Keyboards, And A Cool Photo

Okay, let me start by saying that keyboards are important. Very important, even. You’re probably thinking: yes, genius, we get that. You’re a writer, right?

Now, I should probably mention that I always knew keyboards were important—the real question, of course, is how important.

My old keyboard—a Dell one (yes, Dell from Hell and all that)—was actually a very good keyboard. It had a nice, strong feel to it; it made a nice, big CLANK when you hit it; it had nice, big keys; and it was black; and it was a great keyboard. It even had really tall keys, that required a fair bit of effort to press.

It’s weird, huh? You’d think that a keyboard should be easier to press, not harder—but actually, I find that keyboards lacking in attack (is that what it’s called?) have a tendency to provoke errant keystrokes, which are very annoying!

There is nothing more irritating than typing away at your latest scene (‘The dragon made its lair, in much the same way an oversized, carnivorous bird would’) and then—BANG!—you’ve accidentally changed to a different window and all your prose is on the web browser!

Or—my personal pet hate—you’re typing away, and a bad keystroke sends your writing on the previous paragraph, in the middle of a sentence... heck, in the middle of a word!

(You must be thinking I’m really weird after all that...)

Anyway, I broke the Dell keyboard in a fit of rage. It wasn’t directed at the keyboard, mind you: I had to edit my Drama essay to hand in the next day, and LibreOffice writer had, for some unfathomable IT reason, decided that the particular paragraph I was trying to edit should be read-only.

I still don’t why it was doing that; instead I saved the doc, and worked on it from Word.

But not before I broke the keyboard.

(I would have broken the monitor, but that would have been rather more expensive to replace.)

Anyway, I bought a BenQ keyboard thereafter.

I’m not naming and shaming here. The keyboard was actually pretty decent: it had lots of buttons—like this one—whose purpose I have never ascertained; it had big keys; and plenty of spacing; and it was a decent enough keyboard.

But it didn’t have attack. It was too soft.

So, I am now writing this on a different keyboard which I managed to find buried in the house. I’m not sure who made it, because the only branding is a funny little blue thing that looks kinda like an ‘E’. Regardless, I can smash the keys with abandon and they CLACK! nicely, and it has everything the other ones do, so I’m happy.

The keyboard is also UK, so I don’t have to deal with all that no-pound-or-euro-sign bullshit the US ones give. (I’m not too keen on the placement of the @ and # signs either. Oh, Americans...)

What About That Photo

I was always confused about what you call pictures and images and photos in the English language. In Romanian, we just have ‘imagini’ and ‘poze’. ‘Pictures’ is kind of a grey area with me.

Anyway, take a look:

‘It’s a landscape!’ you say; ‘It has snow and mountains and trees and shit’.

Well, that is correct. However, it looks eerily similar to a major setting in my novel, the Necromancer. Specifically, it looks like the ‘Northern Mountains’; a mountain range—who would have thought?—towards the north of Arachadia—surprise!—in which the Necromancer has his lair.

So there you go. A little, pale view into my imagination.

Update: had to fix some typos. Sorry for that.