Elgato Stream Deck: Useful for Programmers?

I thought I'd make a quick blog post about using a Stream Deck as a programmer, for anybody who's on the fence about picking one up.

What The Hell Is A Stream Deck?

Regardless of what it's meant to be (some kind of DJ Deck for streamers? idk I've never streamed), the Stream Deck is a small programmable keyboard with OLED screens for each button. Buttons can be configured to display arbitrary content (including animated images), perform arbitary actions on an attached PC (including reconfiguring the Stream Deck itself, so for example a button can display a set of sub buttons), or respond to arbitary events on an attached PC (for example, opening a program can switch to a set of sub buttons).

So, is a Stream Deck useful for programmers? Absolutely! But figuring out how takes a little bit of time. Here are my own use cases, hopefully they will inspire others:

1. Binders Full Of Shortcuts

Sure, you can move your mouse to navigate folders of bookmarks to frequently used shortcuts, but it's tedious hovering the mouse in exactly the right place and clicking. Being able to fat-finger punch a nice, binary on/off button is much quicker.

With the Stream Deck, I can configure buttons that open sub-screens of other buttons, and categorise all my front-end and back-end systems.

2. Handy Apps

Sometimes you want a little app and your main screen is already full of Web browsers, IDE windows and debugging consoles. For me, I often need a quick calculator.

With the Stream Deck, I can write a simple JavaScript app that turns my buttons into a calculator. This is better than a separate, physical desk calculator because a) it takes up no space when not using it; b) I can cut and paste values to/from my PC.

Another handy app lets you turn every button into a separate copy/paste clipboard, so you can (finally!) have multiple cut and paste buffers.

3. Mini Status Windows

Sometimes I want to check on an external system just at a glance, without having to open a Web browser.

With the Stream Deck, I can write a JavaScript app to poll a web service and animate a button. For example, I can show my Jenkins build status and, if one's in progress, how long it's got to go.

4. Shortcuts For The Forgetful

I use a lot of different programs, and haven't committed to memory the keyboard shortcuts for all of them. For example, I will occasionally fire up After Effects. Whenever I do, I have to Google how to trim the video composition, because I can never press the right keyboard key or find the damn option in the menus.

With the Stream Deck, I can configure it to display a set of After Effects-specific buttons whenever After Effects has the focus. And these buttons can be named after what they actually do (for example, 'In Point' presses the 'B' key). It's like a modern-day version of one of these bad boys:

5. A Second Screen

Some apps, like Zoom when sharing somebody else's screen, need all the screen space they can get. They fill the display and have no visible toolbars.

With the Stream Deck, I can configure it to have icons that don't fit on my primary display, whenever that app has focus. For example, to mute my microphone.

Conclusion

I've had the Stream Deck about a month. I bought the XL version (has more keys) and although I wasn't sure if it was overkill, I'm gradually filling up the buttons. Plus I have about 10 sub-screens of buttons. I've found it an immensely useful little gadget. The ability to quickly check on things, and quickly invoke actions without using the mouse, is great for programmers!

Wealth Projector acquired by IOOF

Wealth Central has recently been acquired by IOOF as part of its Advice 2.0 strategy. It is a proud moment for us that IOOF share our vision and recognise the enormous potential for helping more Australians engage with their finances and the financial planning process. We would like to thank our awesome development team and our customers, advocates and experts that enabled us to create something amazing. We look forward to the next exciting stage of the journey.

Convert Das Keyboard Ultimate to Wireless (sort of)

I love my Das Keyboard Ultimate mechanical keyboard. It feels great to type on, and the plain-black keys always raise an eyebrow :)

Unfortunately, it doesn't come as a wireless version. I've seen a number of people asking for one. And even some very impressive hobby projects. But no easy answer. However, I recently stumbled upon a near-perfect solution!

I purchased a Velocifire VM02WS Wireless Keyboard. These are wireless, almost the exact same size/shape/weight as the Das Keyboard Ultimate, and feel very nearly identical to type on (slightly softer, though still brown switches). They're also incredible value.

Now for the clever bit: the Velocifire comes with a keycap puller. Simply use the keycap puller to pull all the keycaps off your Das Keyboard and swap them with the Velocifire (they fit perfectly). You'll end up with a plain black wireless keyboard:

As a bonus, your old Das Keyboard Ultimate now has a full set of printed keys - so it can be handed down to a non-touch-typing family member :)

Update: the Velocifire is a very similar weight to the Das Keyboard, but I found it doesn't slide as easily on my desk whenever I want to change position. Thankfully, the feet have removable rubber caps. Removing the caps gives back that Das Keyboard slippiness.

Financial Planning meets Virtual Reality

We've evolved our prototype into a production-ready, richly graphical, engaging Virtual Reality experience.

The idea is to replace the 'let me turn my monitor around' or the 'let me sketch this on some paper' moment during the Financial Planner and client's face-to-face meeting.

Check out the video below:

Behind the scenes of our new VR promo video

Just completed shooting the promotional video for our Virtual Reality Financial Adviser experience...

NSW Volunteer of the Year Award

I was delighted to receive a NSW Volunteer of the Year Award from the Centre for Volunteering, for my contributions both teaching and coordinating Primary Ethics at my local primary school. Primary Ethics is a volunteer-based organisation that teaches philosophical ethics to primary school children across NSW.

My thanks to the Centre for Volunteering for organising the event, and for their recognition.

Eclipse hangs during: Publishing to WildFly 0%

One of our developers just lost a couple of days productivity (even going so far as to reinstall Windows) to a very elusive Eclipse bug. After working fine for months, his Eclipse suddenly starting experiencing significant delays (up to a couple of minutes) when trying to publish changes. Eclipse would just sit there, stuck at 0%, saying Publishing to WildFly. It did the same with other applications servers we tried (such as the Deploy Only Basic Connector).

We eventually managed to resolve this as being an issue with m2e-wtp. We found the mappings it uses under .settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component. We then modified these mappings to copy individual webapp folders one-at-a-time. Specifically, we avoided copying very large, nested folders such as node_modules.

After editing the file and refreshing the Eclipse project, the publishing pause is gone! The developer will have to be careful that future changes (such as doing Maven > Update Project) do not override the .settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component file, but if they do he'll just need to revert changes (we've checked the file into version control).

I'm posting this blog because we couldn't find any reference to this issue anywhere on the Internet. I can only assume it may happen for others who use Eclipse, Java EE and Node Modules together.