Kailh Choc Pro Red, and how to tear down a Voyager

Hi |FNAME|,

This month we took a Voyager apart, to document the process in detail. The Moonlander and ErgoDox EZ have detailed teardown guides, so we figured it was time the Voyager had one, too.

Early in the month I published a ZSA Loves post all about YNAB, sharing a little bit about my own personal finance history and a few surprising things I've learned over the years from using this great budgeting tool.

Also, we just introduced a new switch type for the Voyager, the Kailh Choc Pro Red. It's linear and light, and there's a whole blog post about it linked below with lots of photos. I also share how you can get it standalone, in case you already have a Voyager.

In other news, we've got an interview with Pat Plummer, a sleep specialist doctor who also happens to be a gifted woodworker. There's also a site with lots of hand-drawn illustrations of Ontario's chip stands (poutine ftw!), a new text editor that's not Vim or Emacs, and a few other fun links. I liked this month's featured layout, too, which is one of our first showcasing the Voyager and how flexible you can get with it.

Finally, we've just published a deep-dive guest post by Voyager user Giles Knap, all about working in VSCode without using your mouse. Very in-depth, right down to a JSON with shortcut mappings.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope your year is off to a good start!

All the best,
Erez

Voyager teardown guide

Complete with videos

In this step-by-step guide we show you how to take the Voyager apart, in case you want to swap out a part or modify anything. Each step has carefully-written explanations and detailed photos and videos, and you don't need any fancy tools. Yay for modding and repairing your own gear!

Introducing Pro Red

A lightweight linear switch

It's a lightweight linear switch, and now you can get it preinstalled on your Voyager. In this post I share my experience with it. It did not make me a better cook, nor am I any less bald, even after using it for months. I've also included lots of photos and a note about how (and why) this particular switch affects the lighting on your Voyager.

Featured User Interview

Pat Plummer

Sleep Specialist

Two words: Incredible craftsmanship. You should read the whole interview, but even if you just click in to scroll through the photos showing Pat's woodworking, it's more than worth it. The attention to detail — and those handmade "dot clocks"!

"Outside of work, I travel the world with my wife of thirty-nine years, do woodworking in my garage, and build digital light/color based clocks in my basement electronics shop. We live at home with our four cats when we’re not on the road."

Layout of the month

Layout of the month: QWERTY with more thumb keys

The Voyager keyboard is great and compact. However, I found I miss more thumb keys, so I shifted the whole layout 1 row up, removing the number keys. This allows for 5 thumb-keys on each side. You need to change the keycap for what used to be B and N for a custom keycap I designed and printed so you can press those keys without interference with the neighboring keys.

Layout of the month: QWERTY with more thumb keys

Things we liked

Helix Editor →

A post-modern text editor

Vim and Emacs are not the only game in town. This console-based code editor comes with batteries included (fuzzy finder, surround integration, and more). Open-source and free. Interesting!

Every chip stand →

Celebrating the chip stands of Ontario and elsewhere

Poutine! Or just chips. These are over 90 detailed illustrations of specific chip stands/food trucks in Ontario and some other parts of Canada, mainly prioritizing older ones which are kind of ramshackle and visually interesting. So great.

MonitorControl →

Control your external display brightness and volume

Free, open-source, for Mac. Lets you set the brightness, contrast, and volume of your external displays. Works really well with my LG monitor, and supports keyboard shortcuts, too. Should really be a built-in macOS feature.

Apocryphal Inventions →

Devices that could have been

This is a massive project by renowned type designer Jonathan Hoefler. He came up with a whole bunch of meticulously crafted “historical inventions” using generative AI and gave each a name and a carefully written description. So fun to browse through. There’s a detailed index, too.

omg.lol →

The weird Web lives

This is a collection of services under one “personal address”— you get access to their Mastodon instance, an easy-to-edit “link in bio” homepage, and a bunch of other things. It feels like a community, small in a pleasant way.