it's bad to strain my neck looking down at a laptop. laptop keyboards tend to make me hammer through my poor little finger joints' tolerance way faster than a good mechanical. cool as they are, i'm too old to quickly pick up a new input paradigm, like those ortholinear split boards, trackballs, eye tracking, talon voice control, etc..
what ever can i do? am i cursed to focus on one setup at my desk and then always have to compromise if i ever want to work anywhere else? well, maybe not. and it occurs to me that maybe i can share some of this knowledge out, since maybe someone else out there is in the same boat and i don't wanna take my familiarity with computery things for granted if it might help someone.
h/t to @artemis for these three, altogether a makeshift mini-monitor-arm:
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$120 lightweight 10" IPS screen with a hunk of metal in its back (amzn)
$25 metal arm intended for holding up a tablet (amzn)
$15 magnet intended for tripod-mounting phones (amzn)- the little tablet-holding thingie on the metal arm can be removed from its socket and replaced with the magnet-thing (they're the same orb size), and then you just push the magnet up against the metal thing in the base of the screen.
- don't bother with the adhesive metal plate things that come with the magnet, the adhesive will peel off the screen's surface. (consider putting one of those on the back of your phone so the funny arm can pull double-duty when you're not using it with the screen -- holding smartphones generally isn't good for your posture either!)
- the screen is well within the magnet's strength rating in terms of weight (i've used this floating directly over my face in bed, left one sideways for months without it falling off, it's fine).
- clamp the arm to something near a place where you can sit or lay down comfortably, like the coffee table or side table by a couch, or a dresser or headboard by your bed.
- grab a few rubber bands to gently hold the power cable and HDMI to the arm by looping the ends of the band around the little twisty knobs, so they don't just dangle off the screen.
- since they're inexpensive, i bought a couple of the arm/magnet pairs to leave mounted in a couple of my usual comfy spots around the house.
- you can pay another $40 for the capacitive touchscreen version of the screen, if you want such a thing, just expect to also grab a USB-A extension cord to run up the arm along with the power and HDMI.
- you'll need an HDMI cable, and depending on how stiff the cable is, you might want a little u-turn adapter (like this (amzn)) to avoid strain on the cable/socket where you plug it into the screen.
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$60 mechanical qwerty TKL keyboard (keychron)
- the tenkeyless layout is important for posture reasons if you're a right-handed mouse holder -- it's generally a bad idea to turn your arms apart as far as you have to with a full tenkeyful board! you want your forearms both pointed forward, not angling outward. in an ideal world we would've just moved the numpad to the other side, but what're ya gonna do.
- plain old qwerty rectangle. i haven't (yet?) been able to wrap my mind around split ergonomic boards or alternative key layouts.
- brown keyswitches. i prefer zealio zilent switches for my main desktop, but browns will do in a pinch, and i don't wanna break the bank on something i'm gonna be throwing into a backpack on occasion. what i'm looking for is relatively quiet operation and not too much activation force, because my finger joints get tired quickly.
- note: my K8 shipped with a firmware bug where in USB mode the F1-F12 keys can only send their media-key scancodes, but it's upgradeable. in fact i'm pretty sure it's literally just QMK.
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$100 vertical mouse (logitech)
- also important for posture reasons. you should be roughly in the "handshake" position, not twisting the nerves etc. in your arm to have your palm be facing the table. please take the wrist-hurt disease seriously before you get it! your body's evolutionary lineage involves climbing trees, and the resulting muscles and joints will be happier if you use them idiomatically.
- similarly to the keyboard situation, i'm intrigued by some of the more distant departures from the 'mouse' paradigm (trackballs et al), but i'm simply too used to a mouse. the MX Vertical was very easy to get used to!
- lefties might need something like this as Logitech doesn't make a left-handed version of what i have.
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$400 steam deck (steam)
$80 dock (steam)- explained in this post, but tl;dr it's a small, light, and very capable Linux desktop PC that fucking works without needing you to accidentally become a Linux admin -- while simultaneously respecting you enough to not be locked down like Chromebooks etc.
(napkin math noises) $800? yeah, that's the cost of a laptop. $320 for just the I/O stuff if you've already got a suitable portable computer you like with USB or bluetooth and HDMI or VGA out. $160 for just the little screen and arm situation if you've already got input methods you like.
unprecedented levels of cozy. thanks to my flower plushie for modeling it for me.
oh woah this is extremely cool and helpful and informative!
I've been volunteering at an electronics recycling place which has really revamped my uh, tech life? turns out i'm super interested in more portable and ergonomic ways of interacting with tech! literally the first thing on the list (the mini monitor) has been something I've been thinking about for a while because i don't have a TV (just a projector) and sometimes I want to play a video game on a console (specifically elden ring on my ps4 (since i don't have a computer that can run it lol)), but for a variety of reasons don't want to have the projector on taking up a whole wall of one of two rooms of my apt... So this definitely helps whittle down that particular problem! i'm also quietly cooking in the background abt whether i want a steam deck but i think i'm arriving at no? i feel like i don't need a way to play more games, i just need a way to play the games i already have, y'know? idk, this is a self-indulgent ramble which is why it's read more'd haha
anyway, rebugging as a way to not lose this valuable resource lol
