i’d been wanting a split keyboard for the longest time, so conveniently a month or two ago there was the aliexpress spring sale and the silakka54 was half off for ~$30, so i just had to get it. i ended up getting a $20 koa profile keycap set alongside it and a set of wuque studios black arowana switches from maxgaming for another ~$23.
the build quality for this price obviously isn’t anything crazy, but believe it or not i’ve had much worse experiences with more mainstream mechanical keyboards. the switches are surprisingly nice out of the box as well.
my biggest hurdle has been learning to actually type. see, despite having used computers and keyboards for about 20 years, its all been related to gaming. left hand resting in wasd position and arms in an offset to the left. i have never touch typed in the traditional sense, i am right handed but i’ve always just used two or three fingers from my right hand when typing. despite all this, i am a solid typer, averaging 110-120 wpm. regardless, this made the first week of using it hell.
my left hand is going speedy gonzales while my right hand is like a quadriplegic trying to scratch their nose.
now, being completely honest: for the past month or so i’ve neglected the keyboard a lot as all i’ve done on my computer has been gaming, if i even had the time and/or energy to get on it. obviously when gaming i am using my 65% hall effect keyboard.
lately i’ve been using it again and trying to figure out a convenient layer setup that works for everything, really. casual gaming, programming, general use. programming is where my current set up is clearly lacking as i am struggling while working on this website project with this board, or maybe it’s just the fact that i’ve not been using it at all.
this is a layer i have set to activate when double tapping right alt. left side is mainly for obs recording and soundboard binds, while tap dances 5 and 6 are my media keys. it may look very confusing, that’s because it is.
there is also the fact that i am finnish so i am using the finnish (iso) keyboard layout on an ansi keyboard. shift 8 and 9 are actually (), not the asterisk and left brace.
other than that, i do have a second layer bound to double tapping the windows key, which has caps lock, f1-f12 and mousekeys. very convenient and i am still struggling when trying to use my mouse less, even though i’ve been using linux with gnome and a bunch of tiling window manager -esque plugins and binds for a few months now… also the backslash is completely missing and i am unable to find it in vial lmao help
as an ending note, i did get used to typing on this thing again very quick. my right hand is still struggling but no where near as badly as i was expecting to and i am loving it, despite being completely lost when it comes to layer switching and getting used to that layer pictured above.
also neovim worked very well when typing this, btw. though i forgot all the handful of commands i had learned due to not working on anything in a while, oospie.