pitter patter on the keyboard

My blank Das Keyboard Model S has pretty much had its last run. Purchased last March, it had seen the last of my days as a smoker and consequentially the switches have become a little gummy. Now that everyone and their uncle has a blank keyboard I pondered what would have the same level of bad-assery while being unique. Thanks to WASD Keyboards‘ custom laser etching and engraving it’s now easy and affordable for anyone to design their own keycaps and it didn’t take me very long to think of using bar codes.

WASD lets you choose from a selection of mechanical Cherry MX switches; I stuck with the Blues because they’re what I know and love. You also get to choose from a range of keycap colours; using their flash-based keyboard designer it’s easy to mix and match to get your ideal colour coding. The etched (contrasting colour) or engraved (indented) design can also be done in the flash designer but for full customization PDFs, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw documents based on provided templates are accepted. This is the route I would have to take to get bar codes.

Not knowing anything about Illustrator before diving in, my alignments are a little off in some places but not to the point where it’s noticeable. To make things go swiftly I used a font rather than generating individual bar codes for each key. Since Code 128 requires start, stop and check characters (which would take up far too much space on many keys) none of these bar codes are scannable with a bar code reader but the font does create valid individual character codes. Ideally, characters should be converted to objects before submission but being useless with Illustrator I submitted the font in my order comments and the staff were kind enough to play along and install it. You can grab your copy at http://k-fox.net/code128.ttf

Much to my surprise my order was already being worked on the evening it was submitted and it shipped two days later. That’s some seriously fast turnaround for any sort of custom order. The keyboard itself is built like a tank and I’m overjoyed at the feel of my fresh, clean Cherry Blues!

Great job, WASD – you’ve landed a repeat customer.

I purchased a Das Keyboard Ultimate Model S in March 2011 because I longed for the tactile feel of the IBM model M keyboard I used with my PS/2 as a wee lad. Perhaps slightly more, I wanted it for the ridiculous amounts of clickity-clackity sound their spring-buckling action produces which seems to magically take normal typing and make it sound like mad hacking.

This technology is currently licensed to Unicomp and it is possible to get one of their keyboards on eBay for well under $100 (maybe my next investment). A colleague informed me Cherry MX Blue switches produce a similar tactile feel and clicking sound but had a more modern (and patent-friendly) construction. That fact combined with Das’ super sexy blank keycaps had me sold on the Ultimate model S.

Hard to tell in this shot but it was very much a smoker's keyboard.

I have only two complaints and they are mostly my fault:

• The switch grease does not withstand beer admirably. I am considering replacing it with RO-59.
• Debris seem to be able to enter through the back of the switch into the mechanics. This causes very bad sticking and increases in the pressure required to depress some keys when a keyboard full of ashes is, for example, held upside down and smacked. If I had known this beforehand I would have completely disassembled the keyboard first. Heavy use eventually makes the keys stop sticking but the quality of the keystrokes never returns.

Neither of these can be addressed with a simple cleaning; the switches themselves must be opened, cleaned and re-lubricated. I quit smoking two weeks ago though and figured why not give it a little cleanup in the mean time.

While it is possible to do it by hand it is strongly recommended that one uses keycap pullers to remove the caps from your switches. They allow for an even, vertical withdrawal and minimize the risk of pulling out a switch. They can be obtained on ebay for about $4 a pair.

It is particularly important when removing the keycaps on unlabelled keyboards such as the Ultimate that you maintain their position. The caps on a Das have different inclinations to make the keyboard more ergonomic but this prevents one from swapping keys from different rows.

Long keys like Return and Space are supported by metal wires called stabilizers. To remove keys mounted with stabilizers pull vertically to release them from the Cherry MX switch; this may take some wiggling. You should now feel the key pivoting freely about the stabilizer. Very carefully press the key to one side and pull up to release that side from the stabilizer, then without forcing the key at odd angles slide it out in the other direction. Remounting these keycaps requires only reversing the process and is a little easier.

Keys can be cleaned by simply rinsing in a tub of water then placed face up – in order – on paper towels or another substrate which will wick away the water from inside. If you have hard water you may wish to dry them as they come out as there will be a white residue left on some keys.

You may wish to use a wet cloth or Q-tips to clean out the tray on which the switches are mounted. You will notice gaps where the switches are mounted which provides points of entry for debris. Do not turn your keyboard upside-down; if you are concerned about what is underneath the tray it is much better to remove the back housing of the keyboard than it is to develop sticky keys. Once the keycaps have dried replace them firmly by hand.

I just bought my first cellphone in years. I know that sounds strange coming from an IT guy but my logic is sound: if you don’t have one your boss can’t call it. One of my colleagues is a big VoIP genius and he pointed out that by using a dial-out gateway and Telus’ one-number-unlimited feature it’s possible to have the equivalent of unlimited calling for $7 per month on a prepaid phone – plus the one-time cost of provisioning a phone number that forwards incoming calls back through the gateway (about $25). I’ve been horny for the newer android-based phones that are in circulation in the states but most of the ones I want don’t operate on the Canadian bands yet and/or it will take a long time before they are rolled out up here, thus I decided for unlimited calling at $7 a month I may as well settle for a cheap phone in the mean time. I decided to tack on $10/month unlimited web browsing because it makes the e-mail and instant messaging packages moot.

The Keybo 2 is the closest thing to a smart phone in Telus’ prepaid lineup, and at the time of writing the most expensive – clocking in at a modest $99. It sports a 160x96px external screen and flips open to reveal a large QWERTY keyboard and 320x240px internal screen. There are stereo speakers mounted on either side of the internal screen and to be perfectly frank they are better sounding than my laptop’s. The Keybo 2 has a 3.2MP flash camera that takes decent pictures but crappy closeups.

In the United States (and possibly elsewhere) the Keybo 2 is marketed as the enV3. The Canadian model number is CX9200 and the US model is VX9200; as far as I can tell the difference is cosmetic. Verizon seems to be the main carrier for enVs in the states and Koodo is popular in Canada as well. Interestingly the Koodo and Verizon firmwares of the phone do not include Java support. It would seem that the popular thing to do with your Keybo is flash it to Telus’ firmware if you’re on a different provider. Unfortunately Telus’ firmware is so locked down that one wonders just how bad Verizon’s could be.

I’ve had a hell of a time over the past few days trying to find information on hacking the Keybo 2, most of the results I have found thus far only apply to the original Keybo (aka enV2 or VX9100), for example it no longer seems possible to simply overwrite application slots with other java apps to install them on the phone. Telus’ proxy prevents users from downloading apps from the web that don’t come from their store. I have tried altering the proxy settings to use a personal proxy on ports 8118, 80 and 110 but the browser fails to connect. I even tried popping the opera mini .jad and .jar files onto an SSL site and altering the .jad to pull from the new URL to no avail – the download begins, posts, then returns this error:

Issue has been reported.
Please try again later.

950 Server Error (-1289)

then the browser bounces back to the Telus apps store. I tried renaming the .jar to .jax (and updating the .jad accordingly) also to no avail.  I am beginning to suspect that the firmware has been modified to enforce some sort of DRM for applications. Custom ringtones are a pain in the ass as they definitely require DRM, fortunately they can be dropped into the phone’s filesystem at /brew/shared/ringtone/ with BitPim (1.0.7+ supports the CX9200) and given DRM with the Sony-Ericsson DRM Packager.

I couldn’t find the right SPC code for my particular phone anywhere (unlike the old Keybo/enV2 it does not have nvm_XXXX files) so I had to grab it with CDMA Workshop (it’s 105495 by the way). With the correct SPC you can access the programming menus for your phone by dialing:

##DEBUG
##TELUS
##BROWSER
##TEST
##DATA

Note that you can get into ##DEBUG on any LG phone with the unlock code 183729.

Overall, this phone pisses me off because it could do so much more but Telus makes it extremely difficult to modify. While there is some community support for the Keybo/enV2 those of us with the new Keybo 2s and enV3s are practically on our own at present time. The fact that the Telus firmware is considered “the good firmware” is extremely discouraging, flashing your old Verizon enV2 to Telus’ old Keybo firmware may let you load on some java apps but how to do this successfully on the newer Keybo 2′s firmware is as yet a mystery.