11–20 of 44 posts
I don’t know…someone needs to do Real Tech Workstations of Orange County or something because all of these setups seem very clean and perfect. My desk is a mess which I’ll clean up when I have a moment or something like that.
I don’t know…someone needs to do Real Tech Workstations of Orange County or something because all of these setups seem very clean and perfect. My desk is a mess which I’ll clean up when I have a moment or something like that.
- Asymmetric desk
- Shift your workspace to your non dominant hand side. This frees up space for reference material, and for writing on your dominant hand. When I previously worked on site, it was also a great place for having other engineers bring their laptop to sit next to me while we were working together.
- You can 3d print rails for a laptop so you can mount it under your desk
- You can purchase under desk mounts for large desktops. I have two computers under my desk. One gaming pc and my work macbook.
- You can also 3d print mounts for things like dacs, and amps to save even more space
- As above I switch between my work and gaming pc with a switch
- Keyboard maestro + activate application + 1 / 3 splits of windows is all you need on a decently sized monitor: 27 - 32. Being able to hit hyper key + letter to bring up or hide an application makes viewing things trivial.
- Bonus points if you map your 1/3 splits to keyboard maestro.
- Drill a hole in your desk in front of your keyboard
- You can put any wires directly into the hole vs running them uncomfortably to the edge of the desk.
- Use a split ortho linear keyboard. Push your chair in as close to the desk as possible so you don't have any breaks between your elbows and the board.
- Once a week, on Friday, make time to clean your desk. Organize it for your future self, so Monday you feel good coming to execute on work.
- Make it obvious. Put things that are habit based in front of you. You'll be surprised how much easier flossing becomes by doing this.
- Put your medication on your desk in front of you
- Put flossing material in front of youThere's room in your setup for asymmetric screens. I currently have three 24" monitors set up side by side, with a much smaller 7" screen underneath, showing Grafana dashboards. At one point, I actually had two of the 7" screens. I also briefly had a "horse blinder" style 17" monitor at the side of my setup, because I worked adjacent to the hallway and didn't like seeing people coming towards me.
Bread tabs make great cable holders. PCI slot covers make great headphone rests.
Throwing a single switch to shut the whole desk off when you're done is immensely satisfying.
In the olden days, I didn't let the two big, boxy CRT monitors on my desk run me out of space. CRTs make great tables. At one point, I strapped an FM radio, TV tuner, and a small digital clock on top of one.
I don’t know…someone needs to do Real Tech Workstations of Orange County or something because all of these setups seem very clean and perfect. My desk is a mess which I’ll clean up when I have a moment or something like that.
At least you have a desk. My workstation these days is just a laptop set on whatever surface I happen to find.
I don't like the term 'digital nomad', but I'm embracing the lifestyle to the fullest.
Biggest desktop organization hacks - Asymmetric desk - Shift your workspace to your non dominant hand side. This frees up space for reference material, and for writing on your dominant hand. When I previously worked on site, it was also a great place for having other engineers bring their laptop to sit next to me while we were working together. - Under desk mount everything. This saves space and indirectly causes you…
This is no joke. After i put a bowl of floss picks (those u shaped things that are pre-strung) on my desk my dental hygenist made a surprised comment at the level of improvement in gum health.
One of the finest engineers I’ve worked with has macular degeneration. His entire setup was designed to allow him to focus on the same part of his laptop screen (with a very large font), which is basically eye-level screen. I have only ever used a monitor the first day I got to my desk because it happened to be there. These setups strike me a bit like AWS/GCP. Just another place for devs to spend money. And yet anoth…
I will say, a laptop is the least important computing device I own. I have one to test builds on arm64; it's on a shelf somewhere and I SSH to it. If I'm "out and about", not at my desk, then I don't want to do any computing. Meanwhile, desktops are cheaper and more upgradeable. Need more RAM? Pop a stick in. ML training too slow? Pop another GPU in. I don't know why anyone would do it any differently. (I also have 3 monitors, 2 of which are for IMs because there are so many IM apps these days. I miss the days of having IRC inside Emacs. But bought some hardware to compensate for my friends and coworkers desire to use Discord and Slack. So it goes.)
The second one looks ergonomically terrible. The chair has no adjustments, the desk is a writing desk and not a computer desk, and there's no proper keyboard or mouse. Surely nobody can work like that for a long time without getting injured.
Not at all surely. Some people need that stuff and some don't. Just the luck of the draw.
I have a macbook plugged into a monitor, wireless kbd, trackpad. I use that setup about 30% of the time. The rest of the time I just use my laptop on whatever surface is near: my lap (shocker!), train or plane table, lying on the couch with the laptop on my thighs. On a plane if I have the window seat I often jam myself in at an angle and use it while twisted.
My gf thinks that is crazy: she needs an ergo mouse, special pillow on her chair, monitor at the right height etc. Her hight is a factor, also she's a parent so her carpal tunnels (and some other tendon guides) have narrowed. But she needs a neck pillow for the car as well, which I don't.
In general the physical environment is designed for people around 180 cm +/- a few. Car seats, star risers, chairs and tables... Fair or not that's how it seems to be. And luckily, I'm just a smidgen over 180.