Geekery

The Top Ten Weirdest Keyboards Ever

Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by Jake.

Keyboards. We use them everyday, and if you’re me, you bang ‘em so hard you rub the letters off. Investigating alternativtives, I came across these – keyboard variants that seem to come straight out of a Star Trek episode. Here’s my Top 10 list of the weirdest keyboards ever.
10. Roll-up keyboard
This keyboard has the same measurements as a standard 102-key keyboard, but there’s a big difference. You can roll this one up and put it in your pocket. Nice. Oh, and if you spill your coffee, no worries, just lather, rinse, repeat.

9. The wrist keyboard
This one might be useful if you’re in the need to type stuff while doing practical work in tough climates, like Macguyver  – but if you would wear this keyboard at the office, you might be considered a bit geeky.

8. Maltron 3D Ergonomic Keyboard
Things are starting to get a bit more weird, eh? Getting used to this keyboard isn’t something you’ll do in 10 minutes or so – it will take a while for sure. But if you have medical problems with your hands, this might be a good choice since it’s a very ergonomic keyboard. Or you might consider calling your doctor to fix your wrists instead.

7. The SafeType keyboard
Just take a look at this one. Do you understand how to use it? The idea is that your hands and arms shall be in a more relaxed position while working with the SafeType compared to a traditional keyboard. While doing research for this article I ran across this review of the safetype:

“However, if you have a low tolerance for frustration (and learning to type in a new manner can be frustrating) then your best bet is to stay flat and stick with a keyboard that’s a little more “common” Erm…yeah.
6. Virtual Laser Keyboard
This is more cool than weird though. This laser gadget projects a virtual keyboard on a table or other suitable material, and then interpret your finger movement and pass them on to your PDA or whatever you have it connected to. Cool.

5. The frogpad
The frogpad is a tiny, tiny keyboard – or it would be more suitable to call it a keypad actually. The manufacturer say that you can get up to 40 words per minute if you practice between 6 to 10 hours with it. Any idea why they are calling it a frogpad?

4. The Twiddler 2
What do you say about the Twiddler 2? It looks to be quite painful to use, or what do you think? According to the testimonials at their site, it will take you ‘a weekend’ to learn typing 30 words per minute, so the frogpad wins that round. The Twiddler actually reminds me of those guitar classes I took when I was young…

3. The Orbitouch
This one could be a leftover from Area 51, or a prop from the set of any science fiction movie. Wonder how it works? Here’s what the manufacturer say: “The orbiTouch creates a keystroke when you slide the two domes into one of their eight respective positions. You type the different characters by sliding the domes to create letters and numbers. The orbiTouch also has an integrated mouse, so moving the domes gives you full mouse and keyboard capability!”

The target group for this keyboard is of course people who have limited or no motion in their fingers or hands, and that’s a very good thing – but anyway,.. weird.

2. The Datahand
This product is aimed at people who get pain in their hands from typing with a traditional keyboard – and that’s a good thing. It’s still looks like a very strange keyboard. Everytime I see this one I think of the movie Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, don’t know why. I love this one – the keyboard, not the movie.

1. The Tidy Tippist
Isn’t this one lovely? The keyboard is hidden inside a decorative, washable tablecloth. The electronic is woven into a fabric, which finds itself between layers of water resistant felt as sandwich material. The soft felt surface makes it a pleasure for fingers to tip – a cosy keyboard. Awesome, hehe.

Honorable mention
Here’s my favorite keyboard of all times – the rubber keyboard (chiclet keyboard) of the ZX Spectrum. I still have one at home…love it.

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Geek God – James Cameron

Posted on 19. Aug, 2009 by Jake.

When one mentions James Cameron one could almost be referring to two people simultaneously. There’s the Oscar-baiting period-obsessed “King of the World” Cameron; then there’s the man who endeared himself to legions of geeks by directing some of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, inventing all sorts of groundbreaking movie tech as he went along and essentially ushering in the era of CGI filmmaking. Obviously, we’ll be focusing on the latter.
Cameron cut his teeth as a screenwriter, effects designer and model maker for the legendary Roger Corman. Appropriately, Cameron’s later advances in CGI would prove to be just as influential as Corman’s preceding work with stop-motion animation, with Cameron essentially ushering in the transition from stop-motion characters to computer-generated ones.

Cameron’s first major success as a director came with The Terminator, a movie that exceeded all expectations and proved that sci-fi could be a profitable genre and appeal to wider audience, rather than a small niche. After the success of The Terminator, Cameron went on to direct two more hugely popular sci-fi films, Aliens in 1986 and The Abyss in 1989. Significantly, both Aliens and The Abyss picked up Oscars for Best Visual Effects, foreshadowing the revolution that Cameron was about to usher in with his next major film.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a strong contender for the most influential film of the last 20 years. At the time it was released, it was also the most expensive film ever made, although it made more the double its budget at the box office and proved to be a massive hit for Cameron. T2 contained an unprecedented number of CGI shots, almost 300 in total, but it was the manner in which they were integrated into the action that changed the way movies were made.
Applying technology developed on one of his previous films, The Abyss, Cameron came up with the concept of a cyborg made entirely out of liquid metal. Shots of the T1000 morphing from one form to another cost almost six million dollars and took eight months to produce, but the payoff was cinema’s first realistically rendered CGI character and proof the CGI could be integrated into movie in a seamless manner and used to produce shots that no-one would have dreamed possible.
 Like Aliens and The Abyss before it, Terminator 2 went on to win several Oscars, including Best Visual Effects. Besides being critically acclaimed and massively successful, there’s a strong argument to be made for T2 being the most influential film of the last 20 years. Put simply, it proved that CGI was a viable technology; without T2 there would be no Matrix, no Spiderman, no Lord of the Rings.
 
Cameron is currently working on his first feature since Titanic swept the Oscars in 1997. It’s called Avatar and it’s set to do for 3D technology what T2 did for CGI. Footage has already been screened and one of the people who saw it had this to say: “I think it’s gonna be gigantic. It’s gonna be another one of those benchmarks. There’s gonna be Before that movie and After.” This person just happens to be Setevn Soderbergh, who’s directed everything from grimy indie films to multiple Oscar-winners like Traffic and Erin Brokovich to blockbusters like Ocean’s 11, so he probably knows what he’s talking about.

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