SEP.05.2026 - #81

Hi all 👋, and welcome back! As mentioned previously, last week I was the presenter for 3&3's August monthly meetup where I gave a short talk about the scary career transitions I made, feeling like an imposter, and the creation of this very newsletter. The VOD went live earlier this week for anyone that wasn't able to attend — I'd highly recommend giving it a watch, I had so much (nervous) fun yapping. I'd also encourage signing up for the next 3&3 meeting, each month is pretty low-stakes and there's never any pressure to participate, but every meeting always ends up being a great time with fun discussions to be had.

This week while writing I've been watching the new DC Lanterns show, discovering that MapQuest has been revived in the aftermath of a certain local lake renaming drama, and reading about the sad and unnecessary destruction that AI has brought to physical books. Nuphy has also been hard at work, finally releasing their Raycast collaboration keyboard and a brand new retro Braun-inspired keycap set all within the same week!

→ I'm sure many of you have seen a number of Teenage Engineering's products scattered around the internet at some point in time, even if you didn't realize it. Their music production and minimal/retro aesthetic products have made appearances in many videos and reels in my feed, especially the TP-7 audio recorder and CM-15 microphone. I love these looks, but to me, everything they've made has always been out of reach — too expensive, not very accessible, and obviously not in my wheelhouse as I'm not into music production. However, I'm very intrigued by their recent lo-fi inspired releases — the PO-80 portable record cutter (linked above), and a matching standalone microphone. While these are significantly cheaper ($1200 → $60 just for the microphone) I still see these as not as accessible, because you have to have a pretty specific use case to enjoy them (I'm not looking to cut any of my own vinyls anytime soon). Regardless, the “lo-fi lineup” looks fun, it matches that retro-orange look I've seen a lot of — like the Nuphy caps from above and Syitren N200 from two weeks ago — and the microphone might just be my first ever purchase from them.

→ Obsidian sits at the core of my workflow — every idea, note, link, thought, or image gets organized within it. Sometimes however, needing to sift through and place each thought in its correct folder, with the correct tags, and format everything slows me down. Oriko, a community plugin for Obsidian that turns links and web clippings into local attachments and notes is helping me solve this issue. Right now, I've added it to my Obsidian workflow as a “drawing board” of sorts — throw everything at it and see what sticks. I don't have to worry about shuffling it away or how it's formatted, just copy the link, hit CMD+V, and Oriko places it in a beautiful grid of images. It's been a while since I've switched up or added anything to my Obsidian setup, and I have a lot more to explore within Oriko — like creating multiple grids or custom properties — but I'm loving it so far.

→ The Tofu Universe of keyboards by KBDfans is a collection known for embracing simplicity and convenience while still offering multiple materials, layouts, and reasonable price points. The newest addition — the TOFULL, a 100% premium board — follows that same legacy. I personally don't use full-size boards, but it feels like the pendulum may be swinging back towards their favour, as I've seen more and more projects offer this layout. Just like the other recent Tofu group-buys, the product page lets you fully customize your TOFULL exactly to your liking — lots of top and bottom case colours and materials to choose from as well as a healthy amount of internal component offerings (plates, foams, weights, etc.).

→ For the last clack this week, we'll switch gears a little to some keyboard-adjacent news. The DualPlay Mini by Acer is another new release in the rapidly growing realm of handheld gaming PCs that innovate specifically in the keyboard space. Similar to the OneXPlayer 3 and GPD Win Max 3 (shout out to my handheld-obsessed friend Peter for showing me every single one of these 😄), these devices are making it a point to integrate keyboards and dedicated “laptop modes” into these micro powerhouses. I don't think these keyboards and attachments are up to the standards of keyboard-enthusiasts yet, but as I said, this is a rapidly growing area of gaming tech and I believe it's only a matter of time until mechanical switch technology gets incorporated into one of these bad boys. And that's a handheld this keyboard-lover would be very interested in.

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!!