Flipped spacebar... I have ascended. (A love story)
For the longest time, from the retirement of my beloved Commodore 64 until my
triumphant purchase of a Pok3r a few months ago, I wandered through the
desolate wasteland of rubber dome keyboards... squishing my way through the
various ergonomics and full-size garbage boards that come with pre-bundled
PCs.
I bought into the Macbook hype, that the scissor switches were technically
mechanical... but my fingers knew better. They longed for stiff, clicky
switches of the long forgotten Commodore. I suffered in silence. Not knowing
that "real" keyboards still existed, and were thriving...until I stumbled
upon /r/mk a few months ago.
I was floored. I was awestruck... so many beautiful keyboards, waiting for me
to click and clack on. I knew one had to be mine. I lurked for only a short
time, waiting to pounce on my beloved Pok3r, but it was out of stock. I had
no idea what switches I needed. I listened to the jokes of people saying
greens were too stiff. I knew better. In my heart I knew that the greens were
what I needed. Then, like a clarion call, the Pok3r with greens was
announced. I sprung into action. Testing be damned, I snapped one up as soon
as I could.
It was love at first clack. The day my baby got to its new home, I plugged it
in as quickly as possible and began typing. It didn't matter what it was,
I was typing it. I had to get used to the rigidness of the switches, and
train myself how to type on this style of keyboard. It was a definite
learning curve, but things were progressing nicely.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was looking at the keyboard porn that's all
over the place on here. The Jukebox sets, the Dolch sets, Granite, Miami,
blank PBT caps, even the occasional Hack'd set that gets posted. Keyboards of
all form-factors and sizes...but there was something that I noticed
happening. People were flipping their spacebars around.
"What is this blasphemy?!?" I thought to myself. Though I was intrigued. This
had to be something if multiple people were doing it. So, I took the plunge.
Instantly, I noticed my mis-strikes on the spacebar had all but vanished.
I found I had a lot more control. Sure, it looks a little weird, but my
slight hand cramps began to vanish. I figured it was purely coincidental, so
I flipped it back to stock. Oh, how wrong I was. Within a few moments, the
cramps began to come back. I quickly popped the spacebar off and changed it
back to its awkward front slant, and I haven't looked back.
My hands have never felt better while typing. While I might not stay with the
Pok3r forever, I have ascended to the ranks of "flipped spacebar" user...and
you should too.