So I drank some Kool Aid recently, and I’d like to offer y’all at least one cup!

As a semi-nerd, with experience in translating meanings across dissimilar cultures, I’ve got a strong new understanding of why WayTools doesn’t “just ship.” Why “good enough” really is not as good as what I’ll call “a vanishingly fluid disappearing act!”

I was surprised to learn a week ago that I was invited to joined the ranks of TREG. Now, I remember well the “what’s he got that I haven’t got” feeling whenever I heard one of those announcements, so “I feel your pain.”

The TextBlade arrived late Saturday morning. I got to spend an hour with it, then another hour later in the day. Two primary things happened in those two hours. I began to get acquainted with the typing experience on the TB. AND I got ahead of myself, got several things tangled up and couldn’t get it to work anymore. Thought I’d broken it for sure.

When I approach a new keyboard I immediately try to impress myself with how fast I can type. “Now is the time for all good people…”

Apparently, I accomplish this by flailing both hands at the keyboard with great abandon, fingers flying all over and kind of slapping at the keys. I’ve always been impressed. Until Saturday. The garbage coming out of my fingers was appalling. It took a little bit for me to discover that holding my hands still and letting my fingers just float a tiny bit got really pretty good results.

Sunday afternoon, while Southern California was drowning and Central Florida was in danger of being blown away by January tornados, Mark Knighton offered me much (delightful KoolAid)! I really did enjoy it all, and I saved some for you!

First, he untangled my efforts from the night before that caused me some anxiety. He got the TB not work. The first problem was caused by Apple’s unannounced change of procedures for BlueTooth in iOS 10.2. As I understand it, when BluT is turned on, the iPhone scans for peripherals, but then it stops and no longer goes looking. So the peripheral needs to be already hunting when BT is turned on. I think. Or, honestly, I may still have it backward.

And when I got to fiddling with Jumps, I didn’t realize that each change means that something like 50 kernels need to be re-written into firm memory. Since I didn’t know that, I interrupted one of those writes, probably by thinking it had frozen and I should reboot by dis-and re-connecting it; and I created what looked like permanent damage. But the TB has several layers of safety, including a basic kernel for each module that writes nearly instantaneously to protect for interruptions. Saved my bacon.

Now sitting at my local Subway store alternating bites and bytes. (Sorry!)

Walking over here, I found myself thinking there could still be some out there who think this is a mirage or a scam. It. Is. Not.

Write me at lexbaer@gmail.com and tell me what I could do to put your mind at rest about that.

I also gained an understanding and appreciation of the enormity of the task of creating this bitty thing. It takes a lot of machine discrimination to make the proper difference between

a ideal keystroke and the more typical keystrokes that a gazillion different humans will make. They maybe are

struck off center

struck with fingernail instead of the pad of the finger

struck from an angle

bridge two different keys with the desired key getting the stronger numeric capacitance score

bridge two keys with both keys getting very similar intensity of capacitance readings.

This latter condition is one that has required developing a process for machine learning/AI discrimination to develop the rule that says, “This particular ‘human’ really wanted an i in this location instead of the k that he also pressed.”

And I am convinced that this level of problem is something that is reasonable to have been discovered only after the first full production run. I am also convinced that Mark is not working for perfection, but that he is rightly **very **concerned about hurdles. There are so many elements that make this way more than a keyboard. Maneuvering around a body of text or between apps or between machines without taking your hands away from the keyboard is incredibly productive and worth every bit of the price. But if a poor typist starts poking at it and getting spurious results, it won’t take very long before the TB gets tossed in the “gadjunk” drawer and the content of " word of mouth" turns rapidly sour.

I was interested in the moments that Mark spent singing dbk’s praises. What has helped is the amazing depth of his ability to find many ways of mishandling this thing. (Wait, what did that sound like? It really was supposed to be a compliment.)

Now at (a large) Starbucks, and no one has even noticed me, uh it, yet. But the other night at Pepper’s the waitress stopped dead in her tracks and said, “That is SO COOL!” And the TextBlade was all she really wanted for a tip. LOL!

Over these 5 days, I’ve come to recognize the (slight) misshapeness of my hands. My pinkies curl in a little bit, like 2 parentheses. I discovered this by continually typing ’ when I want p. As others have noted, it’s different on an old fashioned keyboard. I could just slam my pinkie out there and I’d know if I’d hit the near side of the p or just the far side of the ’ key. So I find myself leaving my hands anchored and sliding the TB forward or back by 1/8" or so. IMHO, making this thing so even idiots (pardon the judgment) get what they want from the keyboard will make the difference between “it’s kinda finicky” and “this is so freaking cool!” And it may be even more important for the partial nerds who are impaired by their assumptions that they can dive into anything, so they start poking around and at worst brick it. So writing code to fence out those who have not yet perfected their adaptation is, I think, necessary. And yes, I think it is more like grinding off the misalignment of concrete slabs on a sidewalk so people don’t trip, and not like “Warning! Coffee is hot!”

I also think Mark feels the pressure that an input device has a greater requirement for flawlessness than, say AirPods. If the wireless audio is sloppy, get annoyed and put it in your pocket. But I can picture an MD pounding his fists on the table and yelling, “I’ve got to get these notes typed so the Emergency Room will know what to do with Mr. Jones!” (Ok maybe that’s KoolAid, but you get the idea.)

Maybe I’ve gone long enough for now. I shouldn’t have sat in the corner at Starbucks.

Hang in there. Though you are probably right now more frustrated than I am, now that I have my hands on it, the waiting time seems to have flown swift as a dream dies at the opening day.