#wasd keyboard

[mechanicalkeyboards-blog]

White side printed caps on a WASD

[yoshikee]

Mechanical Typing

Over the past few months I've had to use my keyboard more than I've ever had before, of course I had no issue doing this because I was enjoying every second of the crafting, tinkering, advancing and discovering that my typing usually involves; everything or almost everything I've been doing requires a keyboard and/or a mouse.

On busy days all the fun that I would get from typing would lead to pain on my forearms and hands, not the type of pain that you have after exercising a part of your body at the gym but a type of pain that get's to be hard to ignore, even to do the most simple tasks. This pain became a huge limitation to my creative process.

After talking to my mother and father (both health experts) they suggested me to look for a more ergonomic peripheral or to just plain stop typing or I would really screw up my wrists and or fingers due to severe pain, muscular atrophy, etc. So I started looking for such a thing and the first thing I came across were these really odd shaped keyboards:

A weirder one:

I even got a chance to try one of these when I was visiting a friend in NYC but I didn't like it at all, plus the fact that this would make me dependent on that specific shape to feel comfortable which for once was never going to be found in a laptop and not to mention that it's very unique form would definitely change the way I type make it extremely uncomfortable when not typing in this keyboard (this is a consideration I had to make given the way I work i. e. everywhere/anywhere).

Then I came across the CODE Keyboard (see below) which my parents even offered to buy for me as a present as I was being very indecisive about whether or not I should be buying a keyboard like that, of that price range without even trying it out (the CODE keyboard priced at 150 dollars). Before I knew the keyboard had sold out.

As I was lurking WASD keyboard's website (the makers of the CODE keyboard), I found out that they provide a plethora of ways to customize a keyboard, from keycap colors, switch type to the print in each of the keys. So one saturday morning at 7 am, I decided to open Adobe Illustrator and start the design of my custom made keyboard. The end result, what I decided to call the Y1:

The main idea of the keyboard is to show the hexadecimal representation of the ASCII characters for all the symbols but for the letters a-z and for the enter key and tab key, which I decided to use '\n' and '\t' respectively. They keyboard has Cherry MX blue switches and needless to say, it's loud. But it is also an extremely comforting typing experience. I couldn't believe how pleasing it was to type in a mechanical keyboard, my reaction was such that I had to carry this from home-work and from work-home on a daily basis for a good two weeks, then I got tired of doing this and decided to buy another keyboard.

Initially I wanted to buy the exact same keyboard, but I couldn't find a way for WASD to get it in a reasonable time (less than 4-5 months). Hence I decided to go with the Das Keyboard for the Mac:

So now I have the WASD keyboard at work and the Das keyboard at home. After switching to this new world of clicks and clacks, I have to say: I'm an extremely happy costumer. And lastly if you ask me: "Is the price worth it?" I will respond: It is worth it for me, working on these keyboards gave me back the freedom that I would usually get from typing and added an extra comfort to it.