Hi, I'm Erez. I run ZSA, and write The Ergo.
Every month I put a bunch of work and love into the magazine. scroll down for an example of what sorts of things we share in the Ergo, or hit Play and I'll take you on a little audio tour. You don’t have to be into keyboards to enjoy this newsletter.
What's in The Ergo
Our Featured Wallpaper
A render, or a photo.
A Company Update
A few lines about what we're currently working on.
Hey there!
Black Friday is just about here, and I wrote something about it. The post is linked below, and you can tell me your thoughts: Simply reply to this email, or write me personally.
In other news, we've released a new Live Training mode called Whack-a-Key which is lots of fun to use. You can watch me stumble through a training session in the announcement post linked below (it's hard!).
And finally, we published a blog post that's been about a year in the making: Ben Milford's in-depth tutorial for using the excellent and free video editor DaVinci Resolve with our boards. So much goodness in this post. Thanks so much for investing all of that time and effort, Ben!
All the best,
Erez
Announcements
Any new features or products.
Introducing Whack-a-Key
For increased precision
Whack-a-Key is a new Live Training mode for becoming faster and more accurate at any of your "non-typing" layers. If you have a Photoshop layer, an Ableton layer, or any sort of layer full of macros and shortcuts, you should check it out.
Using ZSA Boards with DaVinci Resolve
Explored in detail
Ben Milford, a professional director of photography and video editor, created a very in-depth tutorial showing how he uses our boards to edit in Resolve. Even if you're not a professional editor, this is worth checking out because DaVinci Resolve is powerful, free, and cross-platform.
Screw Black Friday
Some candid thoughts this year
I tend to write something about Black Friday every year, but this year I had some big feelings to talk about. It's a more opinionated post than usual, but I felt like it needed to be said.
User Interview
Some pretty interesting people use our keyboards. We publish an interview every week, and every month pick one to feature in the newsletter.
Featured User Interview
Gjermund Sivertsen
Founder, PopJazzOnline.com
How do you use a Moonlander without a desk and without a mouse? Gjermund has an amazing workspace that answers just that.
"I help people from around the world to better understand how they can play jazz and eventually be better at expressing themselves through their music."
Layout or Layer of the Month
An interesting layer / layout tour from one of our users.
Layer of the month
XCode (macOS)
The most common actions/shortcuts are just one tap away. This saves a lot moving your hands from one half of the keyboard to the other or even use of the trackpad.
Curated Finds
Never sponsored. Just things we genuinely liked, from all over the Web.
ChainList
GitHub for Checklists
It’s quite niche, but I was looking for something like this. Lots of templates for checklists (you can make your own, too)— and the assumption is that a checklist is reusable, not a one-off. Great for packing, business processes, etc. Web-based.
Wattpad.cc
From Wattpad to Epub
Wattpad, in case you don’t know it, is a hotbed of fan-fiction and other writing. Lots and lots to read, much of it free, and some of it good. Wattpad.cc lets you paste in a Wattpad URL and get an epub file, which you can then read on your own eInk eReader.
Lexica
Searching AI-generated Art
An underappreciated part of AI image generation is that once generated, the images… exist. That means you can use them or riff off them. Lexica allows you to search through countless images made with Stable Diffusion, and see the prompt and seed for each. Interesting and handy.
Animated Knots
Handy and Detailed Knot Explanations
Does what it says on the tin. The link goes to the Farrimond Friction Hitch, which is one of my favorite knots and a good example for how thorough (yet clear) this site is. They also have an app which works offline. The narration on the videos is not to be missed.
Wallpaper
Subscribers get to download our monthly wallpaper here, in various resolutions, also for mobile.
Wallpaper Of The Month
One of our favorite accessories is featured in this beautiful still shot taken by Jo. Say no more. :)
Thank You For Reading!
