Since I spend so much time in my little office, I thought it couldn’t hurt to take a few photos, and describe it a bit. Check them out on Flickr, or click each photo to see it larger.
Firstly, to set the scene, myself and my wife live in a terraced house, usually with two housemates, two dogs (and two chickens). This means there is a distinct lack of room. When I said to my wife, “I need an office”, I was given the cellar. Which I have to share with the washing machine. Coupled with little money, I couldn’t afford to convert the cellar into an airy and fresh new room. I put in a concrete floor, a little insulation in the ceiling, and a lot of yellow masonry paint.
So as you can tell, we’re just getting the basics in right now, rendering it livable for starters. Thus, in this photo, note the lumpy walls, utility meters, coal shute and general mankiness. Now, we’ve dealt with that, I apologise for it and now you can ignore it, and focus on the good stuff! Roll on the next photo…
Now to explain a little more about my setup. I use a custom built desktop PC, with a quad core Q9550 processor, 6 Gb of RAM, assorted hard disks, and a Radeon HD 4830 graphics card. I’m currently running Windows 7, with some variety of the Adobe Master Collection running.
The boss tuneage is thrown out by a fairly run-of-the-mill-but-sufficient 5.1 surround system, with my media player of choice being the inimitable Foobar 2000 – fast, tiny memory footprint and thus sexy indeed. The fluffy dog toy is a mascot. She’s called “Banger”.
The final thing to note in this photo is the landline. Guess if the cellar gets terrible network coverage for my mobile phone. You guessed right. Time for the next photo!
Well, the big thing to notice here is the screens, and what’s on them. My big ol’ graphics card has two DVI to VGA converters shoved in the back, giving me my two HP L1906 monitors, boasting a total of 1280×2048 screen space. I like the task separation that two separate screens give you, as opposed to one massive one. I also like the fact that trading my 14inch for two 19 inch screens cost me just £70!
The photo backdrop is one I took on my K10D at dawn a year or two back. It’s split across the two screens (and I have an extra taskbar) thanks to the genius that is Display Fusion Pro.
Your final treat is the “Vote for Chris” poster on the wall. This is a remnant of my comedy campaign for the union elections at Sheffield University. I lost, quite badly. Time to move on, I think…
From the side, there are three things I want you to notice:
Firstly, my excellent VisiBone cheat sheet, with hexadecimal colours, and a guide to colour blind appearance of the spectrum below. Get your own at www.visibone.com!
Secondly, the mirror I have wedged at 45 degrees in order to (ineffectually) reflect light from the coal shute into my office. Pity me, as you read this from a computer near a window.
Thirdly, have you noticed the dogs yet? More on that next…
The star of this particular photo is Pudding. She is a labrador. I’m guessing you worked that out on your own.
I’m not going to insult your intelligence by talking about her for twenty paragraphs, I’ll just say that if you want to find out more about her, check out her twitter page at www.twitter.com/dogpudd.
Let’s move on, although if you hated that one, you’ll love what’s coming…
And sleeping under the desk is Hezebelle, my collie. Quite why she chooses to sleep on such a horrifyingly mouldy duvet I’m not sure, but she hasn’t developed a cough, pneumonia or cerebral malaria yet, so I’m not too worried.
Yes, she is on twitter as well, sad as that is. Check her at www.twitter.com/dogheze.
The only other thing of note here is my chair. I did have a wonderfully comfortable, adjustable, ergonomic executive office chair, with arm rests and pneumatics and everything. Sadly, it gave me terrible RSI, and slightly depressingly, this old kitchen chair cured it instantly.
Nearly done now…
You have waited with me to the end, and I thank you for that. In this last photo, you can see me using the office, almost as I would if the camera wasn’t on a 12 second timer, and I hadn’t just vaulted over the washing machine to get into my chair in time.
You may note that I am, in a rather egocentric manner, looking at http://allaboutchris.co.uk, my personal website.
Feel free to do the same, but otherwise, thanks for taking a look at my office, and checking out the blog. See ya!
Dank. Claude Bernard spent alot of time in the basement, and look what happened to him.
Oh, that's really annoying. The photos haven't been put in when it transfered into facebook. See it on the original page at http://allaboutchris.co.uk/blog/2010/my-office/
Chris, the photos are there, how else did I know it was gloomsville?
That's so weird. They definitely weren't there when I loaded it before!