Best games of 2020

It is around this time of the year I look back and give a nod to the games that I have been playing and enjoying in the year. This is purely my own experience and opinion, of course, so your mileage will vary considerably in terms of resonating with you.

This year I'm going to keep it REALLY short. 

 

Best PC Game of 2020 - Noita.

I still have not beaten the game, but love it anyway. I'm getting really close now. This is last years runner up, but this year it continued to improve and the replayability concern I have is clearly moot point, considering the hundreds of hours I have in the game by now. Will I still play it once I have "won"? I'm not sure, perhaps then might be time to try out some of the many many mods.

Best Mobile Game of 2020 - Solitaire : Bakers Game

I play the Solebon brand of solitaire, and the "Baker's Game". It is my go-to if I need to kill a few minutes. My win streak is now 169 games. It seems a bit sad that solitaire is the best game on a mobile, but hey, it is all about what you enjoy.

 

Most promising game 2020 : Cyberpunk 2077.  

I only just got this, and have not gotten a lot further than character creation. This could be the best game of the year, technically, but I think the experience will have to be pushed into next year. Let's see if it is as much fun as it took to make. I do trust CD Projekt RED. It will undoubtedly have a whole raft of bugs, but they will slowly sort them out. I will say that so far I have not noticed any, but like I say, I've just scratched the surface on this.

New Hobby (Obsession?) : Manual Typewriters

The Collecting Bug

One day you think, for whatever reason, I'd like to get myself an "X". The object in question could be almost anything, although some things seem to be more collectable that others.  Spoons? Sure, why not. In my case I've gone through this list of things : folding knives, watches, pocket watches, locks (to pick). Anyway, you've decided to buy this object, and you get one. Are you "one-and-done"? Does this satisfy? For many, yes. But for the collector, often the answer is no. So then the question changes, as you get more of these things - how many is too many? Gulp.

Random Beginnings

In my case, at least two of my hobbies have started by other people and what were random events, more or less. I started pocket watch collecting due to a mis-delivery of a mysterious package, and I could not make out who it was for so I opened it. The pocket watch inside was fascinating, and when I returned it to its rightful owner I decided to get one for myself. I have one on me now, it is part of my daily wear. It brings me a lot of pleasure.

Similarly, one day my daughter came back from school with junk/treasure (it depends on your perspective) from the side of the road - an old typewriter that was no longer working. She put it in the garage, and after a few months of not looking at it I threw it out in an effort to reclaim some space - a constant battle I'm fighting in the garage and attic. Before doing so I did go to ebay and I could see that I could replace it with a working one for about $25 (at the time), so it didn't seem like I was throwing away a lot of money. After all it didn't work, or at least, it didn't work well. In hindsight, I probably could have got it working with what I know now. Anyway, I did have a little moment when I had thrown it in the trash and I looked down at it - I felt sad, like it was a great shame to dispose of such a mechanical beauty, working or not. I do like old mechanical things a lot of the time, such as my pocket watches. Still, it was the right thing to do at the time so sighed and I moved on with my life.

...and then one day

We were selling some household nick-nacks and paintings in an online auction. Something we have never done before. To find all our items and set them as "favorites" I had to go through the entire catalogue. It was then that I came across an Olivetti Lettera 32 DL and I remembered the typewriter in the bin, like some ghost calling me. We were having some success with selling our other items, so, on a whim, I put in the minimum bet on this typewriter. In the end I won it without anyone else bidding, ie at the minimum bid. I found myself to be surprisingly excited about this. 

Waiting is a curse

The problem is, while I was waiting on the auction to complete, I started checking out other typewriters. What if I got outbid? It seemed that if I really wanted one, I should just buy one somewhere else. But which one? Notice that I have overcome the "one-and-done" issue by buying two before I even had one in my hands, if you see what I mean. And once you have more than one, well, the sky is the limit then, right? What if the one I got is faulty and I can't repair it? I do want a working one, I don't want to be disappointed. I had already gone down the Olivetti path, so I looked at the other models and liked the look of the standard green Lettera 32 with black keys. It is fairly common and often reasonably priced, and didn't look overly complicated. I bid on one that was going cheap but looked very old and moldy, not a lot of info in the listing though. Not long after bidding I got impatient with all this uncertainty and did a "buy it now" on a similar, fairly expensive one that claimed to be in pristine condition, with a good looking type sample. There, done.

For those keeping count at home, that is now three typewriters. One for sure, and two possibilities. Inevitably, the two I were bidding on I won, but in my defense I didn't know that was going to be the outcome at the time.

Just my type?

By now, the typewriter bug had bitten me fairly hard. I was really interested in everything about them, but particularly on repairs/maintenance. The collector in me also appreciated the other manufacturers designs and the natural question comes up - which one is the best? Here I discovered the wider "typosphere", a community of diverse enthusiast. Tom Hanks being one of them, who has a personal collection of several hundred machines and has even in a documentary about typewriters called "California Typewriter". Recently I watched this with my wife and I think it has helped her understand where my enthusiasm for these devices comes from... partly. 

Anyway, the day came and I picked up the auction-won Olivetti DL, a trip across Sydney to the dusty warehouse where they sell and dispose of the goods in physical form. I was pointed to a fairly compact and unassuming grey case with a black stripe and black handle and was left to take it away. I took it back to the car, carefully unzipped the case (the Olivetti cases are notorious for having broken zippers, I later found out, and I can see why) and looked at the machine, the first of mine, for the first time. I gingerly pressed a few keys and they did, in fact, seem to work. The joy of that was significant, the auction listing was fairly vague on if it fully worked or not, so any signs of life were positive. When I got it home I found that it more-or-less worked fully, with the only issue being that the keys were all quite heavy and a bit slow to return. I didn't really know that at the time as I had nothing to compare it to. I was discovering what all the levers did, and how it all worked. It was great. Oh, and the bell didn't work.

I was doing some typing test when I discovered something that I should have probably noticed sooner - the DL was a sans-serif typeface. I'm not sure if they are all like this, but I think it suits the "retro-futuristic" angle the machine has. If I ever want to write a science fiction story, I think this would suit well. So, I'm very happy with this, but it doesn't really show the typical typewriter experience. Never mind, the other two Olivetti's had arrived in quick succession from eBay and they did have the more typical Serif fonts. 

The two green Olivetti were at the polar ends of the spectrum in terms of price, and also in terms of functionality - but not how you would expect. The cheap device I call "old moldy" came to me with a fair bit of black mold on the case, but this easily wiped off with a little soapy water, dried off immediately. It worked flawlessly otherwise, with a very light touch.

The other, more expensive, Olivetti Lettera was immediately more visually appealing but turned out to have a slew of issues, some of which I am yet to resolve. Firstly, the leading edge of the paper when it feeds in sometimes, and more often than not, gets jammed under the paper guides to the side of the vibrator. Then, when you do manage to finagle the paper into place, it does type away. Not quite as light a touch as "old moldy", but OK. The type is quite tightly packed, and if I was trying to get the most words on a page this is the machine I would use of the three. 

Not long into the test I noticed another problem though, the type was fading in front of my eyes, each letter getting progressively paler. Scratching my head a bit I soon realized that the ribbon was not advancing. A lot of fiddling around later, and experimenting, showed that I could get it to advance, but only reliably when going in the other direction. Then the platen knob broke off in my hand, a fair old chunk falling on the table. Oh lord, what now!? Seems that during shipping, or just as a matter of circumstance, it chose now to break. Fortunately it was a very clean break, and when the part was put back you could almost not see it was broken, only if you were looking for it really. So I super-glued it in place, and a bit shaken and afraid that something else would go wrong, called it a night.

Hyper-Collecting

By now though, I was looking further afield than the Olivetti garden I started in. There were other brands and models that intrigued me - either by their reputation or by physical appearance. I was looking at Gumtree and eBay, but also took a trip to some local Op-shops on a Saturday morning on the hopes of finding a cheap machine that way. I didn't have luck in the Op shops, the only machine I found was, funnily enough, another Olivetti machine that was truly in appalling and irreparable state.

Having gone through a few experiences of collecting things, I think I have managed to escape some of the common pitfalls and quickly narrow my focus down to certain models and brands that are the ones that appeal to me most. I have quite a strong and instinctive opinion on what is attractive, and while I can appreciate some machines technically, if they look god-awful to my eye I'm not going to get one. 

The next machine I got was one that stopped me in my tracks as soon as I scrolled to it. It was pretty much love at first sight. I mean, and it might just be me, but to my eyes this thing is gorgeous! Look at the curves. Click it for a larger image to truly drink it in.

 

It was a "buy it now" on eBay, fairly $$$, and I hit the button first and justified it second. My justification came easily, not only did I really like the design, but it also somehow reminds me of my mother and I wanted to get something to do this. It is an all metal case Royal "Royalite 110" model. I have it now and everything works nicely on it. It has an black only ribbon installed, but can take a two color ribbon - the switch to do this is not in the keyboard area like most, but tucked back near the platen neatly on the right. You can just see it in the photo there as a chrome tab. I like too the semi-rounded keys and the protected sides of the space bar. So elegant.

Quirky keyboard layouts

A oddity of these old typewriters is that they do not have the identical layout of keys to the modern computer keyboards. The letters are the same, although you even have to watch out for that as some are not. Mostly the differences are with the numbers and symbols, a lot is missing and some of them are a bit surprising. I noticed this as soon as I tried to type my first ever word actually, because I wanted to simply type this ... "Hello!". The problem came at the end, the exclamation mark. Ummmmmm. Looking, looking, looking,... nope. It doesn't have one, what the hell!? Further examination shows that they were quite thorough with representing fractions, a lot of keys are dedicated to those - 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/8, 3/8, 5/8. Yeah, I doubt I will ever use them, but I suppose in the Imperial measurement system world it was important for those feet and inches. Missing are the ! and usually also * = { } [ ] < > | ~ ^ The big surprise too is that the numbers start with 2 and end with 9, so the 1 and 0 are missing sometimes also. What gives?

Well, if you are into typewriters you will know this - but otherwise you probably won't - there are some tricks to typing some of the "missing" keys. The 1 is a lowercase L, so you use that. The 0 is similarly an uppercase letter o. The ! actually takes three key presses to make...are you ready for this? You press the single quote ' (ie shift-8), then the Back key to allow you to overtype the quote, then the full stop. This gives you the two parts, top and bottom of the ! which is ingenious, if not a little laborious. I think of the exclamation mark as being one of the primary keys on the keyboard, so for a serious typing experience I do prefer a dedicated key for it. The other keys though, well, those are simply missing.

And the rest (3 more!)

So, I had a small collection going by now, four machines, and quite honestly I was on a roll and having fun and nobody was there to stop me other than my own self-restraint and that was MIA, so I bought more machines. All bargains and with the clear reasoning of completing the now "collection" as quickly as possible to a satisfactory level (to me!).

I wanted to next get a machine for me specifically, for more serious typing. One that was considered to be a good if not great machine by those in the know. I wanted my exclamation mark also. So, I was reading various opinions and the Hermes 3000 kept coming up as the one a lot admired. Unfortunately these go for a king's ransom and bargains are really not to be found with this model. It is too much of a superstar to fly under the radar. However, I did find a similar older model Hermes, a Hermes 2000 on eBay. It works (apparently), with the only two visible issues being the top half of the letters being faded and one of the metal clips on the case being broken. I am yet to receive this machine because Australia post are being painfully slow at the moment, but hope to have it in a few days or so. I'm really looking forward to receiving this. It is different to the others in that it is a desktop model and in fairly original condition, from what I can tell. Amazingly enough I got it on the minimum bid too, nobody else showed up, and I had even put in a higher bid buffer in case they did but it didn't get used. It has the ! and * key too, which is a bonus.

Then, after watching the movie "California Typewriter" I mentioned to my wife that one of the models in the film was an Olympia SM-3, and I really liked how it looked and it has a reputation for being a nice typer. Again, like the Hermes 3000, these are not easy to find cheaply. However, I did find one I liked in grey on Gumtree and I contacted the seller. It was their grandmothers old typewriter that had been sitting idle for over 40 years and they were going to throw it out. It does type, but they report that sometimes it doesn't advance when you press the letter "o". Also, there is some paint on the case and it looks a bit scruffy. However, with my experience with "old moldy" I know that sometimes these machines come good with very little effort, and I hope this is one of them. It was on the upper end of my price range, but we agreed on a price. I am awaiting this one to arrive too, and it will be re-packed and put under the x-mas tree for me. The seller has been very nice about this transaction, somewhat restored my faith in humanity and made me think that "typewriter people are good people". I have discovered that Knitting people are also good people, by the way. There may be others too.

Finally, the last one was a bit of an ebay bargain impulse buy, that again I surprisingly won without any competition. Another Hermes, but this time their highly regarded portable "Baby" model (which is the same as the Rocket and other re-brandings like the Aristocrat). It has the iconic "sea foam green" keyboard and is otherwise in need of a good clean too but who knows what issues await. Perhaps none, perhaps a ton, it is all part of the adventure. It was a bit of a take-it or leave-it purchase, but I'm glad I won it.

So that is it, right? You are done?

Well, I feel done. When these other machines turn up I will know for sure. The collection will have a nice array of brands and models I really like. There *might* be one more machine in me though. I do feel the call of the Smith Corona Super "Silent". It is the one machine Tom Hanks said he would take over all the others, and I trust his judgement. However, I want to give the Hermes 2000 and Olympia SM-3 a good crack before I go looking further. These are also top machines and I want to really use them. If I'm happy with the typing action on those, I'm good to stop here honestly. I have more than enough to play with. I mean, how many typewriters is too many again? Seven, eight? Some people have hundreds of them! I don't have the room, finances or desire for that, my figure is much lower and I think I'm more or less at it now. These machines seem to have personalities and character, and if you have too many you can't appreciate them fully. At least, that is how I see it now. I want them all to be special to me.

In fact, I was already thinking of perhaps giving one of the Olivetti's away to a family member, if they want it, as part of the Christmas festivities this year. Share the good vibes, if you like. We shall see how the story unfolds from here...

Watch Review : Vaer Automatic A7 "Heritage" with Date (Swiss Made)

Well, I'm back again with another watch review. I recently did my favourite watch, the Fortis Flieger Professional, which seemingly few people know or care about which is a shame. I've had that watch for a fair while now, but the one I'm going to do today is only a few week old. It may seem premature to review a watch in such a short time, I'm still in the "honeymoon" phase after all, but I think I've got a handle on this and feel I want to get it done now. As usual my review style is simply the things that I want to highlight. If you want spec lists I suggest you go visit the product pages over on www.vaerwatches.com. I mean, if you are interested in the watch you are going to have to do that anyway, as that is pretty much the only way to buy one.

You can't actually buy the watch I have on my wrist though, it is a Kickstarter variant they are not offering any more (or at least, while I'm writing this). [Edit : You can now! See below] There is a model very close though, and this one has the Miyota movement and is "American Assembly" rather than "Swiss Made", but other than that it is pretty much the same. To get a sense of what I'm going to be rabbiting on about, here is an image from their site.

Do you like that look? My instinctive first-glance reaction was a fairly solid "Yes!". What appeals to me are a number of things, but I like the White arabic numerals, the railroad style minute track, the all white hands, the red second hand and the centred text. At 40mm diameter and a pleasantly thin 9.7mm case, the dimensions were right too. As someone who enjoys pocket watches from the early 1900's, this has some hints of design cues, although their more expensive but truly awesome "dirty dozen" even more so with the sub-seconds at 6 o'clock.

I did agonise a little over the date window, as during the kickstarter you could get it with or without this. Let me dig a little deeper briefly on this topic. Fundamentally I agree with the purists that the look and design of a watch face is cleaner without a date window. However, for many of the scenarios where I use a watch the date window is an extremely useful function to have. I have tried to wear watches without the date function and my frustration with them is almost immediate. For example, I went shopping and bought some milk, and wanted to check that it had plenty of date left. I know many people just know the date but I am not one of them, I know it roughly but usually not exactly. So I glance at my watch to double check. At work I fill in paperwork and need the date frequently and even when I have just looked at the date a few minutes prior I find I look again, perhaps out of habit and perhaps because I'm an idiot. So a watch design with a date usually wins with me, and having a day is good too. Again, check out the Fortis, they do that right.

Anyway, I have an equally strong pet peeve, and that is truncated numerals. In other words, the numbers that are somehow chopped off by a watch function on the dial. I might be in a minority here, but I find it visually very irritating. So the rabbit hole got deeper because my decision to go date or no date then really hinged on if they implemented the date window "properly" (in my opinion only, note!). What I mean by that is that the number 3 is fully formed, and not cut but the window, and even better, if there is a little space between them. As you can see from the image above, things are pretty tight, and there is no other 3 to compare it to, but it looks OK to me. Not great, but OK. So I pulled the pin on the date model and I must say I'm glad I did.

There is actually another angle to the date window issue, believe it or not, that causes me some angst. That is the date wheel is black text on a white background. I asked nicely on the forums if they would use a colour-matched wheel but was told politely, "no", which that is a pity in my mind. If the text was white on black background then the date window would be less intrusive and the dial would have the benefit of the date without it sticking out too much. If I can stay with this point for just a moment longer to point out that it would be fairly simple to mod the watch to change the date disk, as this is fairly standard and fairly easy for a watchmaker to do. When it gets out of warranty and if I am feeling brave, I might just do that.

I like the hands quite a lot, being white lume filled and painted white. In terms of being able to glance at the watch and know what time it is, this gets a big green tick. The hands seem to glow on the dial, and if they were steel/silver then I honestly think it would not be as good. They are the perfect length too - the hour stops just short of the hours and the minute hand goes out just far enough. The pinion is white with the base of the hands, and I suppose they could have been black but white seems to work here too. The second hand is a bit orangy-red, but has a pleasing arrowhead and small counterbalance and looks good. It is quite delicate. Overall, very nice handset.

The text on the dial is minimul and that is just the way I like it. The logo for "VAER" is under the 12, and "AUTOMATIC 100m" is above the 6. Mine also has "SWISS" and "MADE" on either side of the six and due to these being shorter words than "AMERICAN" and "ASSEMBLY" you still get two minute markers before the next 5 second marker. These 5 second markers are not white - they are a off white/cream color which really softens the look in a very nice way. Magic stuff.

One thing I have appreciated when viewing the watch is that the crystal has just the right level of dome, and that the watch face is quite high and close to the glass. Dive watches tend to have the face deep into the watch, thick glass and thick bezels, and it sometimes feels like you are looking into a well to read the time. The Vaer feels nicely upfront about this instead. It is a subtle thing, but something I've definitely noticed and liked.

The sapphire crystal is domed (double-domed I'm fairly sure) and has anti-reflective (AR) coating on the underside. In most lighting conditions it is good and easy to read. There are some reflections sometimes though, and if you view the watch at extreme angles the distortion takes over. If you even vaguely angle the watch towards you it is not going to be a problem though.

Now, the case. I really want to talk about the case. I need to borrow another picture from there web site so you can get what I'm about to say...

Apparently they paid a designer to make the case for them and I don't know how much they paid them but it probably wasn't enough - they did a stella job. The bezel is generous and angled down from the glass to continue the rounding out of the glass. There is circular brushing on the top of the bezel, and a high polished lip on the underside which is a really nice detail. The bezel overhangs the case slightly, but not by much. The case sides are rounded and the overall effect of this is a wonderfully gently curved - particularly on the other side from the crown. The thought I keep having is that when you roll your wrist the watch profile looks like steel lozenge that you kind of feel looks tasty! It is a strange thought but I can't shake it.

The lugs are thin but in no way flimsy. They look right. 

In terms of straps it came with a horween leather, and a tropic. I also got a two piece seat-belt style material strap. From memory, they are all quick release, and of a high standard of finish. The buckle is branded and very nicely rounded so there are no rough edges. It is in these small details that the quality of the piece is really seen. On saying that, there were some issues with the straps when I got them. The straps were either just long enough or not long enough. I could wear the horween, and I really liked the look, but I developed a rash from it so I stopped wearing it after a few weeks. I think it might have been the way it was tanned, I'm not sure, but I have not gone back to it. Instead, I wear it on the navy blue fabric strap, and it is quite a looker on that and very comfortable. 

In terms of customer service, Vaer noticed that some people did not fit the supplied straps and offered to replace them with longer ones. Nice work and another reason why I like the brand.

Of course, what I really want is a steel bracelet, but unfortunately they do not yet offer one. They have done a great job of providing backward compatibility with all models to straps, and I am hoping that one day a bracelet will be able to be purchased at a reasonable price and with the same quality as the head of the watch. I think the chances of this are about 50/50, but I have my fingers crossed because it would elevate it even further into my daily rotation. As it is though, an easy recommend if you like the look of it.


Pros

• Very attractive face design
• Simply superb case design, this can't be overstated.
• Relatively inexpensive for the movement and "Swiss made" (at least, kickstarter was)
  
• Very comfortable to wear, goes well with casual clothes
  
• Screw down crown for 100m water resistance. Don't fear water.
  

Cons

• Non colour matched date wheel.
• Straps might be short for thicker wrists
• Dial is not textured or have any levels and is printed.
• Date window may be too tight to the 3 for some.
  

 

Edit 2020-12-07

I started this review a long time ago, but never quite finished it and hit the old "Publish" button. Since then I have had a lot more wear time with this watch and I can confirm that it has continued to be a wonderful purchase and I still enjoy wearing it immensely. The watch I bought is here. 

Watch Review : Fortis Flieger Professional 704.21.11 L.01

Today I'm going to discuss my daily driver watch : the Fortis "Flieger Professional".  While not perfect (is anything?) it is certainly a cracker of a watch and well worth looking at in detail. There is a lot to appreciate in a watch that at first glace seems perhaps a bit plain.

This review has been a long time in coming, as I have been thinking about it for ages. In some ways I have felt a little indecisive about some of the features of the watch, so I wanted to see how a longer term experience played out. An example of this is the mixed finish in the band, with the high polished centre links. My preference is for an all-brushed look, and the high polish is "a bit fancy" for me, but what was it like in the real world? Well, read on.

Stepping back a fraction, let's start by discussing the brand. Fortis on the whole seems to fly under the radar of the watch world. This is a great shame as they have a long history and very decent model line-up. I will confess that a lot of their models do not appeal to me, they are too chunky, thick and complicated on the whole for my tastes.

Where does Fortis fit in? Well, it depends on your perspective, but it is generally agreed that they are a low to mid tier Swiss brand, or makers of a "Basic luxury Swiss watch". The prices usually have four digits. Things are generally made well, with ETA Swiss movements, sapphire crystal and decent if not high quality control.

It is a bit hard to categorise the watch accurately. There is that "Flieger" in the name, and it does have the fairly classic A-dial design with the triangle and two pips at 12 o'clock. So, it is a flieger, right? Well, hang on a minute. I would argue that it looks a lot like a field watch, and isn't large like a typical flieger at 40mm. And then it goes to 100m and the strap has a divers extension. It has in some conditions a somewhat dress air about it. So, which is it now? In the end it really does have some elements of a flieger, diver, sports, field and even dress watch. That may sound like a hot mess, but it is actually a good thing.

An acid test for any watch in my collection is if I can easily, quickly and intuitively answer this question when looking at it - "what is the time?". That might seem like a no-brainer when it comes to watches, but honestly there are a lot of designs on the market where this is significantly harder than others. Most people would summarise this simply as "legibility", but it is a subtle variant of that - the primary purpose of the watch over all other features. This is also perhaps why I am yet to own a chronograph, as the dial gets so crowded with subdials that telling the time becomes a challenge.

Anyway, back to the Fortis! With the arabic numerals around the dial (except 12 for the traditional flieger triangle + pips, and the 3 for the day/date aperture), it is trivial to see what hour it is. Next is the minutes, and the track there has smaller white markers every 5 minutes to assist with this.

One other important thing about telling the time is knowing your hour hand from the minute hand with absolute certainty. The hands here are mat black framed and lume filled. The hour hand is just-right (IMHO) length, just hitting the hour markers, and wider. The minute hand is longer and goes all the way out to the minute track. The second hand, for what it is worth, is a shock of orange and is easy to look at or ignore depending on if you need it or not. One subtle feature I enjoy is the fact that all three hands are matt black near the center of the dial, so there is no visual clutter there.

Overall the dial and handset work extremely well together and it gets a gigantic big tick for visual clarity. Note that I am not into military 24-hour time and so I am very happy not to have this on the dial. Some people may miss that if it is part of their life is to reference time in this way, but I have no need for it.

 In the car, what's the time? Fri 11th, 4:25

The dial itself is black, a deep slightly glossy black. There is a sort of sunburst to it, but it is very subtle and perhaps more of a sheen than an official spec sheet point. Where the pips for hour markers are there is a circular track of engraved lines, much like the groves in a record, except circular rather than a spiral. This is where the "Swiss Made" text is located around the six pip. This track provides a visual break to the sections of the dial, and quite a lot of again subtle interest. The more you look here, the more you see. The applied indices are lumed, and are even framed in black, which really is a fine and premium finish and give the dial a lot of depth and character. The lume is fairly good too, often glowing when I come inside from being in the sun.

The minute track around the outer edge of the dial is perhaps the plainest feature of the watch, in simple white (not lumed) and just markers for each minute. As an aside, I have owned watches with sub-minute markers and I always wondered what the point of these were, particularly when you have a second hand to read the sub minute time much more accurately. Anyway, the way it is here is my preference, although I also like the old fashioned "railroad" track too.

For the numerals for the seconds there is the "flipping" of the text between 15 and 20, and then again at 40 and 45. As the numerals are center aligned, this is the most common way of handling the issue. If you don't do this, then the 30 at 6 o'clock ends up upside down, and most people don't like that. I am not like most people though and I think this is the right way. I used to be a bit more passionate about this issue, but now I've softened my opinion after owning this watch. I appreciate the legibility does trump the aesthetic purity of the non-flipped numerals.

The text on the dial is really minimal, and all printed crisply in white. There is "Fortis" at 12, and AUTOMATIC at 6, and that's it. There seems to be a trend, seen easily in dive watches like the Rolex Submariner, where 3 or 4 lines of text at 6 o'clock are standard fare and denote some sort of luxury credentials. I am not a fan of this trend at all, and so again the Fortis wins with my preference on how things should be in a watch, it is another tick from me, even if a small one.

The dial has at 3 o'clock the day/date window, framed in a thin white box. The wheels are color matched (white text on black background) and blend in nicely with the rest of the dial. Sometimes it seems like the disks might have a slightly different black/matte than the main dial, but it is pretty damn near the same. I could now spend a long time going over why I love having the day and date at 3 o'clock, but I feel like I've covered that ground already. So, I'll just leave it at that - I love having the day and date on this watch and I think it is a stand out feature. Good luck finding another watch with this set of specs, look and the day complication.

On top of the dial is the glass, so let me talk about that for a minute. It is, as you would hope and expect, sapphire crystal. It sits slightly proud of the polished bezel, perhaps by a single mil or so. One of the few slip ups with this watch are with the AR coating, which is of the purple variety and works very well. The problem is that the glass is coated top and bottom, which means it can scratch off ... in theory. In practice I have had this watch for, gosh, is it a few years now? And in that time it has not scratched. Well, I just looked at the surface very carefully with a 10x loupe and could see under this magnification that indeed there were some faint scratches, and even wear at the very edge of the glass. But with the naked eye? You don't see anything.

 Action shot! Underwater...

One other quirk with the crystal is that in some angles of direct (sun)light, there are some internal reflections and a number of concentric light circles are seen on the glass. This only happens occasionally and I think is caused by light getting into the edge of the crystal and causing issues from there. Despite this, in normal use the glass and AR coating are very effective and the glass just disappears from view.  There is a glow from the inner vertical edge of the steel case, and this plays off the groove ring of the dial. It is all fairly fascinating to look at!

Next I want to move onto the case. There is a mix of finishes, with the top fixed bezel being polished, the mid case is brushed, and the screw in caseback is polished again. The brushing is horizontal on the sides and actually vertical between the lugs. This is only something an owner of the watch would notice really, but there you are. There are no bevelled edges on the lugs but they are elegantly curved at the sides and meet the case in a pleasing way.

The crown is unguarded, which looks right on this watch. It is a fairly chunky and knurled, signed and easy to operate. It is just push/pull, not screw-down, so you get the convenience of that and still have 100m water resistance, which is nice. The crown sits quite low down on the watch, when you look at it side on, but it does not dig into the wrist, although I wear my watches "above the bone". If you are all gansta and wear a super loose watch then it might be a problem and dig in.

There is a sapphire (I believe) window in the caseback enabling you to see the moment. I like this from the perspective that I sometime take it off to show people if we are talking about watches and I want to show them an automatic movement. It is surprising perhaps how many people have never seen one, and I am happy to gently educate when it is right to do so. However, the glass window is fairly small and the movement is really not all that special to look at, so it is not a huge advantage in this case. If they really want to see a nice movement I get out my pocket watch and take the back off that - the movement is open to the air and is even more impressive at over 100 years old, but that it another story for another time.

So I think I've covered the head of the watch now. It is a subjective thing, of course, but I find it a very attractive and neat package overall. It is well built, compact and functional.

Moving now on to the bracelet. This has a fairly bad rap online, when I was doing some research before purchasing the watch I read some describe it as "cheap, thin and rattly", which sounds fairly horrible. While I don't think it is perfect, by any stretch, it is a lot better than that. The links are slender, compared to some chunky watches, but in no way cheap or flimsy. There is a little rattle when taking the watch on or off, but none when wearing it. I actually like the sound it makes when I take it off and put it on. There are actually a bunch of positive things to say about the bracelet now that I think about it.

The two-tone thing is interesting. As I said earlier, I would generally rather a fully brushed but this has grown on me a lot. For a start, in many lighting conditions and angles it looks like the same finish. If it was two-tone it would really stand out, but as it is silver/silver, you don't often see it, and when you do it adds interest rather than annoyance. I was also thinking initially that it would scratch but despite a lot of wear it is still fairly unblemished. There are plenty of micro scratches, but the brushed outer sections still look brushed, and the polished inner link still look polished. Overall it has worn really well.

The clasp, however, has taken a bit more of a beating and it shows. It is very compact a clasp actually, and low profile, but it is the thing that contacts when you rest you arm on a surface. Here is a question for you though - do you bite your nails? If you do, then the clasp is going to frustrate you no end, as it is not a push button deployment. Instead, there is a pressure fit fold over security clasp (high polish, with the Fortis logo, nice looking) which really needs a fairly healthy finger nail to use. Then the clasp opens, again, with a pressure fit. Whenever there is pressure fit systems the question is how MUCH pressure is needed, too much or too little is a problem. In my example they have got this pressure value pretty much just right, so it works. It is these subtle tactile things that do differentiate a
well made vs cheaply made watch. The butterfly section is milled but undecorated.

I would certainly recommend the bracelet over the standard strap BUT it does kind of depend on the price. When I bought the watch the bracelet option was actually fairly expensive thing to go for, adding perhaps $300 AUD to the total price. You can get a whole watch for that. So it does depend on your budget. There are pros and cons, but overall the bracelet is good without being great. It does suit the watch, and overall makes it an elegant package rather than the more rugged or utilitarian end of the spectrum. To me this is good, as it shifts it gently more into the every-day wear that I use this watch for.

This model is discontinued now, but you may be able to find new-old stock about still. The closest replacement watch, which I have not tried on, is probably the Fortis Aeromaster Old Radium, model Reference 655.10.28. I quite like this too, although I'm not sure of the thickness of the watch. Some of the Fortis watches are quite thick, which I am not fond of, so it is one of those specs I pay attention to myself. It is a different look, with the angled rehort, tan markers and missing minute numerals. But it is clean and nice too in my opinion, worth looking into.

Final thoughts. I've rambled on about various elements of this watch for long enough. If you have read this all so far, well done for you perseverance. I can summarize how I feel about this watch overall fairly easily - I wear it almost every day and it gives me a lot of pleasure to do so. When choosing a watch to wear I have to force myself to pick something else. It doesn't make the best dress watch, but it can hold its own. It doesn't make a diver watch, but it can go in the pool without concern. When I need to know the time, date or day, it can tell me without fuss. When I am driving and my arm is in front of my, I catch myself admiring various elements of the design. It is a watch that keeps on giving, the initial impressions might be of a plain watch, but there is honestly a lot there. I think this watch is really overall unappreciated in the watch community, and I think that is a bit of a shame as it really is worthy of more attention. If you are looking for a one-watch collection, this could well fill that role. A fairly easy recommend, if the few minor points don't bother you like they don't bother me.


Pros

• Perfectly legible and usable as a daily watch
• Attractive dial and indices. Minimal printing
• Thin and very comfortable to wear
• Day and Date complication, colour matched wheels
• Swiss movement and well built
• Compact clasp with 4 micro adjusts and divers extension

Cons

• Not applied logo on the dial, but is crisply printed
• Top (outer) coat of AR on sapphire glass can scratch
• Some fairly rarely seen internal reflections on glass in some light conditions (I call the "onion effect")
• Movement not very decorated or pretty
• Brushed surfaces a little blingy, perhaps
• Clasp needs finger nails to use

Best Games of 2019

Hmmmm. There was no Best Games of 2018, oh well.  It is the first year I've missed since 2012.

But oh man, another year almost down so that means it is time to press the pause button and give thought to the best games of the year. In a way, this is easy for me this year. I've known for most of the year which game was going to take the gong in this prestigious event (that's a joke by the way). This year I'm just going to get straight to the point and blurt out the winner, which is...

Winner Best Game 2019 : Minecraft

Minecraft! Minecraft? Seriously? After all this time? Well, yes. It is perhaps the best value gaming experience ever, and somehow Microsoft have yet to stuff it up, which is a minor miracle. What I have been playing though is not the vanilla game, but instead heavily modified versions of the game. Modded minecraft takes it to the next level, or even several levels, of difficulty compared to vanilla. It also adds a huge amount of variety and challenge, something the game needs when you have played it for the many thousands of hours like I have.

If you have played modded minecraft before the immediate question is - which modpack? There is a very healthy community of modders who give, for free, wonderful themed mod packs. I use the Twitch launcher which, once you get the RAM settings sorted, makes the experience of playing mod packs easy. I have played quite a number of them this year, and want to give a micro-review of each in the order I played them.

One thing they all have in common are questing systems.  These are a great idea as they generally lead you though the various mods and give you pointers on how to play. You also get rewards and a sense of progress. The questing system gives you a reason to play, which can sometimes be an issue for a seasoned Minecraft player.

Stoneblock
I watched the youtuber GamesForKicks play some of this and the more I watched the more I wanted to play too. The start of the game sets the tone for this one - you are stuck in small spherical cave in and more or less have nothing but a torch. At the time this seemed like a fresh take on the restricted start, when compared to all of the skyblock variants. Some people find this claustrophobic, and it is a little, but it is fine really after not long at all. I also liked the idea of inverse building - normally you are adding blocks but in this it is all about taking them away. I enjoyed my playthoughs on this a lot. I think I did a few because I was not happy with my base layout or progress.

Where things started to fall over a bit was in the unlimited resource generation method chosen by the pack - chickens. You breed them up to being 10/10/10 and that is a bit of a chore, and then you have unlimited supply of resource x, whatever flavour that chicken is. I think it was this pack were I cut my teeth on a number of other mods I have not played before, like refined storage. Again, the questing system, discord and a bit of googling makes all this possible to get a handle on fairly quickly.

Forever Stranded
The Yogscast started playing this and as I watched I wanted to play too. This one is really quite hard in the start but you have a pre-build base in the form of your crashed shuttle-like ship, in the desert. This pack has a heat/cold mechanic along with the food, and getting resources initially is quite a grind. The mobs in this hit pretty hard too, and the sand can build up to allow them to climb over walls. Overall this is pretty hard pack, and just getting to the point of certain safety and enough food is a major milestone. Unfortunately, that is about as far as I played as it seemed to be the point of the pack to me. There is a lot more you can do, of course, but I didn't get drawn to it and about the time my interest was waning there was a new release...

Stoneblock 2
Feed the Beast released an updated Stoneblock 2, and as I had enjoyed Stoneblock so much I was bound to love Stoneblock 2 even more, right? Well, not so much as it turned out. It was OK, but I felt like I have "been there, done that". Again, I seem to enjoy the early game of just surviving an setting up the base, but once I'm comfortable continuing just seems to be a bit of a grind. By now too I was becoming more aware of the individual components of the mod packs, which ones I liked and which ones I didn't so much. For me it turns out I am not so fond of magic based mods, they just seem arbitrary and not always logical. I started looking for something different and found it in ...

Astroblock
Talk about a rough start and a change of scene. You start out suffocating from a lack of oxygen on a small space station. Fortunately you have a single tree that .... errr... grows in the vacuum outside without issue and provides oxygen. Yeah, well, accept that and move on. A space based theme seemed like a welcome stark change from the claustrophobic caves, and I enjoyed this pack a lot. There comes a time when you have to take a leap of faith and jump off the station. You have to watch your oxygen tanks, and the base power. You slowly build up resources and capabilities. Eventually you can build a ship and fly away to another planet, my first time with using any kind space travel, and it was fun to land again on Earth, which is of the destroyed cities variety. This was cool because you had to set up again, another piece of the early game cake I love so much. Then, you go to the moon and guess what, you have to set up there too, this time without oxygen so you have to bring all the gear to make that (that you got given it in the first base). And so it goes, with more an more space travel in the quests - but I more or less stopped there as I felt that I had achieved what I had wanted to. This modpack relies quite heavily on some machines that no other pack really use, compressing things rather than smelting them. I also discovered I really like having a jetpack. The developer was really cool too, and was often on the chat in Discord. Overall I had a lot of fun with this pack but the internet was abuzz about a new version of a kitchen sink pack, and I stopped playing briefly (I thought) to check it out...

Project Ozone 3
This pack is really big, and takes a log time to even start up, about 4 minutes on my PC. There are a number of start options but I took the suggested "Garden of glass" which is more-or-less a skyblocks scenario, which I had not played for a while now. There is something to be said for creating everything from nothing, or almost nothing. This pack has a number of quality of life additions so that often the grind element can be bypassed and you can get to the fun bits, eg vein-mining. There become quite a lot of dimensions to explore - Hunting Dimension, Deep dark (good to go to fairly early for resources), Twilight forest, Erebus (first time for me for this one, think land of the bugs) etc. There were a few mods I didn't like so much in this - Embers, Lordcraft and Pneumaticraft to name a few. But I played through them fairly quickly and moved on to the stuff I did like more. I built a mob farm and storage systems to deal with all the loot. The infinite resources from this comes mainly in the form of Mob farms and Mystical Agriculture crops, and I collected almost every seed there is, which is quite a feat (chore?). In this pack I played a fair way into it, reaching some of the late game content of extended crafting and Draconic Evolution, which starts to get a bit silly after a while. I also did most of the armours, which is also a massive grind. So, I gave this modpack a great go, and got fairly powerful by the end, both in terms of my base and also gear. It's a top tier pack, worth playing for sure, and is fairly beginner friendly. The RAK reward system is a really gamble, and adds some spice. You do want to save up for the swords though.
At one point a "John Cena" creeper blew up a fairly huge hole in my base, and JUST missed destroying my AE2 hard disks. I am diligent with backups (before every play session) but did not ragequit because all my stuff was OK, so I played on and rebuilt. You end up with hundreds of thousands of ingots, diamonds etc. It is a lot of working on base power, layout and storage systems and then a bit of exploring.

Sevtech Ages
At this point I was feeling pretty cocky, and wanted to try something a bit more challenging and could go the distance, and I tried Sevtech. Boy, is this a contrast to PO3. You spend hours and hours playing before you can even get to a crafting table. The low-tech start of the game I actually didn't find all that great. I also dislike having such crap storage systems like open chests that only hold a few things each. I played to the start of the third "age" and gave up. This pack beat me, in the sense I couldn't be bothered carrying on. I had survived, and was in the process of building a large base building, but it just all seemed to hard. I have seen others play through this modpack and it is a fairly serious grind at times. I certainly would NOT recommend this as a first pack to try. If you can make it all the way through the ages in Sevtech, my hat comes off to you.

Omni Factory
I read about this online somewhere and it sounded intriguing. It had some "expert pack" like qualities, which means it was fairly hard, but promised to be like a factorio in minecraft. At this point I was fairly sure I didn't like any magic based packs, and this modpack didn't have any in it. Further, combat was not important and even could be played in peaceful mode. I chose a start in the ruined cities environment and I think that this is the best choice (perhaps the sparse cities is even better). I started in a river bed next to a road, and I followed this a short way to a large building, which was to become my base... once I cleared it out. For a pack that claimed combat was not important, clearing out a building when you hardly have any resources is a lot more challenging than you might think. It is worth it though - the building makes a good base and there is a lot of loot. You want to find the boots which allow you to have no fall damage. Once you get a safe space, and a bit of food going, you can start to work on the quests and the factory. You need power and you need machines to make parts, so that you can make more and better machines. This is a road that goes a LONG way, and I had a great time with it, some of the best minecraft gaming I've ever had, and that is saying something. Every step forward feels like a real achievement, because it is.
One thing I really like are the HUGE vein ore deposits, so mining is not really something you have to worry too much about. If you can find a vein, you are more or less set for life as you can hammer a 3x3 strip into it and get a few stacks of it in no time. Later you get vertical diggers and other things which make ore collection less and less manual. This does not use refined storage but AE2, which is different but you get used to it. Pretty soon you have a huge number of machines linked together via power lines and item and fluid pipes, and it is all working away. When AE2 gets going you can start to order the system to automatically make things for you, creating all of the components from raw materials and assembling them. This is just as well as by this point you are starting to go a bit crazy with some of the micro crafting of crap like screws.
I'm a big fan of this modpack, and I have started over a few times just to play it more. One major problem it has is that eventually the game starts to lag with all the machines working at once. It is somewhat immersion breaking to have to make design decisions of your base to minimise lag. As a new pack, there are also some minor bugs and balancing tweaks needed. As of writing this the version is 1.2.1, and there is rumour of a version 1.3, but the developer may have either fallen ill or lost interest in the project. He seemed to be distracted too by a "Kappa" version of the game, that is, a super hard variant. I don't think it needs it myself, it is plenty hard enough as it is. You can spend hours tinkering in your base and not even step outside, my save files were tiny as I have explored very little. The ultimate goal of this modpack is to make the creative tanks so that you can re-do your base and then make create drawers. At that point you are effectively playing in creative mode, being able to make infinite amounts of anything. I never got to this, the furthest I got to was LuV power.

Dungeons, Dragons and Space Shuttles
This is the pack I'm currently playing. It is a fairly massive pack again and fairly hard in places, and a greater emphasis on exploration. Some things take a fair time to craft, and the Nether is fairly brutal. A fairly good mix of mods, and some I'm getting into that I've never bothered with before, like Pams Harvestcraft for cooking. Mobs hit fairly hard (especially skeletons) and I always seem to be out of gold. There are a fair number of interesting buildings and creatures that are not in any other mods I've played. I'm not sure how far I'll go with it and I'm perhaps half way through all the quests, but it is a lot of fun so far.
One thing I have done to make my life bearable is to claim the chunks around my base so creepers don't grief when they explode. Also, I tend to adjust the Blood Moon mod so that I can sleep through it, because honestly, I don't enjoy it. I'm trying to play this game without making a mob grinder of any sort, but I'm starting to think that I might need one, particularly for gold. There are some magic mods in this and so far they have been bearable.

And more!
You'd think the above list was enough, but I've actually played more still.

• R.A.D Rougue-like adventures and Dungeons. A bit too run and gun for me, but still fun.
• Glacial Awakenings. Start buried in ice. Once you get the surface, it is an snow world
  
• DigSite. Fixed map with a lot of story and hand crafted locations

So you can see just how many hours of entertainment this game still gives me, each and every week. With these modpacks it is like playing whole new games over again, with the familiar framework of the minecraft world. I still think it is all incredibly cool.

Runner up 2019 : Noita

This was the surprise game of the year. This little game has some things about it that I really, really love and wish was in more games. For a start, it launches really fast, like in seconds. The soundtrack is amazing. The game is being honed and balanced with each update, and is still early access and quite beta, but is very playable and takes considerable skill (and some luck) to succeed. What I like about it too is that there is no hand holding. You develop your own techniques for the challenges you face. Initially you are likely to try and kill all the enemies you meet, for example, but this will likely wear down your health and the choice of running is often wiser. This is where a lot of the satisfaction in the game comes from - discovering how to play it well.

The game has an overall vibe which is kind of unlike anything else. Yes, the stand out feature here is the per-pixel particle simulation, and it does have effects you can take advantage of, but it is only a part of the gameplay. Much of the game is spent searching for new wands and traits to enable you to face the deeper levels with some hope of surviving. It does get hard quickly, if you are stuck with your starter wands on the third level you are pretty much toast. I will admit that despite dying about 65 times (it keeps count), so that's how many games I've played, I'm yet to "win" the game. That may seem hopeless and dreadful, and perhaps it is but I don't care at all. I am generally improving each time I play and get a little (or a lot) further. Deaths can be varied and fairly entertaining in themselves, and usually you learn something - even if it is "don't do that again!".

However, the reason this game has not won this year is that I can see that it has limited playability. You restart each game in exactly the same place, and it does get old fairly fast. Each game lasts about 10 minutes, perhaps more and perhaps a lot less. But it has a bad case of ground hog day. If they can add a decent amount of variety to the start, then this game will be elevated to another level. I am not aware of any plans to do so at this point, it is just a thought I have. Please don't get me wrong, even with this gripe/limitation the game is an absolute blast to play and an easy recommend to try out.

Best Mobile Game 2019

There is none this year, as far as I'm concerned they all suck. Even PvZ has taken a turn for the worse in recent updates with intrusive ads and that is crap. I have not exactly been looking at all the games, but have not come across any worth mentioning. Booo.....

Keyboard review : IBM Model M Keyboard

Note : This review was written way back in 2004. It is still relevant today, and perhaps even more amazing is that I am still using the SAME keyboard to type this. Yes, they really do last.

Many moons ago..

I have been around computers for a long time. How long? Well, when I was 15, I used an Apple ][ at school back in the early 80's. Yes, back then having TWO floppy drives was a luxury as it meant less disk swapping to boot the beast. These were real bendable floppies mind, not the modern fancy hard 1.44MB ones. I'm a nostalgic kinda guy sometimes - I still have a working ][e in the garage somewhere. My first computer was a tape drive based Tandy TRS-80. I had a lot of fun programming that to do silly text adventures in basic.

I also knew someone who worked at IBM, and I played with one of the first IBM PC's, and a thing called the PC portable. This was a "portable" not a "laptop", unless you wanted to become a paraplegic in a hurry. You see, it weighed quite a bit, and more or less took a full grown man to move it.

Then I used a whole swag of PC's and macs. Fast forward to today and I estimate I have touched perhaps a few thousand computers. Consider that I spent time as a computer consultant supporting offices with 50 computers at a time, and this doesn't seem so crazy. Over that time computers have changed.. a lot. Initially, they were super expensive and made to last. The IBM cases were so strong that it was quite possible to stand on one with no ill effect. Other components too were often over engineered. Then things changed. It was all about volume and cheap prices. Quality dropped, compromises were made and durable parts were substituted for cheap parts. Hold that thought.

I distinctly remember playing a text based adventure game called "Nethack" on one of the original IBM PC's. This software came from the mainframe world and amazingly, can still be played today! If you have never tried this gem, I suggest you give it a go. It certainly won't give your graphics card a workout (or your CPU either), but it has a charm and depth that is undeniable. Certainly as a spotty 14 year old, it was very addictive and enjoyable. I recall moving about the maze, using my imagination as to what was happening on screen, to the soft clicking sound of the keyboard.

The clicking what?

The clicking keyboard. Every key press could be heard, twice in fact. The down press is louder than the key up, but there was a sound involved with typing. There was also a feel, a feel I got used to and liked. All of this is due to the fact that early keyboard were made with springs under the keys. As you pressed the key, the spring compressed slightly, then buckled (which made the sound and also produced the key press). When the finger lifted up, the spring unbuckled with another slight sound as it snapped into place. You don't see the springs of course, but you do feel and hear them. These keyboards were amazingly durable, with each key taking rated for an estimated 25 million key presses.

Sadly, these keyboards were not made forever. You see, they cost too much, and to be honest, some people didn't like the noise. A cheaper way was found, which involved a plastic dome bubble. These bubbles were pushed in by a spike on the underside of the key. When the top and bottom of the bubble made contact, the key was "pressed". Sheets of keyboard bubbles could be made very cheaply. The feel of these keyboards are completely different however. "Squishy" is a word that comes to mind. For those that noticed, it was a giant step backwards. Not many people did notice however, as most people were new to computers. Besides, the mouse was the big thing at that time, the keyboard was oh-so 70's. Even IBM gave up making the sprung keyboards before long.

So...what? Can you get to the point please?!

Patience!! The other day I was reading Daniel Rutters excellent web site, Dan's Data. I enjoy his sense of humour and also trust his judgement. If you have never checked out his site, I suggest you do. One day, when I am flush, I will give him some money for his efforts as well. He deserves it. Anyway, he was reviewing a fancy-scmancy new light up keyboard, and I read his article with passing interest. The more I read, the more I thought about the humble keyboard, and an idea started to grow in my head. I remembered in a flash the old keyboards of oh-so-many years ago, and how much I liked their feel. The penny dropped that these keyboards were so well made and durable, they can still be used today, and that I wanted to get one. I knew I would lose the "multimedia" trimmings, and the windows key, but I was ok with that.

SO I hit Ebay... no luck. But good old Google turned up some interesting things. Most notable was the growing feeling that I had just discovered a quiet underground movement of keyboard fanatics. I was not alone, and perhaps even a little slow off the mark. This web site, www.clickykeyboard.com is a shrine to the IBM Model M keyboard, and has a run-down of all the models and dates. It also has an extensive buyers guide, so I felt I was hot on the trail! I did note that the keyboards they had for sale were all in the US, and were quite a bit more than I wanted to pay (about US$50 each plus US$70 shipping - ouch!). These old keyboards are rather heavy you see, so to send one half way around the world costs real money.

I did more research. It turns out that Dan had already fairly comprehensively covered these old keyboards as well, in a dedicated article on the IBM model M's. What his article is a bit short on, is how to get one of these boards in Australia other than paying through the nose, like he did it seems. But the more I read, the more I knew I wanted one - it started really becoming a quest. I told my wife about all this, and I was not surprised to be called a "geek" in no uncertain terms. To get excited about a keyboard is not normal, apparently. I don't get upset in the slightest about her teasing, I'm quite used to it by now!

So, did you find one?

No, not one. I recently discovered a second hand PC dealer in Crows Nest, EziPC (Edit : no longer in business). A very soft spoken and genuinely nice guy by the name of Charles runs the place, which can be loosely described as a basement full to the brim of old computer gear. Some in racks, some stacked on top of each other on the floor. I thought he might have one, so I sent him an email. But I couldn't wait for a reply, so I called him and arranged to go there after hours that same day. To my great pleasure, we found a whole big box of Model M's, mostly model 1391401's - just what I was looking for. Some had a few keycaps missing, so I decided to take, wait for it... six!

Charles didn't know about the value of these keyboards, and to be honest was happy to give them to me for free based on past business. I wasn't happy about that though, so I did pay him for them. I also told him that I thought they were worth quite a bit, to the right person. I figured this information may be worth something to him as well, even though I was effectively burning my bridges. When I got home I discovered that I had 4 model 1391401 boards, one of which was older that the others and had the black and white logo. The other two of the six were Lexmark made models, which are still good but not quite as good (seemed ok to me, but I bow to greater knowledge on this topic). So I took the missing keycaps from these two Lexmark keyboards and made 4 perfect boards in total. Woohoo!!

When I got home...

Of course, I tell my wife that I have just bought 6 keyboards and she looks at me like I'm some kind of madman, which perhaps I am. I then proceed to rip all the keycaps off one of the boards (I started to do this with a screwdriver, but actually, you can just pull them all off with your fingers. You might need a tool to prize the bigger keys off though). I don't think this helped me looking less mad - I mean, why buy 6 keyboards if you are hell bent on destroying them? I was not destroying them of course, besides, they are indestructible. I was simply started cleaning them.

A clean keyboard is a happy keyboard!

You see, these keyboard were 12 to 15 years old! They had been used by more than a few people previously, and I did not like the keyboard plague that was before me. Everyone knows that a used keyboard is dirtier than a toilet seat. I wanted the new old look, and I was prepared to clean each key to get it. Took about half an hour per keyboard. I also cleaned the keyboard itself, and removed the crap that had fallen into the keyboard with a vacuum cleaner. A bit of spray'n'wipe later and I can pass these off as almost new. One keyboard had clear evidence of a coffee spill incident in it's past. This was near the space bar key, and I it was very sluggish as a result. It is a testament to the durability of these 'boards that after cleaning the residue away it worked like new. Honestly, these will be still working when my fingers have long since cramped up.

So you are happy, right?

Well, yes I am! I now have 4 mint IBM 1391401 keyboards, including one rare old one. They all work a charm, and are a pleasure to use. I have even taken one to work and intend to use it with my laptop in place of my logitech wireless keyboard I'm using at the moment. Except I can't just yet. Why not? Well, you see, these are PS/2 keyboards, and my laptop doesn't have any PS/2 ports. The PS/2 port is slowly disappearing in favour of the much more user friendly (but not actually as responsive) USB port. I am not concerned though, as I have a AU$15 USB->PS/2 adaptor on order from my local super cheap and nasty computer store. This little widget plugs into any USB port and gives you a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port to play with. So these keyboards can now live on until the USB port standard dies. Which I figure is not any time soon.

But does that mean they are perfect? Well...no. They are without doubt superior to other keyboards in terms of key press feel. I think this is the most important thing, so the rest doesn't matter so much. They are also clearly more durable. On the negative side of the coin, they are noisy, big and heavy. They don't have any fancy keys such as the windows key (Ctrl-Esc does the same thing by the way) or any multimedia things like volume control or one button email/internet. I have had a few keyboards with these extra keys and I can count on one hand the number of times I've used them. The only things I have found remotely useful have been the volume controls and mute button. Still, a decent pair of speakers will have a volume control on them, so if they are within arms reach there is no problem. My laptop also has a volume control on it. It's also wired, and wireless is flavour of the month. Bah humbug I say.

Also, and this has taken a little use to find out - the keys are angled slightly differently to modern keyboards. They are more, well, upright. I feel that I have to be a little more "above" the keyboard to be in the right position, and there is no palm rest of any kind (although you can add your own easily enough).

I think some of these issues could be solved if I could get my hands on a model 1395300, which is basically the same mechanism but in a much smaller enclosure. This would eliminate the size and weight problem anyway. I am still on the lookout for one of these! They were made in smaller quantities, so they are a harder find. So.. it's not over yet.

You may be wondering why I have bothered to write a long description of all this. The answer is twofold. The first reason is that I genuinely believe these keyboards are special, and everyone ought to know about them (although that means it's harder for me to find them... but I have 4 so I can't see myself EVER needing more... unless they are all stolen..). The other reason to type all this is exactly that - a good excuse to type something. You see, you enjoy it with one of these keyboards!!

I draw the analogy to cars. This keyboard is like a 20 year old Cadillac. It's big, it's not as fancy as the modern cars or as sleek, but has a special something that is just magic and the ride is super smooth. It's not for everyone, but I know it's for me. I was going to say that they just don't make them like this any more, but that's not exactly true. There is a company that still make sprung keyboards. I like the *look* of the IBM's better (the lock light panel is nicer IMHO) but the mechanics are the same. Check 'em out here. I think it's more fun to find an old one in a bargain bin somewhere, but of course it's your call.

And no, I don't have any spare so don't ask. I'm keeping mine. Forever.

Keyboard review : K-Type (with Halo True switches!)

Carelessly placed in a way where anyone walking by could take it, my long awaited K-Type keyboard arrived from Massdrop. Fortunately I was first to notice it laying there next to my mailbox, and I quickly took it inside an unboxed it. I have used it to type this review.

So...what's it like then? Well, read on!

KType vs the Model M

I need to start off by explaining a little of my personal keyboard preferences, as we all seem to be different in this regard, if the key switch industry is any guide on this. Perhaps the best way to explain this is to tell you which keyboards I have been using for the last, oh, 10 or more years. At work I use an IBM Model M with the famous original clicky keys. At home I use an ... IBM Model M. You may see a pattern there. So yes, I come from a world of extremely noisy buckling springs and keyboards you could possibly land a small aircraft on. I wrote a review of the keyboard once, but that was back in the day before blogger and it is in raw HTML and the web site that hosted it is long since dead. I might dig it up an put it on here just for kicks (done!)... but I'm being distracted! This is not about the Model M, the best keyboard ever, it is about the K-Type! Is this the new best-est keyboard ever?

Even still, I needed to get that off my chest, and some of you may be wondering how the keyboard switches feel compared to the buckling springs. Well, they are not the same, so there is that, but I will talk more on that point in a bit. I was drawn to the k-type mainly because of these new switches. I have tried all of the modern cherry switches and the blues come closest but none really feel like, or are as good as, the buckling springs. This is totally my opinion, you understand, and yours may be completely different...and wrong! Haha.

Halo Switches

The K-Type could be ordered with a number of switches installed, and a key feature of the keyboard is that the switches can even be easily changed. Reading more about this I came across some fairly fascinating (to me) charts showing the pressure graphs needed to actuate and release the keys of various key switch types. Included in the chart were all the cherry switches and the topre and buckling spring and some others. I would embed the image, but it seems to be on an insecure site so it complains here on blogger, but you can see it by clicking here.

The guys over at the input club were developing a new kind of switch, which in theory had the best characteristics of all the switches they ever found. They had two new versions, the Halo True and Halo Clears. The pressure chart for the Halo Trues looked interesting to me in that there was a dip in the chart like a soft "click" that the buckling springs have, and then a gentle ramp so that bottoming the keys out was not harsh. I'm not a heavy handed typist anyway, some people really bash away at the keys but I am more gentle so the bottoming out issue is not that critical - but it is part of the key switch experience for sure. The long term effect of a hard landing on your keys is fatigue and possibly joint pain, so it is good to get it right. The activation force is less at 60g vs 70g for the M, and the "click" overall is less pronounced.

I read all the marketing materials and early prototype reviews I could, but it was too new and nobody really compared the new Halo switches directly to buckling springs, or even to the Cherrys in any great detail. So, in a fairly uncharacteristic move I just went out on a limb and ordered the keyboard from Massdrop, my first ever purchase from them. I was one of around 3000 in the drop, a pretty big one I understand, and my keyboard is serial number 968 for what it is worth. It was not cheap, at $217 USD, but it's not like I buy keyboards often. Despite my love for the Model M I wanted to play with some modern features like n-key rollover and backlighting/underlighting and a native USB-C connection and the smaller form factor. I'm still not sure I can live without the numeric keypad, but it sure makes a hell of a difference to the size of the keyboard - it is tiny compared to the M, and allows the mouse to sit closer to you.

Massdrop vs Input Club

There was/is some, um, "controversy" between the Input Club and Massdrop over the ownership of these new Halo switches during development. It looked like it might get ugly but the boards were still shipped on time, in fact a few days early. I'm not really going to comment on the whole deal other than it is a bit sad to watch from the outside and it may mean that you will not be able to buy another K-Type any time soon, or possibly even these switches. We shall see how things pan out. It may be that the Input Club actually develop a different switch and the Halo switch ends up a footnote in keyboard history - in which case I am probably lucky to pick one up when I did. Massdrop currently has around 1700 requests for this product (people who missed the drop), so that is I would have thought enough to go a second one but they have not done so yet - so what does that tell us? Perhaps they are waiting to see how this batch goes, and the reviews, before committing further, but that is all complete guesswork on my part. Moving on.

Packaging and Quality control

The packaging it comes in is nice enough, in a kind-of Apple style. I don't really care about packaging myself, after all in a few moments it is put aside. It came with a fairly usable key puller which has a hidden Phillips head screwdriver in the handle, or perhaps that is like the top of a keyswitch? I'm not really sure what it is! It also came with a switch puller, which is a simple folded piece of metal with hooks on the end. If you ever do take the switches out of the keyboard, it is a very good idea to use this tool and there is also a specific technique to it. There is the USB-C cable included, with the older standard rectangle USB end to plug it into your computer. This is white plastic, and is fine without being anything special really and it is not terribly long. It could easily be replaced if you care.

My example of the keyboard is pretty impressive, I have to say. Solid. I like the look overall myself, it is clean without being too flashy. With the backlighting options and ability to change key caps you can make it look any way you want, more or less. However, a co-worker took one look at it and said "it's ugly, eh!" so opinions do vary. I don't think she liked the exposed key look, or perhaps it was the silver base, she didn't say.

Reading some of the comments of those who got their boards though, it seems that the QA on the manufacture was all over the shop. People have been complaining of duplicate keycaps, non functioning keys, repeated keys, missing magnets, unstable boards, dents/scratches and other issues. More issues that I think you should have in a short run of product. Checking my board over I could see that I had all the right keys, and they all worked as expected and no dents or scratches. The only oddity I had was that some of the keys looked like they had some red marks on them - ink or nail polish or lipstick or ...blood perhaps? I don't know what really, and it gave me an excuse to use the new caps puller to get them off and wash them. The red stuff mostly came off, but there is a small trace of it still there. You can see it on the "( 9" and "{ [" key. Click on the picture to see more detail.

Edit 2017-11-10 : Hmmm. Last night I noticed for SURE that it was dropping letters. I saw this when I was signing off on an email, and typing my name. Instead of "Saul", I got "Sul", yet I typed the "a" - four key presses. I opened up notepad and typed my name many times, and yes, it was dropping letters at random, notably vowels, sometimes the "u" went instead of the "a". It was worse when done quickly, but sometimes even dropped the letters when typing reasonably slowly. I read of someone else who had this issue so I flashed the keyboard once more, making minor tweaks to the colours (kill the yellow and make it all blue) and the problem was then resolved. However, I had flashed the board not long ago and this behaviour is quite alarming. The sole purpose of the keyboard is to capture key presses and if it can't do this reliably then it is simply junk. If this happens frequently it will be the end of this keyboard. I wonder if pulling the USB out and resetting the board may have fixed it too, if it happens again I will try that. Right now, on typing this, I have not had any mistakes, but the letters are sometimes lagging the typing - which may be Blogger or the PC and not the keyboard. Anyway, in hindsight, I wonder if the high number of "mistakes" I was having was due to the keyboard actually dropping letters, although mostly I have been having transposition errors (letters in the wrong places) so it is probably still just me...

Lighting & Software

When you first plug it in the LED's are in a rainbow animation, which is great for seeing that all of them are working properly but not great after a while as it is distracting to type on. And here is were there is a bit of a rough edge to all this as the software to control the keyboard to its full extent is not quite ready yet. The way you modify the keyboard lighting and functions is quite complicated, not for someone inexperienced with computers, and shows the enthusiast market the keyboard is really for. Flashing the K-Type is needed to stop the rainbow effect, and this is done by a fairly long series of steps which you can read about by following the link if you are interested. It helps to have a second keyboard plugged into your computer too. You need to download drivers, install software, open ZIP files, move files, push pins in holes blah, blah, blah. No single step is hard, but I got confused at one point about whether I should have the keyboard in flash mode or not (it did need to be) by pressing a pin into a little hole on the underside of the keyboard. Overall, once you get used to the process it is actually not too bad, but like I said, it is mostly made for enthusiasts.(Edit 2017-11-10 You can put the keyboard in flash mode using the key sequence Fn-ESC, which is handy. However, I'm not sure why the software can't do this for you when you ask it to flash the keyboard?)


So, the software is currently quite bleeding edge, but is getting better at a rapid pace by the developers at the Input Club. You can actually configure the keyboard using the online web based designer, or a local app to your PC/Mac/Linux box. Setting up the colours can be fun for a while, and I'm using the very colourful layout below at the moment but I will probably change it further. Using the function keys with + and - you can adjust the brightness all the way down to off. There are animations too, like when you press the keys, or the wave, but these seem somewhat limited at the moment and quite gimmicky. I don't have any animations on. You can set the colour for each key, and brightness by choosing a darker version of the same colour (I will admit it took me a moment to realise this!). I'm not sure yet how many layers of animations you can put on this. I'm not 100% sure of the limits to any of this yet, and if you can do things like have the caps lock key go a different colour if activated. If you turn the backlighting completely off the see through sections actually invert to show the dark behind and are still visible. I counted 17 levels of brightness using the Fn +/- keys. I have mine set around the middle brightness, and with the colour choice some of the keys appear a bit faint in the photo.

Key Caps

For some unexplained reason, the key caps have a strong texture on them, like 800 or 400 grit sandpaper. I think I read somewhere that it was an antibacterial coating, but don't quote me on that. It certainly affects how the keys feel on your fingertips and arguably improves the grip - your fingers are not going to slip off in a hurry. I don't actually mind it, but it is worth noting as it is unusual. Keyboards do get grimy over time, and I'm curious to see how long this looks good, or if it will turn out to be a chore to keep it looking nice, or if this wears off and becomes shiny. Due to the open design, and removable key caps, it should be easy to keep clean at least.

Another thing to point out is that the text on the keyboards is top justified, which means the shift version of the key is on the left. See the number row to get what I mean by this. The reason for this, rather than the normal stacked vertical arrangement, is due to the underlying light-pipe. The light from the switch LEDs is on the top part of the keyswitch, so all the clear see-through sections have to be there too. At first I thought this text layout was weird, but you get used to it very quickly. The graphics on the tab, caps lock, shift, scroll lock keys are a bit funky though.

Typing Experience

So getting back to the most important point - what are these new Halo True switches actually like to type on? The short answer is : pretty darn good. There is a key resistance which is quite pleasant, and a positive feel when a key is pressed. Coming from a model M, it is not a revelation, it is simply "nice enough" and perhaps less springy. If you have come from a rubber dome world of disposable "normal" keyboards, this will be a huge step up. If you have come from another mechanical cherry switch, it will probably just feel subtly different. The keys are firm at rest, but in getting them to actuate is actually not hard. The bottom out is smooth and not unpleasant. Where it does perhaps feel a bit different to a cherry switch is when the key is released, this also has a feel which is hard to describe but is tactile, like they go back into place by themselves in a neat way.

I've been typing this review on the keyboard and I have noticed that I have made probably more mistakes than I would have if I had been using my Model M. I think though that almost any new keyboard will do that to you, and it isn't extreme but is noticeable. None of the keys are in stupid places or strange shapes, everything is where it is supposed to be.

The keys do not all have the same feel though, despite all having the same keyswitch. I never quite got what some were saying about stabilisers, but now I know what they are talking about. The larger keys on the keyboard need more than just the switch under them to keep them stable when you hit them off center. Without stabilisers they would wobble all over the place. The keys affected by this are : Backspace, Enter, Left and Right Shift and of course the space bar. The space bar is ok in this case, thank god, as you use it A LOT. It is more the other keys that have an issue - and that is that they sound, and feel, rattly and tinny metallic when you press them, particularly if done quickly. Because I am a klutz, I most notice this with the backspace key. If you change your mind and want to erase a whole word you might press that key several times in a row. Then you really notice the problem - it doesn't sound or feel like the letter keys.

It is possible to fix this rattly key problem by putting in different "plate mounted" stabilisers (like genuine cherry ones), or installing some fix like grease/tape/something else - I don't know. As stock this is a noticeable area where the key feel (on these specific keys) is not quite right at all. That isn't the switches fault per say, it is the hardware around the larger keys causing this issue. I read a comment that possibly the wrong gauge of wire was used in the stabiliser by accident, but this could just be a rumour. There are a lot of serious modders who got this keyboard so I'm interested to see what they come up with as a solution. So far, the consensus seems to be that 1) They suck and 2) You should replace them with genuine cherry stabilisers asap. The keys I'm talking about work, they just don't feel and sound as good as the rest. It's a nit pick really, but on the other hand this is the stuff that serious keyboard users care about - and this is a serious keyboard users keyboard.

The sound of the keys is not exactly quiet either, if you were hoping for or expecting that. It is quieter than the Model M, but not by much - and besides, what isn't quieter than a model M? If anything it is just a different kind of sound. I am actually using it in a noisy server room environment at work, and so compared to the ambient sound it is not an issue, but if I was in a quiet office or at home the sound might travel and be more noticeable. Your mileage may vary with this, some people are very sensitive. Like I keep saying, I've used a model M for so long I just don't hear it any more, like someone living next to a train line perhaps!

So to wrap this up, what do I think about this keyboard? Well, the acid test for me is if it will stay on my desk or if the model M will muscle its way back. I've only given it a few days so far, so I'm not actually sure yet. I need more time with it to decide. I have missed the numeric keypad a few times to be honest - I went to type in a mobile number and my hand floated over where it used to be. I will update this review in a while if this situation changes, or there is anything else I particularly discover about the keyboard I've not already mentioned above.

So far I've enjoyed using it a lot, and while that lasts it's earning its place on my desk.

Edit 2018-03-22 : Well, I gave it a good six months but in the end I caved. I'm back on the Model M and it feels like coming home. The M is so consistent and solid, and I just type better with it. Make of that what you will!


Pros

• Compact, attractive design (in my opinion!)
• New, unique and interesting keyswitches : Halo True
• Designed to be easy to mod
• Nothing quite like it
• Very good lighting effects
• Maybe a new cult classic...?

Cons 

• Some very random and quite serious quality issues reported
• Currently not available to purchase
• Was pretty expensive (but not so much for an enthusiasts board)
• Keys with stabilisers rattle (Shift, Caps lock, Enter, Backspace)
• Software used to configure fairly convoluted (but improving)