Google Japan goes rogue with 5.4ft long keyboard Google's Japan business appears to have ignored its semi-official "Don't be Evil" motto by publishing blueprints for the Gboard Bar, a 1.65m (5.4 feet) QWERTY keyboard. As the search giant explained, the DIY hardware has keys arranged in a straight line "so you don't have to look around." And yes, it's not even alphabetical, …
Any kit that encourages or supports "pair programming" should be viewed with extreme doubt. The entire concept of two folks thrashing out what the code should do and how it should work while actually keying it in is fundamentally flawed, although I suppose it coincides with the current view of programming as "coding". By the time code is keyed in, the decisions as to algorithm and mechanism of the code should have all been made. In real engineering, design comes before implementation (ideally via a design proving stage).
The story subtitle speaks of doubling "development time," while the body text speaks of doubling "development speed." Seems to me that doing both at once would be quite an impressive feat...
True story: A high executive at a previous employer once E-mailed a company-wide dispatch announcing the launch of a new system for filing expense reports. The improved system would, he said, "maximize response time." With talent like that in the exec suites, is it any wonder the company failed and vanished?
Freudian slip. Any expense report system is designed to make users' life miserable - it needs to be cumbersome to use to discourage employee to file expenses, and once expenses are filed, it needs to be as slow as possible to approve and pay them. Usually, it has to have features like requiring users to modify filings many times before getting them approved - "Google Maps says there is an itinerary 500m shorter, please modify your filing" - "Please add emails from your whole hierarchy approving taxi use for a destination where no public transport service exists", and so on, so the poor lad just told the truth.
The width is only 0.064mm, making it convenient...
Well then, at 64 µm, it is at the order of the size of one hair.
I'm sure it is a convenient keyboard invisible to the many. Especially to the ageing who need reading glasses and a large class of Asian descent with myopia.
Now, where did I leave my keyboard...
> This keyboard reminds me of the only movie Dr. Seuss scripted -- The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
There is a better copy (different name but same film) here, keyboard at 1:22:
In this one you can see the difference between her dress and her boobs; all the color and focus is better.
Is a piano\midi style keyboard that translates notes and chords into alpha numeric characters like a qwerty keyboard does today.
That way, after a likely painful initial learning ramp up, I could aspire to become as proficient at playing music as I am at typing today, even while working.
I'm not saying that typing would make anything that sounded like actual music, but having the practiced muscle memory for the notes and chords would be a huge benefit to playing music.
Maybe it could provide the left and right hands access to the same content as they have on a qwerty keyboard without having too much hand travel.
Takes off crazy idea guy hat...
Is a piano\midi style keyboard that translates notes and chords into alpha numeric characters like a qwerty keyboard does today.
Take a look at these two articles for inspiration - plenty more like that with a bit of searching...
https://www.instructables.com/PiMiDi-A-Raspberry-Pi-Midi-Box-or-How-I-Learned-to/
https://www.makerhacks.com/usb-keyboard-emulation-with-the-raspberry-pi-zero/
Of the MIDI interface, you only need the MIDI In part of the hardware.
I think the USB interface on the rPi B can't act as a USB HID module, but the Pi zero & pico can.
Connect the 2 devices through I2C, and now some interfacing code on both modules will give you a MIDI to USB adapter... Connect a cheap MIDI keyboard, Drive the output according to the chord input, via a mapping table, and that will allow remapping easily.
I seem to recall they already exist... Used by divers as a text input method but with fewer large keys instead.
But for regular use, you in theory could get 32 characters out just 5 keys or rather 5 bit. Using both hands you'd be able to get to 1024 but if you ignore the thumbs 256 is perfectly reasonable.
Or the one handed chorded keyboard first demonstrated in 1968 by the man who invented the mouse?
@Richard Currie, what I suspect you actually did was "racked" your brain.
The verb rack comes from the mediaeval torture instrument and means to stretch and cause pain, whereas the verb wrack is an alternative form of "wreck", as in "wrack and ruin".
A pet peeve that seems to have come into common usage is the spelling "nerve-wracking", when what they mean is "nerve-racking".
Anyhow, thanks for posting ... it was worth watching the video as I needed a good laugh this morning!
Back in the 90's, I was walking around Tokyo on my day off. I purchased a most magnificent toothbrush with bristles 180 degrees apart. I could brush the bottoms of both my top and bottom molars in ten seconds flat. Didn't seem to help with dental hygiene anywhere else though.
For stress-free pair programming, it is important that both partners are comfortable.
When you make your own copy of this innovative keyboard it will be vital to ensure that you use hot-swap key switches, so that they can be swapped between say, Gateron red and green between each line of code.
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