Violins, blank keycaps, and tap dancing

MARCH 2021

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Hi *|FNAME|*,

Spring is definitely springing here in southern Ontario. No snow on the ground! Sunny days! I'm excited.

This month we've rounded out Tap Dance with an important addition: You can now change layers within your tap dances! More on this below. In other fun news, we now sell 10-packs of blank "line" keycaps in the accessory store.

Also, I found a thing that makes 3D blobs and just had to share it below — file under "oddly satisfying".

I hope you're enjoying springtime as well (or a beautiful fall, if you're one of our readers in the Southern Hemisphere). As always, write me anytime — ez@zsa.io.

All the best,
Erez

Tap Dance gets layer switching

Simple and powerful

Any tap dance sequence can now go to a destination layer, either temporarily (as long as you're holding the key down) or permanently. Yay for more powerful sequences!

Featured User Interview

Paula Muldooon

Backend Engineer & Violinist

An American living in England, Paula tells us about her simple tech setup and how she plays her antique violin in a string quartet or orchestra while sheltering in place. Check it out!

"I also founded a group called MusiCoders, which is a Slack community dedicated to bringing together people who both play music and write software professionally, particularly supporting those of us who have retrained later in life as engineers."

Layout of the month: Linux, Windows, and Mac

This layout is designed to offer good ergonomics while supporting programming on Linux and Mac, and gaming on Windows. Where possible, I favor modifier keys so that I can use both hands for chords.

Things we liked

Historical Dictionary of SF →

A comprehensive quotation-based dictionary of the language of science fiction.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am really into science fiction… And dictionaries. This marriage of the two lets us enjoy words like "kiloday" with their source references and dates.

Engram Keyboard Layout →

A new ergonomic keyboard layout

Created by ErgoDox EZ user Arno Klein, Engram is open-source and implemented in Keyman. Built with split boards in mind.

Blobmixer →

Make 3D blobs

The blob gallery is a good starting point, and then you can go ahead and customize your own 3D blob using various sliders and rotate your creation around to marvel at it from all angles, right in the browser. Surprisingly fine-grained. I'm not sure why this is fun, but it is.

City Guesser →

Can you guess which city you're in?

Watch a few seconds of video taken in a random city, and try to pinpoint it on the map. Surprisingly tricky for me, even for cities in Canada!

lazygit →

A simple terminal UI for git commands, written in Go

If you live in the terminal, this is an interesting alternative for resolving merge conflicts, squashing, renaming, navigating recent branches, and more.

Tip: We have a subscriber-only link archive with all of the links we shared over the years. Just for you. ❤️

Wallpaper of the month

I really like how Steve's latest creation looks on mobile. Minimal and stark — there are hints of Ghost In the Shell here (especially if each finger then splits up to type on the keys).

Thank you for reading!