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

I am Léopold, senior data scientist for L’Oréal working for toxicologists. Previously I was a PhD, then postdoc, student in bioinformatics at Sorbonne University (Julien Mozziconacci and Alessandra Carbone were my mentors). I specialized in chromatin organization in 3D in the nucleus. Today I use all of my scientific knowledge to help toxicologists in their evaluation of risk when they evaluate a formula or a molecule. I am active in martial arts (Katori Shinto Ryu and Aikibudo from Alain Floquet), a country music fan, and a happy father of a two-year-old wave of energy!

What hardware do you use?

One HP EliteBook for work. At home I have a classic computer with AMD Ryzen 5 that I bought during COVID time (for working of course, hmm…and a little bit of playing!). I use two keyboards, the ErgoDox when I work and a basic AZERTY keyboard for video games and just when other people (my wife, for example!) want to use my computer. When you have to share a computer with a person not familiar with that kind of keyboard, no way they will use it, so it’s a question of compromise every day.

At work, I mark the position of my keyboard when I finish, because in open space it gets moved every day, and the exact position is important for me. I have a handicap—my right arm is shorter than my left arm—and that was why I was looking for that kind of keyboard. I never had any expectation, I was just looking for any separated keyboard in order to feel better in my usage, and one day I found the ErgoDox page with the help of some geek friends. They all have TypeMatrix and stuff like that, so when I explained my problem they said, “Look at this.” It was a huge revelation for my everyday comfort.

After I really optimized the keyboard, it took me one month to be fully operational with it (Switching from AZERTY to BÉPO was a huge transition! I was like a six-year-old kid with a keyboard, come on!). The first coding session was really slow, but step by step, I came to prefer the ErgoDox 😊. It is fun to see that somehow now, I am familiar with both options and I can write really fast with both of them.

And what software?

Like all data scientists, I spend my life on Python notebooks for GCP/AWS, and Outlook is always open in order to write a lot of email!

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

I use blank keycaps with stickers I bought for the BÉPO layout. On my first keyboard I used Cherry Brown keyswitches, but in order to be more appreciated by my colleagues, I switched to Cherry Silent Red—and in fact, I prefer them in use, so I’m kind of happy with them!

I tried to optimize my previous layout that I found at Azure DevOps in order to correspond more to my usage. There are many variations, but I just use the main layout most of the time.

I really enjoy Oryx and Wally. I started to dream of this keyboard during my first year of my PhD. I got it in the period when all the tools you’ve developed didn’t exist yet, so I spent quite some time to understand how to program the keyboard on C++ (I have never been so close to hardware programing as that) and finally found one repository that did the job. All the questions that I still had were answered by one of my students—who had the same problem as me—and your email support!

What would be your dream setup?

I was thinking of switching to a Moonlander, but in fact I was too familiar with the ErgoDox, so I didn’t want to change again (and optimize a new layout). Because I am in a lot of open space, the keyboard is always in my bag while I am moving from home to workplace.