New trackball printable and a way to find great books

Hi |FNAME|,

The official soundtrack for this newsletter is Face of Melinda by Opeth, as recommended by Kristan in her interview below. If you can, put that on, and let's get into it.

We finally launched our new backpack! What a relief. The launch went smoothly and we got lots of love, as well as people bewildered by the price. Making something good is expensive right now, as is shipping, thanks to world events. This just meant we had to make sure the backpack is actually worth it (no pressure). This is also why it took so long to make. It's already shipping, and I can't wait to start seeing images of ZSA Backpacks in the wild.

In other news, we have a new Printable for the Navigator trackball! It's a little crown that clips onto the existing mount and allows you to tent the ball at much steeper angles. It's quick to print, lightweight, and uses almost no filament. Below is a link directly to the printable itself so you can try it out.

For typ.ing, we introduced a new mode called Uncovered, created in collaboration with Uncovered.ink. It's a way of finding your next great read without relying on recommender algorithms, author names, or covers.

Finally, I added a new classic game you can play with ZSA Cards: Golf. The page also comes with a built-in score tracker for the game, which is mobile-friendly and persists across sessions without requiring an account. Golf can be played with any deck of cards, you don't specifically need ZSA Cards. Tell me if you get to try it out?

As always, thank you for reading, for replying, and for being so positive. I feel so lucky I get to make these crazy products with and for all of you.

All the best,
Erez

Navigator Trackball Crown

Five grams of PLA goodness

This is such a simple idea and works well in practice. It's a crown you slip over the existing trackball mount and it keeps the ball from falling out at extreme tent angles. It's a friction fit, so you don't have to disassemble anything. It can be easily slipped off for when you want to clean the trackball. We iterated with quite a few ideas until we got this one just right.

Uncovered

Judge a book by its writing

This is like holding a book at the bookstore without seeing the cover or the author first. It's open in your hands, and you just start reading (and typing). If it hooks you, you can keep typing and reveal the title and author, and add it to your shelf. If it doesn't, just hit Tab to immediately flip to the next book. These are all modern books. Tell me if you like this mode, and please make suggestions.

Featured User Interview

Kristan Schwartztrauber

Artist

Is it weird that I got a bit emotional reading Kristan's interview? The art she creates is evocative and beautiful, and when she connected the Moonlander to her ability to keep painting it was a powerful moment for me. This one is a combination of gorgeous paintings and photos of cats and dogs with open-hearted storytelling. Plus, I think this is the only interview so far to recommend specific painters. Make time to read it.

"Begrudgingly I had to reprogram the layout to better suit my needs. It soon became fun. The online interface was accessible enough, when I’d been worried it’d only be usable by the more programmingly inclined. I’d spend some hours writing, chatting with friends, or gaming, then go back to my little layout and shift something around. Eventually I settled on a setup that worked great for everything I needed, and I’ve been using this keyboard exclusively ever since. Five plus years."

Layout of the month

config 3

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to look at my layout! It took me more than 200 iterations to finish it. Over time, I have been inspired by Miryoku, Seniply, and many other layouts on this website, as well as Pascal Getreuer's articles and Reddit posts.

New on typ.ing this month

Anne of Green Gables

I've been reading this to my kid at bedtime (we're almost done with book 3), and it's my second time reading these. Magical and chill books, highly recommended if you haven't tried them yet. No wonder they made an anime out of them (among other things).

And also...

Things we liked

My Best Kite →

Every New Kite Is an Adventure

This is a delightfully old-school site all about making and flying kites. Minimum irony, maximum joy. I love everything about it, from the subject matter to the design to the style of writing. “Nothing quite compares to seeing your own work floating way up there. The bigger the better. Bask in that ‘I made it myself’ feeling.”

Annual Report Archive →

Retro-corporate core

Public companies share annual reports, and those reports have covers. They’ve been doing that for a long while now, and so there are some old and bold covers around. This is an archive of some of the more striking designs. Just beautiful graphics. I don't love the "AI prompt" button but the art is good.

Normal Tools →

From Mulch Calculator to Markdown Preview

This is a collection of close to 200 oddly-specific calculators and single-purpose tools across several categories. No ads, runs in your browser. Has things like a recipe cost calculator where you plug in your ingredient cost, batches, your labor time, and more. Or a clan name generator (with themes), or an image resizer, or a PDF splitter. Just loads of these tools. So interesting.

RecipeTables →

Less scrolling, more cooking

Turns out there’s a more ergonomic way to visualize any recipe. I’m not talking about clicking the “Jump to Recipe” button at the top of those interminable blog posts. Rather, you can turn any recipe into a table. It’s a concise and clear way to show ingredients, the steps involving them, and how the whole thing comes together to make the dish. This is a tool for making such tables, and has a massive collection of existing recipes people already converted to this format. I only wish it worked better on mobile.

WebGL Fluid Simulation →

Such pretty colors

This is a browser-based tool that starts out with a black screen. Click and drag, and splashes of swirling color will appear. They glow, they blend, they flow, and then they disappear. This feels like a graphic benchmark, and works really well on a modern computer. If you want to enjoy it on a phone, there’s a dedicated app (I think toddlers would be really into it, too).