Yay, new phone. Now I can actually play Angry Birds. And maybe start Android development.

I told myself I wasn’t going to buy anything but Steam games this Black Friday but I couldn’t resist. The Human Solution was having a sale on the Kinesis Advantage (a $300 dollar keyboard) with a 10% off coupon for Black Friday and free shipping. FREE SHIPPING!

Yep, I just bought this keyboard for $242.10, shipped.

Now let me explain. My RSI/carpal-tunnel symptoms have been getting worse and worse so I’ve been looking for some ergonomic keyboards to help fix it. There is quite a selection of them but I wanted one with mechanical switches leaving only a few (expensive) choices. Among them was the the Kinesis Advantage, one of the highest-regarded ergonomic keyboards. The huge price tag had put me off initially but then I thought about it for a bit. Here’s the rationale I came up with to convince myself into buying it:

• I’m probably going to be making a living typing on a keyboard, might as well make it a nice one and not ruin my hands.
• I’m hoping this will help with the RSI/carpal-tunnel problems. Better get a ergonomic keyboard than have to go to doctor to treat them, right?
• It’ll make me type faster and be more productive (hopefully).
• It’ll look super cool!
• $242.10 is still not that expensive for a keyboard is it? I feel like keyboards are often the most neglected piece of computer hardware and most people buy the cheapest one they can find. As a person who uses the computer for the majority of the day, the keyboard is one of the most important pieces of a system. It’s how you interact with your computer, how you control it (yeah, yeah, there’s the mouse too). It should be on par with the other components of your system.
• IT’S 19.3% OFF!

That last one was what really convinced me to buy it. Can’t mess with the percentages man.

I will probably put up a review when I get it. I’m excited; I love getting stuff in the mail.

I bought a Kindle. Its pretty neat.

So I just learned that if you verify your dropbox account with a .edu email address, you can get double the amount of referral storage. Instead of 250mb per referral, now you get 500mb per referral. And it even bumps up the existing ones too.

Just visit dropbox.com/edu and have them send you an email with a confirmation link. Click the link and bam, more storage.

And if you don’t have dropbox already, I am disappointed.

I implemented the A* pathfinding algorithm in python/pygame today. Yep. I was bored of doing Source SDK stuff for my CSE381 class and so I decided to learn a new language, framework, and algorithm. The program itself is pretty basic and isn’t really that optimized but it works. Maybe I’ll post the executable once I figure out how to build python code into exes.

I’m actually really liking python/pygame. Maybe I’ll make my next game with it.