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  • Showing only topics in ~hobbies with the tag "hardware". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Sound enthusiasts - share your system

      Those of you who love music and the sound of it, please tell us about how you listen. Whether it is a 1000W stereo setup, a soundbar, or a floating Bluetooth speaker I'm interested to see it! What...

      Those of you who love music and the sound of it, please tell us about how you listen.
      Whether it is a 1000W stereo setup, a soundbar, or a floating Bluetooth speaker I'm interested to see it!
      What do you like about your system? What do you want to improve?
      Pictures and links are very welcome.

      35 votes
    2. Photography: Next lens after nifty fifty?

      Beginner amateur photographer here (emphasis on the amateur - zero desire to monetize my photos or start a business). Several months ago I bought a Sony A6000 after doing some research on cameras...

      Beginner amateur photographer here (emphasis on the amateur - zero desire to monetize my photos or start a business). Several months ago I bought a Sony A6000 after doing some research on cameras for beginners. The camera was fine but to completely honest I wasn't very enthused with the pictures coming out.

      Then I bought a 50 mm prime lens, and what a difference! Compared to the kit lenses, my photos started coming out the way I envisioned them. They say you should never blame the gear and while I agree with the general sentiment, photography became a lot more fun after acquiring my nifty fifty.

      My question to all the photographers out there is, what next? For context, I mostly enjoy shooting people from close distances (1-5 m) away. However, a lot of my shots are of groups of people doing sports-like activities so when there's more than two people I have trouble capturing it all with my current setup. Any recommendations are much appreciated!

      13 votes
    3. Dvorak, Colemak and other alternative keyboard layouts

      I wouldn't really consider it a hobby, but couldn't think of where else to try and have this discussion. How many of you have ever heard of, or even considered the idea of alternative keyboard...

      I wouldn't really consider it a hobby, but couldn't think of where else to try and have this discussion.

      How many of you have ever heard of, or even considered the idea of alternative keyboard layouts!? As unanimous as it is, why are the letters of the alphabet even placed that way on our keyboards anyway? Alternative keyboard layouts attempt to optimize the layout by placing letters in such a way as to make typing more ergonomic. Often ideas include focusing on the home row, rolling fingers, alternating hands, high frequency letters on index and middle etc.

      Some examples to look into if you've never heard of the concept:

      • Dvorak, the most well known alternative keyboard layout. Prioritizes alternating hands by separating vowels and consonants by hand.

      • Colemak. As opposed to Dvorak, prioritizes rolling the fingers rather than alternating hands and attempts to limit same-finger bigrams.

      • BÉPO, a layout optimized for the French language!

      • Others include Carpalx, Workman, MTGAP, Norman and many, many more. Creating rather than using layouts has sort of become a hobby for some...

      So what do you think? Supposed ergonomics vs standardization. Would you ever consider switching or do you think it's a bunch of hocus pocus? Perhaps you have switched or tried to switch and would like to share your experience.

      20 votes
    4. Mechanical keyboards, anyone?

      I'm only a beginner down the rabbithole known as mech-keebs, but I thought I'd source some thoughts here. Apologies if this has been expanded on in other ~hobbies threads. Those of you who have...

      I'm only a beginner down the rabbithole known as mech-keebs, but I thought I'd source some thoughts here. Apologies if this has been expanded on in other ~hobbies threads.

      Those of you who have been in the mech game longer, what switches have you tried? What do you find are your personal preferences on switches and why do you think that is? Have you ventured away from the very popular Cherry MX switches?

      What about keycaps? What are your favourite profiles or colourway designs? Preferred material? I am currently rocking a DSA set of keycaps from one of my favourite designers, MiTo: https://mitormk.com/legacy-dsa/ I got the blue/black Tron-inspired set. I gotta admit, I was a little skeptical of ABS caps, but they're really nicely textured in a way that's reminiscent of PBT, but without that powdery grippiness.

      Tell me about some of your favourite layouts too! I hear some pretty aggressive proponents of tenkeyless layouts, but I just really like my numpad for lots of numeric input. If it were just a gaming keyboard, I probably would be pretty happy with TKL though.

      Are you working on any new projects right now?

      Looking forward to all the responses!

      29 votes