Category: Me

New Keeb – Planck Rev 6

Behold my newest keyboard, the Planck Rev 6:

I have had this project in the works for a while now, but only just got around to finishing it when I realised that all of my other mechanical keyboards had the loud-as-hell clicky style key switches. This was always fine when I worked from home in a tiny cupboard and could disturb nobody, but lately I’ve been sharing an office with my wife who is on video calls pretty constantly, and my delightfully clickety clackety Ergodox keyboard with Cherry MX Blues suddenly weren’t as charming as they once were (Well, they were for me, but probably nobody else.

Rather than bore you with all the geeky build details, here are the salient points:

1. What are the colours all about?

I had originally wanted to do one of these cool blue to pink gradients for the keycaps… but realised that the set I ordered didn’t have enough single squares to cover the full grid required – and I didn’t fancy having to get a full new set just for a few extra keys. The other problem is that while gradients look cool, they also make it a bit of a nightmare to find specific keys that you need at a glance. In the end, I decided to go with something a bit more practical. The yellow keys are modifiers like Escape, Enter, space, etc. The pink and blue rows are the letters, and the green keys are reminders of where specific keys I need for work shortcuts are.

2. Wait, why are all the keys square?

Aesthetic, innit.

This kind of grid layout is known as an ‘ortho-linear’ keyboard. There are a bunch of reasons people like this system… with the theory being that it keeps your fingers in a more natural typing position than the standard setup. To be honest though, I just think they look cool, and wanted to try out something a bit different (though this isn’t my first grid rodeo…)

3. But there’s only four rows! How does that work?

Err, yes. There is. In the mechanical keyboard world there is often a bit of an obsession to see how many keys you can strip out and still type just as fast as you would on a full size board. The Planck is the smallest board I have tried so far, with just 48 keys in total. The sharp eyed amongst you will probably have worked out that this means there isn’t enough room for a number row… and there isn’t. So how do you get access to all those keys that are missing?

The idea is pretty straightforward: Rather than have just one ‘shift’ layer which gives you capital letters and exclamation marks and all that good stuff, you have multiple ones. The blue keys to either side of the yellow space bar(s) on the bottom row let you ‘shift’ into completely different layers which have all the other keys – which you can program however you want.

For reference, here is my top layer, and then a couple of my additional ‘shifted’ layers.

So if I want to get to the number row, I press and hold down the blue key to the right of the space bar. Simple.

I am still figuring out what the perfect layout for me is (ignore that rogue right arrow on the top layer… I’m not sure what is going to end up in that space just yet) – but I already really like this board. It’s neat, and I have space for all of my weird custom modifier shortcut keys I have set up for work. The keys I use most are on the top layer, and anything I use less is just an extra press away. Of course it takes a bit of getting used to, but then all keyboard changes do – and I’ve adapted to the Planck far quicker than I have others in the past.

4. What kind of switches are in that bad boy?

Those would be the Outemu Sky 68g switches. They are ultra-tactile without being too loud to use around other folks.

5. What’s with this obsession with weird keyboards?

When you spend most of your life using one specific device, it’s good to explore different ways of interacting with it. Plus, the MacBook Pro keyboards are now so shockingly bad, that I will do almost anything to avoid having to use one. If you know, you know.

6. Nice USB cable.

Why thanks for asking. It’s a custom made one from CoolCable.co.uk.

07/01/2020
Books 2019
One of the things I wanted to do in 2019 was to carve out time to read more books again – especially since I had a three month sabbatical over the Spring. To that end, I kept track of what I read. It’s a mishmash of music bios, fiction, and non. I’ve only included books that I actually finished, and left out anything that was purely for academic purposes.
1. Crucial Conversations – Kerry Paterson.
2. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying – Marie Kondo.
3. Happyslapped by a Jellyfish: The Words of Karl Pilkington.
4. Karl Pilkington – An Idiot Abroad.
5. Subtle art of not giving a fuck – Mark Manson.
6. Come as you are – Michael Azerrad – A biography of Nirvana.
7. The Last – Hanna Jameson.
8. Green Day – Nobody Likes You – Marc Spitz.
9. Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet – Andrew Blum.
10. Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography – Limmy (Brian Limmond).
11. Daft Wee Stories – Limmy.
12. That’s your lot – Limmy.
13. Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata.
14. Broadcast – Liam Brown.
15. In the miso soup – Ryu Murakami.
16. The Passengers – John Marrs.
17. HWFG – Chris McQueer.
18. Lucky You – Carl Hiaasen.
19. Hings – Chris McQueer.
20. Stories of Your Life and Others – Ted Chiang.
21. Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet – David Kaye.
22. The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet – Jeff Kosseff.
23. Hatching Twitter – Nick Bilton.
24. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language – Gretchen McCulloch.
25. Smashing Pumpkins – Tales of a Scorched Earth – Amy Hanson.
26. Tokyo Vice – J. Adelstein.
27. 10% Happier – Dan Harris.
28. Kevin Sampson – Powder.
29. Gotta get Theroux this – Louis Theroux.
30. Unfollow – Megan Phelps-Roper.
31. Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson.
32. the Hunting Party – Lucy Foley.
03/01/2020
Sabbatical Aims
Every five years, Automattic employees can take a three month sabbatical from work to get away from the computer and recharge. The idea is that it helps highlight areas where you as an individual have unwittingly become solely responsible for particular tasks, and allows you to come back with a refreshed perspective and enthusiasm. That’s my take on things anyway.

I have been employed by Automattic for well over five years at this point, and I sign off at the start of next week – having pushed the date back a bit to make sure the weather was a bit nicer (!).

Three months is a fair amount of time to fill, but it can easily end up being filled with nothing in particular if you don’t take the time to plan out what you want to do. For that reason, I’m posting this up with my aims for the next few months, so I can look back on it at the end of June and see whether I actually did any of the things I said I would.

So here it is. Over the sabbatical I want to:
1. Travel. I have a number of trips booked – from spending some time in Japan, to visiting my parents in Canada.
2. See more of Scotland. I have been all over Scotland, but there are still plenty of areas that I haven’t been. I don’t have any concrete plans yet, but I want to get to at least one or two different places – preferably further north than Inverness.
3. Make time for old friends. I have too many people that I haven’t seen in ages, and I want to change that. I’ve booked a long weekend to visit some folks down south in May to start with.
4. Get better at guitar. Despite having played guitar for about 18 years, I am nowhere near as proficient as I should be. Rather than learn other people’s songs, I always just wrote my own, and my skills have suffered a bit as a result. I’ve bought some official tab books from bands I like, and want to use them to get much more proficient. The way I will test whether I’ve done this will be whether or not I can confidently play a significant number of songs from those books that I couldn’t play before.
5. Write and record music. I have a few musical projects on the go at the moment, and not enough time to really sit down to write and record. I want to make use of the time I have, and release at least one album by the end of June.
6. Finish and submit another journal article. I have been working on a second journal article for a while, but not found the time to finish it. I want to do so, and submit it for publication.
7. Read more. Specifically, I want to take the time to finish and enjoy a pile of books that have been building up. I’m keeping a list of them all to see how many I get through.
8. Go to the gym regularly. I already go to the gym at least once a week, but it’s too easy to find excuses when you are busy working. I want that to change.
9. Take more photos. I haven’t been taking many pictures over the past few months, and I want to get back into the habit. Specifically, shooting and developing a bunch of film.
10. Tidy up. This is a boring one, but I want to get some things in order. Marie Kondo style.
so that’s it: my ten aims, out there for posterity if not accountability. Looking over it now, it’s probably too much to pack in to what I am sure will be a few months that fly by – but it’s good to aim high. I’ll report back once the sabbatical is over and see how I got on.
22/03/2019
UK Immigration Problems: RBS Bank Statements
Regular readers will be aware that my wife and I are currently going through the long process for her to gain British citizenship, after moving here from the United States. Contrary to popular belief, marriage doesn’t mean that you automatically have a right to stay in the UK.

There are many, deep flaws and contradictions with the law and the Home Office’s application of it. I’ve written about some of this before, but there is plenty I haven’t covered, which is partly out of a very real fear that any concerns I raise publicly could prejudice the outcome of the process itself… which is in of itself a huge problem that we need to face up to. However, I want to do my bit to highlight a few of the more specific problems I have come across, with my conjoined perspective as a lawyer, and the spouse of a non-EU citizen.

In this entry I am going to detail a practical procedural issue that has cropped up multiple times throughout our visa ‘journey’. Theoretically, it should be one of the most straightforward portions of the whole process, but in reality it has turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. That is: getting copies of bank statements that satisfy the Home Office Requirements.

Fair warning: This is fairly long, and probably not much interest to those of you just looking for a casual read – but I think it’s important to be comprehensive, and I know that these posts are picked up by others looking for help on Google – so it is what it is.

Home Office Requirements

In order to qualify for a spousal visa, or visa renewal (called ‘Further Leave to Remain’, or ‘FLR(M)’ in this case), you need to prove that you and your partner have financial means of support. You can do this in various ways, but the most realistic for ‘regular’ couples is through income from employment. In other words, demonstrating that you have a job where you earn at least £18,600 per annum (this figure goes up if you have children).

In order to prove your income, you need to submit payslips covering a 6 month period, with corresponding bank statements. If you’ve changed jobs, this becomes 12 months. In of itself, this seems straightforward enough. However, there are some complications:
- You cannot apply for a visa renewal/extension more than 28 days before your current visa expires. (well, technically you can, but this will cause problems further down the line).
- Any evidence you provide has to be from less than 28 days prior to the date of your application.
- Once your evidence is submitted, you still need to either send off all of the documentation, or attend an appointment in person. There is no guarantee that you will get an appointment at short notice, or in the location you want. In the past, people have frequently had to travel across the UK to find any available open spot. In our case, we had to go down to Liverpool from Glasgow.
When it comes to the bank statements themselves, things are complicated further.
- Electronic print outs of bank statements are not accepted, unless accompanied by an official letter from the branch stating their authenticity or stamped on each page to the same effect.
- Bank staff rarely understand the specific requirements of the Home Office, and are often unwilling to provide stamped statements/a letter in the first instance – leaving you to ‘order’ paper copies instead.
- Ordering statements can take time, and are subject to delays.
It isn’t unusual for banks to say that ordering copies of statements could take up to two weeks, which leaves a pretty short window of time for the evidence to arrive, be submitted, and then to get an appropriate appointment. All the while, the anxiety over the rapidly impending deadline is growing.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Copies of Statements

I am an RBS customer who gets digital statements. I used to get paper statements sent in the post, but they had such a problem getting my flat address correct (unbelievably, they couldn’t understand the slash or dash system), that it made things even harder. So, now I don’t. That means that I need to order copies of my statements every time we come for another round of visa extensions.

The online RBS Support Centre states that ‘you should receive your paper statement within 5-6 days of ordering it.’ That isn’t ideal, but it’s also not awful. So long as they stick to that timeframe, you should be able to pull together everything you need.

To THL, or not to THL?

I logged onto digital banking as outlined above, and chatted with one of the advisors. Here we ran into the first problem. I was told that they could order me a ‘transaction history list’ (THL) instead of a statement. When I queried what the difference was between the two, they said ‘there’s no big difference’. Well, that isn’t really good enough. What might be a minor difference to customer support at RBS could well be enough to have the FLR(M) rejected. No thanks. After a while of trying to figure that out, I decided to just go into the branch.

The branch staff were helpful, but nobody in there seemed to be able to tell me what the difference was between a THL and a statement either. We went through a checklist on the bank’s system to determine what I needed, and it came out saying THL – but again, no explanation of why there were two different sets of documentation, and what was what. To be safe, we ordered a ‘copy statement’ – despite all of the efforts of the bank’s systems to direct us down the THL route. I asked how long the statements would take to arrive, and the teller dropped the bombshell that it could be up to 2 weeks (10 working days). Reassured by his insistence that they usually come through much faster than that, I went home. In any event, he said he would check in on the status of the request in a couple of days and let me know if there had been no update.

One week in. No Statements.

After five days, I hadn’t received any statements, and I was beginning to get antsy. At this point I knew I wouldn’t be getting anything in the post over the weekend, and the clock was ticking. I went into the branch to get some kind of confirmation that the statements were on their way. However, after being told (again) that I could ‘just print them off from digital banking’, it turned out that they don’t have any visibility on the status of statement orders, as they are fulfilled from some central place. Great. I was again reassured that the statements would arrive within ten business days, and that there was ‘nothing’ they could do in the meantime. Gritting my teeth, I left, and tried to tell myself that it would be fine.

Bad Memories

At this point I was getting extremely stressed out with the seemingly blasé attitude of the bank, and for good reason. When we were first applying for a fiancée visa so that my partner could come to live in the UK, I had a huge bust up with the Royal Bank of Scotland’s main branch on Gordon Street, in Glasgow.

As mentioned previously, the address on my paper statements had been messed up for months, and not fixed despite my repeated attempts. As a result, they were useless for evidentiary purposes. I went into the bank to get copies of the statements printed off and stamped, naively thinking that this would be a simple request. Oh no. I was flatly told that my request was ‘against RBS policy’. I didn’t really believe this at first, and thought that common sense would prevail after I explained the situation, and how the only reason I didn’t have paper statements in the first place was as a result of the bank’s failure to grasp Glasgow flat addresses properly. Unfortunately, it did not.

Despite me stressing that my immigration lawyer had stated that I needed a specific format of statement to comply with the Home Office regulations, the staff told me that the bank manager had denied my request because ‘You know what lawyers are like. They say lots of things’ and ‘we see people all the time applying for student visas and the print outs from digital banking are fine’.

Faced with the prospect of my entire life plans falling apart as the result of a decision made by a condescending bank manager who wouldn’t even come and speak to me directly, I blew a gasket, and caused such a scene that I was taken into a side room where the manager made me show him where in the Home Office regulations it said that this is what I needed (yes, really).

Endless RBS Contradictions

As you can imagine, I was a bit concerned (!) that if the statements I had ordered didn’t arrive in time, that my only option would be to go into the branch and get them printed/stamped/authenticated – and that I would have to carry out some kind of demonstration in order to do so. I had a full speech and strategy prepared, which included sitting down on the floor of the bank until they provided me with the proper documentation. That might sound extreme and ridiculous, but remember that getting these paper statements is necessary to make sure that my wife is not deported from our home in Glasgow, and our whole lives turned on their heads. With that in mind, it suddenly doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.

Anyway, unsatisfied with the answer I’d received from the bank, I then attempted to call the branch directly and speak with a manger to get some kind of reassurance that if worst came to the worst, they would be able to help me. However, I was routed to a digital banking call centre in Liverpool (the cruel irony). At first, they seemed to understand my question, which was a relief – but then they came back to say I should just print off the PDF statements from my online account. After yet more explanations, they then told me that definitively speaking, branches were not allowed to print off, stamp, and authenticate statements like I had asked.

At the same time as this though, I had tweeted the bank’s social media team at @RBS_HELP to pose the same question. They had a different answer – equally as definitive:

To throw more mud in the water, I also read about someone else in Scotland who was fighting a similar battle, and who had been told after a whole load of mucking about that it was down to the bank’s discretion.

So… what one is it? Why was this so difficult? Is getting a copy of paper statements not simply a basic function of a bank? Why did we spend Billions of taxpayers’ money to bail out banks if they can’t even provide such a base line of service? Why is this process being made so much harder needlessly by an institution that is supposed to be making efforts to recover public trust?

How many days again?

By this point, my stress levels were through the roof. I can usually handle pressure well, but when you are trapped in a situation that you have no control over, and have to rely on other people who have no personal investment, it’s much harder – especially given the high stakes.

I had talked myself off the ledge with the reasoning that I had only been charged for the ‘historic bank statements’ on Friday the 1st of March. Despite that being 5 working days after I ordered them in the first place, I thought they would surely turn up by Tuesday. Either way, if they weren’t here by the Friday I would go into the branch, armed with the rationale that they had failed to deliver on the 10 business days statement.

Come Wednesday though, there was still no sign of the statements, and I was losing patience. I checked over the bank’s support documentation again, to see whether I had missed anything – but nope, it clearly said that statement copies would only take 5-6 days. At this point, we were at 8-10. I decided to ask the digital banking advisors for some reassurance, but that only served to frustrate me further, as they insisted that the statements would take 10 working days to arrive, irrespective of what their own site said:

I asked RBS on Twitter what the deal was, and after telling me AGAIN to just download and print PDF statements, they said that the ‘timescales would depend on the type of statement’ – with zero recognition that their documentation says nothing about this.

Not helpful.

The crescendo

In the end, I decided that waiting a few more days wasn’t worth the damage to my blood pressure, and I went into the bank determined to get the statements that day. As it turned out, the manager had been contacted by the Twitter team, and was prepared to help out. He was incredibly apologetic, and took the time to make sure that I got the statements and the accompanying letter in a format that would meet the Home Office requirements.

The Lessons

There’s a few things that can be taken from this experience:
- The Home Office regulations are deliberately and unnecessarily restrictive on both the format of the statements, as well as the timescales involved – which makes it extremely difficult for applicants and institutions to reasonably comply.
- Despite this, the Royal Bank of Scotland is failing its customers on a number of counts. Specifically by the inaccurate information on their website; the inconsistency and lack of clarity on process between different departments/members of staff; as well as the unreasonably long time to process basic requests.
- Despite eventually providing the requested information, people should not have to rely on kicking up a fuss online.
- RBS need to stop telling people to download PDF statements from online banking as the default response to any kind of statement query. It is misleading, shows a lack of interest or basic understanding, and will trip up people who are not as familiar with the specifics of the Home Office requirements as I am.
This is just one example out of many of the procedural problems inherent in the UK’s immigration law. Having a broken system which places pressure on applicants purely as a kind of punitive stress test is not beneficial for anybody – irrespective of what your views on immigration might be.

Further update

After I posted the above, I contacted the office of the Chief Executive, Ross McDonald to complain about the lack of clarity in the process, and their lack of understanding. After a couple of back and forths, they said:

All our staff have access to an online business support manual which clearly explains the process and timeframe for ordering and providing copy/historic statements. Five to six days is regularly achieved, but I am aware of instances where the process has taken longer and a project team is reviewing the process to establish what is going wrong.

In terms of providing statements quickly, we provide up to seven years statements via Online Banking and these can be printed and are suitable for almost all purposes. You can get an up to date statement covering the last few months transactions at any of our branches and again these should be suitable for most purposes. It is our policy to no longer authenticate documents such as statements and passport documentation via the application of a stamp and signature.

So basically:
- Statements are (usually) provided within 5-6 days of ordering them – but there are problems with that.
- No recognition of the disparity between the website information and the information provided by staff online and in branch.
- A statement (again) that online banking statements are ‘suitable for most purposes’ – completely ignoring everything I’ve repeatedly said about the Home Office requirements.
- A definitive statement that RBS will not authenticate statements via a stamp – contrary to what their online helpdesk and branch staff said.
What a joke.
07/03/2019
Commodore 64 Mechanical Keyboard Project

The Commodore 64 is a classic, and it has played an especially important role for me. It was the first computer I ever owned; given to me by my parents as a fifth birthday president, and my granda used to spend hours showing me how to program it from a big purple book he had gotten from a magazine. I credit this introduction with piquing my interest in technology early on. Staring at the rainbow loading screen, waiting for games to load from the cassette deck is also probably to blame for my terrible eyesight. I rediscovered the C64 as a teenager when I learned of its coveted SID sound chip, and I’ve been making music with it ever since under the guise of unexpected bowtie.

One of the things that always stood out in my mind was the C64’s keyboard, with its thick brown keys and symbols that I never really understood. If I could, I would use it all the time, but that was never really practical. Recently though, I fell down the rabbit hole of ‘mechanical keyboards’ online, where people build and use special keyboards with custom switches, sizes, and layouts. One of the projects I found included a re-working of the C64’s keyboard which brought it into the modern world, and I felt inspired to do something similar.

Sourcing a C64

I originally planned to source a broken Commodore online and use the keys from it, rather than defiling my beloved console. Truth be told though, mine was in a bit of a shabby state, and even broken C64s go for a pretty penny in the UK. I decided to just make use of what I had, with the belief that I could always pop the keycaps back on if I changed my mind later.

Purists, look away now.

Removing the keys

Removing the keys initially proved a bit trickier than I had anticipated… partly because I was trying to get them off while the thing was fully assembled. What you need to do is open up the breadbin itself, and then detach the keyboard from the chassis by taking out some screws. It was pretty easily done once I realised this was what was required – especially since my case had already been taken apart a fair few times to get at the SID.

Popping the keys off can be tricky, as they are far stiffer than one would expect from a more modern device. Keycap removers didn’t really work, and so I resorted to using a set of pliers, being careful to pull straight up to avoid damaging the posts underneath. Each key has a large spring underneath which can ping off easily if you move too quickly, so watch out for that.

Underneath was filthy, and it seemed like a good opportunity to give things a clean even if I didn’t end up building anything. I left both the spacebar and the Shift Lock keys in place, as I suspected they would be a bit more fiddly to deal with, and I wasn’t planning on using them anyway.

Finally, I gave the keycaps a clean with some soapy water and left them to dry.

The new board

There are lots of mechanical keyboard designs to choose from. For this project, I went with the Preonic, and got a partially built kit as part of a group buy from Massdrop, which came with a fetching orange aluminium case. It is a compact, ‘ortho-linear’ keyboard – which means the keys are arranged in a grid like pattern, rather than staggered as you would see more commonly. The idea is that your fingers have to move less, and in a more natural way when typing – which reduces strain. I opted for the Preonic (rather than the Planck, which has less keys), as I wanted to make the most of the C64 keycaps.

The switches

One of the main reasons people like mechanical keyboards is the quality and range of switches available. The switches are the bits underneath the plastic caps with the letters on them (or not, depending on what you prefer). Unlike the squishy keys you find on laptops and other modern computers that are so unsatisfying to use, mechanical keyboards feel great. They can either be smooth (linear), have a bump (tactile), or have a bump and an audible noise (clicky). Most people probably mentally associate typing experiences from yester-year with the clicky type – personified by the Cherry MX Blue switch, though the Commodore 64 actually had smooth keys. For this build I opted for the Cherry MX white (aka milky). They are clicky keys, but with a far less sharp and pronounced click than the Cherry MX blues. This means it’s a bit more socially acceptable when typing around other people (!).

Fitting the keycaps

The biggest issue with this project was that the keycaps from the Commodore 64 aren’t compatible with any of the switches that are commonly used today, and so wouldn’t just snap on. However, some wonderful person has designed a C64 to Cherry MX adaptor that can be 3d printed and shared it for free (open source is wonderful).

Preview of the adaptor showing the Cherry MX side

I don’t have a 3d printer, so obviously had to outsource this. Getting a decent price in the UK was tricky at first, as nobody would take up an order that small, but eventually I got 80 caps for £22.98 including delivery from 3DPrintDirect.co.uk. That would be more than enough to cover the 60 keys on the Preonic. The material was SLS – carbon reinforced plastic.

It took about two weeks for the adaptors to arrive. I had read that some people had trouble with their adaptors, especially if the finish on the 3d printing was rough, but mine worked out pretty well. At first I thought I might have to disassemble the switches to install them as they were very tight, but in the end I could just press them against a flat surface and push hard with the keycaps on. My fingers hurt after doing a bunch, so I did them in batches. When the board arrived, I realised that it actually made much more sense to put the adaptors into the caps first, and hit them gently with a small hammer, before pressing the whole thing onto the switch. Getting them at the right angle could be tricky, but they all turned out fine in the end.

It’s worth noting that I did also discover that removing an adaptor from a keycap isn’t really possible without destroying the soft plastic and leaving the inside of the cap gunked up, so that means that these caps are now committed to the project, and won’t be reusable on the C64 itself like I had hoped.

Building the Preonic

The Preonic kit I got came from Massdrop in a bundle, and it was packed and presented beautifully. The instructions however, weren’t exactly n00b friendly, and it took me a bit to work out exactly where the spacers and screws were meant to go; it seemed like there were extra unnecessary holes in different places, which threw me. Eventually it came together though, and things began to take shape.

I’ve done a fair amount of soldering in my time modifying Game Boys etc, so it wasn’t a difficult task to deal with the through-hole switches. I did discover that one of them was bust after putting it all together though, which meant I had to de-solder and replace it, which was a bit of a pain.

The layout

When I started looking at the actual layout of the board, I ran into a couple of issues with my plan to use the Preonic. Firstly, I had overlooked the fact that the board is built around a grid of single keys, and doesn’t really support anything larger except in the middle of the bottom row. That meant that I didn’t have enough keys from my C64 to cover the full thing, and no perfect option for the space bar.

Secondly, my choice was further restricted by the design of the C64’s keys, as the caps are ‘sculpted’ depending on where they sit, so I couldn’t just take one from the top row and put it on the bottom, even if it would work better for my purposes.

In the end, I managed to source some extra single keys online, and did the best with what I had. I had feared that it would be wildly off, or that I would need to use really inappropriate keys, but it actually worked out not too bad at all.

Some folks have commented that the layout doesn’t make much sense, and I should say that I am not religiously sticking to what is printed on the keycaps. For example, I am using the ‘Return’ key in the place of a space bar, as that was the only key from the original board which seemed appropriate and fit the slot on the PCB. I’m using an equals key for Enter. The @ key brings up a list of my bookmarks with Shiori; The £ key activates my Alfred snippets; RUN STOP is my Hyper Key; < and > activate the ‘Lower’ and ‘Raise’ layers of the Preonic, and so forth. The beauty of the software which powers these keyboards (QMK) is that you can map and re-map the layout to whatever makes sense for your own needs.

You can find details of my layout over on GitHub.

The finished article

As a finishing touch, I got a special rainbow coloured USB cable made up from coolcable.co.uk as a nod to Commodore. Special thanks to them who put up my last minute changes to the connectors as I ordered the wrong thing.

I still need to set up the Preonic’s layers to suit my own custom layout, but I really like the board. It’s nice, solid and relatively compact, and now I have a personal homage to my granda and first computer. The keys feel pretty great to type on, though they could potentially have done with some heavier switches as the cap and adaptor combo mean that you end up putting more force on the keys than you usually would.

Edit: This was featured on Hackaday, which is awesome.

19/09/2018
Nuraphone Headphones Review
For the past few months I’ve been bombarded with adverts for some supposedly next generation headphone technology which adapts to your individual hearing, the ‘Nuraphone’. Various industry professionals were shown in the accompanying videos, reacting with apparent amazement at the sound quality. As a bit of an audio geek, I wanted to see for myself whether or not there was anything to the claims, and ended up picking up a pair recently – something that probably also partly confirms that online marketing campaigns really do work.

One thing that’s worth noting is that Nura released a software upgrade for the headphones at the end of July which added a bunch of features, and corrected some issues that people had reported. They even added in active noise cancellation – which wasn’t present before. That is particularly cool, and something that it’s good to see a company do. Newer stock of the Nuraphone come pre-loaded with this update.

The Concept

Custom Hearing Profiles

The main principle behind the Nuraphone is relatively simple, in theory at least. You first connect them to a smartphone app, where some quick tests result in a custom ‘hearing profile’ being created. This profile is then stored in the headphones, and playback is tailored accordingly – theoretically resulting in sound that is far more pleasing to your ears than a generic approach would provide.

Over and In-Ear Design

The other main defining characteristic of the Nuraphone is their unique over/in-ear design. The outer silicone cup encloses your ears (and doesn’t irritate any of my many cartilage piercings), and delivers bass frequencies, whereas the inner ear portion sits just inside your outer ear, delivering the mid and treble frequencies. This helps provide a nice separation, and a much fuller sound. It works very well, though does feel pretty weird at first.

Immersion Mode

Immersion mode uses drivers in the outer cups to provide ‘feeling of a live performance’. This basically makes the bass much fuller and deeper, without compromising on the quality of the mid or treble frequencies.

What Other People Say

I was intrigued by the Nuraphone, but also pretty skeptical. It didn’t help that the reviews online ranged wildly from the bizarrely enthusiastic to the dismissive. There were many puff pieces from sites who were clearly just happy to get a free pair, but there were also users who claimed that they and their friends had the quality was so good that they had actually been moved to tears on their first listen. Others weren’t as enamoured, angrily dismissing the Nuraphone as nothing but marketing spin, or even suggesting that £30 generic earbuds sounded just as good. Ouch.

In general, many of the criticisms seemed to focus on the following:
- The design was too heavy and uncomfortable – especially if you have glasses.
- The sound wasn’t that impressive.
- The setup was complicated and confusing, resulting in different profiles every time.
- The ‘generic’ profile that you compare your personalised profile with sounded worse than it should, and that something shady must be going on.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such conflicting experiences with a single product, which only pushed me to try them out for myself.

My Experience

Setup

Setting up the headphones was as simple as downloading the app, connecting via Bluetooth, and following the on-screen instructions. I had no bother getting the cups in the right place, and despite trying the calibration process a few times, my profiles were pretty much the same each time. It couldn’t really have been much easier.

Brand new Nuraphone with the plastic wrap still intact.

The one real annoyance is that once set up is complete, you’re encouraged to switch between a generic ‘flat’ profile and your own personalised one to hear the difference. As many people have commented online, the problem is that the generic profile sounds pretty terrible on its own – far worse than you would expect even as a baseline from far cheaper headphones. It’s as if it has been heavily compressed. As a result it all seems a bit disingenuous, and Nura have probably not done themselves many favours by including this ‘feature’.

Comfort

After reading all of the negative reviews, I expected the Nuraphone to be extremely heavy and uncomfortable, but in actual fact, they slipped on with ease; the silicone of both the ear-cups and headband feeling both soft and comfortable. They weren’t particularly heavy – at least not markedly more so than other cans I’ve worn, and even the in-ear protrusions didn’t feel all that bad – going less deep than I expected. As for my glasses, they didn’t seem to make the slightest bit of difference to proceedings.

I wore the headphones for about seven to eight hours on the first day (with breaks), and my ears definitely got a bit sore by the end, though I knew to expect this from the Nura support team, who claimed that the tips of the in-ear portions would soften up with use. Despite this physical discomfort, my ears didn’t ever get hot or sweaty, which seems to be thanks to the use of the ‘TeslaValve’ air-flow technology. Not just a gimmick after all!

After listening to feedback on the issue of comfort, Nura have started to include different tip sizes with new purchases, including small and medium. There are also some third party options out there that are compatible, though whether they have a significant impact on the sound (negatively) is up for debate.

Controls

Many of the fundamental controls of the Nuraphone are contained within the accompanying smartphone app. Some of these can be mapped to a couple of touch sensitive ‘pads’ on the side of the cans – such as volume up/down, play/pause, etc. Both single and double tap gestures are supported, allowing you to choose four controls to make use of.

I personally have volume up and down configured for the single taps, with social mode and play/pause for the double taps. At first I thought this was a bit awkward, but after a day or so I found it really natural, and have even found myself trying to tap on the side of my other headphones out of a force of habit. After using the Nuraphone controls, the physical buttons on my Sennheisers feel a bit clunky and unintuitive.

Speaking of social mode, this is a nifty feature that turns off the active noise cancellation, and turns on microphones to allow you to hear what’s going on without having to take off the headphones. I’ve found this really useful in practice, though it can be a bit disconcerting to have certain ‘exterior’ sounds suddenly amplified louder than they actually are with the headphones off.

It’s not all great news though. The controls themselves are extremely sensitive, with no adjustment possible. Often I would end up accidentally triggering the pads when adjusting my glasses, or just moving my arms about, and I had to continually turn the headphones back down. There are also some functions that can only be accessed via the app, which is a bit annoying. For example, at the time of writing you can’t adjust the level of Immersion mode without being connected to the phone app – which would be handy for switching between genres. I’ve heard from Nura that they are working on a desktop app which would help alleviate this issue for those of us who regularly listen on our computers.

Finally, the controls don’t work when a cable is connected, which is understandable, but a bit irritating, breaking the continuity of experience.

Connectivity

I’ve been dubious of wireless technology for a long time, given the pretty crappy historic quality of even higher end headphones. As a result, I only recently bought into the whole arena and was pleasantly surprised. Still clinging to this, I was put off at first by the prospect of having to buy a separate, expensive analogue cable, but realised that I don’t actually need one for everyday listening.

In terms of the quality of the bluetooth connection itself, it was generally pretty good. For some reason my first pair worked fine with my laptop, but dropped out constantly when connected to my phone when I put it in my pocket. That meant they were totally useless for walking about, and I was restricted to using them when stationary at a desk, or on the couch till they got replaced. Generally though, once this was resolved, the connectivity was good, and I only had the odd blip here and there. Definitely not something that would be irritating or especially notable.

This all leads nicely to my biggest issue with the design of the Nuraphone: the proprietary nature of the cable connection. Apparently in order to allow compatibility with a bunch of separate devices, they had to create a new single port that is used for everything, including charging. I’’m not really convinced by this argument, and it means that it’s yet another cable to carry when travelling, which isn much harder and pricier to replace. The nightmare scenario would be misplacing one while on a trip.

Sound

In the past I have played with various special music EQ apps that provide extra stereo spacing and increased ‘ambience’, but always returned to listening flat, as they never did a great job of applying equally the quality across genres. In other words, what sounded good with electronica would make grunge sound utter garbage. I suspected that this would be much the same with the Nuraphone, and I was pretty disappointed when it seemed to be the case upon first listening. Techno sounded pretty good, but generally the sound was too coloured, with vocals often lost in the mix. It wasn’t until I realised that I had an additional EQ set on my Mac already that was interfering with things that I actually heard what the Nuraphone could do, and my perception completely changed. Why bother even bringing this up? To highlight that it’s important to start with a flat EQ, or you’re going to get a distorted perception of the sound – which is easily done.

While I wasn’t exactly reduced to tears, the sound from the Nuraphone really was pretty impressive, bringing a whole new feeling of dynamism to music that I knew well. It was as if my favourite tracks had been given a personal re-mastering, and it was amazing. I scoured my library to find old songs and re-discover them in a different light. Despite an overall perceivable increase in quality, a lot of this seemed to come down to the ‘Immersion’ mode. When I first read about it, I was dubious. Cranking up the bass so it rattles against your ears doesn’t really ‘capture the feeling of being at a live performance’. However, I have to honestly say that there is something in that claim. With the slider at 75% I could feel every kick of the bass drum in early Green Day albums as if Tre Cool himself was in the same room, and there were times during some songs that genuinely reminded of being at a music festival due to the interaction of instrumentation.

There have been some comments that the Immersion mode is too heavy handed, such as:

The Immersion effect might suit bassheads or movie-watchers, but you’ll get the most balanced sound with it on very low – or turned off.

That hasn’t really been my experience (though maybe I’m a basshead?). Even at a fairly high level (70%), the Immersion mode only serves to add a bit of greater depth to the tracks, and doesn’t result in distorted or farty bass – though there is a definite cut off where this changes. To be honest though, if I wanted a flatter, more ‘balanced’ sound, these are not the headphones I personally would be using in the first place.

How do they compare to my other headphones though? I don’t really have technical details here, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they offer a much more dynamic and engaging sound. My other headphones still sound and feel great, but if I want to really get lost in the music, I’ll go with the Nuraphone every time.

Other Stuff
- Portability: Unfortunately, despite having pretty great passive and active noise cancellation, the Nuraphone don’t seem especially great for travelling. They don’t fold down, and the protective case is pretty chunky. I still need to decide whether or not they are worth sacrificing precious space for in my carry on.
- Audio fade in: The Nuraphone have a built in ‘fade in’ to the audio when they start playing back from silence. That means that if you fire up Spotify, stick on the headphones, and start playing a track with a banging intro, it ends up lacking punch. I can see the benefit of this feature when you put the headphones back on – to avoid getting blasted mid-song at full volume, but this should 100% be an optional feature, not something that can’t be turned off.
- Noise cancellation: The passive noise cancellation of these headphones is pretty decent already, but the active noise cancellation is especially good. The combination seems to block out more ambient noise than my Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC cans, and it’s pretty amazing to hear the difference toggling ‘social mode’ on and off makes.
- Battery life: The Nuraphone boast an impressive 20 hour battery life. I haven’t tested them continuously, but what I do know is that the headphones arrived on a Monday; I used them heavily, and by Friday morning they were only down to 40%. In practice this means I’d only really need to charge them about once a week, which is pretty great.
Conclusion

I really didn’t want to like these. Despite having a glimmer of hope that they might be decent, I planned to try them out for a few weeks then send them back after discovering that they were mostly just marketing puff after all. However, that isn’t how things worked out.

The truth is that I really like the Nuraphone. The sound is different to anything I’ve heard before in a set of headphones, and the Immersion mode really helps bring certain kinds of music alive. I’m excited about listening to music again, and for that reason alone they are well worth the money for me. If they only took standard cables, and folded down to be a bit more portable, it’d be tough to find any big flaws.

They retail for £349, but you can often find 20% off discount codes on Reddit.
06/08/2018
Productivity Apps: Keyboard Maestro
I’ve had this article on the back burner for almost three years now, but for the next thrilling instalment of my productivity app blogs, I’ll be turning to look at Keyboard Maestro.

Don’t let the somewhat dated website put you off, the app itself is unbelievably powerful. I have to admit to being wary when I first tried it out. The learning curve is steep, and the documentation pretty unclear – especially when compared to the other productivity apps that are available. However, after months years of sustained use, my feelings towards Keyboard Maestro have completely changed. It’s tough to get into, but so worth it. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it at this point.

So if Keyboard Maestro is so great, why did it take me so long to publish this? Well, there’s a few reasons. Firstly, there aren’t so many general use cases for Keyboard Maestro – at least not for me. Instead, it’s an app that’s best for repetitive tasks that are very specific to each user’s needs, which makes it difficult to give good examples. Secondly, it’s an app that you tend to set up and forget… before rediscovering it later on when your needs have changed, and you realise: “Oh! Keyboard Maestro could make this way easier!”. I’ve gone through that cycle a number of times, and after rediscovering just how awesome it is, I decided to finally complete this post.

What does it do?

Okay okay so Keyboard Maestro is great, but what does it actually do?. This is a good question, as it isn’t immediately obvious. Essentially, Keyboard Maestro allows you to take any task that you have to repeat, and automates it. If you’re familiar with Alfred, think of Alfred workflows, but on steroids. The key difference is that instead of having to write Applescript for every action you want to complete (which is still an option, by the way), there are a whole bunch of options baked in. Whether that’s telling the mouse to move and click on a certain point, displaying a popup message, getting an image size, filling in a field on a website, or whatever. You get a lot of control from the get go.

Some of the ‘actions’ available.

The sheer power of Keyboard Maestro is also its undoing in a way. It’s easy to look at the list of actions and wonder when you will ever use any of them. The UI is not the most intuitive, and you’d be forgiven for giving up at the beginning purely on that basis alone.

If you want to carry out simple, general tasks, then there may well be a nicer app that lets you do those things. However, that isn’t the point of Keyboard Maestro. Keyboard Maestro is there to help you automate pretty much any task that you can think of.

In addition to the automation, there is a whole host of other cool features that you can do a deep dive into – such as an extensive multi clipboard manager, application switcher, and others – but for me the real glory lies in the macros.

What can it do for me?

One of the biggest hurdles to starting off with Keyboard Maestro is working out exactly what you’ll use it for. It takes a conscious effort to work out what tasks you could automate – which isn’t necessarily something you thought was possible beforehand. Once you do sit down and give it some attention though, you’ll soon come up with plenty. Do you have to fill out specific fields on a website more than once? Use a macro. Do you need to convert HTML to markdown? Use a macro. Need to extract URLs from a big block of text? Macro. The possibilities are endless.

As part of my job, I regularly have to review and respond to reports about different websites using a helpdesk system. Each one (generally) requires me to:
1. Find the website URL in the e-mail and open it.
2. Decide what to do.
3. Note down the action taken in certain circumstances.
4. Reply by copying a specific part of the original message, and quoting it back in a certain format before providing an appropriate response.
5. Select a certain option to mark the issue as ‘Resolved’ or ‘On Hold’.
All of these steps are fairly straightforward, but a lot of time is taken up by clicking through the same tasks for each – even when I use a textexpander or snippet manager like Alfred. Sometimes the URLs are jumbled up and I need to fix them before opening or responding, or they are buried in huge blocks of text… etc. However, with Keyboard Maestro, I can reduce this all to a couple of key presses, with a couple of macros doing all of the following:
1. Extracting all of the URLs from the messages, and opening them in new windows.
2. Pasting the URLs in the correct quoted format at the top of the reply, along with the appropriate response.
3. Adding whatever notes needed to track the action taken in a specific field.
4. Marking the issue Resolved or On Hold as appropriate.
The only thing Keyboard Maestro doesn’t do is decide what action to take – which is just as well really, for a variety of reasons!

Like many of the examples, that one is very specific, but it demonstrates a bit of how granular and useful Keyboard Maestro macros can be – and will hopefully get you thinking about your own use cases. Here are some other more general tasks I regularly deploy macros for:
- Inserting a URL wrapped in a href tags.
- Pasting text with different styles of quotes depending on the situation.
- Parsing blocks of text to extract URLs and/or e-mail addresses.
- Getting ID numbers from long URLs.
- Pasting items in a bulleted or numbered list automatically.
- Filling out forms online.
- Copying the current URL from my browser window (and doing stuff with it).
The most powerful and useful ones are those that have very specific, work related use cases. With a bit of imagination, you’ll come up with your own, so I’d encourage you to give it a bash.

Triggers

To wrap this up, I wanted to highlight one more feature of Keyboard Maestro that makes it stand out from other productivity apps. For those veterans amongst us who regularly make use of workflow improvements, it’s easy to run out of hotkey assignments, and Keyboard Maestro has a bunch of different ways to solve that problem. First off is the use of ‘palettes’, which lets you assign the same hotkey to different macros – and then select them from a menu – or to activate different hotkey sets depending on what you’re working on that day.

If you already use Alfred, Keyboard Maestro is a brilliant complement, rather than a replacement in this way too. There is a specific Alfred workflow that lets you search and trigger Keyboard Maestro macros from the Alfred search bar, which is incredibly useful for those that you may use occasionally, but don’t want to dedicate a precious hotkey to: Alfred Maestro.

Finally, triggers aren’t just confined to mere hotkeys. Oh no. Pretty much any event you can think of can kick off a macro. If you want certain changes to happen when you connect to a particular WiFi, you can make that happen. Execute commands remotely by running Keyboard Maestro on a server? Why not. Run certain checks when a USB device is plugged in? Easy. You can even have Keyboard Maestro react to MIDI notes and values, which opens up a whole world of interesting hardware controllers aside from the keyboard… something I’ll be exploring in the next post.

In the meantime, go forth, and automate!
09/04/2018
On ‘Creativity’

When I was (a lot) younger I would spend a lot of time doing things that weren’t homework. I used to edit and publish a DIY school newspaper; make my own ‘radio show’ mixtapes; write short stories; and a myriad of other things. That’s something I’ve carried on as I’ve gotten older, through avenues like my small-time cassette tape record label, and music project unexpected bowtie.

Perhaps as a result of that kind of thing, I got lumped in with the arty creative crowd, and I hated it. Whenever there was some sort of brainstorming session or group discussion at school or work, such as trying to decide on a name or a strap line for some project, I was always told: ‘Come on, you’re a creative person. You’ll be able to think of something great.’, and of course… I never could. How was I meant to translate the weird stuff I did in my spare time into a stunning one liner for an ad campaign? It was an impossible task.

There’s this common idea that there are two different kinds of people: those who are ‘creative’, and able to just pluck amazing ideas for anything out of thin air… and others simply aren’t… as if creativity in of itself is a particular skill. That was the perspective that was hammered into me for so long, and since I didn’t have that sort of seeming creative genius that allowed me to come up with flashes of brilliance on the spot, I really came to resent the idea and label of ‘creativity’ in general.

As time has gone on though, I’ve come to think of things differently. I know so many amazingly creative people that do so many different things, but who are hopeless when placed out of their own wheelhouse and ways of working… and when you think about it, it’s ridiculous to expect anything else.

As far as I am concerned, creativity isn’t (necessarily) about the ability to conjure up something specific for any given situation on demand. Instead, it is the urge to make stuff, whether that’s something like music or poetry; something tangible like jewelery or paintings; or something like cutting hair… writing code… or performing live in a band. Creativity isn’t a skill that can be turned to any task at hand, but something rooted in people that derives energy and satisfaction from the act of creating something… whether it’s any good or not. Somebody can be a creative person whilst pumping out absolute dross, because it’s the process – not the product – that matters.

I think we do our students and colleagues a disservice when we call them ‘creative’ and expect them to produce brilliance in response. Rather than having the intended complimentary effect, it just ends up as a rope around their neck, and produces expectations that are too much to live up to. I’d happily never hear the phrase ‘you’re a creative person’ ever again.

01/06/2017
A Hyper Key Solution for Mac OSX Sierra
In the past I’ve mentioned how I have streamlined a lot of the everyday tasks I have to do through the use of various keyboard-centric apps such as Alfred and Keyboard Maestro. One of the linchpins of my setup is the use of something called the ‘Hyper Key’, which is essentially re-mapping the fairly useless Caps Lock to act as a super-function key, letting you trigger all sorts of shortcuts and different macros.

This particular configuration relied on two bits of software, called Karabiner and Seil. However, earlier today I was forced into upgrading from OSX El Capitan, to OSX Sierra, to fix an issue with some other apps that I was having. Of course, upon upgrade, I discovered that the Karabiner/Seil combination no longer functioned properly, and there was no real solution using the same tools. Sigh.

After a bit of digging, I discovered a way to re-enable the same functionality, albeit with a bit of jiggery pokery. Here’s how I did it:
1. Install Hammerspoon. This is a piece of software that allows for automation, acting as an interface between a scripting engine called lua, and the OS itself.
2. Install Karabiner Elements. This is a version of Karabiner that works with OSX Sierra. The latest DMG is available here.
3. Under OSX Keyboard System Preferences pane, change the Caps Lock Action to ‘None’, to allow Karabiner to control it.
4. Set up Karabiner Elements to map the caps_lock to F18. You can also do this by adding in a config file to ~/.karabiner.d/configuration/karabiner.json, but it’s so easy to do manually that it seems overkill to go that route.
  How Karabiner Elements should look
5. Now, load up a lua config file into Hammerspoon, by copying it to ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua – see below for examples.
The config file I am using is available over on GitHub here. It will re-enable the Hyper Key function for all a-z and 0-9 keys, as well as a couple of miscellaneous ones that I use, though it should be self explanatory on how to add new ones.

One thing to watch out for is that any Hotkeys set up in Alfred to launch applications with the Hyper Key don’t seem to work any longer, so for that, one way to get them to launch is to add a specific mapping in the init.lua configuration. Here’s what I’ve done to get 1Password to launch with CAPS+O:
```
-- Code to launch single apps that Alfred used to handle.
-- Hat-Tip: https://gist.github.com/ttscoff/cce98a711b5476166792d5e6f1ac5907

launch = function(appname)
 hs.application.launchOrFocus(appname)
 k.triggered = true
end

-- Keybinding for specific single apps.

singleapps = {
 {'o', '1Password 6'},
}
```
As you can see from the above, I obviously didn’t write the code to make all of this work. Credit for that goes to a combination of ttscoff and prenagha; I just tweaked it for my own simple use case and wrote this up in the hope that others might find it easy to follow.

Good luck!
28/10/2016
Another example of inconsistent British immigration law
Today I came across yet another example of how the British approach to immigration law is completely inconsistent, and penalises those of us with non-EU spouses disproportionately.

There are various ‘global entry’ style schemes where frequent travellers can pay for additional background checks, which lets them go through an expedited customs and immigration process when travelling to certain countries.

Here’s a recent explanation of how Canadian and US nationals who are a member of this scheme can get preferential treatment when coming to the UK:
Registered Traveller was launched by the UK Border Force to give faster and more convenient entry to the UK for eligible nationals from the United States and Canada. Membership of Registered Traveller costs £70 in the first year and £50 per year thereafter.

Membership of Registered Traveller includes the following benefits:
- Access to ePassport gates
- Use of the UK / EEA queue
- No requirement to complete a landing card on arrival in the UK
- No routine credibility interview with a Border Force officer.
All of that sounds great, until you consider how this approach differs from the way we treat British citizens who have non-EU spouses.

For example, my American wife has lived in the UK for the past 2 years. We have gone through two (soon to be three) separate visa processes, paying thousands of Pounds, and providing an incredible amount of evidence about our backgrounds, finances, and relationship. Yet, she still has to fill out a landing card on arrival in the UK. This landing card includes questions like: “How long do you intend to be in the UK?”, which is totally inappropriate for residents – but who cares about that?

That’s the logic of British immigration law. Give foreign business travellers a pass on basic checks if they spend fifty quid a year and do an interview, but completely shaft British citizens and their sposes that go through the most thorough of application processes and spend thousands of Pounds.

Makes you feel really proud to be a British citizen.
24/08/2016