Hi all 👋, this week while writing clicks 'n clacks I've been banging my head against my keyboard as the Microsoft outage has been slowing me down (here's to hoping it's fixed by the time this email goes live), checking the weather retro-style, giving Ardia (a surprisingly robust Arc/Dia clone) a try for my web-browsing needs, and preparing for the inevitable as I see Waymo cars flood the streets of Toronto as they plan for future expansion into Canadian territories.
More Black Friday sales in the keyboard realm have begun, with Nuphy and QwertyKeys joining the fray, OneOfZero dropping a BOGO deskpad deal, and CannonKeys adding a ton more deals to their warehouse clearance event!
Hold your breath and dive in as we explore this week's features!
clicks 🔗
Courtesy of krillion.io
→ Similar to other puzzle games like Wordle, Connections, Puzzmo, or just the classic crossword, comes a new free daily brainteaser called Krillion. Each day you are presented with a new daily dive which is a set of 7 questions designed to make you dig deep into your knowledge banks and pull out the most obscure answer. It could ask “Name any part of a bicycle” — you could answer wheels or the front derailleur — the less other users have answered the same as you, the more points you receive. Provide the most elusive answer and get top marks for being “one in a krillion”! I've been playing it for a few days now and I'm consistently impressed with the range of questions, from topics spanning pop culture to geography, tech, biology, and beyond. It gets those memory recall and quick thinking parts of your mind moving — a quick and fun way to train your brain!
Courtesy of bookorbit.app
→ I've finally made the transition over to Umbrel for my personal home server (good riddance to Windows), and a service I've always wanted to set up has been a OPDS catalog. Formally known as an Open Publication Distribution System — it would allow me to host my own server for ebooks and comics, access them from anywhere and have full control over my local files. There are lots of great solutions out there, but I just stumbled upon BookOrbit and it seems to have everything I need and more. It's a fully-fledged solution with native apps on iOS, Android, as well as a web app that allows you to throw any reading material at it (ePubs, PDFs, CBZs for comics, or even MP3s for audiobooks) and it handles it all — metadata, syncing, progress tracking, annotations, highlights, reading goals, etc. I've always just thrown the raw files into an iCloud folder, so utilizing even a small percentage of this feature set would be a huge improvement.
clacks 🔗
Courtesy of user @iSeS on geekhack.org
→ The Doo and the Do.25 from designer iSeS are a set of twin boards, now available in a group-buy, that bring a retro board layout into the modern era. WYSE was a keyboard manufacturer in the 80's and 90's that incorporated features like a strip of legends above the function row, three-block layout with inverted-T arrow cluster that sits stacked right below the nav keys, stepped CTRL keys to the left and right of the spacebars, elongated spacebars that could be 7u, 8u, or even up to 9.75u wide, and a 1u/2u “Do” key where an F16 button would sit in the function row. The Doo closely resembles these older designs, while the Do.25 translates them into a more accessible and modern format. It's hard to describe but the images here and here from iSeS's Instagram do a great job showing off both versions of the board.
Courtesy of liminal.cat
→ The designers at Delta Key Co. are releasing a wonky, ƨbɿɒwʞɔɒd keycap set inspired by the recent horror-hit, Backrooms. It's coming soon as a group-buy with many international vendors on Monday the 16th and the base kit is only $85, pretty reasonable for a GMK-produced kit. Even if you're not a horror fan, I'd give the landing page by Omegaswitch a browse — not saying it's over-designed, but it easily puts all other keycap landing pages to shame. Not only does it have a spooky fully animated intro for the set, but you can also view all kits (base, alphas, novelties and extras) that will be a part of the drop, see the colourway swatches it uses, and get all the links to the vendors when they become available.
That’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed it, and now it’s time to hear from YOU 🫵. I want to know your opinion—what you liked, what you loved, what you didn’t like, what you skipped. Email [email protected] (or reply to this issue!) and have a great weekend!!
