New keyboard!

I got a new keyboard at work... and I am loving it.
Really, keyboards, mice, and joysticks are the best things MS can make.
I got the Microsoft Comfort Curve. It is simple, cheap ($20), and it feels really good. Love the gentle curve in it since I don't like the economic ones which are broken in half and than re-attached.

Obviously, I had to configure the few multimedia keys under linux.
Using xev and looking up the proper description of the keys in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB I put that in my .bashrc:


xmodmap -e 'keycode 236 = XF86Mail'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 161 = XF86Calculator'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 233 = XF86AudioNext'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 234 = XF86AudioPrev'


Now you can configure your amarok or other applications to use those keys as they now appear in any key short cut configuring dialog when you hit those special buttons.

Under KDE 3.5.x, a special thing happens when you hit the volume up and down buttons. Using kmilod, kmix listens to those button events and changes the volume of your entire system. Haven't quite figured out yet how to get rid of that key shortcut association and let amarok only use those two volume keys.
I could turn off kmilod entirely with kcontrol -> services.
But I think I like that I now have shortcuts to control the global volume and different shortcuts for amarok's volume.