I totally agree. I was focusing on getting the positioning of symbol layers and such right, and I wanted that to be independent of the number of thumbkey so when I add thumbkeys back in (say for weteor/grumpy) the core layouts will remain the same.
Personally I'm not sure it's worth it longer term. 5x3+2 is my preference but I'm doing this to sort my layers so I can try some of the unibody split keyboards that have less keys to go round.
Yeah I'm doing it to establish a common layout for my symbol / number / navigation layers more than anything else, so I can expand from there to some 28 and 30 key keyboards as well as the Ferris Sweep with some consistant muscle memory.
It's my own layout starting from Colemak DH with the "missing" outer keys on another layer.
Somewhere in the middle? More of late night realisation than anything else.
To be fair I am planning on putting them back at some point.
I'm working on a core 18-key layout that I can expand anywhere up to 34 keys, so I have a consistent layout that I can use on some of the unibody split keyboards that are usually in that range of keys.
I've taken it too far haven't I?
I use the Hario Switch almost exclusively for pourovers. It's glass plus you can throw in immersions with it. Bit spendy compared to the plastic cones though.
Beautiful design. I love the casing over the nice view and roller.
I know you don't want to spend too much but there's also no point buying something that misses the mark in terms of the grind you need for the espresso you want. When I was looking at grinders for espresso I narrowed it down to the 1zspresso J-Max for a hand grinder or the Baratza Encore ESP for a machine grinder. Both are a bit more expensive than the basic options but give much more versatility for dialing in grinds.
Yes it's to keep my wrists a bit further apart but also to give my pinky fingers less work to do.
Yeah I'm new to it and still getting used to it. I've gone the slow but accurate route, which is incredibly frustrating, but I'll get there.
Haha its actually a Neon Genesis Evangelion themed keycap set so the additional keycaps are icons of the angels. I have them wired up to Vim and AutoHotkey shortcuts.
It's mostly a copy of my 34 key layout so the thumb keys are shift - space - enter - layer. Having the spacebar would throw that off. I was tempted but in the end I didn't want to lose a key on the top three rows for "enter".
I ordered this on a whim and got a cheap set of keycaps off Amazon for it, but now that I have it put together (plastic switch plate, tape modded, gateron cap golden yellows, double o-ringed keycaps) it is sounding and feeling really good. The keycaps were a cheap but they are bright and fun. I might make it my "throw in a bag and take into the office" keyboard.
I just worked out that a rotary controller can be mapped onto a mouse scroll wheel, which suddenly makes a lot of sense. I've been sitting here thinking "why would I want a volume knob? Why would I want two?" Is there anything else I am missing about rotary controllers?
I think once you accept that standard keyboards are laid out as they are just by convention and nothing else, and that moving to a new layout will take a bit of time, the prospect of having a keyboard where everything is exactly where you want it to be becomes quite thrilling. This is actually my first bit of real typing using Colemak DH. It is excruciatingly slow to touch type but I didn't know it at all two weeks ago. In two more weeks time I'll have my first split keyboard in my hands. So it's definately doable...
I was going to write a bunch of things about the Switch but I guess they would apply to most other pourover drippers too. I'm coming from the Chemex as a comparison, which is lovely but a bit slow and unwieldy for that one cup of coffee.
Having said that what makes the Switch stand out to me is that it feels like such a high quality piece of kit, and having the immersion element in the mix really suits me. My brain interprets that as "big aeropress" for whatever reason.
Yes that's basically why I got my Switch and its mostly the way I use it: percolate for the bloom then immerse for the brew. Although I'm going to play around with that soon.
I can only compare it to the Chemex, which is a bit of a different beast. I find that I can get a great balance of extraction and flavour out of the brew because I can immerse. For my work coffee I have settled into a medium grind of 18g coffee + 54g water, gentle pour for bloom, followed by a full pour (to 300g) at 30 seconds with the switch up so that the brew immerses, then switch down at 2 minutes to let the brew drain through the settled grounds. Then I vary the grind to sort any extraction issues with the particular beans I have.
I'm not sure if glass v plastic will make a difference like the ceramic does. I prewash my filters with boiling water which will heat up the Switch but I'm not sure how effective that will be.
I got a Hario Switch a few weeks ago and, honestly, I wasn't sure where it was going to fit in between my Chemex on the one side for large, slow brews and my Aeropress on the other for quick, single dose fixes. But the Switch has fast become my favourite coffee brewer.
I have not seen much mention of it so I thought I would give it a shout out on here to see if there were any fans and techniques to be shared.
I opted for the 03 off the bat so I had plenty of room for immersion and, having used it now, I don't really see how the smaller size would work satisfactorily so - if you are curious - definitely get the 03.
When you are drilling new keys but you absolutely do not want to look at the layout map that shows the keys you are supposed to know already.
I am doing some experiments with my neglected chemex trying to reproduce a look and a taste from a coffee shop in town a number of years ago. The taste was light and tea-like with lots of flowery and fruity high notes and not too much body weighing it down, so not much caramel or chocolate kind of notes, that sort of thing. The look - far less important - was also quite light and clear.
I tend to have light roasted beans in the house from one or two local roasters. What I have tried so far is increasing the grind size to be fairly coarse and increasing the dose of coffee a bit to compensate, and limiting the fussiness of the pours. The nice thing about chemex is the filters are nice and thick so I'm hoping the brew won't just fly through coarser grinds and I should have more flexibility. Here is what I did today:
. 40g coarse ground coffee
. Made a little divit because that's a lot for a flat bed
. kettle heated to 80C
. 80g pre-pour for the bloom
. 30s pour to 340g
. 3m 30s pour to 600g gently
. Brew finished at around the 6m mark
I got lovely notes but the brew was still really well extracted with plenty of body. Don't get me wrong it was a really good cup of coffee but not what I was after. I possibly need different beans but I would like to see what I can do differently with what I have usually got. I'm going to try bringing the dose back down to something below 60g per litre next.
Is there anything different I could be doing with the brew itself? I'm talking about notes and stuff like that but I far from being an expert particularly when it comes to tasting! I kind of know where I want to get to but not how to get there.
I am still waiting for my Ferris Sweep to arrive but in the meanwhile I have been keeping busy by drilling Colemak DH and learning QMK. I posted last week about some ideas I had for the layout I wanted to try, which I have since refined and managed to code up in QMK to the point that it compiles! This may sound a bit weird but I am deep learner - its how my brain works.
Anyway there is lots of documentation - which you might consider even more weird I don't know - let me know what you think. All subject to change especially when the .. firmware .. hits the .. metal .. I guess?
I am having trouble posting comments to posts in the Coffee community today. I have posted about it in the Support community but since those comments posted ok there, I thought I would try creating a test post here in c/Coffee to check whether is limited to comments.
Anybody else having trouble with comments?
Hiya all. I was wondering what pointing options there were out there for split ergo keyboards? Looking around, on the face of it there seems to be the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and well that's about it. There seem to be plenty of trackballs at various prices but nothing that looks particularly small and nondescript.
I will give mouse keys a try but I am really not convinced. If I could get my little Chromebook to display RDP colours correctly it may be that having a touchscreen would do just fine as an alternative.
Somebody asked so I thought I would post a link to the Google Sheet I drew up for my Ferris Sweep layout:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l2nOnsPRKFaykuBirOujkDo7srL1JX_3IZWA8OosrcY/edit?usp=sharing
I'm sure there are far better tools out there but it will do in a pinch.
So I should be getting a PiantorFerris Sweep* from Beekeeb in a number of weeks and I thought I would get a head start and plan my layout - or at least one version of it, influenced heavily by Ben Vallack's video about avoiding press-and-hold mechanics.
Still plenty of fiddling to do. I want to move the WASD-style cursor keys in L3 onto my first three fingers for sure. In fact I've already changed it and made room for insert and added shift as a home key mod on the right. God this is addictive.
*ETA: I am, of course, talking about a Ferris Sweep with two thumb keys as depicted in the drawings not a Piantor, which I was also considering. I guess I was swayed by the alliteration.
Reposting this on what is probablty the correct community, which I didn't know actually existed on Lemmy until five minutes ago .....
I’m humming and hawing over which split 36-key or thereabouts keyboard to get, either pre-soldered or as a kit to do the soldering myself (which would be an adventure because it has been a minute).
I’m pretty sure I want five columns not six, because I don’t see the point of giving my pinky extra work. I’m not sure about giving my thumb two or three keys for layers. Three keys would probably give me more options but I don’t want to get all layered out, you know?
Any thoughts on that? I know there is huge potential for going down the rabbithole here but assuming I get one keyboard, would I be better getting more rather than less - six columns - to play with layouts and layers? Or just go with my gut and get 5x3+2 right at the start?
PS: Does anybody know if Beekeebs 36-key Piantor case fit the 36-key PCB snugly? Or is it just the 42-key case with a big gap where the extra PCB has been broken off?
I'm humming and hawing over which split 36-key or thereabouts keyboard to get, either pre-soldered or as a kit to do the soldering myself (which would be an adventure because it has been a minute).
I'm pretty sure I want five columns not six, because I don't see the point of giving my pinky extra work. I'm not sure about giving my thumb two or three keys for layers. Three keys would probably give me more options but I don't want to get all layered out, you know?
Any thoughts on that? I know there is huge potential for going down the rabbithole here but assuming I get one keyboard, would I be better getting more rather than less - six columns - to play with layouts and layers? Or just go with my gut and get 5x3+2 right at the start?
I got some TWSBI Swipes to play with and I am really pleased with them. I have some beaten up Lamy Safaris that have probably seen better days and I love my Vac 700R so I thought I would try them out, and take the opportunity to offer a little bit of content. I hadn't realised the community had moved!
Has anybody got experience of the Kiwi switches? They seem ideal for me EXCEPT that they are incredibly green and it sounds like they probably disrupt RGB backlighting from what little I have been able to find out. I don't know how bad the effect is, though.
I was going to go for a set of Gateron Kangaroos but I read that the Kiwis had less post wiggle. Why do they have to be so hulked out??
I have been making do without an electric grinder for a while now and I have decided the time has come to get one back on the kitchen work surface. I usually make coffee with my aeropress or chemex, and sometimes grind coarsely for cold brew. I don't have an espresso machine and while I could imagine myself dabbling with the weirder manual and stovetop espresso options out there, I know that I prefer the extraction from pourover so it would never be a Thing.
I am trying to decide between the Fellow Ode v2 and the Baratza Encore ESP. One the one hand I feel I can't go wrong with a Baratza and the ESP would give me some extra flexibility. On the other hand, the Fellow Ode probably matches my coffee sensibilities perfectly. I can't really see myself choosing other grinders because I have had a Baratza before in a former life and I know their customer service is amazing. It's just those burrs on the Fellow Ode v2 that are tempting me. Any thoughts? Gotchas? Steers either way?