How to thock

Hi |FNAME|,

I think more companies should show people how to void their product warranties in creative and useful ways. After all (as I wrote last month), it's your keyboard. To that end, this month we have a deep dive from Robin showing two different ways to customize the sound of your keyboard for more "thock" by installing sound dampening foam.

Another fun user mod comes in the form of a guest post from Luca Benazzi, a UX designer who created a simple way to keep the Voyager's halves placed exactly where he wants them. I particularly like that this mod doesn't involve 3D printing, laser cutting, or anything "high tech" — it's all made with simple materials, tools, and techniques.

In non-blog news, I'm excited to share that FK Custom now have a dedicated page for ZSA keyboards, where you can create your own custom keycap sets for the ErgoDox EZ, Moonlander, and Voyager. We don't get a cut of the sales, this is all FK, but I did want to share because I think it's useful and high quality.

File this one under "back to school": I recently discovered the exciting world of low-cost refillable pens — I don't mean pens with refills, but pens you can actually refill with liquid ink. I also shared a fun little mod for one of the pens.

If you're a trekkie, you're going to want to check out this month's layout tour. And finally, our second video in the Spaces series is here! Meet Shy. :)

All the best,
Erez

p.s: I was recently invited to the Changelog podcast. If you'd like to hear me nerd out about keyboards, cards, and business, the episode is here. If you listen to it, reply to this email to let me know what you think.

"Originally I got it with the lettered keycaps but it was too user friendly for people who aren't me."

- Shyamal Ruparel, Moonlander User

Installing sound dampening foam

More thock

This month in "fun ways to void your warranty," Robin shows you how you can install two types of foam on your keyboard — case foam and switch foam — to modify its sound.

Featured User Interview

Rajiv Khattar

Strategy Senior Manager

Rajiv's setup is beautiful, but what really got me is that he called his cats fur(m)wear. Get it?! And yes, there's a great cat picture in there. Also, his keyboard layout has two Y keys on layer 0 (on purpose!).

"In my personal time, I have a lot of very different hobbies. I have been getting more into aerial circus, specifically aerial straps, because of my partner. It’s been a great way to get a sneaky workout while learning some cool skills."

Layout of the month

Seven of Nine

Welcome to the USS Voyager, Cadet! Report to your orientation, we'll get you briefed and up to speed in no time. This layout was designed to be deceptively simple while still leveraging the Voyager's strengths. It is designed to be as easy as possible to learn if you're coming from a standard QWERTY keyboard and aren't quite sure what you want out of the Voyager just yet.

Things we liked

Obsolete Sounds →

Blasts from the pasts

I’ve seen archives of old sounds before. What makes this one particularly interesting is the music: Artists take a base sound (the Opel Astra F’s handbrake, for example) and then build a whole track around it. You can listen to the base sound on its own, as well, and each sound pair has information about the original sound and the artist.

The Hydrant Directory →

Fire! (Well, water, really)

A gallery of high-quality 3D scans of fire hydrants, each meticulously geotagged and with its own color palette. Click into a single fire hydrant to spin it around. So great!

dCode.fr →

A collection of over 900 tools to help solve games, riddles, ciphers, mathematics, puzzles, etc.

Wow, is this site packed. It’s got the usual suspects such as a Wordle helper and such, but also a ton of fascinating codes and ciphers like the Vigenere cipher which I’d never heard of before. If you scroll down the page for a cipher there’s a complete explanation for how it works, not just an encoder/decoder.

ShadeMap →

Where’s the sun?

This is so cool: A layer on top of Google Maps that lets you visualize shade anywhere in the world, down to the building level, at any date and time of day. It even lets you add buildings so you can visualize what a new construction project will do to the buildings and areas around it. There’s a slider that lets you change the time, and the shadows update in real time. I recommend using this on desktop.