…or, the Colemak DHm to be exact. After experimenting (and very much liking) the home row mods, the natural next step was looking into a more ergonomic layout than QWERTY. I landed on Colemak DHm due to it’s suitability with ortholinear layout.
As expected, my WPM tanked. Slowly (suuuu-uuuper slowly) I’m picking up the pace with Colemak Academy, but it’s a long road ahead. Current WPM is around 15-20.
After just setting up a QMK environment and creating and flashing a firmware for my Hotdox keyboard, I decided to write the steps down because I will inevitably forget something the next time I need to change something.
The official docs are good, but the current Brew version of avr-gcc is broken and needs to be manually built from source after setting up QMK:
brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies avr-gcc@8
brew install --build-from-source avr-gcc@8qmk new-keymap -kb hotdoxqmk compile -kb hotdox -km antttiOnce the keyboard is built, the .hex file is found in ~/qmk_firmware/.build and it can be flashed with QMK Toolbox.
SPC f e d: Open .spacemacsSPC f e R: Reload .spacemacsSPC 0: Open/focus file treeSPC f t: Toggle file treeSpacemacs is actually just a premade set of configurations for Emacs, thus the first step on installing Spacemacs is to install Emacs. An easy way to install Emacs on a Mac is to use Homebrew:
brew install --cask emacsSource Code Pro is the suggested font for Spacemacs. You can of course change the font later on, but to make things simple, install the free & open source font from GitHub.
To install the actual Spac part of Spacemacs, git clone the repository either directly to ~/.emacs.d if you don’t have an existing Emacs installation, or to some other place and then copy/merge things over:
git clone https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs ~/.emacs.dStart Emacs and the Spacemacs wizard should pop up, prompting you for your preferences regarding some of the most common options.
The default font size of Spacemacs is painfully small 10. To bump it up, hit SPC f e d, search for dotspacemacs-default-font and increase the :size prop to a more comfortable one. It should be possible to reload the config by hitting SPC f e R, but for me setting the font side required restarting Emacs.
Navigate to your preferred search engine and search for Spacemacs tutorials to continue your journey!
“Upgraded” my old Strat by changing the Suhr V60LP bridge mic to a no-name single-coil sized humbucker.
Wiring was according to the great Seymor Duncan diagram:
Zoom is popular and does video & audio streaming very well, but everything else about it stinks big time.
@zachary on Twitter found a way to install Zoom on the Mac without running the installer:
So turns out keyboards don’t emit characters per se, instead they emit key codes which then in turn the operating system resolves into characters. Therefore, if one wants to use the EN-US ANSI layout but still be able to write ä or ö, things get tricky. I’m still figuring out the best way to do it, but here are my ideas:
Still on my TODO to try out the last one.
My scratchpad of ideas:
It makes zero sense but I really would like to build my own handwired keyboard. One that’s mine and no-one else’s. I’m in the research phase at the moment and here I’ve collected a bunch of resources for mostly my own convenience.
Fn+ Right ShiftFn + Right Cmd (or Ctrl)Pn keyFn + Right Cmd (or Ctrl)Let’s have an example. In my ISO Nordic version of the Race 3 for some reason the § and < keys are mapped just the opposite as what’s printed on the keycaps. Here’s the exact keys I press to change them vice versa:
Fn + Right ShiftFn + Right Cmd§<Pn<§PnFn + Right CmdIf I mess up and need to reset the current layer, I can do so by pressing and holding Fn + R for 5 seconds.