Yeah, I know… I’m probably the only one weird enough to find it interesting how others’ computer / editing “stations” are set up, but it’s not the first time I’ve been weird!
Here’s mine in all it’s gory, I mean glory… Taken on my cellphone with the overhead light on, which is off when I’m using the computer. Also there’s a smaller light under the shelf at upper left which is off here, but I usually leave on since it illuminates the cork board on the back of my desk area but doesn’t shine on either display. I pull the Wacom tablet in front of the keyboard when I need it. Backups go to the Synology NAS at the right (and also to a USB drive off-frame to the left).
Not the kind of setup I’d want for “all day everyday” processing, but it works here considering I already had the desk.
Full disclosure: I shot a previous pic but when I looked at it on my computer, I saw nothing but dust and cat hair… LOL So I had to get a rag, dust a bit, clean things up a little and shoot again. Nonetheless I guarantee you can pixel-peep your way into a few more cat hair that floated in between the time I finished cleaning and took the pic.
My gory detail would be waaaay too gory at present; however, since we’re in the lounge, a bit of sass:
I’m intrigued by Your Starlist 2000 - on the one hand raising your monitor, on th eother hand (not very) convenient for your many astrophotography forays! Is it there in the forlorn hope of prompting more journeys to dark skies?
The book is excellent when considered for what it is – A list of stars and related information. However, I bought it for another reason, rather than to strictly “use” it.
In the technological dark ages before the Internet* (gasp!) I was for a little while the “CH” (conference host) of the Astronomy Conference on the RIME BBS network. Ever heard of FidoNet? RIME was a contemporary of Fido: Relaynet International Message Exchange. It was based on the QWK / REP message system and the BBS to which I connected gated to the Internet once daily to send and receive mail. RIME was a scheduled hub-and-spoke architecture rather than FIDO’s more asynchronous peer-to-peer design.
But anyway the book’s author, Richard Dibon-Smith, was a member of the conference and as a Real Author™ maybe I was a bit star-struck at the time, being young (well, young-er-ish) and a bit impressionable. He announced the books publication on RIME and I bought a copy. I later realized that despite the book’s good points, I didn’t personally have a real use for it beyond the initial perusal. It’s a fine book, I just didn’t need it!
So now it’s found its purpose (30+ years later) in raising my monitor to the correct position.
* More accurately, it was before the September that Never Ended, not actually before the Internet. But in practical terms for us mere mortals, it was before.
Yes … I had a “point” address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet#Zones_and_points for a couple of years (say 1990-1991). I was pleased to have a modem that did a full 2400 baud and dialled in somewhere between 0200 and 0400 in my local timezone.
I went from a little external 1200 plastic wonder* which was a major brand that I can’t recall (not a Hayes, they were too $$$ for me) to a red metal cased Cardinal 9600! Woo-hoo! It even had a DB25 connector! At the time 14.4s were just too finicky to configure, at least for my minimal skills. I kept the Cardinal until I bought a Pentium 133 in 1995 that had a 28.8 (?) internal modem.
Speaking of Fido, I never actually was on Fido but I was aware of it. I used mostly RoboMail (DOS) for email / messaging and if I recall, the ZModem app (which used the zmodem protocol) for connectivity.
My main memory of all that that stuff was that it was just fun. The lack of widely-adopted standards meant some effort was required to make stuff work, but that was part of the fun. And there was a certain community between those who got their stuff working. Everyone had their own special combination of hardware, software, configurations and techniques – and we were continually comparing and trying new stuff.
[ edit ] * Maybe a US Robotics? But I also remember them as being a bit pricey, too… Hmmm…
Absolutely it was fun! I got started in my first year of university 1988 with my first PC (an XT-clone) when a tech-minded colleague of my father’s lent me a 1200-baud modem for a year or so. He also gave me phone numbers of some 30 bulletin boards- some of which were long-distance calls. My favourite BBS software was towernet - it was just COOL.
The software to run on your local machine varied - I used a program called Telix at one stage, and later one called Telemate - which appealed to the nerd in me because of its asynchronous task-management - you could do other stuff while downloading a file (with protocols such as XMODEM, YMODEM, SeaLink and others, a well as what eventually became ubiquitous: ZMODEM).
In my second and third years at university (1989-1990) I enjoyed “internet” access because I could dial in to my university account and then connect to the world. These was lots of downloading from the wsmr software library (White Sands Missile Range is what it stood for - it was part of the milnet that was publicly accessible).
I used Telemate for a while, now that you mention it. I remember the “multitasking” was a big deal (if you asked them). Those were the days of “recalculate your spreadsheet while downloading your mail!” ASCII art (including “animation” via escape codes), tetris over dialup and all that fun stuff.
My first computer was a C64 low-profile, but my roommate had VIC-20 for a while. That would’ve been the early '80s, maybe 1981 or so.
Oh dear… yours looks awfully neat and tidy! I like tidiness, but I’m not very good at keeping it that way. Not least because no soon have I stowed things like cables tidily than I want to rearrange something/troubleshoot something and it all comes out again. I’ve more or less given up on cable tidying now…
I clearly have even more trouble than you with regard to dust and cat (and dog) hairs, @lphilpot !
Also not sure why I didn’t straighten the keyboard…
That’s my old Optiplex (slightly hotrodded in the GPU department…), a budget Lenovo screen (that does have 100% sRGB coverage), a few audio related bits, and the control head for my Icom IC-7100 amateur radio tranceiver wedged in at lower middle.
A DIY reflector stuffed in behind the screen, various bits and pieces stored under the desk, coaxial antenna cables behind… and so on…
Never this tidy “Junk” was removed to take the picture. Junk, as in items I used and instead of putting away, they remained on the table awaiting their next use (and gathering dust).
With the completely vital workbench for all the tinkering which is best done not too close to the computer and display, and is also a good support for all kind of close-up photography (I can use all kind of clamps on it…)
