Mouse evolution

 I have been redoing my desk arrangement. Took out all the mouse that I have bought over the years. Since 2011.

I had another 2: 2 thrown away. One, I forgot what brand but it has retractable wire and can be flattened and lock to bring around. To use, unlock and unflatten it. White with lime green lining. Two, HP gold. I gave it to my sis to use since I don’t use it anymore.

Maybe there is more that I gave away or thrown away but the ones that I remembered were those two. 

New arrangement. Clean up the whole desk today. Almost no place to place everything and, since wfh is getting less often, having them ready for dismantle is getting more important. Last one was meant for not moving around. Now, I can easily remove (still a bit difficult but easier) my laptop adapter and portable screen along with its wiring. Especially now, I also need the monitor to do my Ring-Fit exercise and Boxing on Nintendo Switch. Need everything to be shiftable so in the end I won’t use like half an hour to set everything up.

All the mouse wouldn’t be on my table. Hope my table won’t break. It is like wearing off from the corner already. 

Put it under my Colourful keyboard. Mostly Logitech. It’s because I used to drop them and they can still be used. Well, the more expensive it gets, the easier it is to spoil them by dropping. I used to drop them down the staircase. Especially, Mouse 1 and 2. 

Mouse 1, I think I had 2 before but 1 scroll not really working anymore so I bought a second similar ones. Bought a flowery one for Aunty as that time she had a mini Laptop to play game.

Mouse 3, I bought one wrong set before buying this. I needed a Keyboard and it was sold in pairs. The mouse wasn’t the same as Mouse 2 which is silent. When I got it, it wasn’t. I gave it away before buying Mouse 3 which is also a set with Keyboard. However, the Keyboard wasn’t that silent and hard to press. Then I wanted Silent Keyboard. 

That’s when I got Mouse 4. A set with Ergonomic and Silent Keyboard. Still, it wasn’t silent. The key press is silent but I can hear the Keyboard creaking and also feel the resistance like it was scrapping against other keys. The mouse was heavier with extra 2 buttons but I seldom use it. It was sturdy and feels solid so when it’s on screen, I feel more connected with the monitor. Haha

Mouse 5. It was a free gift from purchasing my HP X360 Convertible Laptop. It was touchscreen. It comes with a touch pen. I was a bit reluctant because of the price after discount. I said I wanted to think about it. He said if I bought that right then, there will be free gift of Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse. I brightened up although there are other gifts, I don’t remember now. I got a leather pouch for the laptop as well. Not sure if that was free. Mouse 5 is there so it means, I bought it.

Mouse 6. I bought a MacBook Pro for Software Engineering course at GA. They said it is better to use MacBook and not wanting to face any learning issues, I bought them. I like learning first before playing around. Just like reading the user manual before fixing stuff. Not break the stuff first before referring to the user manual. Just how I learnt. It also makes learning slow. 1 I hate lecturer or courses that tell me to refer to Wiki. I would refer to Wiki but that wasn’t the stuff I wanted to learn from a paid course. I wanted theory in action. 2 I hate when learning, it was the trivial issues that slows down learning. Might be because of a system differences, I ended up with problems that my lecturer cannot solve and waste everybody time doing that days topic. Why not just learn it with the same system and then at your own time, figure out how to do it with other systems. Or figure it out with another person or group with the same interest or having the experience. Out of topic… The Mouse 3 and 5 not really working properly with MacBook. In the end, I realised that I can adjust the speed… That’s after I got Magic Mouse.

Mouse 7. Along with Keyboard Set. Suppose to be quiet and it was quite quiet. I bought 2 sets. One used at home and another on-site. It was pretty good until the ctrl copy paste became slow or irresponsive unless I pressed real hard. Not sure if that was Keyboard but mainly that time I was still using my shit working laptop. Maybe that was the laptop. Now, my sister is using it. She dropped Mouse 3. One of the Mouse, the scroll wheel a bit not sensitive also and finally not really scrolling. That’s because I scrolled a lot. Imagine a few thousands line of code. Reading a few thousand stackoverflow. Trying new code with the new app. In conclusion, it was good but not resilient enough for Frantic Software Engineer usage. Funny how I used to ask the sales man what computer should I use for programming. They don’t do programming so how they know…

Mouse 8. G604. I bought 2. One for home and 1 for office. Having to carry it back and fro on top of my super heavy laptop and work devices, I really needed 2. Sometimes, I have to bring 2 laptops around and a portable monitor. Why G604? Super nice metal scroll wheel. 8 Additional Programmable buttons. If you have seen how the script scrolled down the page, it’s real satisfying even though you can do Ctrl+End. Most of the time, I do need that for searching codes that I have previously written but need to change them. I always wanted to put shortcut button on my mouse. Only when I have them, I realised, it’s hard to remember what shortcut I put and if I did, which one, since I have 8 buttons. I have to click each one of them before finding the right one. One time almost delete or close my code. Accidentally, pressed back button and I have to refill a form… After I have done so, I pressed back again. Argh… One recommendation, don’t put destructive function for shortcut. No delete, no close window, no back, no shutdown, no backspace and no cut. Only new tab, switch tab, task manager, show desktop, copy, paste and I still cannot remember the other two that I have programmed. Maybe I should put one for lock screen. 

Mouse 9. I wanted to try ergonomic. My hands always get numbed from using Keyboard and Mouse. I saw that it was on sale while my colleague was looking for a mouse. It was light and definitely need some time to get use to it. It is vertical. Right click will move the mouse because the motion is going to the left that the cursor will move a bit before I click. Hence, clicking on the wrong thing. :( Now, after almost a month of using it, getting better by balancing the weight of the mouse with thumb and forefinger. Need my wrist and thumb to anchor it. Liking it and it has two other programmable buttons. Hope it could have 8 like G604 but nope. 

I have Keyboards just as much as the mouse. It mostly bought in pairs. Before, I looked for portable ones and really had a hard time with it. Mainly, I wanted to do writings on my tablet but in the end, 1 was not working when on Battery mode. Another one has some wrong key issues. Both by Microsoft. The 2nd one was a replacement and when it still has something wrong, I gave up with Microsoft Keyboards. The 3rd was Logitech but it was super heavy. It’s broken because it wouldn’t power up. I think partly the battery and 2ndly, it wouldn’t on even with usb charging plugged in. Then bought one from Miniso. I forgot the reason I gave it away. Then I had the sets and so on. Then the last 3 were Mechanical Keyboard. Opposing my usual direction for quiet keyboard, the tactile experience is super satisfying. However, the clicky ones were really noisy after a few use. I bought linear switches and changed them all. I did some lubing, read up a lot on their differences and watch videos on how people modify their keyboards or looking at how each Keyboard sounded after modification. At one time, I found a youtuber recorded his typing sound using his modified mechanical keyboard for an hour. Some use cardboard as the base! It sounded really good too.  I listened to those while working. Strangely, I managed to focus more. Feels like I was in the office. He got over 100k views. Some millions. I wonder if I have become over obsessive with the Keyboards and mouse. I think the lubing and changing switches and keycaps felt relaxing. Like once in a while, I would clear and rearrange my table. Only when I stress, I will do so. Most of the time, I too chill to do so. Just something to do outside of work. Not thinking about work. I have been working in my dream for the past two days. Not sure if that was because I worked from home or I felt a lot of my code that I needed to improve on. 

That day, after the talk given by the head, I felt a bit like stressful although it has been funny. He said maybe now, you used 10 hours to complete a task, then next time, it will be shorter like 6 then 4 hours and lesser and lesser… Although that is reasonable but to me, if I did those in 10 hours, most of the time, if I need to be fast, I don’t put code quality first but function and ui first. So, if I have more time, I would improve the code quality, performance and flexibility to add at a later stage or easier to copy over to another project. I really prefer app to have only the code that it needs. Next time when there are changes or addition, people can easily tell which one instead of looking over a big chunk of code and not knowing where to start editing. Sometimes, not even in use. Waste of time and hold too much memory. Only when those are achieved and well developed. You don’t need 10 hours but others can also adapt the same code quality and practice so that it can be done with less time. The development part has to be improved to achieve that. If you skipped that part and everyone kept on repeating the first step, instead of improving, then it takes forever… Like now, all code base are really old. They really need to be reviewed and improve on. So other can adopt. If there is a common issue that these apps are facing, all the more that it needs to be corrected.