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September 17, 2011

How I’m Using Evernote Today

I call this: mac,pc,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:51 pm

Just a quick use case for Evernote in rehearsal.

Right now we’re still focusing on music, so one of the few things to track in rehearsal is what songs we’ve covered. That’s the biggest challenge on this show — there are 31 of them.

When I’m PSM, I have a ridiculous database that tracks things like this, but this is a pretty simply-structured show, being basically a revue, with minimal blocking, sets and props, and most of what the database does is either not needed, or not needed when I’m the ASM.

Back when I was doing pre-production I made myself an Evernote note with the names of all the songs, because I wasn’t familiar with the show and knew I’d need to be referring to it often. If I were really on top of things I’d have the names of the characters who sing them on there. Maybe that’s my next project.

I didn’t really plan this, but I had nothing to do in rehearsal, and when I have free time when assisting, I do one of two things: create more paperwork than I probably need, and monitor things that the PSM is already doing, just in case it becomes helpful to have that redundancy — for instance if the PSM needs to be out of the room for an extended period he will miss some of what we were working on, and my paperwork can be used to double-check his list for the report.

So I started using my note to not just list the songs, but to check them off as we learn them. I love checkboxes in Evernote. On the Mac you can make them quickly with shift-command-T. I have a suspicion it’s shift-ctl-T on Windows. The system I came up with is that when we start a song, it gets a checkbox. When the song is completely taught it gets a checkmark.

Nothing fancy, but sometimes Evernote is so open-ended that I don’t quite know what to do with it. So here’s an example.

I only wish the iOS client didn’t crash so much. I would keep my run sheet on it. But I can’t have a run sheet that crashes just before a scene change, or loses its most recent changes, and I feel like that would happen at least five times a day, which is five times more per run than I can accept. Currently I’m writing the run sheet in Word. I’m not sure yet what method I’ll use during tech. It will very likely be paper.


September 13, 2011

The Evolution of Recording Music Rehearsals

I call this: mac,phones,tech,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:19 pm


Today we started rehearsal for Ain’t Misbehavin’. After a very complex and inspiring opening speech from André De Shields, we spent the rest of the day on music.

While watching the actors rehearse, I noticed something I had not seen before: one of our actors was using her iPad to record her music. There’s really nothing surprising about this, but I made a mental note that it’s another small step in the evolution of technology in the rehearsal process. In addition to its capability for recording, she also uses one of the many piano simulators available for iOS to find her notes when reviewing music.

A History Lesson as Taught By A Largely Inattentive Observer

Most singers in musical theatre bring some kind of recording device with them to music rehearsals. They use it to capture their individual vocal parts as they’re being taught, the song as it is sung with everyone, and often they will use time on breaks or after rehearsal to have the musical director play through a whole song with the piano part only, creating essentially a karaoke track that they can then sing along with at will. The recordings allow them to continue to review the music at home, on the train, or anywhere else that they don’t have access to an accompanist. Naturally the recording device that allows this is an important tool.

When I started out, tape recorders — either full-size or mini cassettes — were what everybody used. Sometimes an actor would run out of tapes and would be lucky to be able to borrow a spare from a colleague. Batteries would die, and a stage manager who could immediately produce two AAs was a hero.

Around 2005 it seemed that many younger or more tech-savvy actors had switched over to purchasing a mic attachment for their iPods, allowing them to record huge amounts of music and sort through their recordings in an organized manner.

Naturally the plain ol’ iPod gave way to the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have built-in microphones and offer an even easier user interface for making and organizing recordings. The iPad is basically the same thing with a giant screen, so it’s no less useful. Maybe what struck me most about it was not so much what the iPad was doing for music rehearsals, but what its presence signifies in terms of how common the device has become since the iPad 2 came out. It definitely seems more mainstream, and no longer just an expensive experiment for early adopters and Apple enthusiasts. I actually feel like a little bit of a luddite for not having one, or thinking I need one.

I consider myself lucky that my stage management career has spanned a very interesting 10 years. I was around to see the end of a different way of doing things, but thankfully not for too long before the internet age took hold of most aspects of production. I imagine it’s something like what took place when computers began to operate lights, sound and automation in terms of the way the business has changed.

Today in rehearsal the actors were waiting to have their measurements taken, and engaging in a lively discussion about the ups and downs of the business. One of the women somehow got on the subject of the answering service, which made me laugh because it’s been so long since I’ve heard anybody bring up the idea of a service. The rest of the actors in the cast had never used one, having never worked professionally in the time before ubiquitous cell phones, email and texting. I added the stage managers’ perspective — how if, for instance, a call time changed, you had to call every actor at their home, their service, and their cell or pager number — because you never knew which phone they would be near, and cell phones were expensive and had short battery life, so were often turned off when not needed. And you certainly couldn’t rely on actors or production people to a) have an email address, or b) check it more than once a week. Nowadays you can send a single email or text to a mailing list and be confident everybody will get it in a timely manner, and with accurate information — imagine having to leave the same phone message 75 times in a row, and hoping you didn’t accidentally say the wrong time or day on one of them! And that is by far the best thing that’s happened to stage management in the last 10 years.

One last tip on the subject of recording vocal rehearsals: if by some chance your actor forgets to bring their recording device, whatever it may be, a handy way for the generous stage manager to help them out is to use your computer (or iPhone) to record their song and then email it to them immediately — a relatively painless way to keep their process moving, and have the song(s) waiting for them when they get home. The duration of said rehearsal would determine how time-intensive this favor is, but on the occasions that I’ve done it, the very grateful actor and musical director were economical and specific about when they were ready to record, which makes it pretty easy.


July 13, 2011

KP vs. Angry Birds

I call this: gaming,phones,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:20 pm

Confession: I suck at Angry Birds. I hurl my birds haphazardly at structures with little understanding of what causes them to destroy or bounce off harmlessly. When I win, I don’t know why. When I lose, I know it’s because… I suck at Angry Birds.

But I drew a comic about my most perplexing Angry Birds moment ever:


July 10, 2011

My Contribution to the Facebook / Google+ Slap Meme

I call this: tech,web — Posted by KP @ 7:50 pm

If you’ve been hanging around the interwebs this week, you may have seen some animated gifs going around in which Google+ is represented bitchslapping Facebook in various ways.

As far as I can tell, this was the first one:

In the past day or two, many more have popped up, not just slaps, but pretty much any manner in which a Facebook icon can be embarrassed or otherwise pwned by a Google+ icon.

So here is my contribution:


This is what I think of when I think of a good ass-kicking.


“The Mac is Kicking Ass” Music Video

I call this: computers,mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 1:36 pm


OK, I’m not a huge fan of autotune, or stupid YouTube videos, and I clicked on this one with very low expectations, but it won me over with its charming tune and visuals.

It’s Phil Schiller at Apple’s recent WWDC, auto-tuned and set to music.*

In other news, I am impatiently awaiting the release of Mac OS X Lion, rumored for July 14, which is 4 days from now, and entirely too far away. I think perhaps I should watch the WWDC keynote again to refresh my memory about how some of the new features work so I can get down to business once it’s installed.

*one note: for some reason the video uses a clip of the $129 price tag. That was part of Phil showing what OS upgrades used to cost. Lion, like Snow Leopard before it, is $29. Much more kick-ass.


July 8, 2011

For Web Developers: Easy iOS-specific Icons for Your Website

I call this: tech,web — Posted by KP @ 3:06 pm

You know how on iOS you can put a bookmark on your homepage? By default it seems to take a clipping of the screen to create an icon representative of the site. I’ve noticed that some fancy sites (Google sites come to mind) actually generate a specific icon that makes it look more like an app, and well, just more attractive.

Today I found an article that explains just how simple it is to add an image to your site, so that when people add it to their home screen in iOS it looks clean and professional.

The article goes into detail about how to have different icons for the three sizes currently supported by iOS devices (low-res, iPad and Retina displays), and how to assign different icons for different pages of your site, but if you’re OK with letting iOS scale the icon down for you, and only need one image for your whole site, it’s stupidly simple. Check this out:

  • Make your desired image 114×114. You do not need to add any fancy shine effects or curved edges, iOS will do this for you, because as I said, it’s stupidly simple. Mine looks like this. As I already have several icon-sized site logos for use in various things, it took me about 5 seconds to generate the proper image.

  • Save your image as apple-touch-icon.png
  • Upload this file into the main directory of your site. For example, the URL for my image is http://headsetchatter.com/apple-touch-icon.png.

That’s it. Now instead of seeing something like this:

Your readers can see this:

For end users

If you’re wondering how to add web sites such as this one to your home screen, open the site in Safari and follow this handy illustration:


July 7, 2011

Google+

I call this: tech,web — Posted by KP @ 10:08 am

Well after many days of trying to activate my invitation, I have made it into the unfortunately-exclusive Google+ club! I currently have 9 friends, which is actually more than I expected to be able to scrape together. I had had an invite for 5 days, had been constantly clicking on the “Join Google+” button, and hadn’t been able to get in. I was starting to get really frustrated. I kept the sign-in page on my desktop most of the time, clicking on it at random. Finally last night it seems the floodgates opened for a few hours, as I was able to get on, and sent out a few invitations, which also worked right away. So, keep trying, I guess.

People say, “What’s Google+ and how is it different than Facebook?”
The way I see it, that can best be described by this comic from xkcd:

It’s like Facebook but without the Facebook. So, great for people who like Facebook’s features, but hate Facebook as a company. It also has a neat feature called “circles” which allows you to very easily share things with different groups of your friends, such as only your good friends, only your coworkers, everybody but your parents, etc. It should solve a lot of the problems with having sprawling lists of Facebook friends that you might not want to share everything you post with.

I’m excited to see how it shapes up once you can actually get most of your friends on it.

If you’re a member and want to add me, look me up — Karen Parlato.

Now I have to figure out how to get one of those +1’s on my blog posts.


July 3, 2011

Finally, Tethering the Way it Was Meant to Be

I call this: phones,tech — Posted by KP @ 11:27 am

…Overpriced, and with a data cap.

I’m just giving AT&T a little (well-deserved) shit there, but mostly I just want to say that finally, after way too many years of not offering the option at all, AT&T has gotten it right. Or, more accurately, has allowed Apple to get it right, since all AT&T is doing is collecting my money and allowing me to use the data I pay for legally. So, thanks for that.

The Tethering Plan Doesn’t Suck as Much as It Originally Did

First of all, if you missed the news, over the… well, I don’t know when, but it was when I was on tour… AT&T doubled the data cap on its limited data plans, which, if my math skills serve me, means that doubling 2GB to make 4GB is still infinity-times less value for your money than infinity-GB, which was the previous plan. But hey, it’s like 5 or 10 bucks cheaper. Anyway, this happened back around the time that Verizon got the iPhone, which was smart on AT&T’s part, but for one of the first times in my life, I genuinely felt warm-fuzzies toward the Evil Empire for giving me a data cap that at least sort of approaches the 5GB that most “unlimited” plans actually were in the fine print. I mean I’m locked into my contract with them anyway, and they gave it to me for free. Being on the road and having to sometimes use my phone data for things that really should have been able to be done at a hotel or venue’s wifi or ethernet, I could go through a GB in a day if I ran into a total internet fail when I needed to download large files, so suddenly having twice as much room for hotel/venue fail in my month was really great. And at home, forget it. I’d have to work really hard to ever approach that much usage.

So Today on the Train

I’m on the Long Island Rail Road right now. This brings me to the inspiration for this post. I took out my laptop, intending to blog about something else. I opened the lid, and the weather icon on my desktop immediately changed from cloudy to pouring rain. I was like, “how does it know that, it’s not connected to the…?” and then, right above my weather icon, I saw that my wifi was connected. And very carefully I moused over to it, thinking, “It can’t be… is it?” and opened the drop-down menu, showing that it was connected to my phone.

So basically what happened is, without any preparation or action on my part, I opened the lid of my laptop and pretty much as soon as the screen turned on, it had internet access.

Now what’s going on here is that Personal Hotspot and wifi are on on my phone. I generally leave both on by default, unless I’m worried about battery life. Also, having tethered over wifi before, my computer already is familiar with my phone’s network, and will join it by default when other networks it knows aren’t present, the same as it would do with any network it knows. Since wifi tethering became possible within the past year, I still use bluetooth a lot, mostly out of habit, and because I often have my wifi off when traveling to save battery life.

For whatever reason, all these factors have never come together for me before to create this beautiful effect of an instantanous, completely no-click tethering process. I’ve spoken before about how much I love the way Apple implemented tethering because it was previously a two-click process (pull down bluetooth menu, click “connect to network”), which equalled my previous favorite on the Treo 700p. This is fucking no clicks. Now, that may not always be what you want, but in this case that was exactly what I wanted, and it did it for me. It was one of those “I’m living in the future” moments, and tethering has been my wireless pet peeve for about 10 years, so to see it finally working as well as the technology is capable of (and legally, at that) is really heart-warming.

So, rock on, Apple, — and AT&T, I suppose you can rock on, too.


July 2, 2011

Let Me Tell Ye: That’s Not a Broken Caps Lock Key, That’s a Feature!

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 1:29 pm

I learned something today. I don’t know when it happened, but I feel like I don’t take the time to have my finger on the pulse of the computing world anymore. This one slipped by me at least a year ago, probably much longer.

If you own a Mac, you may be familiar with how the eject key requires a longer keypress than a normal key to eject your media. When this feature was introduced, it was disturbing at first, but I quickly grew to be OK with it, since ejecting media isn’t that common compared to pressing other keys, and is kind of a big commitment that will take at least several seconds to rectify if you do it without meaning to. A slightly more purposeful press of the key isn’t that hard.

When I upgraded from a 2007 to 2010 MacBook Pro, I thought there was something wrong with my caps lock key. Sometimes it just wouldn’t activate until after several presses. It happened often enough that I knew it wasn’t just my imagination, so I got this nagging feeling that there’s something wrong with my computer. Not something big enough to be worth fixing, but I started thinking, “What if my keyboard is defective? What if the problem starts to affect other keys? I can deal with having to hit caps lock more than once and make sure the green light comes on, but what if it happens to the ‘A’ key? Is it serious enough that I should get it repaired rather than suffer with a defective keyboard for years?”

Well today, as I said, I learned something.

Let me tell ye: this is a feature.

Yes, your caps lock key is designed not to activate when you press it. I don’t know exactly how many milliseconds you’re supposed to press it for. Based on my non-scientific method of pressing it for different periods of time, I’d say that if you tap it the way you would tap a normal key in the process of typing, it won’t activate, but if you give it a determined press (less than a second, for sure), it will work.

I’m not so much angry about this design choice (which might actually be a good one) as I am annoyed that I’ve spent over a year with this machine thinking it’s broken. I don’t know how I was supposed to know about this unusual feature, but if I knew about it, I might have saved myself a lot of time by learning to press the caps lock key more firmly rather than failing to activate it, having to delete what I’ve typed, then spending a good 30 seconds testing the key to make sure it works, and wondering whether the computer needs to be repaired.

I don’t know when this feature was introduced, obviously sometime between my last two laptops, and I don’t know if the current desktop keyboards support it, but I’ll bet they do. Anyway, I’m mostly blogging this not to rant, but as a public service announcement, if anybody else is as perplexed by their caps lock key as I was. Had I not read a blog comment that mentioned it in passing, I’d have never known.


May 27, 2011

Keyboard Review: Das Keyboard Ultimate (Silent)

I call this: computers,tech — Posted by KP @ 7:50 pm

When I got home from the road, I was determined to celebrate having a desk. As in, having the same desk every day, not something that passes for a desk in a hotel room or on a bus. The first way I went about celebrating was to research buying a new keyboard for my laptop. I want to give my laptop more of a desktop-like experience when plugged in at home, with a real keyboard and mouse, and multiple monitors.

What I have

I have a gaming keyboard (one of the original G15s from Logitech) which is connected to my PC, but when it comes to other keyboards in my household, I have an old and broken Apple Pro Keyboard in graphite somewhere in the bottom of my closet, a slightly less-old and not-broken Apple Pro Keyboard in white, and some crappy miniature backlit keyboard that I found on sale for $20 on the road three years ago. Aside from the G15, none of these are what could be called pleasant to type on. The G15 is decent, but it was needed for gaming, and I’ve always thought if ever I got the hell off the road, I wanted a really nice mechanical keyboard, one that would be geared towards writing, not for gaming.

Keyboard snobbery

While not as rabid as some fans, I did grow up typing on the old IBM Model M keyboards, so I did feel some nostalgia towards mechanical keyboards, although I definitely did not want a Model M replica (which are still made by Unicomp, and can be seen here).

The first thing I want to say about keyboard snobbery is that if you feel you may take keyboards a little too seriously, you need to head on over to geekhack.org. There you will find a forum filled with people who know everything about every kind of keyboard out there. I learned much in just a few days of lurking. They also sell and trade obscure keyboards and parts, and there are wikis and reviews with more information, too.

Two other forums I’ve found with some good info are at Overclock.net (especially The Mechanical Keyboard Guide, which is a great resource for beginners trying to choose a keyboard), and HardForum.com which has more opinions and reviews.

Probably the first decision you have to make when choosing a mechanical keyboard is what kind of switches you want. The most common and cost-effective ones are made by Cherry, and are designated by the color of the plastic used for the top of the switch, which indicates the design of the internals. That guide I posted above from Overclock demonstrates the differences between each color. I should also mention that when I say “cost-effective,” bear in mind that mechanical keyboards are expensive. That’s why hardly anybody makes them anymore. They’re pretty much always going to be over $100, and the ones that use better switches than Cherry are usually going to be over $200.

When first researching, I was thinking I was interested in Cherry blues, which are recommended for typing (not so much for gaming), and have that nice loud, annoying click sound that mechanical keyboards were originally known for. They are highly not recommended if you plan to use your keyboard at work or in a home where other people will be able to hear you clacking away. But since I live alone and planned to keep my keyboard at home, I thought I would revel in the satisfying click of every letter I typed.

Slightly more popular than blues are Cherry browns, which are similar to the blues, but without the click. The thing people like about the blues is that they have an audible and tactile indication of when the keypress registers (which is about halfway through the press, not when it bottoms out). The browns have only a tactile bump, and no sound. That’s not to say they’re totally silent, but they don’t purposely produce noise. If you were really trying to type quietly, you can do it as well or maybe even better than you could on any other keyboard. But if you’re typing vigorously, you do get a heart-warming clickity-clack from pressing the keys down if you bottom out, and the noise of the key bouncing back up.

Trying it out

One of the few mechanical keyboards easily available in the US is the Das Keyboard, which was originally famous for having no markings at all on its keys — just a sea of blank black keys. These days they also sell a model that has letters printed on it, but I didn’t see the point of going halfway if you’re going to buy a badass keyboard.

At first this was what I thought I wanted — they sell both the printed and non-printed keyboards with blue or brown switches. But when I started to read reviews I got directed to the fine forums I mentioned above for recommendations of even higher-quality keyboards. I had a lot of choices to make.

While inspecting my options for purchase, I was looking at the Das on Amazon, and noticed the version I had put in my shopping cart was supplied by J&R Computers. And I was like, “reeeaaaalllly?” So I took a non-virtual shopping trip to J&R and played with both the blue- and brown-switched versions in person. I also came prepared with a thorough knowledge of their return policy (14 days), and a determination to buy a keyboard, whether I ended up liking it or not.

Decisions, Decisions

I went back and forth between the blue and the brown. The clicks of the blues were fun, but I found myself not really liking the feel of it. It’s very hard to tell in a store — I’ve never experienced a new keyboard that I liked typing on right away. But I found somehow the clicks were actually confusing and distracting me. I’m sure I would have figured it out, given enough practice. I also felt the slightly greater weight needed to depress the keys was making my fingers feel a little overworked. What really surprised me about the whole experience was not that I didn’t like the blues right away, but that I did like the browns. They didn’t feel mushy to me, they just felt like they would stay out of my way instead of making the experience of typing all about them. So I decided that since I wasn’t locked into my decision anyway, it might be the braver choice to take home the keyboard I thought I didn’t want, and make it prove to me that something was wrong with it. Also, in the back of my mind I was aware that the browns are more popular, and if I liked them I would have a wider range of options when looking at other models.

So I took home my Das Keyboard Ultimate Silent edition.

The Review

The first thing I’m going to say is that I’m not keeping it. It’s not that it’s a bad keyboard. I actually like it a lot. The real dealbreaker for me is that I don’t want the number pad. A bunch of other manufacturers offer a “tenkeyless” version, which is an otherwise full-size keyboard with the number pad lopped off. The idea being that if you don’t need a number pad you can slide the keyboard more to the right without pushing your mousepad miles away, which allows you to have the actual typing part of your keyboard more centered on your screen, and your mouse closer at hand, which just makes a whole lot of sense. The moment I got the Das home, I tried to slide it more in front of my screen and it crashed into my mousepad and I thought, “this would be perfect if I could just have those four inches back.” So I knew right away I had to go with another manufacturer. I just thought I should get that out of the way, because my decision not to keep it is really separate from my opinion of it as a very nice keyboard.

Casing

The body is shiny black plastic, and the keys are matte black. This contrast is really sexy. I’ve read a lot of reviews that criticize the piano finish because it collects dust and fingerprints. Yeah, it does. They actually include a lint-free cloth in the package, which is nice. It’s really a personal decision. If it makes you happy to look at your keyboard and think, “damn that looks really sexy,” then I think you should spend 30 seconds dusting it off every couple days. If you don’t want to put that much work into it, then you might prefer something that will never look as good, but also will never look as bad when not cleaned. I personally like it, and it’s actually the one thing I will miss from going with another model.

The other nice aesthetic touch is the way the caps lock, scroll lock and num lock lights show up. They’re below the logo on the upper-right, but you can’t see them at all unless they’re illuminated. I took the picture with the caps lock on so you can see. It’s hard to tell, but the icons are bright blue.

In general, mechanical keyboards are heavier than others, which is quite fun, as long as you’re not carrying it somewhere all the time. It feels very substantial and sturdy. I like to use the flip-out feet on all my keyboards, and these stand nice and firm.

The one thing I find a little weird about the physical design is the two USB ports on the right side. Having additional USB ports close at hand is always useful, but I don’t like that you have to plug in two plugs in order for this to work (one carrying the keyboardy-stuff, and one just for the two USB ports). I’m sure there’s a reason all the data and/or power can’t be passed through a single connection, and the Das doesn’t appear to be the only high-end keyboard that operates this way, but it’s just a little bit of a disappointment. If you’re a little short on empty USB ports, you should know that in order to fully use this keyboard, you will lose two slots. This wasn’t a real problem for me. Mainly I felt that it made the lack of a USB hub on the other keyboards I was considering less of a negative. In my case my laptop and a 7-port hub sit mere inches from my keyboard, so it’s not like I need ports on my keyboard to save me from having to reach down under my desk or something. If that sounds like your situation, then you may appreciate the Das more. It also comes with quite a long cable, if you need to have your computer far from your keyboard. It’s a single cable until it splits to two USB plugs at the end. The cable is slightly thicker than normal, but not ridiculous.

Typing Experience – switches

As I said, I took home the one with Cherry brown switches, to find out exactly what it is that makes them so popular. I was quickly sold. I am a bit curious to try the blues longer-term, but I’m pretty convinced that I will truly enjoy the experience of typing on the browns more, whereas the blues would be more for nostalgia and making me work harder, just so I can think “look I’m typing on a really expensive mechanical keyboard” with every keystroke, instead of, you know, thinking about what I’m writing.

Typing Experience – blank keys

The other big gamble I was taking, which is why I was glad for the opportunity to easily test-drive the Das, was whether I would enjoy typing on the blank keys. I am a touch-typer, but I’m the craziest touch-typer you’ve probably ever seen. When I was in school we learned all the ASDF / JKL; techniques (I can still hear the voice of the nun who taught our typing class reciting those letters over and over). I know how to properly touch-type, but somewhere along the way found it was faster to just assign fingers to keys on the fly, based on whatever was most convenient for the word I was typing. I guess the best way to describe it is that I find the keys not based on fingers (as in, the “E” is the key above my left middle finger), but based on where the “E” is relative to the whole keyboard. It’s weird, but it works for me, and when I broke the tip of my right index finger, I typed for months using just my middle finger and ring finger, without any real decrease in speed, making my typing look even more ridiculous than normal and confusing the hell out of everyone I worked with.

I still need to have my bearings relative to the whole keyboard when I start, so I’m very grateful that the Das has nice thick ridges on the bottom of the F and J keys, which can be a visual or touch-based reminder of where everything is. Normally when I start typing I get my bearings by looking at the key I want to start with, and I can actually still do that without the letters most of the time, but I find myself using the ridges for guidance more than normal on the Das.

The scarier part of having no markings is the numbers and symbols. I think most people probably don’t bother to memorize that, and usually are hunting and pecking when typing them. I’ve had to use a little trial-and-error on those sometimes, but I’m doing pretty well. Also, in my particular case, I still have my laptop within reach, and in situations where I really need to type something correctly on the first try (like typing in a password that doesn’t display on screen), I can reach over and type it on my laptop instead.

I’ll be the first person to admit that the whole concept behind the original Das Keyboard was “look what a badass computer geek I am, I don’t need anything written on my keys,” and if you get the Ultimate Editions, that’s still the point. Another common reason people like them is that it’s good for keeping other people from using your computer, because if they can’t type on it, they won’t bug you to use it. This is a brilliant strategy, however since I’m using it at home it doesn’t really benefit me.

Frankly, I think plain black keyboards with white lettering are kind of boring. I’m more accustomed to gaming keyboards that have colorful backlit keys and interesting body designs. I think the blank keys are the only thing that can make otherwise ordinary-looking keyboards look cool, so I was more inclined to get the blank keys for that reason, rather than to show off (to nobody, in my apartment) how I can type without the letters. So yeah, it’s just because I think it looks slick and streamlined, it doesn’t have any function. There are also manufacturers (Realforce and Happy Hacking) that have nearly black-on-black lettering by default, and that looks almost as good, while still basically having the slick all-black appearance, plus the ability to see what the hell you’re doing if you need to. They are both, as the kids say, mad expensive. Unrelated to the color of the keys, they feature the higher-end Topre switches and are close to $300. A number of other mechanical keyboards feature blank keys as an option, mostly those made in Asia, where the style is known as otaku (enthusiast).

Anyway, my assessment of the blank keys is that they don’t impede my use of the keyboard in any serious way. I did some basic online typing tests in the first couple days I had the keyboard and was scoring on average about 75wpm on a keyboard I just got, and that was with tons of mistakes that seemed to come more as a result of an unfamiliar keyboard (i.e. not knowing how far apart the keys are or how much pressure they require) than from anything about the board itself. Those kind of things would quickly improve just from getting used to the dimensions of the key layout.

Wait a Minute, What About the Razer BlackWidow?

The other mechanical keyboard relatively easily-purchased in the US is the new BlackWidow from gaming peripheral maker Razer. You may have noticed from this blog that I own a lot of Razer products. The BlackWidow Ultimate is a gaming keyboard with Cherry blue switches, full backlighting, macro keys, USB and headphone/mic connections, media keys, powerful software, and all that good stuff you’d expect in a gaming keyboard.

When I first thought to myself, “I want to treat myself to a new keyboard when I get home,” this was the one I had in mind. It had just come out, and it sounded great. But I’ve heard some so-so things about the quality on them, and the more I started to re-think how I would make my desk more user-friendly, it became more about a compact and comfortable keyboard for my laptop, rather than sharing a gaming keyboard with my PC.

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Razer. They make great gaming products, but honestly if you’re not using them for gaming, they can kind of be a pain in the ass. The drivers and software are just added complications. I’ve ranted on this subject before. Yes, for gaming you need that kind of programmability, but I like to live a little leaner when working.

I wasn’t going to buy the BlackWidow just for typing on my laptop, and in that case, I’d wind up gaming with it, and using the G15 for my laptop, which then ends me up with a mediocre typing experience instead of a great one, so what would be the point of spending all that money? And to be honest, I’m not doing the kind of serious gaming where having something better than the G15 would matter anymore.

The things I’d been hearing about the quality control on the BlackWidow made me nervous. There will be somebody saying something bad about any product, and others who will say they have no problems, but I was wary. It needs to type. You press a key, it makes a letter. And I knew from the half-dozen or so Razer products I own, they have probably totally over-thought things and in their enthusiasm, endangered its ability to reliably put characters on a screen. I don’t mean this to be a total trash-Razer post, I’m enjoying using several Razer products just in the course of writing this post, but I came to the conclusion that what I wanted most from this particular purchase called for a manufacturer with their priorities in different places.

That being said, the BlackWidow is very feature-rich, competitively priced (including the non-Ultimate version without backlighting and USB/headphone connections, which is very cheap at $80), and is probably the most widely-available mechanical keyboard in the US right now.

Other Options

I really intended this mostly to be a review of the Das Keyboard, but for a very brief look at what else is out there, the main competition is Filco, Leopold, Realforce, Happy Hacking and Ducky. I haven’t linked to any of these, you will note, because most of them are so hard to get, and so often out of stock, that I doubt any links I gave you would remain reliable. Googling may be your best bet. Amazon also has some, but the stock is usually very limited and pretty much always from third-party sellers, so it seems to be very hit-or-miss.

EliteKeyboards is a small US-based company that imports high-end keyboards and accessories from Asia. I have made my decision and ordered a Leopold Cherry brown tenkeyless otaku keyboard from them. Oh, fine, here’s the link, but good luck with that. I’ll save my discussion about why I chose it for a review of that, once I get it and have some time with it.

Basic Keyboard Tip for Macs

I know I have a lot of Mac-owning readers, and I just want to make sure you’re aware of a sort-of-buried system preference setting for using third-party keyboards.

Most PC keyboards you plug in will map the option key as the command key, and vice-versa. There’s a really simple fix for this:

  • Go to System Preferences / Keyboards
  • Click the button “Modifier Keys”
  • Select your keyboard in the pull-down menu if it’s not already
  • Set the option key to be command and command to be option
  • Click OK, and you’ll never have to worry about it again

These directions are taken from Snow Leopard, but hopefully are pretty consistent among all recent OSes.


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