Woof. Seem to be recovering from my cold finally. Been mostly composting in bed staring at videos past few days.

Still a bit out of it but pulling myself together.

Carpal tunnel has been coming back to my right thumb so I gotta start training lefty to take on more loads to account for that.

@mauve i dont have carpal tunnel (just an extremely tense right shoulder), but moving some tasks to my left hand a few years ago is genuinly one of gur best smallish changes ive made in my life, i started off with eating and have slowly extended it to more domains, my shoulder is since less tense and i greatly enjoy being that bit closer to ambidexterous!

@bx Great to hear, ty! I've been mostly focused on fingers so far but I'm also trying out stuff like bag holding and door opening. Also writing is on the todo list but honestly I barely use my arms outside of finger work. >:P

Eating is a cool idea. Been meaning to train lefty too use chopsticks. (it has a hard time atm sadly)

@mauve bag holding and door opening are great ones allot of gur tension came out of my backpack being permanently right shouldered
Chopsticks are wonderful, i love how easy to clean they are, i went fork -> spoon -> chopsticks with my left
If you have a mouse/trackpad/trackball thats not made for one hand, swapping that over is a good starting point for coordination imo!

@bx Ah for my hands I actually ditched keyboard and mouse altogether. I use either my steam deck's controlls or a ps4 controller combined with a mini keyboard that I can operate with just my thumbs. 😁 My previous mouse was an apple magic trackpad and it really sucked for finger pain.

@mauve that sounds like a pretty interesting setup, do you bind gur keyboard and controller together somehow??

@bx Not usually. I generally switch between using one or the other. I have a keyboard that attaches directly to my ps4 controller, but the battery kinda sucks and it's not great for keyboard bindings and special characters.

Kinda wish I had enough money to comission a custom controller +keyboard device but my current setup will have to do for now.

I also considered going ham on chording to map controller keys to different letters/symbols but that would take too long to set up and learn.

@mauve i've considered multiple times trying to map gur way gur 8vim keyboard on android does letters to a d-pad, it's based on which of gur 4 directions you start in, end in and move through, so typing something like an "e" could have you tap up, but typing "t" could have you start on up and move to right,

what kind of layout and features would you go for in a custom keyboard controller hybird ???

@bx Oh cool the setup you mention is very doable with the steam keybinding thingie. That's what I use for my bindings and you can set each joystick/d-pad to different keys. My left joystick has 6 shortcuts I use for text editing.

HonestlyI think my ps4+attached setup is almost perfect. Just needs to be a bit more ergonomic with a single bluetooth connection and a better battery. Also if I could program the key bindings in the controller itself instead of needing extra software.

@mauve self programming would definately be a large benefit, itd be easier to take gur input device between machines, are gur shortcuts just positioned at different angles? or is it more complex than that?
porting gur 8vim input style to a dpad (maybe with some modifiers on a trigger or A/B button) seems to me like it might be gur fastest way to type on a GBA or gur flipper or one of those lil microcontroller based handhelds, itd be pretty cool to have a full forth on one of them

@bx Yeah you can set up down left right to different keys. Also analog sticks give you 8 or more directions. Steam's UI for key bindings is really powerful too, you can have key combos and different effects for long presses and double presses and stuff.

Interesting idea for GBA. I've actually been cobsidering ditching my keyboard for a mini bluetooth cobtroller that would fit in ny hand. I currenrly just use it for tiktok scrolling but this 8vim thing might be usful for typing in general

@mauve i've never pushed gur steam keybinding thing farther than getting mouse and keyboard games working nicely on controller, though this is making me want to dig more into it,
another reason i think 8vim on dpad / analogue stick could be fun is that i might reasonably be able to type in bed using gur switch joy-cons, gur surplus buttons / stick could be setup so there's one typing wheel thingie on each hand, with gur other hand doing modifiers, a symbols one would be good programming wise

@bx Just tried out 8vim myself. Seems pretty neat. Could see it being handy once one has enough muscle memory. I think it *might* be possible to do with virtual menus and "mode switching" but it'd be janky as heck. Probably easier to just write code which listens on the inputs and uses xdotool to generate input events.

Joycons sound great actually. I've been using my ps4 controller but maybe I should give those a shot too. :o

@bx One thing about the ps4 controller, I really like being able to use the touchpad as a mouse/scroll wheel as well as a "middle click". I've been able to do all my desktop navigation thanks to that fact.

Also now I'm looking at this open source ble gamepad with esp32 which is probs easy enough to program keyboard output into. >:) https://www.tindie.com/products/electropoint/esp32-ble-gamepad/

@mauve yeah, gur ps4 track pad actually shines through allot on pc, used to use it with a joypad->keyboard program to play some mk games and then eventually moved to trying out gur steam controller for them, though gur steam controller def had its flaws i think they really nailed it on gur steam deck, id love to see v2 thats just gur steam deck layout on a gamepad

That controller is making me want to try modding one of my wired ones to wireless

@bx Yessss. Big same about a steam deck based controller. I like the ps4 controller but the deck is so much nicer. Tho the typing thing is still nagging at me. Tbh the on screen keyboard on the deck isn't too bad with the dual trackpad typing.

@mauve a steam deck layout based controller that has half a blackberry keyboard assigned to each thumb would be absolute gold, ive always kinda wondered why gur touch screen keyboard on gur psvita took up half gur screen instead of just giving you ~20 keys in a grid under each thumb, gur main thing that feels uncomfortable on those small media keyboards to me is my thumb having to reach in to gur middle