The working from home thread: tips and advice

What size laptop? Maybe an a4 paper holder will be enough if it’s a MacBook Air

Work is a latitude. Personal is a big old 17" Lenovo (and sometimes an ancient but light 15").

Maybe that design might be an idea.

We've got a light, but big palm-like indoor plant in the corner. I was wondering if I could make a storage container with little static drawers and a plant pot on top.

Ideally "make" would be hacking something I can buy from ikea or argos.

A bit like

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HÄSTVISKARE

Being lazy here: how does remote work from the UK for an American or Canadian company (for example) work in regards to taxes? Self assessment with usual tax and NI to the UK gov and work permit for the country of choice? Anything more to consider? Thinking of increasing the scope of my job hunt.

Selling a posh color accurate desk lamp that would fit in well with a lot of the #buyer setups here.

details here

Anyone use a desk mat with wrist support?

MX Master 2s for £38.99 right now on amazon. Lowest price I've seen. Obvs there are newer models but it's still excellent. Will mean I can leave one in my office locker.

Deal: Logitech MX Master 2S Bluetooth Edition Wireless Mouse, Multi-Surface, Hyper-Fast Scrolling, Ergonomic, Rechargeable, Connects Up to 3 Mac/PC Computers - Graphite https://amzn.eu/d/06PAR12x

A year on, how is the wanktorium, the shuffle space, the polishing porch, the hot seat, the relaxation station, the twilight zone, the shame centre, the lubricious Lodge?

the wanktorium is still there. I'm getting all my diy materials delivered today to build its final form out in the summerhouse finally though.

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New desk courtesy of @dbr

We now have 2 metal laptop risers going spare if anyone wants them.

If anyone has a spare cable mgmt under desk unit then we could do with one of those. Also any suggestions to rid us of some wires!

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that looks lovely.

Top work.

2nd MX Master 2s has arrived and I thought part of the grip was loose...

.... Turns out there's another button hidden under there which launches the windows tiles. How have I never noticed this? It's great!

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Also any suggestions to rid us of some wires!

1. Rewire to add a socket behind the wooden panelling
   
2. Route out a space in the wall behind one of the panels to create a secret POWER CONTROL CUPBOARD
   
3. Measure and run custom length power cables to your Power Control Cupboard
   
4. Cover with a secret push open matching panel
   

A less disruptive option would be to use a wood effect trunking or wooden conduit profile like this:

to cover the yellow cable run to under the desk. Then drill a hole in the back of the desk and connect to a multiplug under the silver box. (you can take the plug off to run the wire through the hole and trim to length.

Then replace that ethernet(?) wire with a custom length one (or bought near to the correct length) and use adhesive clips to attach it.

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I know this forum is very much in the cable lacing approach to solutions, but I'd make sure that you can easily unplug and access stuff.

I might be unlucky but every time I get too keen about cable management, it bites me on the arse and I need to undo and access stuff. So now I take a moderate approach.

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Can I replace this thing with a nicer looking a flatter version?

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So at the moment we have 1 power cable into each monitor and we each have an abler subs hub with Ethernet cable all of which lives in the cable tidy under the desk and wires up the back through pre-cut holes.

Has anyone successfully used a writing desk/bureau as a wfh desk with monitor etc. or seen any good examples of how to make this work?

I was looking at this stuff but cant tell if it will look totally naff

This looks great. Can I ask where you got that rug from? Looking for something similar to protect the floorboards from my desk chair roller wheels.

cant tell if it will look totally naff

Up close in your hands, or using it across the whole of your house, it'll be awful.

For that short solid yellow line I drew, you'll only ever really see that first horizontal run and IMHO you will forget it's there by the end of the day. It's also accessible and low effort.

I'd ask in the diy thread about the box. My gut is that it's an old oem surface mounted box you could remove and replace with something slimmer. Although you might have to make a shallow hole in the wall for a back box. Even if you didn't have enough space you could have some sort of neat 5mm wooden Standoff that looks less like an engineer has installed it.

You could maybe even relocate a smaller one under the desk or inset somewhere else... It depends a bit how far from the wall the paneling is.

Officially no. Unofficially the splitter is only needed for the voice bit, your DSL modem can handle anything thrown at it, so you can plug straight from the BT socket buried deep in the stack into your modem. You will need to find or make a suitable cable.

you can swap out the face plate in a couple of minutes for a more curvy one. only way to reduce depth is probably a low profile back box and not sure theres enough clearance in those.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/DAVOX-Openreach-master-socket-Faceplate/dp/B09ZZQJJLV

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