7 May 2026
My all-time favorite mechanical keyboard designer, MTNKBD, is closing up shop and selling its stock. This is no big surprise, as I imagine shipping a specific product from Australia to a small, global audience is not very cost effective. There are literally hundreds of small mechanical keyboard manufacturers at this point, and priorities have become fragmented to such an extent that it is not unusual to order a one-off PCB and 3D print your own design. Apart from a few retailers, who work more on marketing than product, they are targeting dozens (or maybe hundreds) of audiences with every new design.
That said, I consider MTNKBD’s Let’s Tango keyboard to be a masterpiece in terms of design, and it freed me from trying out new keyboards. I don’t want to spend this post delving into the design preferences of something so esoteric, so I’ll just mention that the general craftsmanship of the product is superb. It is heavy due to the brass baseplate, and is fabricated from a single piece of aluminum with good beveling at a slight angle. It comes with a well-padded travel case, and it comes with some extra swappable PCBs in case the electronics ever go out. Build quality is something I’d expect from Apple, not a partner in Sydney. When they closed I sent its creator a little “thank you” note, bought some of the remaining supply as a backup, and told him that sometimes work can be art.
I know his world and can relate to it. Over the past year I have created Table Slayer and Counter Slayer, high quality software designed for a small, niche gaming audience. One is designed for nerds who can install a TV in the table to play Dungeons and Dragons, and the other lets you put together a 3D printed board game for war games that themselves are barely played. With both devices I’m building toward a specific area, and they’re luxury items for people who like to go overboard with their games. In a way, they are a place for me to move forward with my craft. They are my churches made of matchsticks.
Fortunately, being software, the cost of these tools is mostly measured in lost time that I could have used to do something more profitable. Code is cheap, hosting is easy to scale, and open source software never goes away. As long as I maintain my skills, which have remained sharp through their creation, I will never need to close up shop. Still, it seems strange to spend so much time on something that relatively few people will use. I spend at least a dozen hours each week coding, adding deeper features to the skills I’ve developed building more expensive, highly used consumer and enterprise software. They may improve the product, but they will likely never be able to increase viewership. The purchase is too high before I can access the software. You need to make custom furniture.
Table Slayer is open source, and I charge for the hosted version. It may seem strange if the audience is so small, but I charge because having paying customers forces me to listen and respond to their requests. Most of the features I added last year were for them, not me, and add to our little community of weirdos. They’re also chasing the perfect gaming experience, and it’s fun to think of their own little friend groups who sit around a table and play with painted, plastic figures on top of a repurposed television. Even typing it out it sounds pretty silly.
Thankfully, my wife Nicole encourages me. She is a bluegrass musician and although she calls herself an amateur, she performs frequent weekly shows with her band The Black Eyed Suzies. Those programs pay him enough to buy good equipment and gas for out-of-state festival events.
Last holiday we took a road trip to look at new mandolins, because not surprisingly there are only two stores within ten hours that carry that many mandolins. He tried a few Gibsons, but eventually bought a second-hand Stiver, made by a talented luthier in Pennsylvania. Lou Stiver had no apprentices and made about one mandolin by hand every month until he retired. This was his life and his art. When he played it for the first time, even I could tell the difference in quality.
Nicole’s device is a little different from mine
Bluegrass is a small community, but the people who listen to it love it, and they’ll keep telling jokes about long-dead musicians around the campfire. They often travel by RV, hosting small, welcoming festivals where you can take your kids. They play together, eat together and share a bond that is interrupted only by laughter.
I recognize the joy and talent of their community. It reminds me of playing Dungeons and Dragons. It’s just a different place, and they have their own passionate creators.
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