jwz: 13-Mar-2015 (Fri)

DNA Lounge: Wherein there is a petition for you to sign, for legislation that you want.

Passing along this message from CMAC:

SAVE SAN FRANCISCO'S NIGHTLIFE FROM DEVELOPERS!
The lively and vibrant culture, which we all enjoy, wasn't just given to us. It was fought for by previous generations of activists and organizations such as CMAC and the Entertainment Commission. It is time again to step up and tell our city leaders and developers that we are not interested in living in a city comprised solely of condos and that we want our culture protected.
We salute President London Breed, of the Board of Supervisors, who has introduced legislation which will help protect venues from developers. (More on legislation) Let's support Supervisor Breed in her bid to protect our venues:
Signing this petition (click here), is one small way you can contribute. Attending the hearing at City Hall on March 19 at 12 noon is another, yet larger gesture you can make. Getting up and speaking to the Commission is the shit. (check here to check items positioning on agenda)
CMAC strongly urges you to take a few moments out to help protect our beloved venues whose only "infraction" was getting in the way of new development.
See you at the Planning Commission.

And as long as I'm here, I would be remiss were I not to encourage you to come out tonight to Hubba Hubba Revue's SPACE STATION 1966, a show a decade in the making! (Seriously, they've been planning this show forever.) It's going to be epic. Watch the teaser trailer:

The seated tickets sold out a week ago, but there are still standing room and table-service tickets left.

Tonight's pre-Hubba Mortified is fully sold out, except for the tables. So get a table! I'm a little surprised that even on sold out Mortifieds, we rarely sell table service. I mean, it's sold out, clearly the demand is there. It's actually a pretty good deal once you split it six ways and factor in the booze. Maybe you guys can't do math. Maybe you don't have five friends.

Also, do you like bloody marys and poached eggs? I'm guessing you do, which means you should also join us for Brunch Steady this Sunday afternoon at DNA Pizza!

New keyboard

I switched from a Kinesis Freestyle2 to a Matias Ergo Pro, and I'm pretty happy with it! It feels much more solid. The springs feel a lot like the old Kinesis Evolution (which is to say, "like springs, not bubble wrap"), and it's a lot quieter.

I ordered it almost a year ago, and it only just arrived.

There aren't a lot of options for two piece, separated keyboards.

Things I like about the Matias:

The connecting cable is removable. The Kinesis was hardwired, and wasn't as long as I liked. The cable that comes with the Matias is also kind of short, but it's just a standard 3.5mm 4-conductor cable, so that's a cheap fix.
Update: No, that cable doesn't work reliably. The failure mode is that sometimes modifier keys get stuck on until you power-cycle the keyboard. This cable fails in the same way. I need a TRRS cable that is around 25" long to replace the 18" retractable one that came with, but I haven't found one that works yet.
The bottom row is much taller, and Ctrl is wider.
Esc is tall and awesome and in the right place, so I don't keep hitting `~ by mistake.
The Delete Forward key is banished off to the Fn row, which is great because now I can stop hitting it by accident all the time.
Right-Shift doesn't have ↑ to the right of it begging to be hit by mistake.
The bank of function keys on the left is smaller, which is nice because I never used those anyway.
Fn is a chord instead of FnLock, so you have to hold it down to switch between function keys and media keys. I'm on the fence about this but I think I like it.

Do Not Want:

Separated keyboards are supposed to have 6^ on both sides! The Matias has it only on the right. This is horrible. It is literally ruining my life.
Opt is only on the left side, instead of on both sides. Cmd is on both, but really I want all three on both sides.
There's a NumLock key to the left on the N that turns the right side into a numeric keypad. I hit it by mistake all the time and then v50 c6. 64 352 5 6 53. 5' 250 6 .050.
Guess what keycode the Paste key sends? If you guessed Paste you'd be wrong. It sends Cmd-V and Emacs sheds a single tear.
For some reason USB Overdrive doesn't recognize it as a keyboard at all, so I can't remap any of its keys.