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Rambling about — Keyboards

I use an IQUNIX Magi65 keyboard at home, and absolutely love it. I didn’t get the Pro version, as I don’t really need a dial or media keys, and I preferred the smaller size anyways. The only real criticism I noticed in reviews was that the keyboard is pretty heavy, but this turned out to be a good thing for me. I don’t want to carry the thing around with me, and I love the solidity as I type. The typing experience is fantastic.

I wanted a nice keyboard at work, too, and felt weird about buying 2 of the same keyboard. I figured this was a good opportunity to try something else, so I got the NuPhy Air75 V3 for the office. This was also well-reviewed, and is quite a bit lighter. It seems like people who want low-profile mechanical keyboards also value portability, which makes sense.

I’ve been giving it a fair chance, but I have to admit that I really don’t like it very much. For lack of a better vocabulary, the keys just feel too light. I find myself mistyping a lot for some reason, and I think it has to do with the keys being pressed very easily without a lot of bounce-back. Maybe I just have to learn to be gentler with my typing? I’m not sure, but it’s been a while and I still haven’t gotten used to it.

Then, I came across the Toucan, which is just absolutely gorgeous. I had never really considered a split keyboard, but I fell in love with this one.

I still haven’t bought one. I’m worried about losing so many keys, but this has definitely triggered an interest in split keyboards, and the Corne layout especially. I can’t justify getting this as a daily driver, or spending so much money on a side-toy, but I’m been browsing used markets for a cheap entry model. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find The One and dive off the deep end.

So what about my work keyboard? I might just get another Magi65, because it is by far my favorite typing experience.

Nov 27, 2025

Platinum achieved on Expedition 33! This game was a joy all the way through.

Sep 10, 2025

Copy and paste across Google Slides

I wanted to copy slides from one Google Slide document to another. Half-expecting it to not work, I just copied slides in one document, switched to a different tab, hit paste… and it worked! Seamless and perfect.

It looks like when you copy slides, your clipboard actually saves a special payload that contains information about the slides you are copying, rather than the raw content. Then when you paste that into a Slides document, it retrieves the slide data from its servers and imports them to the second document. I imagine you have to be logged into the same Google account in both tabs for it to work properly.

You can actually look at the raw clipboard data by using a custom HTML page like below:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>Clipboard Viewer</title></head>
<body>
  <h1>Paste clipboard contents here (Ctrl+V)</h1>
  <pre id="output"></pre>
  <script>
    document.body.addEventListener('paste', async (event) => {
      const output = document.getElementById('output');
      output.textContent = '';

      const clipboardItems = event.clipboardData.items;
      for (let i = 0; i < clipboardItems.length; i++) {
        const item = clipboardItems[i];
        const type = item.type;

        output.textContent += `MIME Type: ${type}\n`;

        if (item.kind === 'string') {
          item.getAsString((str) => {
            output.textContent += `Content:\n${str}\n\n`;
          });
        } else if (item.kind === 'file') {
          const file = item.getAsFile();
          const text = await file.text();
          output.textContent += `File Content:\n${text}\n\n`;
        }
      }
    });
  </script>
</body>
</html>

After copying slide data and pasting it to this page, I saw:

MIME Type: text/html
MIME Type: text/plain
Content:
<head><meta charset="UTF-8"></head><b id="docs-internal-guid-2b163f80-7fff-e9cd-4022-54d9d4edcc57" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal;"><span> </span></b>

Content:

That docs-internal-guid-* looks like the important bit. Copying multiple slides also results in a single guid, so I guess this is just a catch-all hash that saves all information about whatever it is that you had copied. Pretty cool.

Jul 15, 2025

Finally got to start reading Project Hail Mary. So far it seems to be The Martian 2.0 with a dash of Echopraxia, which is SO my jam.

Jul 10, 2025

To experience, rather than record

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/i-deleted-my-second-brain

I have never made any meaningful headway in deliberate note-taking, or knowledge management, or second-brain creation. Not for a lack of trying! There just seems to be something in my mind that resists this kind of rigor.

So a lot of points made in Joan’s piece here really resonated with me.

PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it - and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.

When I first started using PKM tools, I believed I was solving a problem of forgetting. Later, I believed I was solving a problem of integration. Eventually, I realized I had created a new problem: deferral. The more my system grew, the more I deferred the work of thought to some future self who would sort, tag, distill, and extract the gold.

If some small scrap of information doesn’t stick in my mind, maybe it’s OK to forget it. Maybe recording everything is not the best way to engage with it.

I’m terrible at remembering to take photos. I just get so caught up in the moments that I don’t think to record them. But honestly, I prefer just being able to experience my life for myself, rather than always keeping a phone between me and the rest of the world.

My son’s kindergarten class put on a performance for parents in the spring. The parents were cautioned beforehand that in past years, adults were so busy photographing that nobody remembered to clap for the kids. I imagined being in the place of the kids, looking to see your parents’ faces and just seeing a sea of phones instead.

The kindergarten also hires a professional videographer and you can buy a DVD later. The prices are absurd, but it’s worth it if I can keep my phone in my pocket and make sure my son can always see my face. Every time our eyes meet, he beams.

Jun 30, 2025
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