Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

My name is Douglas Mamilor, and I am an engineer at InVisionApp. I live in Lagos, Nigeria. Outside of work, I spend a lot of time mainly on three wildly different activities: studying Maths, road cycling, and practicing Olympic weightlifting. I can also be found constantly searching (in vain) for a replacement for my favourite cartoon, “The Amazing World of Gumball.” I must admit with some embarrassment that until a few weeks before I bought my Moonlander in August, I did not really know that mechanical keyboards were a thing. A lot (maybe too much :-)) has changed since then. Lol.

What hardware do you use?

I use an M1 Mac hooked up to a 27-inch monitor. I have to switch between the M1 and my personal Intel Mac often, and it’s so awesome that the Moonlander has its software onboard and so nothing changes. Again … I did not know this existed until I bought the Moonlander. Lool. Since then, I have tweaked and flashed the software with Wally probably a thousand times till I found the optimal solution for me. Love it.

And what software?

I spend the vast majority of my time in emacs (and Vim ). I program in Go, C, and JS/Typescript/FlowJS. Everything I need to do—source control, container management, etc.—is usually accomplished from within emacs (yes, I am shilling). Now and then I will use kitty terminal (which is awesome, by the way) if I need to.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

Where do I begin? … Loooool. Until the Moonlander, I did not know that keyboards came in anything but row-staggered layouts. As a matter of fact, despite reading about the columnar layout of the Moonlander, the reality did not actually register in my mind until the keyboard arrived and I made a woeful attempt at typing on it. After getting over the initial panic, it took about a weekend of typing to get used to the layout, and my typing speed and fluidity increased dramatically.

I loved the keyboard but constantly felt that QWERTY did not take full advantage of its strengths, so I navigated a labyrinth of numerous experiments trying to find the configuration that worked best for me. I finally landed on Colemak-DH with a 32-key layout that uses home row mods; layers for numbers, nav, and F-keys; and QMK combos for brackets, parens, equals, etc. All of these were nothing short of astounding to me when I discovered them, and it’s a pity that so many people are not aware of all the amazing work being done in the mechanical keyboard community. My layout and configuration have been life-changing for me, and I do not intend to ever go back to the pinky-destroying lunacy I had endured for so many years.

I also experimented with keyboard switches. I started out thinking I would hate linear switches, and so I got clickies. That did not last very long, and I tried many tactile switches until I eventually learned that I really did not like bumps. Now I use Oil Kings and absolutely love them.

Finally (lol), I jumped around from keycap to keycap and eventually just replaced my keycaps with the ZSA blank keycap set. Products from the other manufacturers I tried did not feel quite right to my fingers, not sure exactly why.

The big takeaway from my adventure with this keyboard is: I think when you buy a product like the Moonlander, you really do owe it to yourself to take the time to figure out how to set it up to suit you.

Side note: If ZSA ever decides to make a Corne-ish build, I would totally buy it :-)

What would be your dream setup?

My dream setup would be a Mac Studio with a Studio Display (or Mac Pro with the Pro Display XDR). Yes I know … $$$$. Lol. I learned a while ago that multi-monitor setups make me less productive.