💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~abrahms › gemlog › happy-hacking-keyboard.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:49:01. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-05)
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I recently purchased a happy hacking keyboard (HHK) when my (previous) daily driver, a CODE keyboard, started acting up. The CODE keyboard is a 86 key keyboard (it has f1-f12, home/end and arrow keys, but no numpad). The happy hacking keyboard is a 60% 68 key device.
The keyboard has bluetooth capability and supports multiple devices that you can switch between with an odd keystroke. This means I can have it paired with two different computers and manually select which one I want to be connected to.
I spent the week paired with my telephone (Pixel 5) and typing in a terminal. Aside from the lack of critical keyboard shortcuts in Firefox, the phone is a pretty reasonable place to be, given a terminal application and some time.
The first keyboard I got was broken. The dip switch that turns the backspace key into a backspace (and not a delete) didn't work, rendering me without a backspace key. Unacceptable. Luckily, they cross-shipped me a new one which worked well.
There is a known bug in the HHK when operating on linux in that the super keys don't operate as a super. Instead, they are some japanese alt key that lets you get to different character groupings. I solved this with xmodmap:
keycode 102 = Super_L keycode 100 = Super_R
Save that to `$HOME/.xmodmap ` and run `xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmap ` .
They key layout is something I'm still getting used to. Where the backtick usually is on a larger keyboard, the escape key is. This makes some sense, but is still a jarring thing to unlearn. Similarly backspace is where the `\ ` key usually is. Given the arrow keys and page up/down keys are hidden behind a function key, I find myself trying to relearn new workflows (like ctrl+page-up to cycle through firefox tabs).
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. It may stay as my external phone keyboard, which would still be a success in my book. I also have an Atreus keyboard on the way to try out. I suspect between the two of them, they'll provide some interesting typing experiences.