Geek Desk
To start off the New Year, I did a little physical un-cluttering to go along with the mental part. My desk had become a disaster zone so I took some time this evening and solved the problem. As it won’t stay in this state for too long, I decided to capture what I view as the ultimate geek desk setup for posterity’s sake.
Here’s an overview of the whole desk. I’m a wide-open spaces person for desks, so my desk is a 30×60 inch commercial workbench. Simple and to the point.
My computer is a 13″ MacBook Pro with 4gb of RAM. I use a 23″ Apple Cinema Display at home. This gives me the best of both worlds. Plenty of screen real estate when I’m at the desk, while still having a small laptop for on-the-go work.
My only grief with the display is that it sits too low when I’m seated at the desk. A quick trip to my local Woodcraft store solved that problem. I bought an 8x8x2 inch block of nice hardwood and smoothed it down. I then glued a piece of thick brown leather on the top and felt feet on the bottom. It is the perfect stand for this display.
My second best investment was a BookArc for holding my MacBook vertically behind the display. It doesn’t hold the laptop completely vertical like in the picture, but it is very stable and helps save a ton of desk space.
Here you can see how the MacBook tucks in behind the screen.
For the keyboard, I picked up one of the compact Apple bluetooth keyboards. I love the compact size, and it is easy to get out of the way when I need to work on other stuff on my desk. I stuck with a Logitech mouse, the VX Nano. It is a shame Logitech quit making them. It is the best mouse I’ve ever used. It is a laptop size mouse but still works perfect for all-day work at the desk.
Finally, two of my favorite desk accessories are a Rotring 600 Series 3 .7mm mechanical pencil and ballpoint pen. These are the older models with the knurled grips. They haven’t been made for over a decade and have become collectors items on eBay. If it is good enough for Jason Bourne, it is good enough for me.
So this is the current state of my geek creation station. We’ll see how long it lasts, but a clean desk feels like a clean mind.
The Passing of a Giant
Michael Jackson, an icon for an era, passed away yesterday at an overly young age of 50. His era was my era. I was in high school when Thriller came out. The album was pure electricity and a defining musical moment for a lot of kids. I’m still a big fan of 80s music, and this album was a lion.
It was sad to watch Michael descend into freak show status. He wasn’t ready for his celebrity status, and I’m sure he had too many handlers doing whatever they could to keep their gravy train going, leading to his decline. Michael became the human equivalent of a factory farm hog – fed, doped and bringing home the bacon for his owners.
So rest in peace, Michael. And remember, don’t stop ’til you get enough.
Charity Overload
One of resolutions for the year was to give $100 a month to a different charity each month throughout the year. I’ve been on a pretty good roll so far this year, hitting five charities I’ve felt good about giving to. But there is now a kink in my plan.
I’ve discovered giving money to a charity is like giving crack cocaine to an addict. My snailmail box is literally overflowing with solicitations for additional donations. There is always a new campaign where they need money now. Worse, it is clear some of my charities shared my name with other charities, because I’m now getting bombarded with solicitations from charities I have never heard of.
So my naive approach of picking a differently charity each month is not a sustainable objective if I don’t want to use a handcart when I go to the mailbox. I realize the tight economic times have made a lot of charities have to work harder for their contributions, but I’m honestly shocked and offended by the quantity of garbage in my mail that results from a simple $100 contribution.
So going forward, I’m going to take a simpler, less diverse route. I’ll continue to give $100 a month, but it will only go to a singe charity: Médecins Sans Frontières. They were my first of the year, and are still my favorite. I’ll make an exception for Toys for Tots at Christmas, but otherwise, I’ll be focusing on MSF.
Catchup
The last two weeks have basically gone by in a blur, so I finally decided to squeeze in some time for an update. At Orange Leap, we’ve been running at warp 11 putting the finishing touches on v1.0 of our product. I’ve been up to my neck in the bowels of Spring Security and attempting to integrate it with CAS and our LDAP server for single sign-on. It has been an absolute beat-down trying to get it all together, and I’ve developed a strong love-hate relationship Spring Security. It makes the simple stuff possible and the hard stuff really hard.
This past weekend, Dallas hosted the first ever Big (D)esign Conference. Organization was a bit rough around the edges, but the conference really rocked. I don’t usually hang much with the artsy design folks, even though it is something that interests me. This was like a breath of fresh air after too much time immersed in hairy backend coding. I met a lot of new Twitter friends and came away with some good ideas. Hopefully I can start back in on some frontend work in the coming weeks to try and apply it.
Some cool tech has dropped that I really want to find some time to get familiar with. Microsoft went live with Bing today, and it looks pretty cool so far. Adobe also dropped the first beta of Flash Builder 4 over on Adobe Labs. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Flex, but need to backburner it until end of June. I also signed up with Ribbit. It looks pretty awesome and is in the queue for brain cycles after I get comfortable with Flex. And I still want to find time to get deeper into Groovy.
Finally, Dallas Tech Fest is just around the corner and I’ve still got a lot of work to do on my presentation. It has been a struggle finding quality time to work at home. Zoe is has decided the best place to watch Elmo is on my lap at my computer, so I have to sneak in work at bath time or after she’s asleep.
April: Going Direct
My ongoing saga of charitable giving stays on a humanitarian path for April. Although I strongly considered giving more to two of my favorite previous charities, I decided to try something different. So for April, my $100 goes to Direct Relief International.
DRI provides worldwide humanitarian assistance to people in need, including inside the United States. This keeps a theme going I created with a donation to MSF in January. Based on their rating with Charity Navigator, I’m confident my $100 donation to DRI will be put to good use helping people.