Das Keyboard

Das KeyboardDas Keyboard

Boy, this was a long time coming. I'm sure it seemed longer because I was still stuck with a crappy Microsoft keyboard that I'd been using for work. It didn’t help that I ordered it just before they revamped it. I'm not sure what they changed about it, maybe the blue LED’s, possibly the powered USB ports, I don’t know. Then they had a minor problem with some units after they were shipped, which delayed my delivery even further. From the end of September 2009 to the middle of January 2010, but was it worth it?

The Microsoft keyboard was one that kind of curved. It wasn’t as if it was split, like some of them are, just bent enough to make it annoying when you switch from a it to a straight keyboard. It must have only cost about £30 and that was in a set with a mouse. After a year or so of heavy use it started to develop problems with some of the keys. I unscrewed it, which was certainly not easy considering the 12 or so screws of different sizes, and looked inside. There was nothing. It was just a rubbery membrane and a sheet of contacts. Nothing broken exactly but just something that was stopping some of the keys from registering.

The Das Keyboard is just a joy to use by comparison. The keys themselves have a satisfying little click just before they are fully depressed. I haven’t managed this yet but I'm sure that you could adjust your typing so that you just hit the first click without pressing the key all the way down.

I ordered the Ultimate, because I can touch-type, but I was a little concerned about entering cryptic passwords that have upper and lowercase as well as numbers. To be honest I haven’t had to do this yet and even if I did have trouble I'd just use the laptop keyboard.

One thing that I used to do with the old keyboard was to look down at the keys when I was hitting the numbered keys above the letters. Now, not having the keys marked means that I have to move my right had up so that my index finger is on the 7 and my little finger is on the 0. After the last week or so I have started to do this simply because I have no choice. The same goes for brackets and the other shifted symbols, there is no visual guide so you have to learn where they are. The numeric keypad is never used. I'm sure it’s only there for accountants and anyone needing to total long lists of numbers. I also have a habit of using one hand to hit an uppercase letter or for control key combinations. It’s these bad habits that I'm going to try to unlearn over time.

It certainly isn’t without it’s faults, but they are only minor. The connection to my Dell laptop is via 2, yes 2, USB ports. The cable out of the keyboard splits in to 2 USB plugs. The laptop has 4 thankfully, the other 2 are for the mouse and a mini-USB cable for my phone. I can’t see why it needs 2 USB ports, possibly for the powered USB sockets that are on the right-hand side. This is another problem. Those ports are right next to my mouse and mouse mat. I wouldn’t use them because any wires would hinder my mousing hand. These ports, useful though they may be, should have been moved 90 degrees anti-clockwise so that they are on the same edge as the main cable. They could even still keep them on the same bump as the Das Keyboard lettering.

Those quirks aside the Das Keyboard is good enough to almost make my job more enjoyable.

Related Links
Das Keyboard Model S from getDigital
Das Keyboard flickr set

Huffduffer

HuffdufferHuffduffer

Why oh why haven’t I used this web-site before.

Since buying an iPod nano, a few years ago now, I've become an avid listener to podcasts. When I'm walking, cleaning, cooking or washing-up I'm listening to podcasts that I've subscribed to. Some feeds I've stuck with for years and listen to every show. Others I've unsubscribed from mainly due to the fact that there are only so many listening hours in the week and they started to pile up in iTunes.

Recently I've wanted to listen to the odd Boagworld podcast or I've found an interview in an MP3 file on a web-site that looks interesting. Before Huffduffer I would have to download the one show via the podcast section, then remember to delete the feed afterwards, or download the file manually, add it to iTunes, listen to it and then delete it.

Being a Web 2.0 stalker of longstanding I read a tweet from Jeremy Keith saying that he was huffduffing himself, which is considered illegal in some countries and is hardly a spectator sport. He was huffduffing the dConstruct ‘09 podcasts which I'd listened to in previous years.

After mentioning it 3 times and ‘it’ also being the title of this post, I'd better explain what it does.

Huffduffer allows you to create your own podcast stream using MP3’s that you've found on the internet. So, in my case, I'm surfing around web-sites and I find a download link to an MP3 file. All I need to do is use the bookmarklet to huffduff it. I have already subscribed to my feed in iTunes so the next time the feeds are refreshed the MP3 file will get downloaded.

It works in a such a way that anything is a podcast feed. You have your own feed, of items that you've huffduffed, you can subscribe to someones else’s feed, a feed of the most popular additions or a feed particular tags. If only there were more hours in the day to listen to it all.

Jeremy said that it was just a ‘scratch your own itch’ project and that it’s possibly too geeky to go mainstream. It’s certainly inspiring to see a niche site like this created just for the love of it.

Hivelogic t-shirt

Hivelogic t-shirt

If it wasn’t for Dan Benjamin I would probably still be struggling to get Rails to run on Mac OS X Tiger. It was the articles that he wrote at Hivelogic that got me going. Back then I hadn’t compiled any source code on my iMac, I didn’t even know that /usr/local existed, but my internet pal guided me through it. And I've followed his posts and podcasts ever since.

As you can possibly tell from the photo I didn’t order my t-shirt until the light grey option became available. Don’t get me wrong, I was tempted by the yellow, but… I live in the U.K., it’s high summer here now which means it’s overcast, it rains when you least expect it and the sun only comes out as it’s going down. If I was to wear the original ‘honey’ coloured shirt whilst out and about I would be mistaken for a Floridian tourist. Nothing wrong with that I can assure you. For now I’ll be proudly wearing the grey version. There is always next year if I change my mind about the yellow.

The Cuckoo's Egg

The Cuckoo's EggThe Cuckoo's Egg

  • Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
  • Cliff Stoll
  • Geek Thriller

In the genre of 'geek thriller' this book is on a shelf of it's own.

Of course I heard about Cliff Stoll from his 'infamous' TED talk, during which he did mention this book and the events that he described.

Cliff was an astronomer/systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when he was alerted to a 75-cent discrepancy in the system accounts. This was back in the day when computers were huge and filled rooms, storage devices looked like top loading washing machines from the same era and all the screens were monochrome, black and white, green or amber. When printers were deafening and took huge boxes of green striped paper. The days of acoustic couplers, teletypes and daisy wheels. Computing time was charged to the account of each user in each department. Actually that isn't so far removed from what Amazon are doing with EC2 today.

What he found out was that someone was accessing the computer, using a GNU Emacs hack to gain system privileges, then copying the password file. This was all done using an account that had lain dormant for some time. The hacker would then seek out other computers to log into using the LBL as a gateway.

For someone like me, the book was fascinating, surely this hacker, once he had the password file, would have been one of the first people to try a brute force dictionary hack to try and 'guess' passwords. The password encryption was only one way, the encrypted password could never be de-crypted back into plain text. I don't know if that is still true of Unix systems today. Digital VAX VMS was mentioned as one of the operating systems, a name I haven't heard of for many years.

It's a real cat and mouse tale with the mouse almost getting away.

One chapter at the end describes a Unix virus. It was described as a virus but it acted more as a worm, trying to connect to other insecure systems. Cliff tried to unscramble the code to see what it's purpose was. Phoning other systems managers warning them of the dangers, what to look for and suggesting possible ways to stop it spreading. Over the phone. Nowadays that would be done using email, forums and bulletin boards on the internet. The web being a source of viruses and other nasties as well as a way of high-lighting possible security holes. This was something that simply didn't exist when this all happened. Of course the beginnings of the web existed but there was no one, not even the software vendors, showing systems managers where their computers could be attacked.

I'm sure this type of book would sell loads of copies today, either as a factual account or one of complete fiction. With The Pragmatic Bookshelf now containing fiction as part of it's Pragmatic Life series it can only be a matter of time.

Geek Thriller: you heard it here first.

Daring Fireball t-shirt

Daring Fireball t-shirt

Being a reader of Daring Fireball for quite a few years I was pleased to find this fine garment in the post.