Yet another desk/work area thread

[Trygve]

Got tired of constantly rearranging and rewiring my equipment just about every time I need to do something with it, so I decided to try organizing it and making it more accessible. I disconnected and hauled out about 95% of the rats' nest of cables that usually covers the floor, took the equipment I haven't used in a year or more down to the basement, and then built a couple of desktop racks out of some half-size rails I had in the garage and various other bits and pieces I had lying around.

The bases of the racks are some Dell relay rack adapters that Techforless had for 49 cents apiece (plus a few bucks shipping). The "headphone stand" is a decorative plate holder that I turned upside-down and strapped to the rack, and I also strapped things like the component-to-SDI transcoder and some of the breakout boxes to the sides of the rack rails. I attached a pair of desk lamps with dimmable compact fluorescent floodlights to the tops, but I'm having trouble getting those to stay in place; I think they were designed to support a standard 60-watt bulb and can't quite stay put with anything even a tiny bit heavier.

I tried gutting an old modem rack and cutting holes in the faceplate to mount a couple of LCD video monitors and switchers, but it ended up not looking as good as I'd hoped and I didn't have space for it anyway after I'd put in the other equipment I needed. Oh, well.

As of this morning, this is what it looks like. I still have to finish rewiring everything now that it's in a rack instead of random stacks all over my desk, nearby tables, and the floor. Now let's see how long it lasts before I have to do something that requires rearranging everything yet again....

 

[Aves]

Damn! :Q

 

[T3C]

Nice!

 

[300MDemon]

:thumbsup:

 

[WarDemon666]

holy moly! *giggles*

 

[ggnl]

Holy shite! What exactly do you do with that setup?

 

[konakona]

you need a better chair... neater cabling...
couldnt pick on anything else
in one word : awesome :thumbsup:

 

Wow, just Wow!

 

[new2AMD]

very nice

 

[Trygve]

Originally posted by: VanillaH
you need a better chair... neater cabling...
couldnt pick on anything else
in one word : awesome :thumbsup:

Thanks! I picked up some cable wraps and other cable management stuff yesterday, but I probably won't have time to work on it again until this evening--but tidying up the cables is definitely on the agenda. (The hallway is the scary part; I've "organized" the cables I'd pulled out by stretching them down the hall and sorting them by type. Ideally, this way I can wire everything up with as close to the optimal length cables tonight.)

The chair's a Steelcase. They're pretty good and they last forever, but I'm tempted to get something a little cooler at least before the summer. Maybe one of those mesh chairs.

 

[PanzerIV]

Originally posted by: Trygve

Originally posted by: VanillaH
you need a better chair... neater cabling...
couldnt pick on anything else
in one word : awesome :thumbsup:

Thanks! I picked up some cable wraps and other cable management stuff yesterday, but I probably won't have time to work on it again until this evening--but tidying up the cables is definitely on the agenda. (The hallway is the scary part; I've "organized" the cables I'd pulled out by stretching them down the hall and sorting them by type. Ideally, this way I can wire everything up with as close to the optimal length cables tonight.)

The chair's a Steelcase. They're pretty good and they last forever, but I'm tempted to get something a little cooler at least before the summer. Maybe one of those mesh chairs.

Trygve you did an awesome job! :thumbsup: I only WISH I had a workstation at home that looked nearly that good. I need to hire you as my consultant.

 

[purbeast0]

lol honestly ... what is the point of that?

 

[pyonir]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
lol honestly ... what is the point of that?

kind of what i'm thinking...but to each their own.

 

[Trygve]

Originally posted by: ggnl
Holy shite! What exactly do you do with that setup?

A little of everything. I've got a bunch of movies I need to get ready for the American Film Market in November--clean up some sound and video issues, make trailers, design and produce DVDs, make promotional posters and sampler disks. Sometimes I do TV commercials and music videos, master CDs, create magazine ads and posters, etc., etc.

I'm already into crunch time with the market less than a month away, so I should be cranking through stuff rather than redecorating, but I was getting frustrated with having to rewire things all the time and making things look organized is motivating, even if I'm the only one who's going to be looking at it. (Well, me and ATOT.) If I can't get the materials I really need (good quality usable stills, decent trailers, posters that don't suck) from the filmmakers, I can at least do what I can to reduce my frustration level.

 

[Trygve]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
lol honestly ... what is the point of that?

Call it a personality defect, but I spend way too much time doing things that don't really make any practical difference, but that just strike me as cool. I do it with my stereo systems, I'm doing it here, and I do that kind of stuff a lot with the server room. I suppose we all have our hobbies. Having things look tidy (and cool) makes me feel better.

It is nice to have all the decks within easy reach, and it's nice to be able to step around the back of the racks to patch in a cable from here to there without having to crawl around under the desks and tables--and the desk lamps on top of the racks swing around to light the cables on the back of the decks while I'm doing it. Rack-mounting also has the advantage that it's easier for me to swap out gear from the middle of the rack...versus all the times I've needed to swap out something that was underneath a couple of beta decks, etc., and those do have some weight to them.

 

[imported_Pablo]

Originally posted by: Trygve

Originally posted by: purbeast0
lol honestly ... what is the point of that?

Call it a personality defect, but I spend way too much time doing things that don't really make any practical difference, but that just strike me as cool. I do it with my stereo systems, I'm doing it here, and I do that kind of stuff a lot with the server room. I suppose we all have our hobbies. Having things look tidy (and cool) makes me feel better.

It is nice to have all the decks within easy reach, and it's nice to be able to step around the back of the racks to patch in a cable from here to there without having to crawl around under the desks and tables--and the desk lamps on top of the racks swing around to light the cables on the back of the decks while I'm doing it. Rack-mounting also has the advantage that it's easier for me to swap out gear from the middle of the rack...versus all the times I've needed to swap out something that was underneath a couple of beta decks, etc., and those do have some weight to them.

That's a pretty neat setup. Since it seems that this is your occupation, I don't see anything wrong with keeping it hyper-organized . Do have any demos of your work? Trailers, etc in a format that is easily shared?

 

[Trygve]

Originally posted by: Pablo
That's a pretty neat setup. Since it seems that this is your occupation, I don't see anything wrong with keeping it hyper-organized . Do have any demos of your work? Trailers, etc in a format that is easily shared?

Unfortunately, I spend 99% of my time cleaning up other people's stuff...which I don't have the rights to distribute on the net or anything like that, but here's a music video I did that I'm fairly happy with. (It's a bit over 12 meg; I hope that's not too big.)

BTW, I'm the tall blonde guy in it. I did seven tracks of vocals on this one (lead, German tracks, background vocals, one just of growls and stuff, etc.) and even did such odd things as going down to the gym and banging different weights together to get some of the sounds I wanted. (Oh, yeah; the very first German voice in it isn't me, it's from a sound library, but the rest is me.)