Hail Mary question here, in case someone somewhere knows something:
In the late 90s, I lived in the UK in Hampshire. One weekend, I went to a local computer show in Portsmouth or Southampton. You know, a few tables in a community center with people selling all kinds of computer bits.
A small UK company had a booth there and sold a really interesting keyboard. It might have been the manufacturer, or a local importer. I don’t remember. But the keyboard had a UK layout. I bought one.
The keyboard was a folding full-size beige 102-key mechanical keyboard with a chunky coiled cable and an AT interface. It was built like a tank and had really good clicky switches. Basically imagine a slightly lighter model-M sawed in two with a mechanical hinge in the middle, allowing the keyboard to fold in two, with the keys on the inside facing each other.
It was a great keyboard, and while it didn’t fold into a particularly compact package and wasn’t light by any stretch of the imagination, it fit great in a small suitcase and protected itself naturally by sandwiching the keys in the middle. And it folded with a loud, satisfying clunk 🙂
I loved that keyboard, but I lost it in a move 20 years ago. I’ve been trying to find out who made it and what it was for years, but I was never able to find anything at all. The only hits that come up when I search for folding mechanical keyboards are those awful miniature battery-powered bluetooth keyboards for cellphones.
Does anybody know what that keyboard might have been?
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You don’t sound much more hopeful than I am in all honesty, and almost as cynical about where society is headed 🙂 The only difference is, I don’t wish the good guys win because I think they’ve already lost, and the revolution will not be digital but will happen with real guns and real blood one day.
As for cryptocurrencies… don’t get me started: I’ve always known it was a wide-eyed fool’s errand at best, and a pyramid scheme variant at worst, even when it was only Bitcoin and it was worth a fraction of a cent per. In fact - silly me - I even built a mining rig sometime around 2009 or 2010, since people were starting to talk about it. You known, just a PC doing that 24/7. I mined a bunch of Bitcoins for a couple of weeks, then got bored and repurposed the machine to do something more useful with the electricity it burned. I would never have though those pointless Bitcoins would fetch a single dollar a piece, let alone 50 thousand or whatever it was at the peak of the bubble. I kind of wish I hadn’t wiped the hard disk in retrospect 🙂 But hindsight is always 20/20. Still, I never regretted not taking part in that gigantic idiocy.
Anyhoos, I guess we’ll see how things turn out. I have kids too and they’re all grown up and out of college, and landed cushy jobs, so I’m not too worried for them. As for me, I’m old enough that I’m reasonably hopeful that if things turn sour, it’ll be after I’m gone. I’ve already enjoyed the good times, so I can’t complain really.