I have been trying to figure out a way to consistently blog during my commute to work. I have a 45 minute bus ride in the morning and evening. That’s an hour and a half every weekday I could use for blogging! I of course could just use my iPhone and the WordPress app to do this but there is something special when you are typing on a tactile keyboard that makes you blog more. I do carry a laptop with me every day which I could use to blog but even at 13 inches it felt a little too big to use in a cramped bus seat. Thoughts of buying a Surface Neo come to mind which would have been a perfect device for this kind of situation. Unfortunately it does not come to market (if it ever will) until late 2020. Also, I don’t think I’ll be able justify such an expensive purchase just to motivate me to blog more.

I just needed a keyboard. That’s it. A keyboard that was small enough to use in a bus, on my lap, with some way to dock my iPhone to it so I can use the WordPress app. I spent hours scouring Amazon for bluetooth keyboards for mobile devices. There we’re folding ones, tiny ones, big ones, fancy ones, handheld ones but none of them we’re designed to hold the phone while you typed. They all expected you to have your phone on a flat surface with a kick stand. You can say that they we’re all not lappable (I’m sure that’s an actual product feature).

During my research there we’re a few keyboards that caught my attention. The TextBlade by WayTools is so tiny yet still usable. It also opens up like a Swiss army knife. It overall just looks awesome. It was a kickstarter project from 4 years ago that seems to finally be shipping a product (soon… maybe… 😂). There’s a really interesting reddit thread about its history and how the product engineers seems to be exhibiting the Second System Effect as described by Fred Brooks. Beta testers have been raving about it for years but no one has actually received a production version as the engineers are still working on perfecting it. When being badgered by pencil pushers when I would get something done, I would usually respond with “It will be ready, when it’s ready!”. They’ve definitely taken that statement to heart.

When asked when it will be done: “It will be ready, when it’s ready!”

Mad Computer Scientist

The other one is something I would definitely buy once it is out. It’s called the Mokibo. I guess that stands for mouse + keyboard. It’s a keyboard that doubles as a trackpad. The keys are normal tactile keys but the key surface (or the whole panel maybe?) is touch sensitive. This means you can use it as a trackpad to control a pointer or do gestures on it. It’s a really cool idea, if it ever makes it out of vapor-land like the TextBlade.

So crazy it just might work…

So what do I do now? As they say, necessity is the mother of all invention. But I say, being cheap is the biggest reason for hacking stuff together. Since I couldn’t find a tiny mobile keyboard with a phone mount; I decided to buy a phone mount and a tiny mobile keyboard separately.

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…being cheap is the biggest reason for hacking stuff together…

Mad Computer Scientist

The phone mount I bought is actually one of those magnetic phone mounts that you put on your car’s dasboard. This one was perfect since it had a swivel that lets you mount your phone at different angles using magnets! (who doesn’t love magnets?) I got it off Amazon for 10 bucks. I then found an inexpensive bluetooth keyboard that was tiny enough to pull out on a bus ride but large enough to be lappable (yes, I am running with that term). Found this one for 20 bucks. It looked nice and even had different backlight settings (who doesn’t love multi-colored backlit keyboards?).

Installation was simple as the phone mount already had mounting tape on the bottom for mounting to your car’s dashboard. It was just a matter of positioning it in the middle of the keyboard.

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And there you have it folks. A 30 dollar contraption that will let me blog better while sitting in a bus during my daily commute. If I was smart I would patent this and make a killing off bloggers that have long daily bus rides to and from work. I hear there’s at least 5 of them out there 😂.