Hello, hello and welcome to Fun Fact Friday
Fun Fact Friday with Leila David, where weekly podcast where we discuss different topics surrounding where we discuss
different topics surrounding a different topic.
Each week, each week sometimes live sometimes not. We are live tonight. It is Thursday, September 14, I think about Yeah. You can you can hit us up at mail FunFactFriday.com You're so good. Yeah.
You've done so much.
So tonight, we have a couple of guests. We have, who do i say first, we have Kayla and Emily. I gave the first one in the show to Kayla because I gave it to Emily on the on the promos from EB IO. How is that? How you pronounce it? And what does Keebio do?
We design and ship mechanical keyboards,
which I love mechanical keyboards sort of lead
me to
mechanical keyboards. That is our powerhouse. So we can feature the ergonomics of saving your neck, shoulders and wrists, knee or the future.
That's awesome. So yeah, we we met, I don't I don't know which way we went, we became aware of Keebio at Galaxy con back in whenever Galaxy con happened in July, and July. And I bought the little macro pad that I've talked about on the show four or five times. And then I just contacted John say, Hey, you wanna come on. And here we are. So we're gonna be talking about keyboards. And we are going to first talk about
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can on FunFactFriday.com click the donate button. We got one boosts we get two boosts I have been instructed to not read one of them. But I'm gonna say the amount if that's okay. 3333 sets. I'm not gonna say who it's from, because I'm unclear on whether he wants me to say x in the chat right now. And then 2000 sets from Red Beard underscore Jake W no note attached to that one. If you want to do something, something read on that red beard JW? Let us know over on fountain which
is it looks like that's the app that you're using. So yeah, thank you so much for the kind support. And yeah, the other donation that you said not to read, let me know. Let me know if you wanted more, more attribution on that one. So there we go. That's it for our support section for this week. Thank you, everybody who donate support, it has supported us for trying to get away from the word donate. Because it's not a donation, it's support, it's them being a producer.
And helping us keep the show running. Right.
It helps us run run the lights and the server and helps me you know, buy cool posters for the studio. Absolutely. Ice Cream environment. Right. So, um, we had some questions. And but for First we want to kind of What do each of you do with Keebio? And you know, a little bit a little bit about the company itself, if you wouldn't mind.
Alright, so I'll get started. So originally, when I started out at Keebio, I was really just doing a lot of the packaging end of things and then also building the keyboards themselves. So doing this was back in the time, like, so at the end of 2021. We weren't really doing as much of hotswap things. We were mostly doing solder keyboards. But from there, I branched out into doing more digital marketing stuff. So I write the newsletter, the blog and do YouTube videos. Emily is
my lovely hand model for much of the YouTube videos nowadays. So I'll do the camera kind of work and then I'll slap together all the footage and then pop in some audio, maybe some sound effects or please don't do this you'll have a better time if you do it this way. And so I have a lot of fun with doing those YouTube videos, blog posts, stuff, and I bounced around the most probably
in the newsletter. Emily. So I'm Emily, I do a lot of the design work. We came out with a aluminum CNC milled case for our flagship model sometime last year, and so I designed that did all the prototyping. Yeah, do some PCB design as well. So the actual like, traces to make the brain work of the of the keyboard. But yeah, and we're a pretty small operation. So we all do. And we are mostly an online store. So we all do like fulfillment and processing and inventory processing. So
yeah, and then so like, I've worked with a lot of small, smaller companies. I know it's like yeah, I'm the I'm the IT guy but guess what if the if the toilets plugged Guess who's the plumber? Also, you know, who's the janitor? Cloth hat. Just go change the hat.
machine broken. Like someone's got to fix it.
But yeah, so the the PCB stuff in the CNC machine, just that Oh, cool. That's the stuff that I love. And then also, the video so if you ever need any voiceover done for your for the videos, just hit me up. I love doing voiceover stuff. But yeah, we had a few questions. They may or may not have been helped out a little bit by AI. I was like, What do you ask somebody about a keyword? So how? Okay, so the, the, I'm gonna This isn't from
the AI, they were all very generic questions. Can you share some lesser known technical details about mechanical keyboard? boring for you, PCB. Now we have some very young listeners, and we have some very so PCB is
a printed circuit board,
right? Well, I'm not I'm not saying Oh, you're correct. I'm just just saying, right? That is correct, you get one point. So anytime somebody uses an acronym that our audience might not know what it is always try and get them get experts to.
CNC is Computer Numerical Control. So it's when like drill or a mill is drilling out your thing. But instead of a person deciding where it goes, you just write some code and then a computer,
like a negative 3d printer. Yeah. I love it. And I did not actually know that that's what the CNC was, like. I've know it what it does, how it works. I've worked with them before, but I never knew that that's what the CNC stood for. I just, I never thought to ask. But the PCB part. Yeah, do you? When you're what's first of all, What software do you use?
Oh, we use KiCad or chi CAD Cae. I see ad. Okay. It's a open source. Oh,
excellent. I'm about to ask that as an open source, because we're big fans of an open source. And then, do you have a local place that prints the boards? Or do you send it off to a, you know, somewhere else? Do you send it off? So you know, so you've got to
manufacturers that we work with? Okay. We have a prototyping manufacturer and then a production run manufacturer.
Awesome. That's, that's that whole thing fascinates me because I've always wanted to when I was in middle in high school, I used to be into all that. And then, you know, misspent youth, we're not talking about it. But when I was a little older, we'll talk about what I did in my late teens early 20s. So, but yeah, like I said, misspent youth and you said you just got this CNC machine or have y'all had that for a while because I've always wanted to play like a really good one is
sent off for the CNC as well. Oh, okay. We just have the 3d printers on a laser engraver
got two 3d printers.
Yes, we actually have three one of them is higher up Yeah, it's hard to see because the camera
so yeah, we we just got our first 3d Well we've had we had a little crappy cheapo crappy cheapo from years ago. What is it even called DaVinci? No. It's like an old little it's cut starter kit, essentially. I mean, we did bed it didn't have a heated so it didn't stick. So that's been in the garage for a while. It's still in the garage but we just got a longer LK five Pro, like half off and has a little bit of work to it. A
little bit of work. There is a penny or a nickel and a dime jammed into a certain Part of it to make things stay where they need to be, but you know what, it worked great. Gotta do absolutely. But um oh, I didn't do the history of keyboards. Leila, jumped right into it. I got all interested in the CNC machine and the okay. So keyboards were invented in 1978 by Joseph keyboard. He had 26 rooms each, which was labeled with a with a letter, and he had the letters all written on keys,
and he had them hanging from a piece of wood. And that's how the keyboard was infinite. Correct. Am I right? Yeah, keyboard manufacturer. Sounds perfect. So it's a running gag on the show. Since episode one. whatever the topic is Joseph, something invented it in 1978. There was nothing invented before 1978. No, people didn't exist before. That's just a running gag. Except for Oreos, Oreos were 1912.
Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah.
Hydrox before
we just went over that. We just went into that what two three episodes ago? Yeah, because I got mad about it. We did a deep dive into Hydrox. Yeah.
Lovely.
It is we we've and you'll never know on the show. Because like, I don't think that episode had anything to do with that. We said something about it in a donation segment and went into a 2020 minute deep dive into Hydrox.
I think it was like how you learn stuff. Yeah, that's that's how we got
and it makes it more entertaining because we're learning it as we're talking about it. So
I mean, you have to follow the White Rabbit.
Every single time. The eggs episode went went off the rails. We were talked for an hour and a half. So back to keyboards. Do you do you have a favorite? Obviously not one of the Chilean manufacturer like a favorite historical keyboard like the the apple two e keyboard, the IBM something or other? Do you all have a favorite or
the old Apple what my father had one of the old apple one
like a TV? I I remember when the TV came out. I'm very old. We got one into school and I loved it. I wish I still had my I had an IBM PC Junior my granddad worked for IBM. And he brought us home a PC Jr. Like when they first came out. And keyboard on that it was big. And it was heavy. You could hit your brother with it. Don't tell me Don't ask me how I know. It wouldn't break.
glad it didn't turn into a whole Cain and Abel.
There were some times but um, yeah, I just didn't know if y'all had like one. It was like your favorite and like, yeah, like on the wall or something like that.
Some of them. Both of us were pretty much like introduced to mechanical keyboards as a community as a hobby. And as a technology when we started working here, yeah, essentially.
Yeah, that's Sorry, I have a technical issue. I had yeah, I've had jobs where I didn't get into the thing until I took the job. So how, how long have you been doing the keyboard stuff? Yeah, a couple years.
But the company started about six years ago at this point. Yep. So the very first release was, I believe, the Nyquist. It was followed by the Viterbi and then the iris which is actually like our like mothership model that we have. The Rev two was released after the Viterbi. So the Nyquist and the Viterbi are straight up ortho linear. So if you think about a grid, that's how the keys and switches are arranged. And then the iris is, we you probably saw a galaxy con when you came by our booth was
columnar stacker. So each column is catered to the lengths of each of your fingers. And so it's best to be very Ergo in this aspect because your fingers are only traveling up and down as like they are mechanically designed to do inside your fingers like the tendons are designed to just bend forward and out.
You said that's the Nyquist that's the iris Iris the iris. Yeah,
I mean, the night question the putter received by being ortho linear kind of follow suit in that way, but the iris is a little bit more catered to the lengths of each finger.
I like the grid. Yeah, I like just a grid.
It's very aesthetically pleasing. Yes.
Get the right key caps on there. And yeah, yeah. And when I when I was at AG I was if I hadn't spent so much money on posters of Samus and Zelda, and which we have Yeah, which they're right behind me. Yes, we're big Zelda. I've got I've got a game in Game and Watch Zelda as my alarm clock sitting on my desk. But yeah, we we we were probably would have spent a lot more money at those booths. I would have been, you know,
I would have to
So still exist.
Right. Right. Christmas is coming up. The the ones that split that are split. How does that how are those connected? I haven't really looked into those too much. Is it
just with a cord? So our older motor models connected with TRS jacks, and all of our new models connect with just a USB C to USB C cable? Okay. Yeah, it's just a data line. Yes.
I love everything's going to USBC even Apple now. Yeah, did
force their hand a little bit a little bit?
Good old good old EU saying nope, no more, no more lightning connector or whatever they called it. Now, we did have some some some of the AI questions that that ALL Chat GBT suggested we ask,
but Oh, soldering.
Okay, I'm gonna go into soldering before we go into the chat. GPD
we heard that you liked soldering. Yes. We love soldering. I heard you and dad. Like nerding out about soldering. Yeah, it was looking a little keycaps
Yeah, I believe I believe I was sitting there. I was like the smell. The smell when you solder something of the you've got
to have a fan pointed away from me.
I love it. I love it. They're like doing a well ventilated area. No. All you kids out there who get into soldering, do it in a well ventilated area. Be responsible here.
But with a good exhaust fan. You still smell? Still smell? Love it. Get rid of it.
Leila, I taught her how to solder probably four and a half years ago, five years ago, we made that little radio in that little heart with LEDs. And then it was cool. She actually got to use those skills when she was making her cosplay for the mica that she did. Yeah. So she she wired up LEDs in there. And yeah, so servo saying that he used to like the fumes for the flux a lot more than then he does now that he's paid for it. It's like when it becomes your job. You're a little less. Yeah.
So yeah,
the curse of monetizing your hobbies.
It is a thing. And I've fallen fallen into that a few times. And it ruins the hobby for you computer building. I used to build computers with my friends. And I was like, I can make money doing this. And then anything that goes wrong with a computer you build for somebody, even if it's their fault. It's like you build this computer on No, you put a bagel inside your your video card fan.
We're having a biscuit party,
you're having a biscuit.
How'd you get beans and
your computers and the entire waffle in your laptop? How does that even happened?
I do crocheting for me. And if someone wants something, sure, but I don't do it for the money. You know,
she's all and I've told her I was like Don't you know if you ever do want to make 50 bucks real quick and make a bunch of those little flappy frog things you make and take them up to one of the local places and sell them we have a lot of pop up shops downtown that a couple places that were friendly with the owners and they would let us pop up a little tent and sell some stuff if we wanted to. And now we got a 3d printer. We can do some stuff like that too. But so be careful
about what do you put out? Well, monetizing your hobbies. Oh yeah. Oh, we exist. Yeah.
It's either have the hobby and do it for the for the love of it. Or go all in on it. And just like yeah, you have to really have to push all in. This is me now. Yeah, you can't you can't halfway do it. So in my experience, so.
So do you use one One of the keyboards that you make.
Yeah, Kelly is the KBO. Yeah, right, KB 5000, which we just did a restock of. So we actually have it in stock. It's one of the ones that it didn't move as much when we had first launched it. But it got out and talked about a little bit after it has launched. But it was one that I just really enjoyed. It's very nice, split, traditional stagger. So you don't get like the two layer macro on the left hand side, but you still get one nice solid row of macros that
you can use. And of course, like, on the website, you'll see that the extra six keys that you get on the right hand side are pre programmed for certain things, but you can always like change those, which is the beauty of mechanical keyboards, you know what? Legends you will usually sit on top of a keystroke, you can always change in via or in q&a.
So if anybody wants to if you're listening, listening right now and you can't click it, and you want to just listen, I K E b.io is the website they're talking about? When I got the choco pad home, I went and found the software to to re reflash and reflash it
your business cards are amazing. Okay. I just want to say that
yeah, interrupted. Interrupted. Never happened. I do interrupt you all the time. That's my thing. That's why
I appreciate it. I designed them.
Okay, so and this is not this is not me. Oh, they're gonna be on the show tonight. This has been in my pocket since since the convention because it's just the exact right size. Just to spin in your fingers and fiddle with but it's quiet. And I fear that if I ever put a switch in it to click that's all I'll do.
silent switch in it doesn't make noise. It's still the key top on there. Yeah, novelty.
But it's it's just this just the right size to just flip and flip. Like a coin. But yeah, I've had in my pocket since the convention. I'm not wearing the same pants I wear. Oh, I might be but I've changed them and washed them. I only have like
one server Yeah, it's just PCB material.
Fr for like we saw them all over the table. And we're like, oh, are these big enough cars? Can we take one that's yeah,
it's just I've described it on the show before but for anybody who's listening who may not have heard it's just a little small piece of PCB that you could it's got this slot to put a key switch into and and I haven't done it yet, but I will just got a whole like make it a necklace. And I don't know, it's just the coolest
keychains originally Yeah, I
saw that you can you can buy them on the site. And I may have to buy a few get to have do you have the whole the whole all the colors? Yeah, go
on other website. And we have a little array of rainbow colors all together.
Oh, if I ever lose this one, I definitely will have to buy another one. But um, yeah. So you said that your indoor Durham, North Carolina? So Are y'all do you have a storefront of any kind? Or are you pretty much just
we have like a warehouse. But we are around. So I can around,
roll up and get a keyboard if I wanted to. I couldn't. I didn't have to just order it online.
Yeah, if you're local, we have a local pickup option that comes up. We actually our boss made a software that if Shopify detects that your like shipping address is within a certain mile radius, it will give you like in store pickup option. But we generally because we're not like always here because we do a lot of our computer work. Not in the sort of fulfillment center. Right.
So yeah, home with feet up.
We have like signups if you want to come by just to make sure that there's someone in the office. Yeah, we really try to impress upon people just like we want to make sure that we're here when you're here, right. We're here so we can help you. We would love to see you. Please make sure that we're also going to be
well, Leila. Leila wants to try the Google Hot fake bakery. It's because my wife and I have been quite a few times, but she's never been with us. And we talk about it like if it was
your once but I was tiny. Oh, yeah. You were like two? Yeah, so I don't remember it. But
we talked about it being so we get up to Durham about once every couple months.
So we're pretty close.
That's cool. Um, let's see what other questions do we have that are relevant?
Let's be super wordy, and nerdy.
The chat GPT is a good starting, it's a good jump off point, it kind of lets you think about, oh, I didn't think about that, you know, it is not good for a lot of stuff. I have been throwing some stuff at it. And it's real dumb.
It's really interesting, because it's heavily dependent upon the data that you give it. So if you give it like a data set, like, this is the information subset that I'm likely to hear? Can you give me questions about like, its history, or what the future looks like? Or what is like present trends, that sort of thing. You have to feed it a little bit of information first, or where to go searching for certain information, and then it will actually populate a lot more information for you.
I just love saying things that it doesn't get from anywhere. From the ether.
back I had, what what did we what were we playing with it that one? I
used it for a math equation last night? Oh, no, for one of my homework equations, because it was, okay, who puts nothing on the map? Where you have to, like take a super long linear equation, and put parentheses around one of the parts of it and change one of the signs that has so it's gonna take me so it's just a bunch of trial and error as much of trial and error. And also is that really teach
you anything about exactly
it wasn't? It wasn't a teaching question. It was a busy work question. Exactly. I don't home I don't understand busy work questions on homework on classwork. I get it, you're trying to fill up that slot?
It's a little division sign had a little line through it because our scanner is crap. Oh, no. It was a little addition.
It looked like an addition sign. It looks like a minus for me, because the line was directly through the two dots in the division sign. Yeah, it was a mess. But anyway, Chad GBT got it wrong. Just completely wrong. I was like, let's go to Wolfram Alpha. And let's, let's use the proper tool.
Wolfram Alpha.
And it's Oh, yeah. Okay. So Chad GPD. I told it to write a story, or a poem that only uses the letter E. Whatever number of times, I was just playing with it, trying to see what it did. And it was like, Okay, here you go. And wrote something. I was like, there, I only use the letter e 27. times. And then like, I started counting, I was like, this is like 76 times, what do you like it just like
that you just saying you only use it, you only use the 26 times.
But I learned how, how it does what it does. And it's not meant for what I was used it? Yeah, for a lot of right people. So find the right AI tool to do what I needed to do, because I'm sure it's out there. Or I'll just hop on an Excel and do it myself. Okay, so what are some of the common? Let's see if you can answer this one. In some of your, in your experience, what are some of the most common misconceptions people have about
mechanical keyboards? And how can you clarify them? So where do you question?
Why are they so expensive?
That is a question. I've been putting together myself and it's expensive.
Totally, totally.
I have a keyboard. That's cheap. Ah, arts, like they just feel nicer. It's something that's so hard, because it's such a like, online, hobby and like community, and people do so much of their shopping online. I mean, we're even an online storefront. But it's, it's so hard to like, convey that it just feels nicer. Yeah, if you don't like, put your fingers on it.
Yes, this is great, like going to conventions pop up shops. So they can actually feel having
a one to one thing, why Best Buy still exists. So you can go into it and try the trial,
the keywords and trial the keyboards? Absolutely, I would say so to piggyback off of that is the fact that like with the layers, that like triples the value of the keyboard, because of your ability to have then two extra key maps that you can do whatever you want, but then it's not just the alphas or the modifier keys that you see on your legends, which are the little markings on each of your key caps. But it's also like any inputs extra that you want that
for a lot of folks that will be macros. Yeah. Anybody who uses hotkeys a whole lot, whether you're like doing design or coding or film editing, it can be infinitely use Old to have hotkeys out the wazoo to help you out in terms of very specific program. And so you're trying to do very specific tasks a whole lot. And so I feel like that value is really there for the mechanical keyboard because you can do so much nitty gritty programming that you want.
And I like the like, if you're talking about video editing, like trying to remember all the hotkeys for After Effects. Photoshop DaVinci Resolve, and they're all different every Yes. Like, I'll be working in After Effects. And I don't remember, like, I've got to have like a cheat sheet up. And yeah, being able to just hit you know, switch to the other, the other layout and then you got a sticker on each. That's three lines. Yeah, go go to the blending options for this layer.
Legends? Exactly. I really liked being able to program the choco pad with an okay. I feel dumb because I bought keyboards with an extra layer of F keys, like f 13, F 14. And like, I've seen them before I've had them. But like, I didn't think, oh, I can just program the macro pad with the extra F keys. Because I was telling OBS to do something. But I like the ability to reprogram any key on the board. And that is definitely something I mean,
there's other software you can get to do it. But then you're running a whole extra program. And, you know,
because it's actually stored in the memory of the keyboard, whatever computer you plug it into.
And I do yeah, I switch swap around computers all the time, because we've got our broadcasting computer and we've got our editing computer, we've got you know,
now what I thought was funny, is he bought this little calculator, number pad, it's just a standard USB pad thing three days before the convention. And then he goes to the convention is like ooh, choco pad and he buys one. I think just like, Here you go. You can have this. It was a number pad.
You used it? Hmm. number pad?
Yes. It's not great.
It's not it was eight $8. But yeah, it's
not the best
server was talking about the, in the chat rooms. The true the shoe analogy, a nice pair of shoes cost more, but it does feel better. And it lasts longer. Was the boot analogy. You buy theory? There you go. $20 pair of boots is gonna last you a week and 100 all pair of boots last year for years. Nowadays, the $100 pair last year we can have 300. But you know, it's a thing. Money changes.
$300 Half of the pairs that are $300 will last you three years. Yes. Because they say like Louis Vuitton on them? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. No, you got to look at your brand names. Yeah, actually, my older brother does tree trimming and Hawaii. And they do the primitive tree trimming because they, a lot of their clients want want it to be very quiet. And they don't want, you know, a lot of machinery on their property. So they climb the tree, you know, hands and feet, climb the tree with a rope. And so he asked to buy like, really expensive boots. And but he's like, I won't buy a pair of boots that is not this
brand. Because they're $900. And I have to buy a pair every six months. But that's just because of what I'm doing. I'm like he's bought, he bought a pair of cheap boots one time. And it almost got him killed. So you know, when the soul rips off while you're climbing a tree and you're, you know, you're counting on that soul to stay in place. But yeah, yeah. So there's that. Um, let's see, design challenges that you faced while developing any of the keyboards or is it pretty?
Pretty straightforward?
I mean, there's always design challenges. Yeah. Anything.
So just using this as a jumping off point with the you were talking about the finger length? Where the keys land on your hands? Did you design them based on the average hand? Or did you
actually a layout they the key layout of that board of our columnar staggered board was developed by someone else who then didn't want to sell it. And so he sold the zine to our company, and we're the ones that like nice. Now, yeah, I'm not sure how
I did it. Column like,
we're decided
we'll just we'll just assume he did. He did all the math and research for weeks and it's all
it is. Yeah, it Is that the curves on that board? Very pretty lovely for your fingers. Great ergonomically not wonderful for machining. Oh, yeah. So trying to design cases around something that's a funky shape instead of just something that's a rectangle. Turns out a lot harder.
Right. And you said you used chi CAD for the boards. What do you use for the 3d modeling? Same thing? 361 360. Okay. Yeah, there's standard software. And she wants to learn can because she wants to design stuff to 3d print.
Oh, yeah, I do what she
was talking about. She's, she was like, looking at blender. So I think she's wanting to do more character stuff for making blenders.
Yeah, yeah, Blender is probably better than a CAD software.
I use Blender before their big overhaul a couple of maybe 10 years ago. And then like, I'd redownloaded to do something, I'd no idea how to use it. Like you've changed the entire interface. I hate it now.
They tend to do that a lot. Like for blender, and I'm also familiar with or at least, back when I was graduating with my undergraduate degree with Autodesk Maya, if you're doing the more artistic side of things, those are two really good places to go. But definitely, each has their own learning curve
resonance. I don't know what you tap, but it was like Pong. Oh, no worries. No worries. I use first one I ever used was 3d Studio Max. Oh, yeah. It was
really good to round. I think that one is actually superior to Autodesk Maya, which is what I started out with an undergrad. Yeah. Well, I
had a I had a 100% legitimate copy of 3d Studio Max back in around 2000. I, I assume it was 100%. Legitimate. The guy who gave it to me told me it was
something I would
never use something and we're big fans of open source. I like the blenders open source.
In Fusion 360s Free as a hobbyist. Yeah. Which is also nice.
So yeah, we're, that's a project we're gonna, we're gonna jump into because I haven't done CAD since middle school. early high school. I did a little bit of cad, or Haskell, the CAD computer that we had to do. CAD is computer aided design, this used for like, doing technical, making technical models of things. When I was in drafting in eighth grade, and the technological Students Association. I had to do CAD for the state competition. And the CAD software we had was so old,
it was command line only. So we had, we went to state competitions. Everybody else is using our mouse and moving things. And I'm sitting there. But all that matters is what that plotter spit out. You know, that's all that matters, as long as it was correct. Might have been faster. Sometimes, some like, yeah, so we're getting in the weeds with non keyboard stuff here. lately. Did you have another question? No. So the mechanical keyboard community? Yes, very passionate. Yeah. And
very persnickety? Yeah, so
I think I think that's a cycle is it's like, part of the joy of modern mechanical keyboards is they're so customizable. Yeah. And then, so it draws people who want to customize as much as possible. And then I'm gonna, and then it's a cycle
and everybody's everybody's got their favorite. And then something will become popular because it's good. And then all of a sudden, everybody hates it because it's popular. It's like microphones. We just had a band drew Scott from the podcast and YouTube channel on a couple weeks ago.
Oh, my goodness, this guy is a nerd.
I listened to that episode. One. Yeah.
bandroom. bandroom is a he is he hasn't heard he's fully aware that he's Yeah. But he is he wants to put out the best content that he possibly can and wants to make sure that he covers all of his bases. But he I talk to him a lot on different chat things and talk to him through different means but when there's this joke about certain microphones being like the SM
seven GI Joe Rogan uses it and there's other people use it. So everybody has to oh, I want to be able to podcast I gotta have an essence seven because you're not a podcast from Louisiana. But then base of it It becomes the face of it. But then everybody's like, Oh, SM seven B sucks, you know, but it doesn't. It's a fantastic microphone, you're just pushing back because it's popular. Do you have seen that y'all participate much in like the communities? Do you go on like the mechanical keyboard?
subreddits? And things like that? Yeah. Pop around. So do you see that with different things with mechanical keyboards? So is it just an enthusiast thing, regardless of the piece of hardware?
I think so. Like they're definitely things come in waves, it's like tacos will get really popular. And then like, they'll wait a little bit. And then like, someone will come up with a new linear switch. And it's really, like, feels really nice. I mean, we litters are super popular. I feel like even like, maybe just like a year and a half, maybe two years ago, the big obsession, whether the holy pandas switches, and you don't hear much about them right now, at least
what's what is that?
They got easier to Yeah, worse. So less fun. Yeah, there's something called Frankenstein switches, where you can combine parts of different switches to make a new switch. Okay, and the Holy pandas were kind of part of that, I feel like they were frequent. Yeah. So they were like, extra expensive and really time consuming, because you had to take your Dubai multiple tests. Which apart and then put it back together in a different Configure.
And those parts are tiny, tiny, tiny. And the springs can just bounce onto your floor, and oh, oh, gee, they're, I guess,
I can imagine
toggle switches are very durable. When they're put together like wear test, it's really hard to wear through one of those. But when you're putting them back together, they're very easy to break. So easy.
So talking about very tiny parts, little anecdote, I, my wife needed a new processor. And I didn't update the bios on the motherboard for the new processor. So I ended up having to put the old processor back end update the bios for to make it except the new processor. So when I was taking the old processor out, I may or may not have been a few of the pins. So talk about talking about microsurgery on something. And I couldn't find my bag. I could not find my magnifying glass. So
I had like a super bright light. And I I was in there was like I went to take tweezers and tweezers were too big. So I ended up having to use like this knife from my, from one of the manicure kit things that you have. And there's like this tiny little knife and I was I can imagine the springs in the mechanical switches are similar process.
But a little little leaves the metal pieces together that. Yeah, actually, it's the key switch.
Okay, so this the switches. Another thing about mechanical keyboards is a lot of people like like the sound and the feel of them. But there's different sounds in different fields based on the switches. So what? There's different colors, different brands, but is there just like a general? Like, I know, the blue switches that I have on my mechanical keyboard are very loud, and they feel very, there's definitely some pushback, or I don't know what's called the very click utility
tactility. So blue is like that. What are the other ones? What are they sound like? What do they feel like? Just kind of a quick rundown if there's a general.
So I would say the color, like classification used to be a little bit more universal. And now as there are more MX style switches as they become more popular and more manufacturers are manufacturing them, there's sort of a step away from all of them being the same color set. So the original colors that comes from the branch Harry, they're a big
manufacturer. They've been in it since the beginning. And they held out between the sort of heyday of original mechanical keyboards through when membrane keyboards were sort of the only thing back like they managed to stick around. The hobbyist community came back up in the last few decades.
They have a lot of those patents. That's the important part. Yeah. For them. For us.
manufacturing sites,
right. Yeah. I know the military had a little bit to do with that because they use the cherry with the cat card readers in them. Yeah. Those because we said I've worked for a company that or During for military bases, and I saw that name a lot with those keyboards, they have that specific one because it read the cards right. So
I think some, like other sort of government and medical institutions also kept it.
Yeah, that. And that's I actually really liked the idea of having a card with an NFC chip in it as your login. That's just, you know, it's it you stand up you when you when you just logged you in loads up all your settings. Fantastic. Servo in chat is asking, Are you giving out a coupon code for this episode, big smiley face.
Our boss has not indicated, but we can certainly inquire
if you do that. That's fine. He put a big smiley face. Thank you understand your real small. Let's see the rest of the good.
Did we want the color rundown? Oh, yeah. got sidetracked.
That, that is Fun Fact, Friday in a nutshell, is what just happened? Yeah, okay. Yeah, the
colors. So as you said the blues so that this is like the classic cherry color system, the blues are clicky. So they make that extra noise. They're very loud. And then they also have a little like, tactile bump. So when you press down on it, yeah, it has that like that push back, you like feel it. And then at the bottom of the switch, it like gets easy. Again. And then it pops back up. So those are our personal
favorite. That's my favorite. And then there browns, which are just that tactility without the added, like,
those are my favorite. Those are going to have like a keyboard inside.
less noise but still has the tactility
Yeah, so they're still on the louder side compared to your like, quote unquote, standard membrane keyboard that you'd get just like a regular office these days. But they're definitely they don't have like an extra piece of metal in them specifically to make extra noise. I love it give you that nice feedback. And then the Reds are linears so they're real smooth, up and down. You don't get that like that, like push
back at any point. So some people really like that smooth experience, and those tend to be the quietest.
Okay, boring read is the most boring of all of them. Gotcha.
Maybe people like them? Yeah, we did admittedly get a really cute canister so so people will send us the switches from a different vendor that they want some planted in their keyboard and we'll install that for for them as part of their builds. And we got some tactile switches and the canister read tactile gang because linears have no soul. And Emily and I cracked up over this one hardcore. It was so funny. We were enjoying that joke very much.
Sounds like it needs to be made into a sticker.
I hope they sell stickers. Oh man. I have
I got the I got the Reds on the choco pad because we're gonna be using a while streaming. I wanted it to be as you know.
Those ones are the trackpad so they're chock switches. They're like lower profile. So you get you get less of that tactility anyway, even in the tactile ones
and then on the switches. There's different don't know what you want to call the the thing you put the key cap into that like stem the stem stem. Okay. I've heard that before. This was not coming to my brain. Yeah, you can pop. Yes. But the stem. These are not the cherry stems.
Right so those are the chalk stems see Josie ChFC
okay. They're from Cahill kale trucks. And but with yours boards you said that most of them are plug and play now with the switches not solder.
Most of them are plug and play with the MX like more cherry style switches with that plus stack, which is what you'll see for most keycaps
I like the thin flat style for like a macro pad or something but if I'm doing a full on keyboard I want the the thicker regular mechanical keyboard.
Again, it's the it's the like it can be as customizable. Right. She's got those options.
She's got on her mechanical keyboard inside. She's got like two different sets. And they're different. The key caps are different heights. Yeah. And I don't see how it doesn't drive her insane
does, but it does. Like, I don't know what I'm typing. When I'm like looking at it, I'm like, Ooh,
I don't like it. But
I got, I had the pink set, like on my keyboard from a while back. But I bought the white ones at like a yard sale or something. And it was a liquidator we went to, yeah, but there was a few keys missing. Oh, no, I know. So I was just like, I can just use a couple, you know, just like the F keys and like the ones on the sides. It looks pretty cool. I'm gonna bring it out here after we're done.
Yeah. So when you're doing we're really really, really bad at marketing for our show. Absolutely. We however, we do have part of our community who remembers to post on, you know, X or, or other social media sites, hey, a new episode of I've ever had on like, Oh, I forgot to post it. Thank you. And that's part of the value for value. They're providing value to us by remind, you know, post posting our stuff for us. But um, what kind of marketing Do y'all do for Keebio?
A lot of it's the newsletter. A, we also get a lot of like, organic posts on the Reddit, mechanical keyboard and ergo keyboard communities. People love people get excited about their builds. Yeah, really nice for us to see. And also has the added bonus of having other people check us out. Right. Nerdy bit of a that's pretty fun for me is when I look at Google Analytics, a lot of the time, it's either people literally just searching for us through either Google Reddit, or
I think it's just literally our website. So those are usually the top three ways that people find us. Right. So it's a lot of it is through Reddit, and just the sharing of how did you make your build? What keyboard is that? Where did you get that model? Where is that design from that sort of thing?
Right? And that just people just like it's Oh, to keep you know, I'm that I didn't see when you held up earlier. The, the piece of the keyboard, half of the keyboard with the CNC. Yeah. Okay, I was just seeing if you had like Keebio and engraved on it. Oh, it's on the back. Okay. Okay, nice. I like that a lot.
I like the engraving. I
like the branding. Habit. And yeah, for the audio folks. They're just holding up the bottoms of the keyboards to show a look at it.
I like the way you did the choco pad too.
Yeah, the chakra pad with the with a nice little switch twitchy guy on there. There'll be pictures in the chapters. Thank you drab for that. Podcasting. 2.0 has chapters. And as we talk about things, one of our listeners, Dr. Scott, he goes through and listens. And when he listens, he makes notes of what we're talking about. And creates creates a chapter file for us. And it'll link to websites that we're talking
about, or show pictures or gifts. So if somebody's using a modern podcast app, it will like show what we're talking about. It's like, not video, but it's still something to look at. And it'll actually show up on in your car. If you got the the Google auto or whatever they're called. Dangerous it's just like album art that pops up and changes as we're talking. Yeah, you can ignore it. You can always switch over to the map screen. Or the you know, something else,
Spotify now. Listen to the podcast.
And we don't I don't like about Spotify. I'm gonna go on a rant you're gonna like about Spotify. DJ number one the stupid ai dj.
He he he has
the he's not good. Have you all heard that? Spotify ai dj
all of my music is downloaded to my computer.
Legitimately legitimate legitimately?
Actually a lot of it Yeah.
I ripped all my CDs back in the day. So I've got nice good you know.
I miss a CD drive.
I bought a USB one of the little bought a little CD, DVD USB drive for like 20 bucks and I was like I'm gonna rip all my CDs and then I'll put them on the on the NAS we got music where everyone listen
to put in all the metadata yourself. Oh, no,
no, no, there's there's a music brain. There's an there's a program Does it for you actually,
manually typed?
Oh, no. I think you can actually even scan the barcode on the back of the CD and it will do it for you if you don't want to. Yeah, so yeah, that's a whole lot of typing.
was over a long period of time. Oh, yeah.
Oh, hey, Dred Scott. Did somebody say drab? Hello. Fun Fact Friday. Well, 1345 Satoshis. That is a awesome donation. Thank you, Jacob. I appreciate that. Thanks for listening live. Thank you for we like about the live as we get the boost, so we can say thanks right then. That wasn't what I was talking about Spotify. I've completely lost track. I don't know. No, it was something that wasn't what else is it was it's the graphics. When I'm listening to a song and it plays like this
four second music video. Instead of just showing the album art.
You can turn it off.
You can turn it off. Yeah. All right. You can show me later.
Then the question is why is that the default? Or is the album Yeah,
you would think they would want to use less bandwidth.
Get your music in like,
yeah, and I don't I don't understand. YouTube. Has like we're an audio first podcast, we thought about doing video, we've done some video. It's not worth it. We don't get the benefit from it. Most of our audience just listens. They're doing other stuff. They're listening. We do have a cool project coming up. We're doing video for but we're not gonna talk about the
super secret. It's, I'll
tell you after we get off the air, it's gonna be so cool. But we're not releasing. We're not talking about it until it's done. So about it. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, you think they want to use less bandwidth? So like, you would think YouTube would have an audio only option?
They do. But he gets the money for it
as a music audio only or they add video to it. Like you think they will save money on bandwidth? Oh, yeah, but I can't upload just audio. Yeah, it has to have a video component. Can you know you can't anyway, I'm getting I'm getting we're way off topic. Did you have any more questions about keyboards? Leila? No. Are marketing keyboards?
switches were but you already answered the blues. Yeah.
Oh, favorite. Such as direct tramps. Currently,
shrimp shrimps.
They're called shrimps.
Always looking ones.
So for your audio folks, I'll be holding up the aluminum Iris addition case. But it has the like this almost seaglass looking effects. It's the soft blue green, and it's slightly translucent. And so it has really nice tactile bump and they're silent. And so
she's pushing the button. That's quiet that sounds okay. So do you have do you have a blue for comparison? nearby?
Blue but we do have a clicky so this is one in a similar vein. Okay.
Yep. So that versus versus the delicious. The shrimps
yummy. That sounds so good.
Laurie. Okay. What? Okay, I think you're allergic to shrimp. Oh, no. Look out. Oh, my gosh, I just have the boogie board thinking it was my phone. So I don't think I have any more questions that I can think of. Did y'all have any questions for us? We always like to ask that. I feel like we should.
Yeah. So Do either of you have a favorite mechanical keyboard?
I like my key Cron. I believe it's a k four. I like it. But it I bought it. You know, it was I purchased it and it came in in a box and I plugged it in. I would love I'm gonna last personal. Yes, I want to build one. I'm gonna build one. Every time I go to buy one. I'm like, oh, I want to get this but oh, there's this other things coming out in three weeks that Yeah. I was going
to build one, like about a year ago that I didn't because I was like Spensive and I didn't have enough money for it at the time. But I
was gonna she has
carrots, which is to make money. Oh,
the carrot switches. Yeah, explain. For our listeners, what's a carrot switch?
It's a switch for a keyword.
What I mean is this cookie is real clicky and bumpy. Okay. Zach Friedman on YouTube, it has a void star labs. I can't remember exact Friedman or void star labs that the channel was called. He did a video where he took every switch available to him at the time, which is a lot
style switch or every switch
every switch that he could get. It was a ridiculous number, like all the Alps why? Yes, he had a board he 3d printed a couple of boards and had them all together. And it was 100 150. Yeah. And he had them all and he had written down how he felt about them all and any demos all of them for you. To project research projects guy, Zach Zach Friedman, he when he does a video, he does a video. I really I really liked watching his channel. They're not all they're not all great.
I'll just say that. Some of my volume, some of them are kind of boring. Yes, your volume is up. What do you need for your computer?
here's the here's the carrots. They're good. I like the clunkiness. I think they'd be nice.
But yes, I do like my key Cron. I've had to about one. And then I wanted to have one for work. But then they banned mechanical keyboards at work. Because I worked in a very, the cubicles work real close. And some people just had to get the loudest most obnoxious keyboard that they could get. And the whole day.
So your impression of keywords. It was it? Yeah,
well, you can type on a mechanical keyboard, and it makes the clicky noises and it not be obnoxious. This person was like, I mean, just straight up slamming down as hard as she could on the keyboard every time she pushed a key. And it was terrible. And I hated it. But anyway, I was like living let live. But the people around her were like, No, this isn't happening. And then she was like, Well, if I can't have it, nobody can. So everybody had to take the mechanical keyboards
home. I had. Yeah. So I've got two of them. I gave one to the wife. And she got some new keycaps for it. And she's very happy with it as well. So we like our key Krons my next mechanical keyboard will definitely be a key to what? You didn't give it to me. No, you already had a mechanical keyboard. You had the red dragon or whatever it was called. Yeah as Alaimo Yes, it was lame. And then you bought a new one. We're not getting into this.
Decision paralysis.
Yeah, yeah. So if you have any more questions for us, we can y'all can be reached at Keebio key but.io k, e b.io. And a Joe has any other things that you wanted to promote?
That's it. We're always chilled, folks. So if you guys are really curious about specific customizations, just feel free to reach out to us and we can have a conversation about it. Cool. Yeah. Do our own customer service. Talking to us. Yeah, the process is like hey, you're paying one of the three of us
the process for getting you're involved with for the show was very pleasant compared to some other people we've talked to people that were very
glad we did experience.
And yeah, we definitely appreciate you all coming on and and Leila, did you have anything else?
No. All right.
I think that'll wrap it up for the recorded show. And we're gonna go into the after show. folks that are listening to the recorded show. If you do Listen Live you get a little bit of extra chitchat after the recorded shows we record on Thursday nights at seven. If we're not doing a live episode, we will let you know on xx.com/fun Fact Friday one and Fun Fact Friday at social media.com on Mastodon so yeah, we'll see y'all next week. Everybody have a fantastic weekend.
Bye.
And we can talk over the outro too but we have this guy Kyle a bear he does the voice of Gohan on Dragonball Z he does our outro Yeah, I'm sorry gums Fun
Fact Friday with Leila nd media production All Rights Reserved unless otherwise stated. If you'd like to help support the show, you can make a donation via Patreon or PayPal over at FunFactFriday.com. Just click the donations link at the top of the page. Please follow like and subscribe. And join us next week for another Fun Fact Friday