKB and I don't see that changing any time soon, unless I change job or, God forbid, "promote" to management.

adhoc wrote: HHKBs are silly little things, and I don't know if I'd enjoy them as much if I didn't spend a significant amount of time in terminal environment. But as it stands, I do enjoy my completely outdated mintty environment in cygwin with my HHKB and I don't see that changing any time soon, unless I change job or, God forbid, "promote" to management.

I also use a very outdated Cygwin environment when I must use Windows: I think I've carried it across from Windows XP and it's just stayed there through various upgrades (I'm now on Windows 10). I can't face updating it in case everything breaks, even though it is sometimes a bit "will it or won't it?" from one reboot to the next.

I also have a terminal emulator installed on my phone as ssh into my Unix box and runing alpine is the only way I can get at my email. Yeah, I could open up the imap server to the big bad world, but don' wanna.

Muirium wrote: That’s the spirit!
<snip> ...
Nah, enthusiasm is its whole own thing, for all aspects in life.

Yes, indeed!

adhoc wrote: HHKBs are silly little things, and I don't know if I'd enjoy them as much if I didn't spend a significant amount of time in terminal environment.
<snip> ...

We are all spending our time in a terminal environment!

Therefore, we should seize our existence find things to enjoy and to be enthusiastic about as long as we are able.

Back to keyboards -- The HHKB is still my overall favorite, but I reboxed it a while ago to encourage me to sample the many other keyboards in my collection. I've been using a custom fully programmable 60% Blue Alps for two weeks or so -- if my HHKB were to disappear, this board would do nicely as a replacement.It's a different experience, but a good one.

At the moment, I am typing this on my hybrid KBP V60 Matias Click with Blue Alps sliders, springs, and click leaves. It's connected via a Hasu USB-USB converter for programmability (HHKB layout, of course). It's difficult to describe this hybrid. The switches are much quieter than the original Matias Clicks, but the sound and feel are different from Blue Alps.Very light touch with a bottom-out clack that I rather like.

Dang, now I don’t know if Hypersphere is just being clever with words or if I spoke Engrish there. Native English speakers, please advise.

adhoc wrote: Dang, now I don’t know if Hypersphere is just being clever with words or if I spoke Engrish there. Native English speakers, please advise.

Yes, Hypersphere is just being clever with words! Another meaning of "terminal" is "pertaining to a boundary or to the end, final"

Yeah, I caught the word play, I just wasn’t sure if I phrased my sentence incorrectly.