[Andras] Schiff, 58, has lately been giving a lot of thought to each of the musical keys and the colors he associates with them as he embarks on the Bach Project, a large-scale tour of North America over the next year that will include all that composer’s major keyboard works, played from memory. [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Oct 25, 2012 -
13 comments
The
Esc key was born in 1960, when an I.B.M. programmer named Bob Bemer was trying to solve a Tower of Babel problem: computers from different manufacturers communicated in a variety of codes. Bemer invented the
ESC key as way for programmers to switch from one kind of code to another.
posted by TangerineGurl
on Oct 6, 2012 -
95 comments
Measure-theoretic probability: Why it should be learnt and how to get started. The
clickable chart of distribution relationships. Just two of the interesting and informative probability resources I've learned about, along with countless other tidbits of information, from statistician
John D. Cook's
blog and his probability fact-of-the-day Twitter feed
ProbFact. John also has daily tip and fact Twitter feeds for
Windows keyboard shortcuts,
regular expressions,
TeX and LaTeX,
algebra and number theory,
topology and geometry,
real and complex analysis, and beginning tomorrow,
computer science and
statistics.
posted by grouse
on Dec 5, 2010 -
17 comments
Each day, we are surrounded by seemingly insignificant objects, taking them from one place to the other, or leaving them on a table for weeks, without paying any attention to them. We ignore or forget them, using things only when we need to, making sure they don’t interfere or inhabit our space. But what if they were not so stable and subservient?
What if they could swivel, bounce or even fly? And what if they did so all at the same time? This experiment is about re-discovering our daily surroundings.
Each object is assigned to a letter on the keyboard, and can be activated or deactivated at any time.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 22, 2010 -
19 comments
Ctrl is an NBC webseries starring Tony Hale (
Arrested Development's Buster,
Chuck's Emmett Milbarge) as an office drone who suddenly finds that, thus far, CTRL-Z lets him undo recent events in his own life, and CTRL-B em
boldens him to stand up to his boss and confess his love to the source of his crush. It was based on a short film,
Ctrl-Z, starring Hale's
Chuck co-star Zachary Levi as the boss. Not exactly a
new concept, but nonetheless well-executed by a fairly good comic team ...
[more inside]
posted by WCityMike
on Jul 18, 2009 -
38 comments
Play Helen Hunt off, Keyboard Cat! So he does. And then he jams. It's a single link to YouTube, and you may skip it if you want. But you're missing out if you do, because as I type this I think this opus is the pinnacle of human achievement.
posted by Mayor Curley
on Jun 22, 2009 -
131 comments
In 1975, armed with a big pile of 8-track car stereos and a whole lot of moxie, Dave Biro set out to change the sound of rock music. He failed spectacularly. This is the fascinating and tragic story of one of the rarest instruments in rock music-
The Birotron.
[more inside]
posted by 40 Watt
on Oct 1, 2007 -
19 comments
“There has never been a massively successful consumer device based solely on a touch screen” ...designers and marketers of electronic devices centers are having a spirited debate about whether consumers will have the patience to overcome the hurdle that will be required to type without the familiar tactile feedback offered by conventional keyboards.
Any significant number of returns of the iPhone could conceivably undermine what until now has been a remarkable promotional blitzkrieg that culminates in the phone’s release June 29.
posted by wfc123
on Jun 13, 2007 -
52 comments
The Colemak keyboard layout. Colemak is a new alternative to the QWERTY and Dvorak layouts. Designed for efficient and ergonomic touch typing in English, Colemak places the 10 most frequent letters of English (A,R,S,T,D,H,N,E,I,O) on the home row. Z,X,C are preserved in their QWERTY positions for easy copy and paste operations. It gets rid of the Caps Lock and replaces it with Backspace so you no longer need to move your hand off the home position to correct errors. Available for Windows/Mac/Linux/Unix it works with all standard keyboards, including laptops.
[via: Projects], [Previously]
posted by Mitheral
on Jan 8, 2007 -
91 comments
A fantastic example of old meets new, a man spends weeks crafting the perfect Christmas gift for his wife, with spectacular results. I give you the
typewriter-keyboard conversion: a true labor of love.
Makes me want to dig up my grandpa's old Underwood and give it a go.
posted by Igor XA
on Jan 25, 2005 -
27 comments
Keyboards Are Not Like Nibs: Fountain pens - or writing instruments in general - rule. Lately though, the main manufacturers have stooped to ballpoints, gels and other madnesses. Just as the stupid
calligraphy fad killed proper handwriting, the main fountain pen manufacturers have been their own hangmen. I love
Pelikan but my main hearbreak is
Rotring, whose
rapidograph 0.10 and 0.18 and
isograph 0.20 (
this latter line now sadly reduced to college sets) are my favourite scratching sticks. Are you
holding a torch for any of those legendary manufacturers (
Parker,
Waterman,
Cross,
Schaeffer,
Aurora,
Lamy et caetera) who have gone
down the drain? What glides your writing hand? Is the pseudish, unpardonably expensive and increasingly naff
Montblanc the last pen manufacturer to uphold its own standards? When you do put pen to paper - if you still do at all - what's
your stubborn choice? Damn it, you must use something to log into your
Moleskine!
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 1, 2003 -
96 comments
Redefining the keyboard. CPUs have gotten smaller, monitors have gotten wider, chairs have gotten ergonomic. Technology has resized our machines to fit our lifestyles, business needs, and personal comfort. But for the past
128 years, the mechanics by which we input text into machines has been dictated not by technology, but by the limitations of our hands. Soon, this era may be over if retired engineer
John McKown gets his way. McKown has invented a palm-size one-handed
wearable keyboard. Should we embrace this giant leap into mobile computing? Or are we not able to part with a century of
QWERTY? (Via
NYTimes. Similar ideas have also been
discussed here previously.)
posted by PrinceValium
on Aug 12, 2002 -
19 comments
a work of art? this site confused me at first, until I saw the drawing section. you can create works of art using shockwave and your keyboard. feel free to create your own and let me know! doodling has become fun again!
posted by aekastar
on Nov 20, 2000 -
3 comments
