Keyboard of the Month - April - Vote

[katushkin]

Happy May everyone, hope you are all keeping well and keeping yourselves entertained.

We've got three delightful boards representing the (almost) full range of keyboard sizes!

First up we have katotaka's Ortho....board?



Full build thread can be found here

Next is subcat's Realforce 84U



A couple more shots can be found here

Finally is kekstee's HHKB Hipro



One more shot in the Topre thread here

As always the poll wilkl last for seven days! Good luck!

[suicidal_orange]

Something for everyone this month, and not an easy choice

[Sifo]

not even close lmao don't make me lose hope in humanity

[katushkin]

not even close lmao don't make me lose hope in humanity

We all know these threads do nothing for your hope in humanity.

[suicidal_orange]

Humanity is doomed, people can't even cope with staying home for a month even in the age of webcams and unlimited mobile minutes!  Source: there's more traffic day by day

[funderburker]

Humanity is doomed, people can't even cope with staying home for a month even in the age of webcams and unlimited mobile minutes!  Source: there's more traffic day by day

Why you know there's more traffic? Are you leaving your home?

[suicidal_orange]

Humanity is doomed, people can't even cope with staying home for a month even in the age of webcams and unlimited mobile minutes!  Source: there's more traffic day by day

Why you know there's more traffic? Are you leaving your home?

Yup, I make parts that go in medical machines, staying home is not an option

[funderburker]

Yup, I make parts that go in medical machines, staying home is not an option

Stay safe then and keep up the essential work! 

[suicidal_orange]

Yup, I make parts that go in medical machines, staying home is not an option

Stay safe then and keep up the essential work! 

Apparently the 'you can sit in the park' update means 'jump on a train' to the morons so safety is no longer assured


Back on topic - not long to go in this vote.

[suicidal_orange]

5 hours to go, looks like a close one...

[xondat]

As much as I love Topre and those boards... it's only hunting parts down then combining. My vote is obvious

[suicidal_orange]

As much as I love Topre and those boards... it's only hunting parts down then combining. My vote is obvious

And crucial!  Now does katushkin agree with us...

[katushkin]

Not again...

[Sifo]

you know your hobby has truly gone to **** when OEM rubber dome keyboard ties with a completely DIY project with a full build log that took thought and experimentation

no offense to subcat

[nmur]

you know your hobby has truly gone to **** when OEM rubber dome keyboard ties with a completely DIY project with a full build log that took thought and experimentation

no offense to subcat

but he's got a sticker

[funderburker]

I'd like to chip in, if I may. Subcat's board is nice but that DIY board needs to take this KOTM. "Custom" Topre's will come and go but katotaka's ortho has been executed really well and is unique.

[Khers]

I feel like this thread lacks a little admiration of just how difficult it is to build up a crazy Realforce like subcat's. It's not as if you can just run to the shops and buy it like some make it sound. Correct me if I'm wrong, but everything in that build has been out of production for several years at this point and you'd be hard pressed to find another keyboard like it.

[subcat]

didn't expect to get roasted in kotm lol

i agree that katotaka should win, but at the end of the day i'm not sure that getting so worked up about things is really in the spirit of this 'competition' - it's just for fun, this ain't the oscars

i make what i like and if that means the hobby has 'gone to ****', then so be it i suppose

[nmur]

I may be heavily biased towards topre, only because I know what it's like check yahoo japan auctions religiously for months only to eventually fiendishly bid from a nightclub toilet stall at 1am on a discontinued realforce with a rusted plate and suspiciously thick curly hairs underneath the keys

****'s tough, and I've barely seen photos online of some of the components of that realforce, let alone actually obtaining them and compiling into such a clean build

katotaka's board is sick, but everyone's gonna vote on their favourite, and this is how it turned out. I don't think 28 people is a good sample set of the hobby anyway

[katushkin]

I don't think 28 people is a good sample set of the hobby anyway

I agree.

Sadly for whatever reason we only get a maximum of 0.1% of the overall traffic of the forum to vote in this competition, meaning it isn't a true reflection of the opinion of the hobby.

Be that for the better or for the worse, more people voting would mean a more conclusive result, but unfortunately over the last 3 years of doing this we have had numbers drop rather than increase.

To go back to the board, I think without the story right there with the pictures, people wouldn't know how difficult it is to get all the parts together in one place in order to build such a board. I certainly didn't.

[nmur]

I don't think 28 people is a good sample set of the hobby anyway

I agree.

Sadly for whatever reason we only get a maximum of 0.1% of the overall traffic of the forum to vote in this competition, meaning it isn't a true reflection of the opinion of the hobby.

Be that for the better or for the worse, more people voting would mean a more conclusive result, but unfortunately over the last 3 years of doing this we have had numbers drop rather than increase.

To go back to the board, I think without the story right there with the pictures, people wouldn't know how difficult it is to get all the parts together in one place in order to build such a board. I certainly didn't.

I love KOTM, but really only remember it when it happens to appear in Spy, which isn't very often.

If it had the placement that the old >>>DEALS<<< button had, or a banner, it would get a lot more votes.

[funderburker]

I don't think 28 people is a good sample set of the hobby anyway

I agree.

Sadly for whatever reason we only get a maximum of 0.1% of the overall traffic of the forum to vote in this competition, meaning it isn't a true reflection of the opinion of the hobby.

Be that for the better or for the worse, more people voting would mean a more conclusive result, but unfortunately over the last 3 years of doing this we have had numbers drop rather than increase.

To go back to the board, I think without the story right there with the pictures, people wouldn't know how difficult it is to get all the parts together in one place in order to build such a board. I certainly didn't.

I love KOTM, but really only remember it when it happens to appear in Spy, which isn't very often.

If it had the placement that the old >>>DEALS<<< button had, or a banner, it would get a lot more votes.

This has taken a bit off-topic road but I do agree - Placement on main menu would be great. ^{DROP MAKE THAT HAPPEN}

[katushkin]

I vaguely remember a brief conversation when we first started about it appearing somewhere on the front page but it went no further than that.

I think I hoped that because it was under the "keyboards" stub people would see it as much as they did anything else and would come in, but there we go.

[suicidal_orange]

I love KOTM, but really only remember it when it happens to appear in Spy, which isn't very often.

That's why I try to have a discussion about something vaguely related in the thread, but there are too many IC/GB threads so it doesn''t hang around long enough.

Just had a look at what SMF has and there's a "recent poll" function and we don't have many polls.  I wonder how it works...

[richfiles]

CRUD!!! I was busy, I forgot to vote!!! And I would have been a tiebreaker! 

[suicidal_orange]

CRUD!!! I was busy, I forgot to vote!!! And I would have been a tiebreaker! 

Go on then - who wins?!

[kekstee]

I guess it's difficult to judge subcat's board. You kind of need to know how insanely difficult it is to hunt those parts down, let alone exfiltrate them from Korea or Japan.
And even then, how does one weigh up a from scratch build? By design? By complexity? Manufacturing? So I'll just vote what I can and do value, wild concept, I know. Same as the guys voting the build log.

What I didn't expect is to see it roasted as ****ty OEM rubber dome after being nominated and tying kotm for the win. Who wants to read that crap in here? Hide on reddit or discord if you want to be a salty memer.

[richfiles]

Okay... I personally would have given my vote to:

katotaka's Ortho, mainly for the creative construction and arrangement.