Majestouch Tactile Click “Otaku” NKRO

By jama22 | Published: July 7, 2010

After some convincing by Derek, I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a Filco Majestouch Tactile Click “Otaku” NKRO (Blue Switches).  Filco is a Japanese hardware manufacturer that produces  “high end” mechanical switch keyboards, like the one shown above.  After taxes and shipping the total cost of the keyboard came out to be ~$200 from www.elitekeyboards.com.

Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves “goddamn that’s an expensive keyboard!”, and you’d be right!  A quick look on the Logitech website shows that even the most expensive keyboard+mouse combo, the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution, goes for $179.

So what’s so awesome about the Filco Majestouch, and does it justify the hefty price tag?

Its All About The Switches

Let’s step back for a second and take a look at the “everyday” keyboard.  If you pop off the keys and look under the hood, you’ll find something that looks like this:

The typical keyboard is a membrane keyboard.  The keys on your keyboard have little pegs underneath them so that when they are pressed, the peg slots into the membrane, completes a circuit, and sends a special key-code to your computer.  Neat, simple, and easy to manufacture.

There are a lot of problems with membrane keyboards, and they basically boil down to low reliability and lack of tactile feedback.  Membrane keyboards don’t last very long because the rubber membranes have a tendency to wear out.  Also, depending on the rubber membrane used in the keyboard, everything about the keyboard will change: the travel distance (how far you have to press the key down to get a “keypress”), the stiffness of the keys, the elasticity of the keys, etc.

Mechanical switches on the other hand are a lot more durable and complex; hence the high cost.  Underneath each key is a spring mechanism which detects key presses, like so:

Now, because each key has a mechanical switch underneath it, the keyboards themselves will be a lot more expensive.  However, there are many advantages to the mechanical switch system.  You get a lot more tactile feedback on each keypress and you also get an audible click (good for touch typing).

The selection of mechanical switches (brown, blue, black, etc.) can also change the overall “feel” of the keyboard as well.  Different styles of switches will change the audibility of the clicks and also the depth at which keystrokes will be generated.   I got my Filco keyboard with Blue switches, and they are supposedly great for typing.

For a more complete and un-butchered description of the differences, you read this well-written comparison here: http://www.ergocanada.com/ergo/keyboards/mechanical_vs_membrane_keyswitches.html

The Keyboard

The Filco Majestouch keyboard is a pretty standard 108-key keyboard.  It has blank keycaps for extra 1337-ness and n-key rollover for all you gamers.

Likes:

  • Good Layout: For the most part, the Filco is really well laid out; typing on it is pretty comfortable and touch-typing is a breeze.  I have some pretty big/wide hands, and I’ve had no problems with it so far.
  • Audible clicks: There is a very loud and distinctive ‘click’, and I love it.  As a touch typist you want to hear that satisfying ‘clickity click’ to know that you hit that key
  • You look like a total badass: while you hammer away at your blank-key Filco with a “click click click” soundtrack in the background.  If anyone asks, just tell them you’re hacking into the Pentagon.
  • Types like a dream:  And most importantly, it generally feels awesome to type on it.  I’ve been using the Flico keyboard for ~3 weeks now, and it certainly lives up to my initial expectationexpectations.  My fingers used to get sore when I used my old keyboard (a Logitech MX5500), but I’ve had no problems with the Filco.  If you like the keys on Lenovo Thinkpads, then you’ll absolutely love the Filco.

Dislikes (more like minor gripes):

  • No media controls: Coming from a Logitech keyboard with every media key imaginable, not being able to adjust the volume or control iTunes is a sorely missed feature
  • USB connection: The keyboard connects over USB, and if you want to use the n-key rollover then you have to connect over PS/2.  My mobo actually doesn’t have a PS/2 connector, so that feature was wasted on me.  Still, coming from a bluetooth keyboard, I miss the freedom of going sans-wires
  • Not great, but not terrible for gaming: The Filco isn’t really a gaming keyboard per se, but you can definitely use it for that purpose.  If you do get this keyboard for gaming, do what Derek did and go with Black switches (I’m rolling with Blues, but ideally you should go with Black).  If you’re playing games where you’re clicking lots of different keys (I’m thinking RTS, MMORPGs), then the Filco is great.  Me?  I’m more of an action gamer, so the Filco isn’t all that wonderful for twitch-based games (FPS, platformers).  For those games you want short keys with short travel distances (I’m thinking chiclet style keyboards).

Final Thoughts

So, is the Filco worth it?  I sure think it is.  You don’t get a lot of the multimedia keys that come with a lot of the higher-end keyboards, but that’s OK.  The ergonomics behind the keyboard and its ease-of-use justifies the Filco Majestouch as a good investment for the health of your hands.

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Lucid Lynx (10.04) and GRUB on Windows 7

By jama22 | Published: June 20, 2010

In a previous post (Recovering GRUB After Installing Windows 7) I described a situation where GRUB would not be able to detect your Windows 7 boot partition after you installed Ubuntu.  The fix was to point the root directory to a small (or secret?) partition outside of the main Windows 7 NTFS partition.

I recently demolished my Ubuntu partition and installed the latest Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), and it looks like the previous GRUB issues have been resolved.  The installation went smoothly and the updated GRUB was able to install and boot into my Windows 7 partition with no problem.

It’s awesome when Ubunut just “works” :)

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Project Win Post-Mortem

By jama22 | Published: June 9, 2010

As some of you may know, Derek and I have been working on a few projects (Project Win) over the past months. We started these projects in February and worked through until May where we decided to go our separate ways for a little bit.

Although none of our projects made it to deployment, we still learned some invaluable lessons:

Mental Stamina

When you work on a project by yourself you have the luxury of working at your own pace.  Each stage of planning, design, development and testing is done in one way or another, but in your own way and at your own pace.

When you work in a group though, you literally need to synchronize your work habits with your partner’s.  You need to convince yourself that Derek is right, and you really need to do more design on Component A when you would much rather be coding up Component B.  This will be easy to do on some days, and difficult to do on others.  Its hard, its stressful, and it strains you, but a lot of the times you have to sacrifice your own desires for the sake of the project.

The Little Things Matter

Its the little things that count, and a bunch of little things stacked up together can have a major impact on performance.  I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t work at 100% capacity.   Meeting downtown every day for a full day’s worth of work right after exam season wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be.  I thought that I superman and that I’d be able to work through it, but I was totally wiped out from the previous emester.  I was okay to work for the first few days, but after that both my performance and my patience dropped.  Derek knew this and I knew this.  Be aware of your own body, and know when to stop.

On another note, there are little things that you can do to help improve morale.  Early-morning Reddit sessions and afternoon Timbit runs really helped us clear our heads and get us through the day.  Find out what works for you and your team and use it.

Healthy Discussion (or Arguments) are Vital

This is more relevant to the design stage of the project.  Healthy discussion between group members can lead to great ideas and eliminate bad ones.  Bad discussions can be poisonous, so avoid them at all costs.

How did we avoid poisonous discussions?  Well, Derek and I agreed that whatever happens, neither one of us would be so mad that we couldn’t make it out to lunch (PBS? lol).  Thankfully, we never really got mad in any of our discussions.   The key is that we never made personal attacks on the other person(calling someone a noob-face doesn’t count).  If you can keep the discussions positive and on-topic, then I think you’re good to go.

One of the dangers of having lots of discussions is that they can go on for a very long time.  This happened to us, and that’s why we didn’t get much progress in the time that we had.  At the end of the day, you need someone to make an ultimate and final decision.  Discussion is good, but indecisiveness will just leave you stranded.

Written Documentation

I cannot emphasis this point enough: Write Stuff Down.

I know everyone says that documentation is key to success, documentation is necessary for team coherency, etc. etc.

Let me make it simple.  When you work on your own project, you can keep all of the project details in your head, you don’t need to write anything down, etc.  That’s great, good for you, that’s how I roll too.

But when you work in a group, your partner won’t have your perfect memory.  Write down your design decisions on something that everyone can see so that each team member has at least some sense of what’s going on in the project.  This is even more important if your team spends a lot of time discussing the design.  We’ve had morning meetings where we’d try to start work on features that were “locked in” from the previous day’s discussions, but we’d have no idea what to do on because nobody remembers the final decisions.

Keep a wiki, keep a blog, whatever; just make it public and keep it up-to-date.  It helps to maintain the overall project vision,and it comes in handy when you start dividing the tasks.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ditch It

Cognitive dissonance is a big problem with programmer; you believe in your code so much that you literally trick your mind into thinking that everything is going according to plan.  Everything makes sense to you in your head, so naturally the code must behave perfectly when it runs.  This is a big problem, and you need to force yourself away from the project and give it a serious review (or hell, ask someone else to do it for you).

If you find that the code is getting messy, cluttered or is just downright wrong; don’t be afraid to throw it away and start over.  You won’t be wasting it; I mean, its just data after all.  The rewrite will go much faster and the code will be much better as a result.  (see Plan to Throw One Away).

Speed Is Your Friend

Don’t get too attached or caught up to any particular idea.  Pick it up, evaluate it, and run with it.  If it works out, great, if not, find something better.  Work quickly, and work smartly.

I’d like to say that we did this a lot, but it wasn’t until we failed for a few weeks that we really got into the habit of working fast.

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Geekery In Print

By jama22 | Published: June 1, 2010

A great deal of my “geekness” has been influenced by various magazines and zines that I read as a kid.  In the days before Reddit and Digg, I would rely on these magazines to teach me more about the latest developments in the tech world.  In fact, even with sites like Reddit and Digg, I still turn to my favorite rags for the latest in technology and hacking.

My must-reads:

  • Wired: It really depends on the month though.  I’d say that 50% of the articles are genuinely good, and the other 50% is filled with trash or advertisements
  • Popular Science: Its not what you’d call “high brow” but the magazine highlights a lot of cool gizmos and gadgets that are being used out in the real world.  They have some pretty ridiculous speculations about “future tech” that makes for a good chuckle as well.
  • 2600, the Hacker’s Quarterly:  I would highly recommend this zine if you can find it in your local Chapters/Indigo.  This magazine literally changed my worldview about the hacker community and about the work that I do.  The articles are very dense and technical, but its defiantly worth a read.

A newer zine has recently come out called the Hacker Monthly ($9 print copy, free pdf).  I’ve glossed over the TOC and the articles definitely sound interesting.    They’re more of a 2600-lite in the sense that their articles aren’t very technical or “traditional hacking”.  Good reading nonetheless.  A word of warning though; frequent redditors will recognize  the articles as duplicates from progreddit!

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Post-Grad, Work

By jama22 | Published: June 1, 2010

Its hard to believe that five years have passed since I first started my computer science degree at UofT.  For the past five years I’ve declared Bahen to be my home-away-from-home; and for five years I’ve slaved away for a piece of paper that certifies me an official nerd (aka a computer science diploma).

In retrospect, my time at UofT can be best described as bittersweet.  My fellow classmates will agree with me when I say that the computer science program is an emotional roller coaster of extreme highs and lows.  This is not a program for the weak of heart.

Indeed, it has always been my position that the computer science program is one of the most difficult undergraduate degrees at UofT.  Its difficulty does not lie solely in the material; but with the dastardly schedules produced by a unique combination of assignment-heavy CSC courses and  midterm-heavy A&S courses.  As a UofT compsci student, it is not unusual to have a solid month where at least 3 assignments or midterms are due every week.

Sometimes, the intense course loads and the Bahen all-nighters can bring out the very worst in people.  But, strangely enough, it is also by suffering together that I’ve met great friends and formed long-lasting relationships.  In many ways, that makes the suffering all worth while.

When Derek and I were in first year, we were in utter awe of the sheer nerdiness of the 4th year students.  In fact, we swore to each other that we would never become “one of them”.  Fate must have a cruel sense of humor.   In my last few years at UofT, I have become geekier than I could have ever imagined: I’ve started a blog, I’ve become a DCS Ambassador, I write code projects for fun, and I’ve trash-talk industry professionals at tech conferences.

And now that my university days are over I need to start focusing on my future career.  Unfortunately, I won’t be working in software development, but instead I will be taking up a position as an assistant product manager for Cast Software Inc.

Don’t bother reading the website, even I find it hard to read.  Here’s the summary: Cast is a Toronto-based company that makes pre-visualization software for lighting designers.  Ever been to a Cirque du Soleil show?  Companies like Cirque du Soleil use Cast’s software to setup/stage their lighting effects before the stage is even built. They have three products, WYSIWYG (this is their flagship product for lighting designers), Vivien (a derivative of WYSIWYG, designed for event planners, wedding planners, etc.), and Black Box (motion tracking system, I’d explain, but you’d have to be a theater geek to appreciate it).

This will be my second time at Cast; 2 years ago I worked for them as a QA Analyst while I was on PEY.   This time around, they’re looking for someone to help out with project management, and I seemed to fit the bill.

In my mind, this job is a very good opportunity to get my feet wet in the management side of producing software.  One of the most common complaints that I’ve heard from managers is that programmers “speak their own language”.  As a programmer, you can become an incredibly desirable asset if you can understand the relevant technology stacks while maintaining a clear focus on the business model.  In my mind, this position at Cast will help me become a programmer who can bridge that gap between programmers and businessmen.   That’s the plan anyways; I won’t find out how well that works until I start on July 5th.

And even though I’m not being paid to code, I’ll still be working away on whacky projects in my free time.   That means I’ll still have plenty of topics to blog about in the future, so Pi/Pi is here to stay!

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