WFH rejig

[Jurek]

I hastily turned the gaming corner into my home office in March. It hasn't evolved a huge amount since then. Luckily a big screen and "sex worker rated webcam" work for both uses. The rudder pedals double as comfy footrests.
I sourced "useful piece of wood" from my stash in the garage to fashion a handy headset stand on the radiator for my softphone headset. The big set of cans lurking behind the laptop screen don't do work stuff very well.

The PC is used for Teamviewer sessions with servers/users and other automata.
The laptop is work issued and used for anything that requires VPN.



I don't have a cat, but my dog is very soft.

Dog looks proper. 

[Morat]

Have you mastered the art of maintaining a Space Engineers/Elite Dangerous/Warframe/No Man's Sky/Other game of choice session in the background whilst working, yet?

I used to be a master at doing that with EVE Online but it's all a bit busy at the moment!

[Feanor]

Have you mastered the art of maintaining a Space Engineers/Elite Dangerous/Warframe/No Man's Sky/Other game of choice session in the background whilst working, yet?

Now that's reminded me of games like Monkey Island that had a 'Boss' key that would switch the display to a nondescript Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet or somesuch!

[Morat]

Dog looks proper. 

He has adjusted well to the WFH era!

[Morat]

Sorry, I think it is because I haven't bothered to make my hosting use SSL.
I'll have to look into that.

[Mrs Pingu]

Yes I was pointed to that so I deleted the post, thanks.

[Mrs Pingu]

Hurrah, now I can see the cat docking stations and the soft dog

[Chris S]

Have you mastered the art of maintaining a Space Engineers/Elite Dangerous/Warframe/No Man's Sky/Other game of choice session in the background whilst working, yet?

I used to be a master at doing that with EVE Online but it's all a bit busy at the moment!

Perfect match! EVE online is all about the spreadsheets (as I understand it - never played it, though I DO have some Elite Dangerous examples), so no one would tell...

[Mr Larrington]

Have you mastered the art of maintaining a Space Engineers/Elite Dangerous/Warframe/No Man's Sky/Other game of choice session in the background whilst working, yet?

Now that's reminded me of games like Monkey Island that had a 'Boss' key that would switch the display to a nondescript Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet or somesuch!

ISTR reading that Leisure Suit Larry's Boss Key would bring up what looked like an innocuous spreadsheet but which did not bear closer inspection.  Wholesale prices for sex toys or somesuch.

My erstwhile chum Meestah Blah wrote a front end for a forumoid site that looked like the Windows Help interface.  Back in the days before Microsith decided that you will always have an internet connection when you need assistance with Windows' latest foibles, natch, a habit slavishly adopted by World+Dog.

[Kim]

Fules!  Don't they know that you can get away with any kind of slacking off, as long as you do it in a green-on-black or grey-on-black terminal window?

[Greenbank]

Awaiting latest shipments to help tidy things up:-
* Two new 0.5m kettle leads (for UPS and server) as 2m cables are not required
* New 3-gang extension lead (with 0.5m cable) to sit on top of the desk
* A cable tidy box for the floor to hide the multi-gang extension leads in

Also been busy with the sticky things and cable wrap.

And have just done an Ikea order to buy a TERTIAL lamp and some storage cubes stuff (including some BYGGLEK lego storage boxes for MiniGB).

[perpetual dan]

Here’s where I’m working these days. I’ve been working from home a few days a week for ages, but never had to coexist with Mrs Dan before, though we shared a small room as an office. For a bit I had a stack of books standing desk in the kitchen. But dismantling in time to cook each evening was a pain, and Mrs Dan’s calls tended to bleed in. So I moved downstairs, into what used to be Mrs Dan’s craft space. Just out of shot are a printer, tumble dryer, washing machine, Miss Dan the Elder’s bedroom door, the downstairs toilet / shower, front door, and a doorway of drying laundry. So it isn’t all glamour, but pretty comfortable. The laptop is work, but plugs into the big screen for programming screen space. Speakers might be a Christmas present.

[Kim]

Cute looking keyboard...

[Jaded]

I like that look!

[perpetual dan]

Cute looking keyboard...

Thanks! It’s a Filco Ninja Magestitouch. Nice proper keys, reminder of which is which printed on the sides rather than tops. I don’t do enough entering numbers to make a numeric pad particularly helpful.

[Greenbank]

Also this:-

Cable horror:-

now looks like:-

And...



Still some minor tidying to go, some shorter cables to come which should get rid of some of the remaining black cable mess.

[citoyen]

Ugh! Looking at that sort of cable hell makes me feel ill.

I find the view under my desk bad enough. Here it is, with escape hatch (yes, I do know the carpet needs vacuuming, thanks):


The two thin black cables are for the desk speakers - one is the power supply, the other the link between the two speakers.
The thick black cable is for the iMac.
The thick white cable leads to...


L-R: lamp, speakers, charger
Plus assorted USB cables for different things that need charging, which include the Anker power bank. It would sit on the floor but I don't have a phone charger cable long enough to reach the desk. Maybe I should swap the extension for one that can be attached to the wall or desk. Or just get a longer charging cable.

[Jurek]

Spiral wrap is your friend.

[Mr Larrington]

If it wasn’t dark back there I'd offer the cable hell of which the Great Hall Babbage-Engine is a part.  The machine itself is relatively innocuous but it sits on the edge of a kind of Rat-King of intertwined anbaric string, with the AV receiver at its heart.  Power cables, network cables, HDMI cables, an optical one, some phono leads and even a SCART Thing for the legacy VHS device.  And speaker cables.  More speaker cables than you can possibly imagine, provided your maths is at the same level as that of disgraced former International Development minister Piggi Patel.

Spiral wrap is your friend.

Not at that price it isn't   Especially if you favour black over poncy white…

[ian]

I avoid cable hell by shoving them to the back of my desk and not looking down.

[Kim]

I avoid cable hell by shoving them to the back of my desk and not looking down.

This.  My concession to organisation is to go to town with the label printer, so you have a reasonable idea what plug powers what before you pull it out.

Spiral wrap and the like tempts Murphy's law of anbaric string, whereby the cable least easily extracted will be the one that needs to be removed first due to something b0rking.

[Jurek]

TBH, at work I have some black spiral-wrap dealing with the electric spaghetti which emanates from three monitors.
At home I have a 30cm wide shelf / footrest some six inches off the floor. Everything, and I mean everything goes under that.
Out of sight.......



AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[citoyen]

My concession to organisation is to go to town with the label printer, so you have a reasonable idea what plug powers what before you pull it out.

That's a great idea! 

[Mr Larrington]

My concession to the mini-hell in the Cupboard-o-NAS is to write the name of the attached device on each of the six almost, but not quite, identical power supply bricks with a Tipp-Ex^TM pen.  Same in the Great Hall, as I need to be able to unplug the PVR when incautious onswitching of various devices brings Thee Green Screen Ov DETH to your my town.  I did try sticky labels wrapped round divers other cables but they tend to fall off, usually immediately after you’ve spent ten floor-grovelling minutes persuading Tab A into Slot B.  In Braille.

[Jaded]

Tiny cable ties FTW. 1 per cable, cable wound up a reasonable amount, then cable tied.