Since the pandemic, when we were all able to work from home, I have been trying to make my home office the nicest place possible to work in. Now that I work 100% remotely, it is even more important to me that I have a comfortable working environment.
I am very fortunate to have a dedicated room for my home office. I know a lot of my colleagues were working out of their bedrooms during the pandemic which isn't ideal.
My home office is what we in the UK call a box room, it is a 2m by 2.5m room. I always find it funny watching American's showing off their “tiny” home offices which are “only” 5m wide. When we moved in, this room was only just big enough to fit a single bed in it and nothing else.
So let me take you on a small home office tour.
Tech #
For my main computer I use a Mac Mini M2 Pro. I pretty much have Apple everything these days apart from my servers that always run Linux of some form. The Mini works really well for everything I use it for. It was originally bought to help me with my video editing, but I haven't done much recently.
I use this with 2 Dell 27-inch monitors (P2715Q) which I have had since 2017. These are connected to an AmazonBasics dual monitor arm, so I can have them in the position I want.
For my mouse and keyboard I am using a Logitech MX Master 2S mouse and a Keychron K1 keyboard.
I have an Apple Homepod Mini on my desk which is great for listening to music or using it as a speaker for my computer. I use my iPad Pro on a stand and use it either for extra screen space or to watch YouTube videos while I work.
To the right of my desk I have a pegboard which hosts my network switch, 10 port USB charger, my Dell Wyze 5070 server and a Raspberry Pi. It is also great for those cables that I use regularly. I also have an old android tablet which I plan at some point to show my monitoring dashboard on and an Oculus Quest 2 which is gathering dust.
Under my desk I have my media server which is built from mostly old spare parts and is running Unraid.
Desk & Shelves #
My desk is made from a wooden kitchen counter top which I oiled and waxed myself with an IKEA ALEX set of drawers and cupboard. I also have an IKEA Markus Office chair which isn't the most comfortable but does its job.
I had been contemplating about investing in a more ergonomic chair such as one of those expensive Herman Miller chairs. In the end, I figured I sit too much anyway so I bought a standing desk frame for around £240. I generally sit in the morning and then stand in the afternoon after lunch.
Above my desk I have a couple of shelves on heavy-duty brackets which hosts all my non-fiction books. Most of these are on self-development, entrepreneurship, programming or physics books I still have from university.
Accessories & Lighting #
I have a few accessories on my desk that are purely for aesthetic purposes. I have a grey wool desk mat which I bought from Etsy which I think looks quite nice and doubles up as a mouse mat.
I am terrible with real plants, so I have a few fake ones to add some greenery, a couple I bought from IKEA and I have a bonsai tree which I can't remember where I bought it from.
Living in the UK most of the year can be a bit gloomy, so I have various RGB lights around my office to make it brighter. I have one strip on the back of my desk, a couple of ambient lights on the back of my monitors and another strip of lights that run along the picture rail.
On my desk, I have a light which mimics the time circuits clock from Back to the Future. I also have a fidget cube which I often pick up during meetings or while I am waiting for something to deploy to keep my hands busy.
Knick-knacks #
I am not sure if “knick-knacks” is a British saying or not, so in case it is:
knick-knacks
(/ˈnɪknak/): small worthless objects, especially household ornaments.
Programming is a creative endeavour, it might not be as creative as writing music or producing art, but it does need a fair amount of creativity.
To inspire my creativity, I have a lot of objects that I have collected over the years. Most of these are just to make my office a fun place to work in.
As you might have guessed, Back to the Future (BTTF) was my favourite film as a kid. I am pretty sure it was one of the reasons I picked physics to study at university. It may have even had some influence in me learning to play guitar as well.
As a result I have either bought or have been bought various BTTF gifts over the years. The latest of which is a Lego Delorean which currently sits under my monitors.
Other things include a few Marvel related things, as well as a Spartan ornament that I bought on my honeymoon.
These things might be a little childish, but they bring me joy and remind me of a time when I was most creative.
Are you proud of own home office? I would love to see some pictures.
❤️ Picks of the Week #
🌊 Waves — FFT-based ocean-wave rendering, implemented in Godot — I love how realistic graphics for games are getting. Water is something that a lot of games struggle with, but these look excellent. If you are mathematician you might appreciate the work that has gone into these.
🛠️ Tools — Aesthetic Command Lines with Hyper, Spaceship, and Oh My Zsh — I have never been happy with how my terminal looks. I am going to have a look at these and see if I can get a better looking terminal experience.
📝 Article — It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word — AI is definitely getting better. I am using it to help me write scripts to automate things. If you give it precise prompts, and you know what to expect it can save a lot of time. However, Altman's claims that AGI is just round the corner is clearly just him trying to raise the price of the company before an exit.
📝 Article — Re-Googling — I have been trying to de-google myself for a while now, but I am wondering if it is worth it. My email and calendar experience has certainly been made worse by not using Google when everyone else in my family is using it. Email is not a private form of communication, so I am not sure how much I gain by not using Google.
📝 Article — Unseen Thunderbirds film reels found in garden shed — Growing up in the 90s I watched a lot of Thunderbirds and I had all the toys. I always find it amazing what people find in old sheds and lofts.
🛠️ Tools — Zod: TypeScript-first schema validation with static type inference — We have been using Zod at work and I really like it. I wrote a note on how to use it if you wanted to give it a try.
📝 Article — Homemade AI Drone Software Finds People When Search and Rescue Teams Can't — It is sad that these drones weren't used earlier to save this man's life, but hopefully they can be used in the future for search and rescue. Drones seem like a great way to search a large area quickly.
📝 Article — Automating processes with software is hard — Most of my job as a software developer is around automating manual tasks. Usually these are tasks that no-one in their right mind would do manually due to the sheer amount of data. As always it is the edge cases and exceptions that take up the most time.
📝 Article — Silicon Valley, the new lobbying monster — It is worrying how much influence Silicon Valley has on politics. The EU at least is starting to fight back against monopolistic tendencies but generally where there is money there is influence.
🐦 Tweet — Nearly all of the Google images results for “baby peacock” are AI generated (Twitter/X) — Given how quickly we can generate images and text it won't be long before the majority of the things we see and read will be AI generated.
📝 Article — The Static Site Paradox — Most people end up paying anything from $3 up to $300 a month to host a website depending on how much traffic they get. They use WordPress for the easy editing experience even though they would get much better performance for a cheaper price with static hosting. My website gets around 40,000 unique visitors a month and according to CloudFlare serves 1.75 million requests, but it costs me just $0.41 (£0.31) a month. The largest cost for me comes from sending this newsletter out.
🛠️ Tools — DeskPad - A virtual monitor for screen sharing — This could be useful for when I start doing YouTube videos again. It is always a pain to have to keep resizing Visual Studio Code when I need to record. This looks like it could solve that.
💬 Quote of the Week #
Weird is about the courage to be who you were born to be. Nerdy, goofy, fidgety; these are strengths. These are gifts! The things that made you weird as a kid are the source of your character and creative powers.
From the book Feck Perfuction by James Victore.
Top comments (0)