Slashdot Mirror
DIY Ambient Light Keyboard Kit
An anonymous reader writes "
Do you envy new Apple 17" PowerBook keyboard?
Here's keyboard light
kits for all most any keyboard no matter which OS you are using. There's
NINE choice of colors (Light Blue, Deep Blue, Hot Pink, Yellow, White, Purple,
Neon Green, Lime Green, and Red) available but unfortunately not coming with
light sensor.
"
How long before we can have multicoloured ones? And then, how long before someone comes up with a cool hack to make the lights flash!
Lucky its not microsoft made, or you'd see patches coming out from day one to prevent script kiddies from taking over the control of the lights and annoying you senseless.
Real Geeks can type in the dark anyway, this is just another add on for your thirty one thousand one hundred and thirty seven machine.
Pretty soon we'll have a story about some guy who put a VTEC sticker on his keyboard and replaced the cable with a thicker one, and claims it increased his typing speed by 30 wpm...
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
There are so many new Slashdot stories featuring case mod kits and the like. These are filed under the 'hardware' subject which sometimes contains actual legitimate, interesting stories about hardware, as opposed to stories about glowing things which crack babies attach to their hardware in order to make it glow.
Apple introduces a somewhat practical keyboard which illuminates when dark, so that the symbols on the keys are readily visible. This is nice, and seems like a useful feature.
The case mod subject/response here is a type of glow strands to be routed between the keyboard keys so that the spaces between them light up, which is useful if you have no tactile sensation of touch in your fingers and therefore don't know where the keys are. If you do know where the keys are, but are just looking for the key symbols, you're out of luck because PC keyboard keys are opague and don't benefit in any practical, functional manner from this mode of illumination.
Therefore, IT IS A WASTE OF TIME, equivalent in absurdity to cargo cults fabricating mock stick and canvas airplanes. "Almost like a Macintosh!" - when you were a kid, did you also fasten cardboard cards with clothespins to the spokes of your bicycle in order to make it sound like a moped?
Couldn't there be a separate subject for case mods? That way I could filter this stuff right out. I propose the icon representing the subject should be a baboon's bright red arse, the color of which also serves no functional purpose but nevertheless appears to attract other baboons.
But only if it has Ogg Vorbis support.
Oh, and plays Divx movies.
I realize that you want rainbow colored lights because you are a flaming homosexual and the rainbow is your logo, you fucking cumguzzler. But not all of us are fucking queers and this means that some of us just want standard one-color faggoty ass keyboard lighting but ultra-super faggoty ass keyboard lighting. Maybe you should stop eating shit because I think it's starting to affect how you think, you fucking douchebag. In the future, please don't post on Slashdot. I've taken a look at your past comments and what it appears we have is just another asshole who thinks they know a lot about computers, programming, architecture, and theory simply because you can read Slashdot on Mozilla. You're a fucking idiot without any real knowledge and you lack the ability to think. Get back to flipping those burgers you worthless asshole.
Yeah, that's right. I'm calling you out. You don't have any fucking kung-fu. All you have is AIDS. AIDS FAG!!! I bet when someone asks you what languages you know, you say HTML and English. God, what a pathetic shit-face you are. Your mother has big fat floppy donkey titties. She's a whore and loves to nibble on cock.
Hey, did you see the new Lord of the Rings film yet? I didn't. Do you know why? Because I'm not a fucking loser like you are you fucking shitfaggot. You love taking man-cock in the anus. It is what you absolutely live for. You wake up thinking about man-cock in the butt and you go to sleep dreaming about man-cock in the butt. When you have lunch, you think to yourself, "I wonder how this turkey sandwich will affect my ability to take man-cock in the butt." In case you haven't picked up on it, I hate you. I really do. And this isn't just a casual hatred of you. I really do hate you. You're fairly fucking typical of the assholes on Slashdot that thinks he/she knows shit just because they read Slashdot. Yes, you download illegal mp3s that violate copyright law and you know how to install software. You are not a "network guru" or a "software engineer." In fact, if you ever do move out of your parent's basement, your career will have nothing to do with any real technology. Perhaps you can become the secretary at Big Black Cock, the magazine.
Oh, in response to the next dribble of shit that came out of you - I'd like to see the days when your mother was pressure sensitive. I mean, these days so many dicks have been in so many different holes that she doesn't even notice when the homeless guy from down the street is chest fucking her in an open sore. Puss is dribbling out along with the ejaculate from the bum but she doesn't notice, now does she? But, like the gay fucktard of a son you are, you're there to catch it in your mouth as it drips off of her. Christ, I bet your father is Muslim.
You clearly never do any mathematical typing. Learn to use LaTeX and you'll be able to answer these questions without thinking.
& - above 7
` - with ~ at the top right and
[ next to p with {.
Anyone remember Apricots from the 80's ? They had an alphanumeric lcd with programmable function keys under it, neat idea, no idea why it didn't catch on.
Because the keyboards weighed 156 pounds each, and after a few hours of use the surface temperature approached the boiling point.
Bit of a showstopper, that.
I write in my journal
yeesh, why would I want to backlight all the gunk that gets trapped in my keybord over all the years? Why don't we just make it a blacklight so any mystery stains (like, you know, coffee) can glow?
And why manufacture a mod kit, why not just build a keyboard?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
youve obviously never had a midterm project due in 8 hours with a sleeping roommate within 10 feet of you. :)
--aiee
...but all the crap, gook, bread grumps, cat hairs, and all the other assorted nastiness that tends to collect there. Eww, thanks but no thanks.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Oh, hooray! Now that I can illuminate the gutters between my keys, I (as well as my friends and family) can see with perfect clarity all the dust and hair that builds up in there. How delightful!
(Instructions to slashdot user: Please insert obvious, misinformed, childish anti-microsoft joke in the space below.)
Thank you.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Although I admit the extra five words probably came from the Pepsi can I glued to my tower's exhaust port.
When I finally save up enough box tops to get a "Type-R" monitor sticker and a genuine copy of a fake Recaro executive chair I'll be the fastest damned typist in the world.
You'll probably waste your time doing shit like *practicing.*
Hoser.
KFG
Add a nice fog effect though. That'd be nice. =) Although, much harder to read the keyboard.
It's really high tech. You place little magnetic loops and wire coils under several keys (selected by frequency of keypresses and desired brightness of illumination) and as you type, it charges a small capacitor that drives the light.
Oh, and I just made that up.
--been thinking about this. You know how some places when they are under a drought water restriction, they have odd/even days for watering? People with odd numbered addresses on one day, even the next, and so on. Keeps the water supply from getting slashdotted.
What would be nice is an honor system "when to click over to a hot new link" regimen.
Something like this, open for review and tweaking. You look at when the story was posted, note the time. Wait to the next full quarter hour before the onslaught begins. That's your start point. Here's how it gets divvied up. Now you take your real name-you only have to do this once, then remember the number-you do a normal letter/number substitution, first letter of first name, first letter of last name, transpose to the correct numbers, add them together, add again if double digits, until you have a single digit. Just a normal numerology deal there with the alphabet, 1 -26 numbers. That final added together digit is your permanent static name number, that you use with the "time" number to click over. Every 5 minute increment from the article post time start point full quarter hour, counts as a digit starting with 1, etc. When your static name number matches your honor system time-digit number for the article, then it's cool for you to click over.
This way it gets spread out better, instead of all at once when the article is posted. Voluntary non-anarchy, being polite to the server, and maybe everyone can actually get to the link without it crashing the server.
OTOH, training in IRC could give you a habit of substituting certain numbers for letters &c.
It would suck to turn in a note to your boss that read "W3 are 0wnz0ring Company A @ the convention."
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX