The other day Sneak spilt half a cup of water onto a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard... Unsurprisingly it reacted like Bill Gates with a custard pie in the face - it stopped what it was doing immediately, spluttering “iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” all over the screen. Sneak pulled the plug before the keyboard buffer could overflow and overwrite some critical component of Windows.

Sneak carefully set the keyboard aside to dry for 72 hours, whereupon it came as no surprise that it still didn’t work.

Two minutes with a screwdriver revealed the shocking truth - the crude switches, made from a sandwich of acrylic films with contacts printed in metallic ink, had been wrecked by the highly corrosive tap water.

A visit to the web, in search of a better class of input device, turned up the Happy Hacking Keyboard made by Fujitsu subsidiary PFU. This uses high-quality capacitance-based switching and can be had in a number of sizes and specs. Sneak, naturally, went for the Professional edition. Which is available with blank keys. Yes, entirely blank keys. Sneak will let the company explain:

“You: The sophisticated world class programmer - able to turn out incredibly complex projects in incredibly compressed amounts of time - you’re the envy of your peers... Shouldn’t your keyboard reflect your status as one of the elite? The blank-top keys and your ability to command the features and functions of this professional tool will amaze your peers - adding to your already formidable reputation!”

That’s a reputation for blind stupidity, presumably.

Of course if the prospect of inscrutably blank keys is not enough to impress your peers, you can always fork out thousands of pounds for a special keyboard with blank keys that have been painstakingly hand-coated with ten layers of traditional Japanese lacquer. Apparently the lacquer will last about 100 years. Your sanity may be less long-lived.