r/keebgirlies Is Totally a Thing Now
When [coral-bells] posted her first build to r/mechanicalkeyboards, she likely felt some trepidation. After all this is reddit we’re talking about, so right away you’ve got two layers of male-domination hobby.
What she likely didn’t expect was to be upvoted into the tens of thousands, or to receive such a response from other girlies who came out of the woodwork to share their builds.
And so r/keebgirlies was born, and already has a few thousand members. This is a brand-new subreddit for women and non-binary folks who are into mechanical keyboards. As it says in the sidebar, men are welcome but limited to the comments for now, so don’t go trying to post your builds. The girlies are currently seeking moderators, so give that some thought.
As for [coral-bells]’ lovely build, this is an Epomaker MS68 with MMD Vivian V2 switches, and those flowery keycaps are from Etsy. She is currently waiting for supplies to mod a Yunzii AL66, but wants to build a kit at some point.
Bear In Mind That You Can DIY Homing Keys
Ahh, homing keys. F and J, with their little bumps or lines that home your fingers on the… home row. The Kinesis Advantage doesn’t have them, unfortunately, but makes up for it with deep-dish DSA keycaps on the home row that are bright blue against a sea of black.
I still miss having bumps around because I like to pick at them sometimes when I can’t find the words I want. So there’s a good chance I will try [theTechRun]’s DIY homing key method at some point.
After trying and failing several ways, [theTechRun] came up with this ball bearing method lovingly outlined in the reddit post. Basically, you draw a line across the keycap where you want the bearings to sit, make indentations with a spring-loaded center punch set on the lowest pressure setting, then use an unfolded paperclip to dab super glue in the divots and set 1/16″ bearings in there. Evidently, two bearings feel nicer than one, and they look cooler, too.
This is a great step-by-step with shopping links for everything but the pencil. [theTechRun] offers a lot of tips as well, like erasing the pencil line before you set the bearings, and using a leveler to mark it in the first place.
The Centerfold: the Rainbow Connection
Happy 8-year cake day to [SpockIsMyHomeboy], proud owner of a bunch of rainbows and a lovely peripheral. This is a KBDFans TET keyboard sporting GMK Panels keycaps on HMX Hyacinth V2U switches. That lovely artisan keycap is none other than a Muad’ib DuneDragon.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Merritt Had Merit
I keep featuring the odd index typewriter here and there because I want you to get the sense of how popular they used to be before the masses had really mastered the keyboard, whatever the layout might have been.
The Merritt index typewriter, which was marketed as “The People’s Type-Writer”, went for a cool $15 in the 1890s until the brand’s demise in 1896. That’s around $500 in 2025 money.
All versions of the Merritt were blindwriters that typed in a linear up-striking fashion. Thanks to a double Shift mechanism, the machine could produce 78 characters. The inking was handled with a couple of rollers. I find the layout intriguing and wonder how fast I could get going on the thing, though it seems like a recipe for a repetitive stress injury.
Interestingly, the Antikey Chop found an ad from 1901 that was placed by a department store. Hamburger & Sons claimed to have acquired “an immense quantity” of Merritts and were offering them for $3.98 and $4.98. They chose to market the machines as “typewriters for those who cannot afford typewriters”, “handy typewriters for tourists”, and “ideal machines for boys and girls”.
This Keyboard Charges Itself
Wireless keyboards are cool and all, but they whole keeping-it-charged thing adds a level of stress that many believe isn’t worth it. After all, what are you supposed to do when your keyboard is dead? Use the — gasp — laptop keyboard? Uh, no. I mean, unless you have a ThinkPad or something; those have pretty nice keyboards, or at least they did a few years ago.
Lenovo is here for you with their Self-Charging Bluetooth Keyboard, which debuted at CES. It uses a photovoltaic panel and supercapacitors to harness and store both solar and ambient artificial light. I don’t have to tell you that supercapacitors last much longer than lithium batteries.
I for one like the paint spatter design, but I wish only three keycaps were green. It’s a nitpick for sure, ignoring the elephant in the room with a sign around its neck that reads ceci n’est pas une ergonomic keyboard.
Bonus: Lenovo also debuted the AdaptX Mouse, a modular affair which appears to be a pretty sweet multi-functional peripheral for those who don’t want to carry too much. It can be a compact mouse, an ergonomic mouse, a travel hub, a memory card holder, and an emergency power bank. Sheesh! Unfortunately, it’s just a proof-of-concept for now. Gauntlet laid?
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.
