The Stochastic Game

I was recently made aware of a group buy for a “Southpaw Full-Size” keyboard that has its numeric keypad section moved to the left-side of the keyboard:

As a southpaw myself, I… just don’t get it.

I mean, sure, as a keyboard nerd, I get it – it’s a cool looking keyboard, it’s customized to someone’s needs, and, in the mechanical keyboard community, more form-factors are always welcome.

I just don’t get it that it’s marketed at left-handed people – or at least marketed as a “left-handed” keyboard. If anything, it should actually get marketed at right-handed people. See, most right-handed people prefer “tenkeyless” designs, since it keeps their mouse (which is on the right of the keyboard) closer to the the main part of the keyboard. This means they don’t have to move their right hand too much between typing and moving the cursor.

Now, left-handed people don’t get this problem – if we consider the proper left-handed people who put their mouse on the left instead of living a lie¹. So getting a keyboard that puts the numeric keypad on the left does nothing much besides bringing a right-handed people problem to left-handed people! For right-handed people who are conflicted about standalone numeric keypads, however, this might be a good option to consider.

Either way, if you’re interested in this so-called “left-handed” keyboard, for whatever reason, head over to the group buy page, you still have a week or so to order.

This article on urban development by Devon Zuegel is a good primer on why prioritizing walkability over vehicle traffic is important in urban development. It reminded me how I really appreciate that downtown Vancouver has a wonderful waterfront made of beaches, bike lanes, and an almost endless promenade¹, while, say, downtown Seattle has a highway instead.

We could have had highways instead too, back in the late 1960s when the city had plans for several of them going through downtown. The plans included the partial destruction of the Vancouverite Chinatown, so of course the local residents revolted. Less than two decades since the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, these Chinese immigrants were actually joined by many other residents elsewhere around the city and, together, managed to cancel the project entirely…. although the project’s cancellation may have also been greatly helped by the federal government’s refusal to invest any money in it. But hey, either way, I’m happy.

Devon’s article also had this interesting video-game-related tidbit:

Fun fact: SimCity was forced to pretend that all parking lots were underground, because the game would be “really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots". SimCity’s lead designer explained, “I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities … We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.“

News of movie or TV adaptations come and go all the time but today my io9 RSS feed brought me a trio of titles that are directly related to my tastes:

• News that the Vampire Chronicles’s TV show seems to be coming for real via Hulu (I’m just sad Bryan Fuller isn’t involved anymore but apparently he’s good friends with the showrunner so it might still turn out pretty).

• Netflix announcing that they’re adapting a whole bunch of Millarverse titles (more here) in various formats.

• Amazon surprisingly picking up Tales from the Loop, the art-book-turned-RPG (more here), as a TV show.

Not only are those 3 opportunities for me to say things like “_I liked it before it was cool_” and “_the original material is better_”, but it’s also 3 things that will bring some additional cash (hopefully) to the original authors whose work I enjoyed.

These days, adaptations can often bring, at best, a lot of geek backlash, but I find that even if I don’t like the adaptation, I’m happy that it’s bringing attention to the original material, and money to the original authors. It’s almost always good news in my book, except for the uncommon case where those original authors get fucked for some reason.