Category: How to

I recently bought my first mechanical keyboard. The COVID-19 pandemic means I’m switching between my Macbook and a Windows machine throughout the week at the same desk, and while I was comfortable typing on the Macbook, this HP Spectre keyboard and I do not get along. The differences in shortcuts for copy and paste alone were causing me to make enough mistakes to know it was time to invest in a peripheral keyboard.

Alas, I’ve made the leap to a mechanical keyboard, a Durgod K320 in space grey with Cherry Silent Red switches (120$ shipped). Typically, I’m the kind of guy who buys whatever Wirecutter recommends, but their suggestions for mechanical keyboards are bad ones.

Features you Should Demand of a Mechanical Keyboard

• the ability to remap any key
• multiple profiles of key mappings

Wirecutter recommends the Varmilo VA87M and the Leopold FC750R. I couldn’t determine if these keyboards include software that makes it easy to remap keys while shopping. The Leopold’s keycaps don’t have legends for the multimedia controls of the function keys, so users will have to memorize the alternate roles of F5 through F12, print their own legend, or change the keycaps. I can’t support these accessibility shortcomings.

Durgod Zeus Engine Only Runs on Windows

The keyboard I bought has companion software to customize the key map and save multiple profiles. That software is called Durgod Zeus Engine, and it only runs on Windows. That might be a showstopper for some, but not I. The current version of Zeus Engine is 1.0.2.12, and it is much better easier to use compared to when I first bought this keyboard.

The changes I’ve made to make this keyboard macOS friendly are as follows:

1. Swap Left Ctrl and Left Windows keys (macOS’ command defaults to the Left Windows key instead of Alt, which is weird and why freedom to customize is important.)
   1. Ctrl = 224
   2. Windows = 17

Use the website https://keycode.info/ to reveal what your keys are actually doing.

How to Switch Between Profiles

Hold Fn and press F12. The M light will illuminate to confirm the alternate profile activation.

Are you getting this error from Azure SQL Server? Login failed on ServerName.database.windows.net.DatabaseName Please verify that the shards are accessible and that the credential information affiliated with external data source ExternalDataSourceName is correct.

When I ran into this error while migrating a SQL Server instance to Azure and designing External Tables, it was because the user I specified as the IDENTITY during DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL creation had a different password that the LOGIN of the same name in the Master database.

Say we create a user in the Master database like this:

CREATE LOGIN ExternalTableAdministrator WITH PASSWORD = 'Nr26MY4@Q407inLE83[I7L$~5j5UL';

Later, when creating a database-scoped credential (and specifying this user as the identity), make sure to use the same password:

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL [ExternalTableCred]
    WITH IDENTITY = 'ExternalTableAdministrator',
    SECRET = 'Nr26MY4@Q407inLE83[I7L$~5j5UL';
GO