317: The Keyboard Episode with Marcin Wichary

The Keyboard Episode

[00:00:00] Marcin: You can

[00:00:04] Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. Hi. Hi there. I’m Brett Terpstra. I am joined by Christina Warren This week Jeff is out, uh, but we have a special guest to take his place marching. Is it Witchery?

[00:00:18] Marcin: And there’s beginnings of

[00:00:19] Brett: Wickie Witchery.

[00:00:21] Marcin: of course the fonts you can swap. And it’s, you know, my, my kind of mental model was, it’s sort of like the last movie with special effects before CGI where, you know, it’s at dead

[00:00:31] Brett: Yeah. We have, I, I work, I work with a very international team, and some people have resorted to spelling their names phonetically for Amer for like American English speakers. And some people have just basically changed their name because that’s the way everybody says it. It,

[00:00:48] Marcin: incredibly complicated. So,

[00:00:49] Brett: uh, poor Stephan. Everyone calls him Stefan because it’s s t e f a N.

[00:00:55] Christina: I see. And which is how I would say it, but it’s stuff and yeah, that’s not so much.

[00:00:59] Brett: I do [00:01:00] my best. Like, first thing I ask people is like, how do you say your name? And then I do my best to remember, but a lot of times it throws me. So merchant is, he’s, he has a, a book coming out. It’s a Kickstarter right now, um, about keyboards and the history, like 150 years of the, the evolution and progression of the computer, keyboard and typewriter, keyboards and early input devices.

And it is, from what I’ve seen, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating. I’ve only read excerpts that are up on the Kickstarter page around the shift Happens site, uh, if anyone wants to check it out, that’ll be on this show notes. But yeah, we’re excited to talk. We’re, we’re excited to nerd out about keyboards and, and all of the, uh, all of the work that went into that book today.

[00:01:47] Marcin: Great.

[00:01:48] Brett: how you guys, how, how are you guys, how are you?

[00:01:51] Christina: I’m, I’m good. I’m good. I’d love, love to hear from Merchant Martian because it’s been a busy couple of weeks, right? Because, uh, the, the Kickstarter went live what, uh, like, um, [00:02:00] last week or week before last.

[00:02:01] Marcin: Yeah, a a a week and a half ago. And, and, uh, it, it’s funny, it’s, it’s went really, it’s gone really well. I, I, I’m really grateful for people’s support because the book is, um, I like the book. I hope a lot of people like the book, but it’s a little bit of a strange book. It’s not like a usual book. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty nerdy.

It’s pretty deep, but it’s also very visual. And I think seeing people, um, you know, bucket and we met our goal in 102 hours. Um, it was incredibly validating, but it’s also a strength set of emotions for sure. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, the Kickstarter is kind of like, I mean, it’s going, but it’s, it’s met its goal, but that doesn’t.

The book is ready. The book is still half a year away, so it’s sort of like a strange moment of half celebration, which I think you, you don’t get with maybe traditional publishing, but, uh, you sort of inherited the strange sequence of steps. And, you know, it’s always interesting because [00:03:00] like, I think every big creative projects is tricky because even if it goes really well, it’s over in a way.

Like it is this sort of, it’s almost like a performance, you know, you bring something out there, people maybe like it, maybe don’t like it at probably a combination of both. And then, then there’s this strange like hollowness, right? There’s this sort of the end of the, the, this stage of performance. And so the Kickstarter was very exciting for a while, and then it started quieting down, which, you know, it would, everything would, and now it’s a little strange because I don’t know how to feel exactly.

[00:03:36] Brett: Yeah. Um, I think that’s true of anything that’s, that’s as, that’s as exciting as seeing 500 some thousand dollars come in. Um, there’s , there’s gonna be a, there’s gonna be a hollowness after that excitement is over. Um, Speaking of feeling hollow, you guys wanna do a quick, quick, uh, mental health check in, uh, a mental health corner.

[00:03:59] Mental Health Corner

[00:03:59] Brett: [00:04:00] Erin has told me she, she’s gonna work on our segue music, uh, but I have failed to get her, uh, my notes, so that’s on me at this point. But just imagine, if you will, some like martini music, uh, 1950s, maybe even zox voice saying Mental health corner. Just picture it. Just picture it. Uh, Christina, do you want to kick us off?

[00:04:28] Christina: Yes, mental health corner. Um, my mental health is, is, is pretty good this week. Uh, last week was kind of a mixed bag because I was getting back from vacation and there was the high vacation, which was awesome. And then I was immediately came back from vacation and, um, GitHub announced, um, layoffs and, and so, uh, which is, uh, unfortunately, you know, not, uh, unique for, for the tech industry right now.

Um, Microsoft had announced some, a few weeks. Uh, we’d hoped that we would [00:05:00] be immune. We were not. And, and so that’s, that’s hard. Uh, it brings up, as we’ve talked about on the podcast before, like a lot of past feelings about the industry I used to work in and the uncertainty of things. And it’s just, it’s, you know, and then obviously you, uh, you feel worse for all the people who are losing their jobs.

Um, in addition to the, the, the uncertainty about your own position and whatnot. And, and even though I, I, I feel, I think, I think we’re okay. Like there are no guarantees and, um, like my mediate concern isn’t like whether or not I’ll have a job because I, I think that I’ll be okay. Uh, even if I were to lose my job, I, I, uh, have, um, confidence that I would be able to find something.

Um, and, and at least I have savings, but it’s still hard. So it was sort of like this, uh, you know, like high of, of taking my first real vacation in several years and then, you know, immediately hit with like, The stress of, [00:06:00] um, layoffs and everything that comes along with that. Uh, but this week, um, you know, trying to kind of turn a page and I’ve, I’ve had some really good conversations with people and I’ve done some cool things.

Having, uh, marching on, on Rocket earlier this week was honestly a delight. And those sorts of things. Like when I do things that feed me creativity, like creatively, that helps my mental health a lot, even when there are other uncertain things happening. Like if I can do things that I feel fulfilled creatively, and I, I, I felt that this week, um, in a number of ways.

That’s really good. So I would say like I’m in a good place, but it’s, uh, it was definitely like if we had recorded last week, that would not have been great. Like, I would not have been in a good place to record last week.

[00:06:45] Brett: which is part of why we didn’t record last

[00:06:47] Christina: of what we didn’t. I was gonna say, I, I, I, not only do we not record this podcast, but I didn’t record the show that I do on YouTube.

And I do have some guilt about that because part of me is like, Suck it up. Your job is to [00:07:00] literally talk into the camera and to get excited and act, and I can do that. Um, even if I was in a really bad place, I could do that. The hard thing was I couldn’t write the script. I was, so, my, my A D H D got really outta control and I was like, I, if somebody else had a script for me, I could show up and suck it up and do it.

Right? Like I, I, I, I, I, I have that ability. I know not everybody does. I have that ability, even when things are like awful. Um, I, I’m, I can be bipo. It’s not bipolar. It’s, it’s, honestly, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s a, I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but I can go from like screaming at someone to then immediately like, Hi, and welcome to, you know, like I could do that, that, that turn in two seconds.

Um, if I had to, but I couldn’t write the script. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it and, and I couldn’t get it done in time for us to record, and I was just, I had to just tell, like my team, I was just like, I, I can’t do it. You know? Like if, if somebody had something pre-written for me, I could have done it, but I, I just can’t go through the [00:08:00] motions of like getting myself focused enough to actually write what I needed to write and research what I needed to research, you know, that I, I was not unable to do.

[00:08:10] Brett: I think knowing you as an ADHD person, if, if enough stress had been put on you. . Um, if enough pressure had been behind, like, you do this or you are fired, or you do this, or we kidnap your mom, like, you could, you could pull it off.

[00:08:28] Christina: Oh, totally,

[00:08:28] Brett: you could, but Yeah. Given, given the ability to take the out Yeah.

I can see for sure why you did that,

[00:08:35] Christina: And, and, and that’s what you’re exactly right. Um, I think back about when Mashable had layoffs, and that was like one of the worst experiences of my professional life and will probably remain that because it was just so hard. And the following week I had to fly to California to go to, um, a, a secur, an on background security briefing with Apple.

And I booked my flight to the wrong co [00:09:00] to to, to the wrong San Jose. And which I realized right before I boarded a flight to Costa Rica, thankfully I did not get on the plane. Um, and then had to

[00:09:08] Brett: I was, I was gonna say, where’s the wrong.

[00:09:12] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, the airport codes are similar. Concur messed up. They’re, uh, I’ll take the, the L on some of it, but it’s also, it’s one of my favorite stories because. I did almost go to the wrong Costa R or go to the wrong San Jose, but you’re right. And then that moment where it did feel very much like everything was at stake, where I was like, if you don’t, this is a very important thing you go to, we’ve just laid off 10% of the staff and or more than that 20% of the staff.

And, um, the money is, is not great and you’re going on this trip because they’ve approved it and you cannot screw up. So when people were like, oh, you should have just gone to Costa Rica, and I was like, no, , you know, I, I, I I, I transferred like three other cities and had to go on a ridiculous process to finally get there.

But I did. But yeah, you’re right. If, if it had been like [00:10:00] enough stress, I could have done it. But, um, fortunately.

[00:10:03] Brett: you, sometimes you don’t fuck around and find out.

[00:10:06] Christina: Exactly, exactly. So that, that, that’s my update.

[00:10:10] Brett: All right. Well, speaking of feeling creatively fulfilled, I am not, and it is killing me. I, I am, I’m writing content for work and it’s not like I have found things I’m excited about. Did you know that you can create a virtual box image and with the click of a button, deploy it as a compute instance on Oracle Cloud?

To me, that’s interesting. Uh, you, you, like, you can build your own local Oracle Linux box. and deploy it as a cloud machine and it’ll generate all the same processors and, and memory set up and, um, all of the command line utilities that you’ve installed fastidiously with their, uh, with Oracle Lennox’s package manager and everything, and you can just push it [00:11:00] to the cloud.

And like that’s interesting to me that I can get excited about that. I have fun playing with right now. I’m writing a deep dive on like command line parameters for the, like flags for a command line tool because I just needed content to come out this week and I haven’t had the motivation to do any personal coding projects.

And I decided my project was going to be, to start watching, um, breaking bad alternating with Malcolm in the middle, uh, just to try to get the Brian Cranston juxtaposition. But it didn’t work out. I ended up going all in on Breaking Bad. So I, I’m on season three because I just don’t have the motivation to do anything else with my time right now.

Um, I, uh, it, it was, it was an interesting experiment, uh, seeing Brian Cranston as like the, uh, what would you call his Malcolm in the middle [00:12:00] character, befuddled, um, quirky, uh, , the, the comedic dad, uh, versus the, uh, breaking bad. Brian Cranston was quite a, it was a trip. But anyway, I, I need, I, I, I need mania.

Uh, I mean, we know what happens if I’m stable for too long and I have been stable and, um, like I’m, my brain is starting to think. . What if I accidentally took two of my A D H D meds today? Or what if I made myself stay up all night and just kind of push that line of like, uh, being okay versus being manic and just try to trigger a manic episode.

And that, like, I talk myself out of it every time because I know what that leads to as well. Um,

[00:12:51] Christina: right?

[00:12:51] Brett: which is to say, I, I know that that leads to being very tired and, and unproductive. Like my mania doesn’t get very dangerous. Like, I don’t, [00:13:00] I don’t gamble. I don’t have crazy sex. I don’t hurt anybody. Um, I, I write code, but it also means not sleeping and being very unhealthy.

And, anyway, anyway, that’s me. So we saved marching for last. Uh, you can choose, you can choose to partake in the mental health corner. Uh, if there’s anything you wanna share. Um, but you can also pass.

[00:13:26] Marcin: Um, I, I wanna share, I, I don’t know how much of this is, uh, the listeners don’t know me, so the context might be missing and, but I already started a little bit about, you know, how, um, sort of getting your, this big personal project that was like the, the book has become so big that it almost became like a partner.

Like, like, like, like something that was accompanying my life for many years. And it still is with its own moods and its own sort of, you know, um, uh, conventions and, [00:14:00] and, and, and, and so like, at, at, at no point, uh, I know whether the book is gonna be kind to me today or is it gonna be, you know, cruel and whatnot.

So, uh, so it’s definitely become like this strange big personal project. And in addition to the fact that I’ve in, in many numerous ways tried to do the book, the my my Way, you know, kind of like put something out there that’s really just like me in a book form. And it obviously has challenges whenever somebody then pokes at the book when it’s out there, or even the website or a Kickstarter and say, I don’t like it, or, or I don’t know about that.

Luckily enough people seem to be liking it, and actually it’s been incredibly. Wonderful and, and, and warm for me to see all of my friends from my prior lives and careers and just nooks and crannies of life saying like, oh, finally I was waiting. I was like, I, you know, we haven’t talked in 10 years, but I’m glad you’re here.

But there were also moments, [00:15:00] uh, honestly, uh, where I was, um, frustrated because I think maybe for the first time in my life, I’m a white guy, so my Twitter life is very easy in general. But I think this was the first time where I got angry at people mansplaining things to me about keyboards, where I was like, Hey, I j i, I just wrote a book about this. think I kind of know a lot , so you don’t have to tell me things. I, and, and, and it’s this, and I kind of started understanding how, how complicated that is, because some of their feedback was great. And I don’t wanna say like, don’t tell me anything about anything. I, I want feedback. I’m a designer in my real life and feedback is currency.

Like I want to be good. But there’s some moments which is like, I kind of wanna stop you right here because this is just annoying to me. So,

[00:15:46] Brett: Do you know who I am?

[00:15:48] Marcin: yeah, exactly. . So, uh, so, so that was really, I’m gonna say interesting, mostly all positive. [00:16:00] Um, there are people helping me out there, people checking in with me, which is really great.

But there definitely was heightened emotions. And Christina, you mentioned tech industry. I’m also part of tech industry in my real life, but I didn’t have as much time in the last weeks to think about it because the, the book. Um, took such a big part of my life and sort of like getting it out there and, and having a Kickstarter for your project is its own project

It’s sort of like the secondary sort of sidecar project a as I’m learning. Um, and the last thing I wanted to mention, I went to my first boxing class in my life and that was fun. And it turns out I like punching things, so I don’t know what it says about me.

[00:16:39] Christina: That’s great.

[00:16:40] Marcin: there was, there was a fun discovery.

[00:16:42] Brett: did you also get punched?

[00:16:45] Marcin: No, I was, I was put next to a punching bag as, as a, as a, as a rookie,

[00:16:49] Brett: I was just curious because that, that seems like the other half of boxing is getting punched,

[00:16:54] Marcin: No, I

think, I

[00:16:55] Brett: have to like both.

[00:16:57] Marcin: yeah, I think that’s gonna come next. Uh, we’ll see, [00:17:00] we’ll see how it goes. But the first one was,

[00:17:01] Brett: gonna go back. You’re gonna keep

[00:17:03] Marcin: I’m going back. Yeah.

[00:17:04] The Keyboard Corner

[00:17:04] Brett: All right. right. Um, so, uh, now onto the keyboard corner, shall we, um, we, we were talking before the show, before Christina got here, um, about how you are not actually like a mechanical keyboard nerd in the way that, uh, kind of the community exists, uh, today.

Uh, people that are very worried about walk and sizzle and, and soldering and, uh, and lubricating their switches and like, that’s not necessarily, uh, you, uh, so what, what is your general, what is your interest in keyboards?

[00:17:48] Marcin: Yeah, I, I, I, I think numerous by, by this point, uh, and I have a mechanical keyboard. Um, I, I think I just needs to be obsessed. About [00:18:00] keyboards in general, including their history and the sort of societal aspects and, and the software and all of that stuff. So, uh, so I, I, I think partly, you know, my role is to be an observer, but I think originally, so I’m, I’m, I’m a UX designer with, with a big, sort of serving of an engineer on the side.

And so I think originally the keyboards were just really interesting because they’re, you know, they’re the interface between people and computers, um, and. and I started being curious like who designed them. Um, and it turns out really nobody . My book is actually called Shift Happens. It’s kind of a joke, but it really is actually meaningful to me in the sense that keyboards just sort of happened.

It was like 150 years of them happening over and over again, and there was nobody in charge. And there’s this, this strange evolution of things and the fact that, [00:19:00] um, if you look at the keyboard from 150 years ago, the first query keyboard, and you look at the keyboard you have under your fingertips right now, they’re both almost the same.

Which is really strange. It’s still query. You could, you know, grab the person who invented it and put, sit them in front of your computer today. They, they would know what to do. But of course, they’re also incredibly different. They’re attached to very different devices. They’re serve different purposes. We, we spent much more time talking with our fingers now than writing, which is not something that happened even 20 years ago.

So there was a sort of desire to, or interest for me in that all of the design aspects, like who’s using them, what problems they’re solving, how they evolve as an object, how the technology that was attached to the keyboards changed the nature of keyboards, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Like, like, like, so, so all of this.

And I found, um, and there are some books that talk about typewriters. Um, and they’re definitely, you know, a lot of contemporary writing about mechanical keyboards because it’s a [00:20:00] big thing now. But there was nothing that connected all of this. Uh, and I just wanted, for a while, I wanted it to exist and then I decided that I will make that exist.

This sort of grand story of how it all happened over the last century and a half.

[00:20:17] Brett: So, so you’ve been researching this for like six years, right?

[00:20:21] Marcin: Yeah.

[00:20:22] Brett: And probably before that as well, but like actually working on the book for, for six years. What is, what is the strangest keyboard you ran into?

[00:20:33] Marcin: Oh, my , there are many strange keyboards. I, um, it’s really actually hard to say because on any given week I will give you a different answer. Uh, but. I have this, uh, the, the, the recent strange one. Um, I have this, uh, watch. It’s a, it’s a sec watch from the 1980s, and it has what I think is the smallest keyboard ever keyboard ever made.[00:21:00]

Each key is, um, like one millimeter. It’s not even a key. Like you’re not touching it. It’s, it’s more like a, you go left and right and then, and then you, you, you know, it’s an what, what would they call, what they would call an index typewriter? An index keyboard today. You know, like how you type in your Apple TV password or, or your Xbox thing.

So, so, but it’s so, it’s comical. It’s so tiny. It’s like the watch is not even that big because eighties watches were, and, and, uh, it’s neither a key, uh, really nor a board in a way, but it is kind of, kind of cute that they tried to do it and it’s really pain to use, but, uh, it’s kind of fun to have like the smallest keyboard.

I’ve never, I’ve never heard of a smaller one in my life. So that’s, that’s the most recent strange cure that I learned of. And of course it’s in a

[00:21:45] Christina: love that. And,

[00:21:47] Brett: a, I had a calculator watch. Sorry, go ahead, Christina.

[00:21:51] Christina: no, no, no. That, no, that, that’s, that would also be like a similar thing, a calculator watch. I was just gonna ask like, what, what’s your favorite keyboard personally [00:22:00] from any era? Teletype, typewriter, computer, whatever.

[00:22:05] Marcin: um, uh, yeah, I think the one that I was. Maybe, you know, if you count like my amazement, um, as a metric. Uh, so for longest time I’ve heard about electric as being like the ultimate keyboard, right? Like there’s, um, I think people of a certain age say Model M and then people a little bit older say electric and it’s just like over and over again.

And it’s really interesting because I’m always suspicious of people like saying like, oh, the, they picked with the electric and then it all went to hell because, you know, like they don’t make them like they used to. It’s generally like scary attitude often and, and maybe there’s some version of gatekeeping.

It’s just like the bad nostalgia. So I was just like, whatever, electric, fine. And then I rented one for a week from, from a, from a local typewriter store, which is a funny thing to say. and, uh, [00:23:00] it was actually really amazing. I was, so, first of all, it’s a beautiful object, this electric, like it was beautiful in the 1960s, but it’s still a beautiful object today.

And, and then as I typed on it, I actually realized it’s, it’s much, it’s much more like a computer keyboard, but there’s no electronics in it. It’s still electromechanical, but it made it feel so smooth and, and it has the features that you would expect from a computer. Like you can type. You can press two keys at the same time and mechanically through like a very clever system of ball bearings, it would allow you to press two and it would remember the second one.

Or if you press enter and the courage still goes to the beginning, you know, it takes a while, you can press another key and it will not lose it. And there’s beginnings of arrow keys there. And of course the fonts you can swap. And it’s, you know, my, my kind of mental model was, it’s sort of like the last movie with special effects before CGI [00:24:00] where, you know, it’s at dead end, but you really appreciate how much effort and, and it’s, it’s, it’s an incredibly complex object inside.

It’s really, it’s, I think, 5,000 parts. You could, in the sixties, seventies, eighties, you could have a career of fixing electrics because they were both incredibly popular but also incredibly complicated. So, so you also appreciate this like, really complex object in a way that Of course. Everything we do today in software is probably more complex, but you don’t see it, right?

You don’t, you don’t have a sense of how complex things are. And this one you could open up and see like, oh my God, okay, this is not a regular type priority. This is some next level stuff. And, and I think to me, it was just kinda amazing, right? It was maybe like the last impressive type priority you could relate to because, you know, the, the electronic typewriter, the iPhone keyboard, all of the machine learning today, it’s, it’s just there, right?

It’s just there in a cloud doing its own thing. Um, and any mechanical keyboard today is actually incredibly [00:25:00] simple, right? It’s, it’s just like the same switch over and over again. So there was something about this like built device and, and it really felt wonderful. And your fingerprints, I was like, okay, I see how people will remember this.

I see how people try for it. And the funny thing is that the last thing maybe I wanted to mention, um, and people kind of forget this, the. People love the electric so much by the way, you can blame electric for the caps lock key being in a place it is today, which every programmer hates. Um, programmer lost that battle in the early eighties.

There was a literal battle. Um, people who use electric were just like, no, this has to be like electric. So they moved it back. But, uh, people loved it so much that IBM like forever tried to recreate that feeling. So first there were beam springing keyboards. There were the, you know, seventies kind of term, really expensive terminal keyboards.

And then there was the model F, which was the cheaper version of a beams springing. And then there was the [00:26:00] Model M, which was a cheaper version of the Model F. So it’s funny because the Model M, which people today say it’s one of the most wonderful keyboards, right? It’s the king of click is the God’s own keyboard.

It’s like the fourth water down version of the electric. Uh, which, you know, just tells you how funny, how funny it is, how history works, right? Like,

[00:26:21] Brett: Yeah. So do you think it’s a, a feature or a bug that the complexity is hidden now? Um, well, the complexity by and large has moved into the realm of software, like you said, like a mechanical keyboard Today is just, it’s a bunch of switches on a board. Um, and, and most people using a computer have no idea how complex the software they’re using is.

But is that, is that good or is that bad?

[00:26:52] Marcin: I think it’s, well, you know, it depends if the software is good itself. I think like, you know, if I see a bad, bad web [00:27:00] app, I kind of wanna fix it , and it’s not, it’s not really possible with the exception of maybe, you know, overriding CSS and

[00:27:06] Brett: Uhhuh.

[00:27:06] Marcin: like that. Um, I, I, I, if it’s go, if it works well, it might be okay.

But I think there is something, I think what we lost. To some extent is you can just like pick under the hood of software as easily as maybe you used to. And also, I don’t think we ever figure out how to make software exciting for people who don’t care. Like in a way you can sort of, you know, again, open the hood of your car, well not today, but to 20, 30 years ago and, or, or, you know, or just like get, get a packet of Lego and kind of like appreciate the, the bits and pieces and the whole result.

I, uh, I think, you know, view source was the last maybe example of that. And there are, you know, modern version of view source. Of course there’s um, but, but software is, is like, can be so beautiful and not even like well-written software, like software bags can be beautiful and fascinating. [00:28:00] But I, I’m, I’m, I’m still waiting for like, maybe waiting for more like storytellers in that space because I, I think there’s so much more we could do to, to just get people.

Excited and understanding. You know, maybe, I just really remember one of the foundational works of art for me was the Soul of the New Machine, the book from I think early eighties. And it was, you know, because

[00:28:29] Christina: a great.

[00:28:30] Marcin: yeah, it was the book about ostensibly, it’s the same way, uh, like my favorite movie Sneakers is ostensibly about technology, but it’s just really about people and emotions and, and, and the soul of the New Machine.

The book was about like, how is it to create a computer and how it is to sort of negotiate with olive’s, feelings of having this sort of creative pursuit, but in this really strange space. And, and I think I’m, I’m, I’m just hoping we see more of those kind of [00:29:00] stories, uh, told, because I think we lost some of that sort of wonder of.

[00:29:05] Christina: Yeah. No, I think you’re right. I think you’re exactly right. I, it was funny right before the reason I was late to record this podcast, not that the audience cares, but I’ll, I’ll share anyway, is, I was recording, um, another podcast and I was talking about, um, it’s called The Last Detail. And I was talking about, um, Manita Claires, and was, was, was, cause it’s a podcast where you like focus on like hyper focus on like one particular object.

And I kind of. Really follow the script because we were talking less about the specific object, which was interesting and I loved, but, but more about like mini disks themselves. And a lot of that was kind of the personality and kind of the, the weirdness and the like, the care that went into that, which, which we don’t have today, right?

Like, like the consideration. And you know, cuz and I, I, I almost wonder if that’s part of the reason why there has been that such a resurgence in, in the keyboard community [00:30:00] is that we’ve all just kind of become bored with the status quo. And there is something about being able to really customize and really be particular about what you’re doing, even if it’s not to, to, to the level of, of like the, the soul of the new machine or like what, what, um, was happening with like the selecta and, and, and, uh, like typewriters.

But there is still this thing, which is like, okay, things have kind of become soulless and a way of injecting humanity and personality and, and whimsy into our, our computing is by obsessing over thought and, and key caps and switches and, and, and weight, you know, and, and, and all that stuff. And, and I, I wonder if that’s maybe part of it is that we’re all like seeking that bit of humanity, that that is, felt like it’s been lost a little bit, but which was a core part of why computing exploded to begin with.

Because if you hadn’t had that human, human aspect just like, you know, sneakers, [00:31:00] like, I don’t know if it would’ve taken off, right? Because there are so many technological things that don’t have that kind of through line. But you could see it in the early computers. I mean, especially with Apple machines, but even with the I B M PC that you could see the humanity, you could see, you could, it, it was, is kind of a.

it. It was like more than just an object, you know?

[00:31:24] Marcin: Yeah.

[00:31:24] Brett: I, I just gotta interject that like marching brought up, looking under the hood of a car, um, which will like my dad at, in high school, like he. Bought parts from a junkyard and built his own first car. Like you can’t do that now. Like we are separated. We have separate, like a car used to be a thing. Any, anyone with the motivation could take their car apart and see how it works.

And like, we’re separated from that now and I do think it removes a certain amount of humanity from the machine.

[00:31:57] Christina: I think you’re right.[00:32:00]

[00:32:01] Marcin: Yeah, my, my my, it’s funny that you mentioned your dad. Like, uh, my dad’s job, uh, when I was a kid, was perfect for me because he was, uh, an arcade game and pinball repairman.

[00:32:13] Brett: Nice.

[00:32:14] Marcin: he would be sent all of the

arcades and, and you know, I still remember, uh, for people who remember pinballs, like, um, or if you have a pinball nearby, uh, which I think a lot of people do still, you just maybe have to find it, but they’re all of this, they’re modern arcades.

Uh, ask them to open it up for you and you know, they can remove the glass and take the whole play field and move it up. And you can see under the play field at all of the solenoids and switches and stuff and light bulbs. And, and to me seeing that was like a revelation because it was, you know, it’s sort of like view sourced for a pinball, but you know, you can like stick your finger there.

You actually probably don’t wanna stick your finger there. You stick, stick a pen that. So noise can actually hurt you. But, uh, speaking from experience, but you [00:33:00] know, you can sort of like see how it’s made and you can see like some logic choices that they made or. Cost cutting choices or some, you know, algorithm choices.

And, uh, there’s some, the bugging modes in software for all these pinballs from the eighties and, and award and it, and it’s just this wonderful thing where you realize like, oh, even play has to be designed and even play has to be considered. And, and, and even play has to succumb to like boring logic. And how do you sort of creatively use that logic?

And so, uh, yeah. I, I think Christina, you are also right that it’s like, I, I think keyboards probably resonate along the same lines. Like you just, just solely, maybe you can open them and you can like grab a KickUp and remove it and grab a switch and remove it or open a switch. This is like multiple layers of discovery there.

If you’re interested, you can get us go even deeper and solder it. If you’re interested on a different level, you. Change the software to do some things right? You can, you can be the next vak, you probably also fail, but you’ll , [00:34:00] you’ll have, you’ll have your layout and you can use it and maybe convince a few people to use it as well, or, or do something completely random.

Like my, one of the people that, uh, that I interviewed for the book just, you know, made a keyboard with this unique layout made out of wood, uh, because there were no keyboards made out of wood before. Um, and, and, and, and it’s kind of interesting and, and, and you can start very simply as well, right? You can just grab one kick up or, or buy like one extra keyboard and see how it makes you feel, or, or, or, um, I don’t know, just like add one keyboard, ma you know, combination to keyboard mast and, and, and feel just kind of like a little bit more excited about it.

[00:34:39] Brett: Oh, are we gonna talk about keyboard maestro?

[00:34:41] Christina: We could, I was gonna say you, you spoke, uh, Brett’s language. Because, because that, that’s like.

[00:34:47] Brett: Um, speaking of bizarre keyboard layouts though, uh, someone, someone in our discord, and I’ve forgotten who, and I’ve forgotten what it’s called, but there was a keyboard layout that started with t h e, [00:35:00] um, and the keyboard layout was based on like the most common letter combinations when writing in English.

And it was like, I took a look at the keyboard. I, I knew that my brain was never going to rock like this entirely different. And I’ve tried Dvorak, like I, I, I, I was, I grew up, I grew up in the eighties. Like I, I typed on Cordy keyboards and it’s home. My brain, I think is ever going to be able to take in as far as touch typing goes without having to like look at the keyboard all the time.

Uh, it, the idea of like smarter keyboard layouts, uh, it, it’s kind of fascinating. It’s, it’s like you said, Cordy. Been around for like 150 years and even though it’s not the smartest layout, everyone can agree it’s not the, the most intelligent organization of the Keys. It still has, it is one diamond again.

[00:35:55] Marcin: I see. I’m gonna like, I’m always [00:36:00] fascinated by people kind of, um, hating on query because, um, yes, they pro like I would say they could be smarter layouts. Um, but I also wonder, like using VA as an example, right? So August VAK came up with this thing in, I think the thirties, 1930s, 1940s. Which is funny because it seems likeon ago, but it, this was like, 60, 70 years after the keyboard, um, was invented.

Right? So, so, so, uh, you know, time, uh, history compresses events, but, you know, so qu has been around for a while and he, he didn’t mean war, right? He, he called qu the primitive torture board. He wrote the whole book was called Typewriting Behavior, saying basically the premise of the book was squarely sucks, , what are you doing here?

Right? And he had this whole math and really an amazing set of considerations, uh, for how fingers travel on the keyboard and where the letters should be and how people [00:37:00] make mistakes. And even just like the psychology of typing, like this whole chapter about like laziness of all things. And, and so really strange, an amazing book, and I would recommend reading it for people who are interested.

and then he had this layout and kind of nothing happened because I think VAK kind of forgot that like, well, you, you, the quote unquote smartest layout, it only takes you so far. Like you still have to, you still have to, on one hand you have to market it, you have to build it, you have to convince people, you know, you working against motor memory of generations at this point.

But then like, I think what he also ignored is that like, What, what if the, what if the premise is wrong? And what if court is actually good or at least good enough? Like what if the fact that it’s been used for 60 years is like not an accident? Like people like to believe that it’s just like this one time where market chose poorly, right?

It’s like it’s, we chose VHS against beta [00:38:00] max, right? And which actually also has been debunked. VHS is supposedly actually really good. But, um, but the funny thing is that like even in the seven years that he’s seen keyboards, keyboards change, like we progressively see fewer and fewer people, professional typing.

The keyboards become, quote unquote more and more ergonomic every five years. Even if you don’t buy a ergonomic keyboard, a keyboard is just softer on our fingers and better. And, and query was okay. It was actually intentional from, from what we can tell, it wasn’t like an accident. It wasn’t there to slow people down.

It was actually very thoughtful. Um, and it’s. And it’s only gotten better because the way we use keyboards and the keyboards themselves gotten better. So in a way, you know, maybe for some people, yes, some people have problems with their shoulders, with their arms, with their, uh, wrists. Um, there’s a lot of people who would benefit from an improvement over like a $10 Dell [00:39:00] quality keyboard.

But for vast majority of people, I, I’m gonna say it’s probably good . You don’t have to worry. And particularly even touch typing. I think we’ve seen studies that say like, touch typing maybe kind of overrated too. Like you don’t have to touch type perfectly to be okay. Um, and so that’s kind of interesting.

Like I’m actually, I’ve become a fan of quirky through writing this

[00:39:22] Brett: Was

[00:39:23] Marcin: which I didn’t expect.

[00:39:24] Brett: Was there an industry that cemented Cordy as like the keyboard, like in the, in the VHS Beta Wars. It was really the porn industry that, that made VHS win. At the time that Quy kind of became popular. Was there an industry that that made it the forefront?

[00:39:45] Marcin: So, so what’s really interesting about, uh, query is that it was the first one, I mean, obviously there were typewriters before the query typewriter, um, but most of them were not mass [00:40:00] produced. Uh, most of them didn’t really go very far. They, you know, they, you couldn’t actually use them well, or they didn’t print well and Kuti just happened to be the first or, or the first big commercial layout.

And, and so it, it always faced competition from day one and it always somehow managed to, um, to, to win. And I think the first use cases for query were. Qu actually invented bureaucracy qu and elevators, right? They, they, they invented offices in bureaucracy. So that’s kinda like a funny thing to think about.

Uh, but also, uh, you know, I think it was, so it was like early, early typing for offices, but it was also transcribing Morse communication. And we know that, like the person who invented the, the early typewriter, um, the query typewriter, he cared about that. So he was pretty smart about like, knowing what the use cases are and knowing what’s the minimum speed, which was maybe 30 to 40, uh, watts per minute, [00:41:00] um, should