Fascinating read on designing controls for cars. Like many, I dislike fully touchscreen controls in a car. Having to look at the button I want to take action on is a pain. Screens are (sometimes) not bright enough during the day, but too bright at night (aging eyes).

While going through some of this article, I kept thinking about other applications of the concepts of a physical control, with digital output. My mother in law could use better controls on her stove, and these would work well.

I went for a mountain bike ride today. It was lovely to get out in the woods by myself for a bit. This ride though was different than most.

I am nursing a shoulder injury that popped up this week. I wish I could tell you what I did, but the truth is I woke up on Monday and immediately knew I had done something in my sleep.

Before the ride I wasn’t sure if I should or not. I wasn’t sure how it would hold up, and shoulders are pretty important for riding. Leaving the parking lot my plan was to ride safe, and ride smart. Easy trails, nothing too hard and on that front mission accomplished.

One thing I noticed while going slower along the trails was that the ride was more bumpy than I remembered the trails being. I was also riding very stiffly.

These combine to make a bad combination when riding. Some trails smooth out the faster you go, sometimes due to skipping over holes, and sometimes due to the suspension soaking up the bumps. Riding stiffly meant my body was not in the proper riding position, and I wasn’t properly moving the bike underneath me. My mind, in its self preservation mode, was making the ride more dangerous. Lovely.

Relearning time

Changes are underway. Yesterday I received my new Dygma Raise 2! After researching for quite a while I finally pulled the trigger and placed the order. It will take a few weeks to get used to working with layers and some of the characters and keys that are only available through a layer.

As someone who works on a computer all day, every day, each year I try to improve my setup in some way and this year I had the budget to splurge on this upgrade. The two next things I think I’ll upgrade are the monitor and my microphone setup.

There are lots of choices for mechanical keyboards and Dygma had a lot of features I was interested in trying out. One of the hardest decisions was the switches. After much contemplation, I decided to go with the Kailh Silent Brown. I don’t want a mechanical keyboard for the sound so I knew I wanted silent, but there are a great different types of silent switches. I realized after a bit that replacing the switches won’t be that expensive if I decide to do that later.

A couple hours of use yesterday and I could start to feel some muscle memory starting to build. I’m also starting to customize the layers a bit to work around some of my terrible typing habits, and to align keys with what my fingers/mind are expecting (command key placement being one of those).

I’m going to take it easy on myself while I adjust. Yesterday I got a bit frustrated there was no ~/backtick key. Easy enough to add to a layer, but I have to work to remember what layer, and how to access that.

LOL. I didn’t need sleep today. 2am wake up as the city started repairing a water main break on the street in front of our house. Nothing like excavation and vacuum truck noises early in the morning.

The 5am wake up, was the house shaking which we thought was the construction. Turned out to be an earthquake. Happy Monday!