Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terpstra Keyboard

terpstrakeyboard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#11

Post by cwbrandsma »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #5

Fun fact, anyone with a surname that ends with the -stra or -sma suffix has their origins in Frisia [0], a region in current-day Netherlands and Germany that retained their independence in the Roman era. Terpstra specifically refers to someone living on a terp, an artificial hill (because there's no hills in the Netherlands lololol) that people would live on or retreat to with the intermittent floodings. This in turn…

And you will forever have your name mispronounced by English speakers that can’t wrap their tongues around the -sma or -stra ending.

Things like TerpSON, TerpSmith, Terp….

One time while voting the lady working there butchered my name 8 times, she literally could not get it right.

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#12

Post by agos »

docdeek wrote: post #6
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #5

Fun fact, anyone with a surname that ends with the -stra or -sma suffix has their origins in Frisia [0], a region in current-day Netherlands and Germany that retained their independence in the Roman era. Terpstra specifically refers to someone living on a terp, an artificial hill (because there's no hills in the Netherlands lololol) that people would live on or retreat to with the intermittent floodings. This in turn…

Very interesting. The only Terpstra I knew of before this link was Niki Terpstra, one of only three Dutch winners of both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.

I also recall one Brett Terpstra, maker of Marked app and kind of a known name in the indie Mac developer scene

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#13

Post by dist-epoch »

Aachen wrote: post #8

I'm impressed how responsive the keys are! Will definitely be checking out on desktop if I can see how the audio rendering code works (unless someone here already knows). I presume the audio synthesis API and ontouchstart but maybe there's something clever in addition like prerendering the audio samples rather than synthesising them on press Maybe it also helps that I've got a headphone jack plugged in instead of the…

responsive, but there is a small click between notes. maybe they start mid phase

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#14

Post by awongh »

maxdamantus wrote: post #7
awongh wrote: post #4

This is cool! I want to try to build a hardware midi keyboard using mechanical hall effect switches like this: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/products/wuque-studio-dash-5... There's a few physical keyboards out there but many are super super expensive.

I've kind of done this, just without the actual "build" part—I instead use a Wooting computer keyboard (which has the hall effect switches you're referring to), and I've written some program to emit MIDI based on key velocity. I've been using it very frequently for a few years, and can confirm it's quite fun to use, though I don't have much experience playing other keyboard instruments and haven't tried to learn it s…

> I've written some program to emit MIDI based on key velocity.

nice! Is the velocity code on the firmware side? Is that why it's not included on the demo site?

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#15

Post by quotz »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #5

Fun fact, anyone with a surname that ends with the -stra or -sma suffix has their origins in Frisia [0], a region in current-day Netherlands and Germany that retained their independence in the Roman era. Terpstra specifically refers to someone living on a terp, an artificial hill (because there's no hills in the Netherlands lololol) that people would live on or retreat to with the intermittent floodings. This in turn…

Another fun fact, from Wikipedia, the name Frisia "stems from Latin Frisii, an ethnonym used for a group of ancient tribes in modern-day Northwestern Germany, possibly being a loanword of Proto-Germanic *frisaz, meaning "curly, crisp", presumably referring to the hair of the tribesmen."

In German Frisur, and in south slavic languages Фризура, means hairstyle, which is also related to the english word Frizz

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#17

Post by matteason »

Aachen wrote: post #8

I'm impressed how responsive the keys are! Will definitely be checking out on desktop if I can see how the audio rendering code works (unless someone here already knows). I presume the audio synthesis API and ontouchstart but maybe there's something clever in addition like prerendering the audio samples rather than synthesising them on press Maybe it also helps that I've got a headphone jack plugged in instead of the…

I had a quick look - it's sample-based (eg organ has 4 preloaded samples, http://terpstrakeyboard.com/web-app/sounds/organ440.mp3 plus 110, 220 and 880Hz variants), and different notes are created by adjusting the playbackRate of the closest sample

It's also all just vanilla JS which probably helps keep it snappy

Re: Terpstra Keyboard

#20

Post by jeroenhd »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #11
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #5

Fun fact, anyone with a surname that ends with the -stra or -sma suffix has their origins in Frisia [0], a region in current-day Netherlands and Germany that retained their independence in the Roman era. Terpstra specifically refers to someone living on a terp, an artificial hill (because there's no hills in the Netherlands lololol) that people would live on or retreat to with the intermittent floodings. This in turn…

And you will forever have your name mispronounced by English speakers that can’t wrap their tongues around the -sma or -stra ending. Things like TerpSON, TerpSmith, Terp…. One time while voting the lady working there butchered my name 8 times, she literally could not get it right.

To be fair to an English speaker reading your name from paper: some native English speakers are taught to read by recognizing words by their first letter and their shape, and skipping the word to later fill in the blanks when they don't recognize the word. The lady may have simply never been taught how to sound out unfamiliar letter combinations, and may have been trying her best to make sense of the unrecognizable mess of letters she saw in front of her.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...

Post reply on HN