I was perusing Big Lots electronics section the other day and came across a bunch of $8 USB gizmos made by Sakar. One that caught my eye was the Mobile Mini Numeric Keypad. It's a small USB numeric keypad meant for a laptop, of course. I'm using it on my desktop since my keyboard has no numeric keypad.

Sometimes I would like to use a calculator or spreadsheet without hunting and pecking through the number row. Well, this little USB gizmo even improves on the PC-style numeric keypad a bit. It provides escape and backspace keys in place of numlock and the lower half of the oversized addition key. In the GNOME Calculator, escape acts as clear-all and backspace acts as clear-entry. I would assume other calculators work similarly. Very slick little detail. Since they are $8 in Big Lots I'm guessing they didn't have as much of an impact on the market.

As for my regular keyboard, I use a Happy Hacking Lite2 keyboard. It's not entirely unlike the old Apple IIgs keyboard but without a numeric pad. I use this particular keyboard because it is one of few affordable PC-compatible keyboards with a UNIX oriented keyboard layout and, at one time, a Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout kit. Specifically, the Lite2 mimics the layout of the Sun Microsystems Type 5 keyboard (other types). Over other Happy Hacking models, the Lite2 adds the old, familiar inverted-T style arrow keys found on the Sun Type 5. The other models have no arrow keys at all. That seemed a bit too spartan for my taste.

I know, what's with the weird little keyboard? Well, PC keyboards are geared essentially toward DOS circa 1980 or so. That's awkward on Linux and UNIX systems. PC keyboards have tons of extra keys and are missing several important X modifier keys. (Compose, Alt-Gr, Meta, Super, Hyper, etc) This keyboard provides markings for some of the missing X modifier keys and removes quite literally all of the secondary keys. And it has no caps-lock. I truly despise the caps lock key. Where you would find a caps lock key on the Type 5 it has a Function key that you chord with another to access less common keys. Function+1 is F1, Function+2 is F2, Function+Up Arrow is Page Up, Function + Left Arrow is Home, and so on.

I wanted Dvorak layout simply because I spend most of each day using my keyboard. A few weeks into a large programming project many years ago I started becoming fatigued after typing for more than a few minutes. If I forced myself it would become quite painful to type. So I experimented with Dvorak and it seems to almost completely eliminate irritation and fatigue for me. The chording feature of the Happy Hacking also means I never have to strain my wrist reaching way across the keyboard to press some odd key like F1. I don't even have to leave the home keys.

Labels: linux