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by muti 575 days ago
A split kb with integrated trackball would help alleviate the awkward mousing situations, e.g. the charybdis [1]. I'm in a similar position having gone down the ergo split keyboard rabbit hole and vim everywhere, now building a charybdis myself

1. https://github.com/Bastardkb/Charybdis

4 comments

Heh, I do 2hrs of z2 4x a week (8hr total) with a Charybdis and inclined treadmill. I use two wrist rests rubberbanded together though; the height of the Charybdis is significant and I don't hover my hands. I'm usually programming, though when I run into more complex problems I usually switch to less cognitively burdensome tasks. Or I just stare out the window and let my gut sit on the problem... which is surprisingly effective in coming up with solutions.

https://imgur.com/a/YpQElUs

I clamped a piece of wood to the desk's edge to have something to push against, as having a point of stability is nice. You can see the back of the treadmill's control panel - I took a regular treadmill, dismantled it, and mounted the panel to my adjustable desk. The treadmill is propped up on blocks to get a ~12% incline; my usual pace is around 3.1-3.4mph, depending on the season/humidity. Sweat... is significant. I usually have a towel under my wrists to uh... collect the arm-runnage >_>

I'm using ball transfer units for the trackball. They're nice, but (as with all trackballs) you should clean the BTUs if you want to keep the smooth flicking. I use a 4k tv as my monitor, so flicking from one corner of the screen to the laptop screen all the way on the other side is really nice.

Dactyls look interesting too (1). Personally, I'm thinking an 'electric eraser' mounted as a thumb stick would be good too.

1. https://github.com/trentrand/ergonomic-keyboard

I went with the less DIY model by getting a UHK with a trackball thumb module: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/product/trackball
warpd has helped me, as far as limiting annoying mouse use.

https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd

I’m yet to deploy this but want to, how have you found it?
It's great, I mostly get by with Tridactyl on the browser but there's the odd website that doesn't work well with it. Warpd does better than anything else at this job. I do have a keymap to get the pointer out of the way, warpd is quite scriptable.