71–80 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And screw it to a wall, not to your desk!
Good advice if can make it. Probably a bit more difficult to pull off if you have a deep sitting/standing desk.
Some of the things that make most difference to me * Teleprompter so you can look at camera and the person you're talking to at the same time. Significantly reduces zoom fatigue for me. * A bright key light. As well as meaning you can be seen on camera I've found it significantly improves my mood having a bright light in front of me that's diffuse enough to not dazzle. * Bone conduction headphones are significantly m…
Chair: yes but doesn’t need to be expensive. I’m still dragging around an office chair from 2002. It just fits me.
Separate your space. Make sure your work and home environments don’t collide. Once I learned this lesson, I bought a used RV and converted it. Power, A/C, fridge - just plug into the house and you’re good. Once the rats infested it and got me sick over and over, I switched to a Lowe’s Garden Shed. Now, replete with a basic folding table and all my stuff.
Synergy. One mouse & keyboard + clipboard, shared across all machines. From left to right, I have a personal intel NUC, work MBP intel, work MBP m1, personal MBP m1. Each with an extra monitor positioned above the machine. So effectively it’s like a single giant machine but workloads can be isolated. So nice. Game changing.
All y’all with your special mics - stop it. They suck for us on the other side of the call. Just get a set of headphones with a mic built-in. Beats, AirPods, etc. y’all with your fancy mics have no idea how inconsistent and awful they are for us on the other end. I lose at least 10-20m of my week with people futzing around with their fancy mic. Stop it.
Again, separation of work space vs living space is paramount. You can poison your living space with all the positive and negative of work - it’s just hard to really let that stuff go without physically changing your environment. Polluting your living space with work will only work for so long.
Other than that, I wish I could express how rudimentary you can go and get yourself a really good and productive space.
FWIW, my keyboard is an old Dell, circa 2005 - still rockin - mouse, old Logitech (2007?). Desk is srsly just a jank folding table.
It’s definitely less about the toys you buy than the protection of your work space vs living space - and making sure your just plain comfy sitting for hours on end as you forget to take a break.
A 42" 4k TV to use as a monitor. Big upgrade over two monitors.
Is that even usable? I don’t really understand how that would work in real condition. Maybe with a tiling desktop manager?
Speaking of virtual background, I took a real picture of a real office. My virtual background looks natural and is not distracting.
Some of the things that make most difference to me * Teleprompter so you can look at camera and the person you're talking to at the same time. Significantly reduces zoom fatigue for me. * A bright key light. As well as meaning you can be seen on camera I've found it significantly improves my mood having a bright light in front of me that's diffuse enough to not dazzle. * Bone conduction headphones are significantly m…
How do you use stream deck in a typical remote work setting?
A can of green paint. Seriously. I painted the wall behind me green. OBS studio does my pre-filter and keys well off the wall. Certain services (aws chime and Google talk on firefox), don't do virtual backgrounds and none of them frame the stream well. OBS+virtual camera does a great job! Speaking of virtual background, I took a real picture of a real office. My virtual background looks natural and is not distracting…
Having been WFH for the last 15y… Chair: yes but doesn’t need to be expensive. I’m still dragging around an office chair from 2002. It just fits me. Separate your space. Make sure your work and home environments don’t collide. Once I learned this lesson, I bought a used RV and converted it. Power, A/C, fridge - just plug into the house and you’re good. Once the rats infested it and got me sick over and over, I switch…
Distance from mouth is the most important factor in voice quality, I've found that a cheap pair of headphones with buil-in stick mic sounded much better than a Yeti mic on the table.
It's quite easy to test yourself, but nobody does that: just record a test audio snippet using the OSX Notes app and listen to it yourself.