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#autohotkey#luamacros#emojikeyboard

The Art of the Bodge: How I Made The Emoji Keyboard

Tom Scott

6.7M subscribers • 29 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 6 people: 4 on Hacker News and 2 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2015 to 2022.
  • Presented by Tom Scott, content creator
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

3.5M views11 years ago6 recommendations

Tools and practiceHardwareThe shell and command lineEmbedded systems

Tom Scott explains how he built a physical emoji keyboard using a series of bodged-together tools like AutoHotkey and LuaMacros.

tomscott.com - twitter.com/tomscott - Here's the behind-the-scenes "how I made the emoji keyboard" video! If you haven't seen the original: youtu.be/3AtBE9BOvvk But the thing is, the truth is basically just "I bodged some stuff together". Which gives me the opportunity to tell some stories... AUTOHOTKEY: ahkscript.org/ LUAMACROS: hidmacros.eu/ and Colin's channel! youtube.com/colinfurze

Why it's here

6 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a classic demonstration of using AutoHotkey and creative hacks to solve a fun hardware-software problem.

hwayneon Lobsters • Recommends

The Art of the Bodge: How I Made The Emoji Keyboard

calvinon Lobsters • Recommends

The Art of the Bodge: How I Made The Emoji Keyboard

modernerdon Hacker News • Recommends

On “In Praise of AutoHotKey”

AutoHotKey (in addition to WSL and VS Code) was enough to make me Windows-curious and eventually try a Windows laptop again after 10+ years on Mac. I first found out about AHK via Tom Scott's similar ode here: link to this video He describes it as “a bodge that helps you make other bodges”, which is beautifully put. For those outside the UK, a “bodge” is a clumsy hack or repair.

jedimasterton Hacker News • Recommends

On “In Praise of AutoHotKey”

Fun AutoHotKey abuse: Tom Scott's emoji keyboard0. It's every single emoji (at the time of recording) on 14 full keyboards with 1,000s of hand-placed bespoke stickers. He goes into more detail here1, but it's beautiful. 0: link 1: link to this video

dijiton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development”

Never underestimate the art of the bodge, it's quite literally keeping the world ticking over, perfection has a place but it is rare and fleeting. I saw a good talk on it from Tom Scott some time ago0 which I think is relevant. 0: link to this video

lcnPylGDnU4H9OFon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Software I’m thankful for (2021)”

I can't disagree, even if I would prefer something else. Easily the most compelling argument I've heard for Windows is Tom Scott's: link to this video .

Kagerjayon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Setting up a second keyboard for more shortcuts in Emacs”

With lua + autohotkey scripts in windows this is definitely possible the last time I checked. You run a luascript on another keyboard mapped to a generic key, luascript inputs that as the proper text-based language There's a tomscott video on it link to this video Checkout Teran van Hemert (linustechtips editor) for some potential ideas too. He's got crazy macro schemas, I've used a couple of his and there great. All windows based as well though. link Mac, I can only assume its something you would write in applescript. But maybe you find some interesting ideas there. I found something called " link that might be of interest to you

modernerdon Hacker News • Mentions

On “How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)”

…pt your drives, don't try to disable User Account Control or Device Guard (like Gatekeeper on Mac). I've found that chocolatey ( link ) is a great replacement for brew, Laragon ( link ) is a good alternative to Valet, and Autohotkey ( link ) is unrivaled for general system automation. (See Tom Scott waxing lyrical about Windows and AHK here: link to this video ).…

jedimasterton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Windows Terminal Quake Mode”

Auto Hotkey is surprisingly powerful Here's Tom Scott talking about how he used AHK and Lua to make a keyboard for every emoji link to this video

avidseekeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Emotional about X11: I'm creating a pure X11 “emoji keyboard””

Reminds me of Tom Scott's "Art of Bodge up" video where he attempts to make an emoji keyboard on Windows. link to this video It's funny at the end he says "and don't ever suggest me I use Linux, just don't." I felt he expected it to be really hard project on Linux, while iterally his project is a single keyboard layout file.