The people who use our boards.

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

Hi! My “innie” is Tomas, who works at a bank in NYC doing banky stuff. But let’s talk about outtie me: I’m msg, live in Brooklyn, and love tinkering. From remodeling my bathroom (Toto toilets that open when you approach are life-changing!) to messing with Prusas and elite-C Pro Micros… well, we had to get to keyboards at some point.

I also do outdoorsy stuff. In the last six months, I've camped in Algonquin (ON), Letchworth (NY), Jim Thorpe (PA), and Winter Harbor (ME)—the last one extra fun because it felt like stepping into Fallout 4’s Far Harbor expansion. Steam says I’ve put 582 hours into Fallout 4 -no comment-. The rest of my free time goes to playing with my dog Lizzy.

What hardware do you use?

At home, most magic happens at my Herman Miller desk, standing or on the Embody chair. The “dirty work” is on an Ikea utility cart in the shed—though in freezing NY winters, I’ve soldered at my desk.

Desk essentials include Voyager keyboard, Flowerpot and funky Dyson lights, speakers, USB outlets, R2D2, ghosts, and Zippos for the Kamado grill. Under the table are a Cerberus Sliger desktop with AMD Threadripper, RTX 4080, and other goodies. A nearby closet is a mini IT hub: TP-Link routers, switches, QNAP NAS, NUC running home automation, Lutron bridge… and lots of blinking lights I mostly understand.

On trips, I use a GPD Mini, a mouse, and half a Voyager with a StarCraft-friendly keymap.

And what software?

Most days I use ProtonVPN, Firefox, ProtonMail, Steam, Plexamp, Discord, and Notepad. To the chagrin of all those fancy Pacific Coast apps, Notepad is my to-do manager. I edit screenshots in Paint, and I indulge nostalgia in mIRC (username e-621 circa 1995, more recently msg). As needed, I use Fusion 360 for 3D design and Visual Studio Code for coding, mostly on my website.

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

Custom layout? Definitely. Voyager Oryx logs shows 94 revisions—77 on the StarCraft-friendly version with numbers, 17 on the one my innie uses (Excel-heavy life).

That F2 key? Excel (above) or StarCraft (below), pick your poison.

It was easy to pick keycaps for the Planck: GMK Laser on office keyboard, Vilebloom with Nuke artisan at home, Mario-ish on the sticks-and-screws abomination for IT debugging. Tactile Zealios are my fav switches.

My Voyager has Choc switches (orange) with ZSA rubber dampeners. Keycaps are white Chosfox ones, so the color scheme follows the LED lights. Not super easy to find other options, but they look nice. I kept the scheme from my Vilebloom days.

What would be your dream setup?

Honestly, living the dream already. Maybe more keycap options for Voyager—that’s worth a little dreaming.