Trinsec @Qoto @trinsec@social.cleverlibre.org

@claudiom@mastodon.sdf.org Heh, I basically exchanged floppies filles with games with my classmates. Some of them even became 'dealers' in games, lol.

My parents did have a type cursus software from somewhere that I also made use of. Wasn't too impressed. What really motivated me was a friend coming over and seeing him type at light speed. So I simply taught myself how to type fast, no software needed.

Still reaping the fruits of that skill, like right now! :D
@256

@claudiom@mastodon.sdf.org The coolest game we had on our school computers (because face it, our PCs at home were usually better :P) was some sort of typing game with laz0rs.

Whelp. Those ones who did the typing cursus managed to get a score of about 300-400 points... That was considered to be pretty good! One guy even managed to get to a whopping 600 points!

Imagine me entering the scene and keep typing until my eyes were basically giving up. I ended up with 1600 points. :P

I've tried a few years later to play that same game on my own computer. It was impossible because of the much higher speed. :D
@256

@claudiom@mastodon.sdf.org Hah, cool. In that time I remember talking to my classmates about how cool Wing Commander looked, that intro was totally rad!
@256

@westofer@mstdn.social Maybe... but considering 1990 had games for PC like Star Control, Wing Commander, and even the good ol' classic Monkey Island... this could've been better. ;)
@256

@256 Hehe, I played this one a month ago on one of those online dos games sites to see what it was about.

Pretty boring to be honest. ;)

@mur2501 But you'll definitely come back regularly, possibly with a whole bag full of dirty laundry for her to clean. :P ;)

@robflop Ah right, EU law for the win. :D Hi neighbour! ;)

Lemme know if you manage to get an ELECOM one from a viable source. It seemed to me back then that it needs importing. After a quick looking around, https://www.trackballmouse.org seems to be an useful site for this. Looks like Amazon also has more options available as well. It was real hard to find (non-Japanese) info about this brand a few years back. ELECOM has so many options available, I wish there was an European shop selling them.

My favorite trackball, that Cordless Optical Trackman, was finger-controlled and was my gaming trackball until it broke and I couldn't buy new ones anymore. The main mouse button was pressed with the thumb there, so that wasn't so bad in my memory. It was also the first button to break though... :P I assume that's what you meant with a more traditional mouse shape?

@FailForward It might be because they're so damned bored out of their skull?

@robflop Oh jeez, there's the M575 now? Haha, well last year I bought a nice deal of 4 M570s so I don't need to look for a new trackball anytime soon. :D

It seems to look similar to the M570 so you could indeed go for the M575 for probably the same experience. At most 50 euro, so around 50 bucks, sounds about right.

And what you experience with the Orbit is also my experience; It's not easy to control the ball and press the buttons at the same time like for dragging. I suspect it is because the push direction is a bit wrong for this. I often need to call in the help of my other hand to perform that stunt.

As a gamer, the Orbit quickly fell out of favor with me. It is also why I'm apprehensive of trying out the Expert, because it's more expensive than the MX Ergo (100 vs 90 euro), and it's probably got the same issue with the button push direction.

If you really want to get the Expert, I'd suggest buying it off a store with a 2-week return policy or similar. Then you could try it out. But those kind of trackballs are definitely different from the Logitech ones.

Oh I remember something. If you really want to keep it ambidextrous, maybe take a peek at the Logitech Marble Trackball, if that's still available. Doesn't seem to have a scroll wheel from what I can see, so that might be a huge drawback. But the push direction there seems to make more sense than the Kensingtons. There might be other brands with a similar setup, but I don't know them off top of my head.

My favorite trackball ever was the Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan. It was finger operated (so not thumb controlled), had plenty of buttons, was made for the right hand (so not ambidextrous) and... isn't made anymore. I don't know why Logitech axed that line. :(

@mur2501 D'awwwwww....

@mur2501 I thought your mom didn't want animals in the house... 😋

Wait.. you didn't call her a cow did you?!

@mur2501 😂

They need to send out another one now! 😋

@kelena Ohhhhhh... burrrrrn....

@westofer@mstdn.social Thanks! Though I've got this issue for years already. I can only hope the new spray is going to be a miracle!

@Untersuchende Apparently you removed your earlier response while I was typing up mine. I decided it was a good enough one to respond with though, so here we go:

There's only one problem: Twitter is not a government-run platform. It's got a commercial company running it and they have the right to point you the door for whatever crazy reason. It's got nothing to do with communism. You want 'freedom to talk about whatever', you're not going to a commercial platform with their own house rules.

If Twitter is a 'threat to democracy' (it wasn't even democratic to begin with..), then simply move on elsewhere. I'm sure the government can have their own state-run information portal. (just like CCP!)

They could always host their own ActivityPub instance I suppose. (and other instances also reserve the right to defederate with them for whatever reason)

@mur2501 Looks nice.

@freemo Lol, so he is kinda your... sorta virtual daddy? 😋

@robflop Well, this one you have got now is a bit 'generic' to the feel. It's not shaped particularly to your hand since it's universally left or right handed.

That's what kinda put me off eventually, since the M570 is better shaped for my hand. The Kensington Expert doesn't look appealing to me either. The orb ring was initially a nice touch (no pun intended) but it's too smooth, I kept overscrolling in the hotbars in games so that wasn't very practical in the end, alas. I don't know what the Expert is like.

The M570 itself has still a fair enough price point. I'd eventually want to try out the Logitech MX ERGO, but it's way too expensive now.

If you want to experiment more after initial tests are likable, and you've got access to this brand, maybe you could take a peek at the ELECOM trackballs. I wouldn't know where to get that brand in my country, but they look appealing and cheap and varied (thumb or index finger balls). And definitely multiple buttons, that's a must for me as well.

If you like trackballs after this one, you can indeed try that Kensington Expert if you like the ambidextrous potential of that trackball. Or if you want one shaped to your (right) hand, the M570 (or maybe even ELECOMs).

You'll have to decide for yourself if you want the balls to be finger operated or thumb operated. The advantage of the latter is that the rest of your fingers are immediately on the buttons, that maybe matters a bit if you do action gaming.

Do /not/ get the Speedlink Aptico though. I've tested that out as well, and it seems to be made for a very misshapen hand. If I kept using it my hand would end up all wonky. :P It was cheap but totally unusable.

Hope this was informative and that I didn't end up rambling too much. ;)

@mur2501 Or cats. Or any pets you love.