LEGEND-ary Keyboard
For a decade I’ve suffered through many, many keyboards.
First, a note about ergonomic boards and me. Maybe my bones are different, but the curved shape of ergonomic keyboards that are supposed to help with cramping and carpel tunnel syndrome do the opposite for me. After an hour of typing on one my hands and shoulders cramp and I’ve even gotten CTS once.
I need a “board.” Straight. Flat. No frills.
You’d be suprised how hard it is to get a rectilinear keyboard today (at least one that isn’t junk and self-destructs after a few hundred thousand keystrokes).
Next, I have a weird home computer setup. I love to work in an almost dark room, with two bright LCD monitors. This makes typing (I don’t touch type) a challenge.
I have tried all sorts of lighted keyboards to compensate. All of the blue bioluminescent-y ones give me eyestrain and a headache after about five minutes. The membrane keys are a joke, too.
Last year for my birthday a very kind soul solved my problem and got me the DECK (105- key LEGEND) keyboard.
This is a serious board made for gamers who pound the heck out of their keyboard in the dark. EVERY single key has its own LED with eight adjustable levels of brightness. They come in RED, GOLD, BLUE, or GREEN. Top-of-the-line key action (every keystroke gives you a satisfying CLACK!) Built to withstand gamer pounding, too.
For me...it’s the perfect keyboard.
First, a note about ergonomic boards and me. Maybe my bones are different, but the curved shape of ergonomic keyboards that are supposed to help with cramping and carpel tunnel syndrome do the opposite for me. After an hour of typing on one my hands and shoulders cramp and I’ve even gotten CTS once.
I need a “board.” Straight. Flat. No frills.
You’d be suprised how hard it is to get a rectilinear keyboard today (at least one that isn’t junk and self-destructs after a few hundred thousand keystrokes).
Next, I have a weird home computer setup. I love to work in an almost dark room, with two bright LCD monitors. This makes typing (I don’t touch type) a challenge.
I have tried all sorts of lighted keyboards to compensate. All of the blue bioluminescent-y ones give me eyestrain and a headache after about five minutes. The membrane keys are a joke, too.
Last year for my birthday a very kind soul solved my problem and got me the DECK (105- key LEGEND) keyboard.
This is a serious board made for gamers who pound the heck out of their keyboard in the dark. EVERY single key has its own LED with eight adjustable levels of brightness. They come in RED, GOLD, BLUE, or GREEN. Top-of-the-line key action (every keystroke gives you a satisfying CLACK!) Built to withstand gamer pounding, too.
For me...it’s the perfect keyboard.
posted by Eric Nylund at 6:08 PM
17 Comments:
Dang, that's a nice setup. For gaming and for the writing. It's on the wishlist, but man who much does that thing cost? A lot, I'm guessing. Take care.
-EMF
You can't type without looking? Strange.
It's funny how it only took a couple decades to make YOU the odd duckling. Typing without looking is the norm nowadays.
My first reaction, I must admit, was: You don't touch type?
Then I remembered a fellow I used to work with when I did call center stuffs for Amazon.com. He typed hunt and peck style with his index fingers, nothing more, and he had the fastest wpm out of everyone.
Nice set up, though, for sure. Matches that rock star hair you've got going on there.
Oh, how i long for the days when i'll get a real computer table like that. Holding my keyboard on my knee while typing is not fun.
Not a bad setup, but seeing the dell, well, lets not get into that. I will say though that you are the first person to actually say that the regular keyboards are good...other than me.
Heh, nikoda, i thought the same thing.
EMF – the keyboard was a gift, but normally they run $150.00 (well worth it if it saves your hands). The DELL XPS 400 was on sale (got it pretty cheap) and it came with a FREE 19 inch monitor (which I used in a mulit-monitor set up on the left). The spilt computer table I got when my economic situation was very different (before my son) and that did cost a lot.
Mintz08, nikoda, s_b—yes. No touch typing here. Although occasionally when I’m deep into writing I’ll start touch typing without realizing it, and then notice and the phenomenon ceases and I go back to hunt and peck typing.
--Eric
I always had the feeling when reading your Halo books that they had been created with the "seek and destroy" method of typing. ;) Just wondering, how many words per minute can you get typing like that? do you think it affects your productivity?
I hated the fact that they required me to learn to type in junior high, but now,I cant see how i would function with out it.
anyhoo. Ive got backlit on my powerbook keyoard but i hardly ever use it. --looking foward to goo
Hey, cool. I use a backlit keyboard also, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested -- it's the Logitech G15 Keyboard. Very nice to type on.
I hated being forced to type the home-row way in Middle School and High School. I use a kind of "custom-engineered" method that isn't home-row nor is it really hunt-and-peck; it's kind of a combination of the two concepts, except for the fact that I don't actually look at the keys most of the time. My hands are kind of diagonally sprawled across the main keys and they stay in that relative position while typing, though a neat feature of this kind of typing style is that I can shift my hands around in different ways and still be able to type at the same speed. Which is actually pretty fast, though I can't remember the WPM I reach.
As for sitting in a dark-esque room with the backlit keyboard, it's odd, but I prefer the exact same thing - even when it's not always good for my eyes.
Anywho. Your desk is dusty, man. Throw a damp paper towel at it and be rid of it! ;P (I have a tendency to let dust collect on my desk, too.)
Take care!
That's just insane that you use "hunt 'en peck" typing! I just tried typing a short couple of sentences using it, and it took me about a minute total. I then used "regular" typing, which took about twenty seconds.
Don't get me wrong, I was a DIE HARD "pecker" up until 8th grade (and I was good too!) or so, when I then became the fastest typer in class.
Heh- I also think it's funny on that last picture where your cat(?) is sleeping on top of the CPU.
Not a bad setup. I purchased a pretty nice one because at the time I was stationed overseas in the Air Force and they pay a little extra for being there.
I'm still running a heavy 'ol CRT, but the picture is phonomenal. I may or may not upgrade. And yeah, wired keyboards went the way of the dodo bird for me. Bluetooth rocks.
Only once in a while if my concentration gets broken, will I look at the keys, but I usually do fine. I have my own method. I never liked home row typing in grade school b/c it actually gave me hand cramps like Eric said.
And a brief interview with bungie is currently up at www.bungie.net
With concept art as well...pretty sweet. I very much like Lorraine's work on the Spartan's armor. Very original, very reminiscient of Halo 1. I give their armor 2 thumbs up, but the title looks kind of weird...I don't really like it too much.
Maybe some red LED lit lights would do the trick.
It’s not typing speed I’m concerned with. Even at twenty words a minute, that’s better than a thousand words in an hour...or a hundred thousand word novel in about 14 weeks. That’s fast!
What I am concerned with is writing quality. I type slow and sloppy and have to go back and re-write everything so it’s legible. It gives me the opportunity to refine my words even before they’re first draft. It’s not a handicap. It’s a gift.
Angel—that dust stays, man. That’s the Dust of Creativity ™ !
MS-- That is indeed a cat on top of the computer. If it wasn’t for her waking me up at 5 AM to be fed every morning there’d be no HALO books : )
--Eric
To clarify: that's a 100K word novel in 14 weeks, if you write 1,000 words a day.
Wish there was an easy way to edit posts once they're up
--E
I just delete and start over.
...That looks exactly like my keyboard, except that mine doesn't light up at all.
And mine is a generic Dell keyboard.
nikoda--thanks.
David-- I kind of liked my generic DELL keyboard...until I destroyed the “T” key after about 70,000 words.
LOL.
The Dust of Creativity, eh?
Okay. That works. Sure.
lol
What about the room temperature? Do you prefer warmer or cooler?
Personally, I can't stand being the slightest bit warm during the creative process -- I get distracted by the discomort far too easily. :(
Colder. Yes. It was a real struggle to write when I was living in a 1920s farm house in central Florida (with no air conditioning).
--Eric
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