Introducing Chordal Hold in Oryx

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Hi *|FNAME|*,

The sun is here!

I love many things about Canada, but the emergence of spring after winter is definitely in my top five. It makes such a difference, and it’s so nice to suddenly have days which are sunny all throughout.

This month I wrote a love letter to a gadget that lets me pretend my iPhone is a camera. I’ve also been doing lots of pen plotting, some of which uses Paragraphic (a great graphics tool linked below). Finally, I’ve been discovering Shogun, but not in the form of a TV show (not yet, anyway). More below.

The big ZSA news this month is definitely Chordal Hold. It’s a recent QMK feature which we’ve just brought into Oryx, and it’s a total game-changer when it comes to dual-function keys, specifically "home-row mods".

One new thing I wanted to start sharing this month is the top performers on the typ.ing daily challenge for the month of Feb (since March isn't done yet):

• #1: Tim Danner, 79wpm and 96% accuracy with 28 daily challenges completed
• #2: merkushin, 61wpm, 96% accuracy, 28 challenges completed
• #3: Japa, 63wpm, 91% accuracy, 28 challenges completed

Tim, Merkushin, and Japa — if you're reading this, go ahead and reply, I'd love to say hi. :)

Finally, the featured interview does not disappoint. Charles’s interview is one of the wider-ranging ones in recent memory, featuring calligraphy, a Turducken, and a nine-monitor setup. Impressive.

As always, thank you for reading, and if you reply to the newsletter I’ll be more than happy to return the favor and read whatever it is you write me. :) Have a lovely April!

All the best,
Erez

I don't think I could really live without it comfortably.

- Mike DiGiovanni, Moonlander User & Pinball Aficionado

Introducing Chordal Hold

Home-row mods users, rejoice!

A "home-row modifier" is a key on your home row (asdf) which sends a letter when you tap it, but Shift/Ctrl etc. when you hold it. This type of key is just so useful, and Chordal Hold makes it smoother than ever. This QMK feature, created by Pascal Getreuer, fits beautifully into Oryx and is now generally available for everyone to try out. The blog post explains it in detail.

Featured User Interview

Charles Webster

Enterprise Architect

There's so much to Charles's interview, it was hard to choose what to tell you about. If you click through for just one thing, I'd say it's to check out his wonderful penmanship — I wish I could write like that. Beyond that, you can find everything from a GIF showing Charles expertly making a Turducken to a panoramic view and in-depth description of his nine-monitor (!) setup.

"I can stand if I need to, sit when I want and, because of a nifty, little foot hammock attached to the underside of the desk I can work almost horizontal! Everything works in combination to deliver a superior level of comfort but the Voyager is a keystone component. Without it I couldn’t open my chest, allowing my arms to rest by my sides so they are always supported taking most of the strain from my trapezoidal muscles so I don’t hunch and instead, relax."

Handy Dev Voyager [split arrows]

This layout uses a lot of mnemonic shortcuts for symbols, has dedicated arrow keys, accents and emoji layers. Works on both Mac and Windows. I hope it inspires you! Letʼs get to the details shall we?

Things we liked

Paragraphic →

A new take on vector graphics

Paragraphic is a $30 cross-platform app for creating unique vector graphics. It’s not like Illustrator or Figma; instead, you create “nodes” and then repeat and manipulate them in various ways. It's visual and fast. Quite cool for generative art. I was one of the testers since before v1 and have used it for a few months now to create sketches for my pen plotter.

Sober Ringtones →

For calls and notifications

This is a lovely personal project: Four sets of ringtones, each consisting of a call tone and a notification sound. They’re minimal and calm, and beautifully presented. Free.

Sketchplanations →

Useful sticky notes

This is a big alphabetical list of concepts and facts, from “Affect vs. Effect” all the way to “Zigzag trenches”, each explained with a pithy illustration. Yes, there’s often more nuance than what the sketch allows for, but at the same time the sketch captures the gist of the idea and is easy to share with others and refer back to.

Learning Synths →

A fantastic tutorial from Ableton

If you’re curious about how synthesizers work, this free tutorial will teach you so much. Web-based and mobile-friendly, it’s interactive and playful and made up of many different pages so you can do a bit now and then resume some other time. It starts with the very basics and gets quite advanced. There’s a “synth playground”, too. The kids liked this one.

Shogun →

The interactive fiction version

I first heard of Shogun when the FX show blew up — but then I learned it was originally a book, which I am now reading. The start of the book mentions this officially-sanctioned Infocom “interactive fiction” title, originally published in 1986. 39 years later, you can play it in your browser, for free. This is a direct link to the game.

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

This month's wallpaper showcases a more intricate Printable than usual: The "Moonlander Trackball" by Papa-o-ROM, which integrates a tiny Pimoroni trackball into a functional Moonlander thumb cluster while still retaining two keys. The Printables page has more details in case you wanted to attempt this ambitious project.

Thank you for reading!