My kid's road to perfection.

[depletedvespene]

From left to right, my son's keyboard at age four, my son's keyboard at age seven, and my son's keyboard now that he's ten. Two days ago, he demanded to have a mechanical keyboard of his own and I was happy to oblige.

I'm gonna start saving for soldering equipment and whatnot, because I'm sure that at age 13, he'll be building his own keyboards from scratch.

[Chyros]

Attaboy ^^ .

[fohat]

My son used junk keyboards for gaming until he was about 10-12 when we "camo-modded" a Dell AT101 for him.

He liked it, but was more impressed by my Model M, so we did a subsequent "camo-mod" on a Model M at 12-14.

As he got more serious about gaming, I let him use my Cherry G80-11900 briefly and then got him a Filco TKL with black MX.

I got him a few interesting caps and we added O-rings which he quite likes. This has been his rig for at least 3 years now.

[XMIT]

I have a couple of NIB Model Ms that I'm saving for the kids. When they come of age they'll get to choose a keyboard.

[depletedvespene]

...

He liked it, but was more impressed by my Model M, so we did a subsequent "camo-mod" on a Model M at 12-14.

...

These look really really nice.

[Zobeid Zuma]

Damn, I didn't learn to type until high school. And I was lousy at it then, but at least I learned to touch type by-the-book, which paid off later.

However. . . How's your son's longhand, I wonder? Does he have a fountain pen too? (Do you, for that matter?) I really wish somebody had clued me in to fountain pens when I was taking notes in school. Ballpoints just made my hand cramp up.

[depletedvespene]

However. . . How's your son's longhand, I wonder?

Surprisingly, not as bad as it could be.

When I was in school, I hated calligraphy with a passion... yet now I think it should be reinstated as a mandatory assignment. I've seen the handwriting of my kids' school mates and it's God-awful.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I was never taught calligraphy (that's a bit extreme) but we were taught to write neatly. Primary school (ca. 1986–1992) was initially pencil and then the Berol Handwriting Pen (fibre tip of some kind I guess). Secondary school, I only ever used fountain pens and rollerballs — I don't know if any kids ever wrote with a ballpoint pen. One brand of rollberball (Pentel?) was hilariously bad: I only ever used two, and the ball would eventually fall out of the pen and roll away. Pilot and Uni-Ball did not have that issue.

An wealthy uncle once bought me a really cheap fountain pen. Why, I have no idea, I didn't need it, and the wretched thing leaked everywhere. That one got stolen — the joke was on the thief! I normally wrote with a Parker Vector — how, I have no idea, as I now prefer a finer line to write legibly (F or EF nib or 0.3 mm rollerball).

[webwit]

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Aye.