The Bricoleur: Making Do

Claude Levi-Strauss used the term "Bricoleur", referring to a maker, of sorts, who makes do with the tools and materials at hand. Terry Frohm, principle technician at the CRRF Chuuk marine laboratory in Chuuk in the early 90s, used the term "Making Do" in reference to appurtenances and contrivances, innovations he cobbled together in creating a functioning laboratory, with a minimum of expensive and specialized equipment or hardware.

I recognized, in Levi-Strauss's descriptions of the Bricoleur, the Micronesian fishermen's use---of necessity---of available materials to solve their own technical problems: Marshallese fishermen used a piece of broken glass or a sharp piece of Aluminum beer can to clean a catch of fish on the beach; spears were fashioned of discarded heavy iron wire from water-tank bands, straightened and sharpened; their slings made from old airplane inner tubes. Goggles were carved from wood---using possibly a kitchen knife sharpened on a piece of pumice that had drifted onto the beach, their glass from a
relict World War II airplane. Gillette's study of Tuna fishing in Tokelau features a demonstration by a Tokelauan elder: trapping an air bubble in the hand cupped over one's eye to provide an air-water interface through which to see fish clearly.

This Blog cannot adequately honor the resourcefulness of those men, but I have borrowed the words of Terry Frohm, to describe the purpose of this proposed collection of solutions and innovations of various kinds. These solutions are embarassingly rich in their reliance on modern materials. The intention is to develop a repository of cheap and easy solutions to problems that are important to me. I I hope it can serve as more than a collection. Rather, by example, a reminder that solutions are often at arm's reach, and not in catalogs.


Saturday, November 2, 2019

Out of my league: custom keyboards.


I just ordered a new keyboard.  It's been a slog.   I'll install o-rings if noise is a problem to others in the room.  I was fooling around with my Keytronic el cheapo, long a favorite, but waaaayyy too noisy.  Found that two large paper clips do well in place of a keycap puller, just hook them on at opposite corners and pull.  Nice.  So I started lubricating with silica grease, and it quieted it down some.  A M$ Surface keyboard is flaky on the bluetooth end; two different logitech, and I NEVER could feel good typing on a logitech---ANY logitech.  Luckily I'll be able to try a G.Skill KM360, a mechanical switch keyboard with white backlighting:

I've spent a few days plumbing the depths of the WWW, learning about mechanical keyboards.  This one has a Cherry Mx Red switches, highly tauted, but perhaps noisy?  Tom's Hardware's best keyboard for typing was also affordable, but I could not make the deal.  

During all this, random bolt from the blue: All those custom keyboards, and DIY keyboards (too much soldering and hands on,  limited in flexibility if using off the shelf Printed Circuit Boards, and extremely expensive)..  What if I could get my hands on a TKL (tenkeyless, meaning no number pad), normal size keys,  with F1-F10 keys along the left side like the IBM-XT's fantastic keyboard.   The move by IBM to the AT keyboard layout alienatied me all those years ago.  Look what I found:
From an Unknown Reddit post, I think. 


Someday maybe.  This was custom built, apparently, and is featured on a reddit post at reddit post here_with_additional_function_keys_on_the left. This is apparently a work in progress and is also featured on the site of lfkeyboards.

Someday hopefully.

I had honed my typing on an IBM-XT, with WordStar, an early word processor.  Today I would not use WordStar, but then, it worked for what I needed.  Today, I use Emacs, a text editor, a programmer's editor, which does not insert formatting codes into what I am writing. For what I've been doing, this is essential.  One of the reasons I've steered clear of M$. The F1-F10 keys were organized in two vertical rows along the left side, as in this custom keyboard.  I used my pinky on the F keys to type key chords, or rapid sequences that became impossible to type on the successor to this keyboard, the IBM-AT, with function keys along the top.  Any more, keyboards have 12 Fn keys, but I think the AT keyboard had 10.  Maybe not.

The transition was painful, and it happened at the time I was learning to type fast.  Even today, I sense the onset of an anxiety attack when I think of this.   When I use Micro$oft Windows, I experience a similar anxiety attack, but in my fingers.  I never could feel comfortable writing in Word or even Libre Office.  Muscle memory is developed through a training period, and, at least for me, overcoming this is difficult.

I am certain this keyboard can be worked into the Emacs workflow.  It will not happen in the even distantly foreseeable future.  But as Basho wrote in what may have been his last (final) Haiku:

   On a journey ill
   And over fields, all withered
   Dreams go wandering still.



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