The working from home thread: tips and advice

Cheers, I'm just off the A10 so that's not too bad. I'll check whether silver is acceptable. Has your fancy desk top been moved to something else?

@rj Cheers, that's part of what I'm looking for, I want something that goes a little lower than a standard desk.

Cool. PM me if you’re interested.

The fancy worktop will end up in France for when we’re working down there.

Selling my Elgato Mic Arm as I went for the Low Profile version instead.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/370179/

WFH even more now and really need to up my Teams/Zoom lighting rig for meetings. I've only got ceiling spot lights which make me look either like somebody in interrogation or a witness giving video testimony at a major trial.

Any recommendations? I'm mostly using an iPad Pro in portrait rotation with a little stand because the camera on my Macbook Pro is so shit.

Elgato Key Light / Key Light Air / Ring Light.

Spendy but lovely.

Just moved into a room where I've discovered that the floor is quite badly sloping. It's about 1.5 degrees in the corner where my desk is. Feel like I'm tilted over constantly and my wheely chair keeps slipping awkwardly. Anyone dealt with this and could offer some suggestions? Some kind of a plywood platform with a rug over it maybe ...

What size if the room? Would it be possible to lift the floor and put down some sort of self levelling compound, then plywood and floor finish over the top? Prob a bit more hassle now, but the floor will always be level..

Remove the wheels and use solid spacers on the legs instead, so the chair lean can be fixed in one orientation?

Go back to where you worked before?

Fix the floor if it's your gaff, as Technics100 suggests.

@Technics100 @Howard it's a rental so I think this is out of the question, sadly

@hippy this kills the crab aeron

I'd probably use gym tiles with a carpet matt over them, or wheel chocks on one side wheels, or move.

Interesting ... would you expect that to be functionally self levelling?

I mean, depends how bad the lean is. I'd probably just fiddle with it a bit to stop the chair rolling around and you could maybe use a different thickness on one side if it's proper wonky.

You could also use that carpet underlay stuff and build up one side a bit more than the other and then cover it with your top layer (carpet mat, plastic mat, etc)

Could also change the orientation of your desk/chair so you roll towards the desk rather than sideways or whatever.

Could also just get proper drunk so you really don't quite give a fuck any more.

Drank two mugs of mulled wine and completely rearranged the room, much better now.

Spent the Christmas holidays painting and sorting my log cabin home office. Probably not to everyone’s taste, but it works for me.

Edit: curtains need sorting, window ones need ironing and there is a blue one on order to replace the beige.

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amazing

I’m never painting my own shelving again, that was a truly horrendous job, and still doesn’t look great really close up, but no way am I doing another coat.

Finally got round to setting up my Flexispot sit/stand desk. It seems a decent bit of kit although I was expecting a bit more in the way of cable management than some zip ties.

Haven't really worked out the best way to have the mains cable to allow the desk to move up and down but still look neat and still need to tidy up a few cables.

Also still looking for a decent looking office chair (that doesn't look too officey) with lumbar support. I don't think such a thing exists.

Haven't really worked out the best way to have the mains cable to allow the desk to move up and down but still look neat and still need to tidy up a few cables.

Perhaps something like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Allcam-Standing-Organiser-Under-desk-management/dp/B0784CFWFQ/

(I've no idea if that one is any good but I've used similar elsewhere)

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Looks ace. Not sure about the world map but everything else is great. So much desk real estate, so little clutter.

Cheers, was slightly worried about the volume of blue, but I quite like it, feels cosy in here, which it has never been due to the high ceilings, so happy with that.
World map works well as a conference call background, always get people asking questions about it.

Haven't really worked out the best way to have the mains cable to allow the desk to move up and down but still look neat and still need to tidy up a few cables

If you're willing to screw things under the back of the desk and this fits then I heartily recommend it: https://www.humanscale.com/products/cable-management-tools/neattech-system

I have a 12 socket rack power extension in mine... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07C2W2DP2/ and all of the power bricks for the USB dock, the USB hub, etc.

Basically my cable tidy is crammed full of cables, absolutely everything in there... and it's strong, the material yields to the odd shape of things, and it's a couple of tool-free clips to access things to manage the cables.

I have the large one that is the width of the desk, and it doesn't interfere with the monitor arm mount, it works great. The picture on that shows two small ones at either side, also looks great but I wanted way more power sockets!

These can be opened from both sides, so if the desk is against a wall you can raise it and go under and still get full access to the cable tidy.

I used 3M command strips to stick things to the underside of my desk. Currently stuck there are:-

• 5 port switch
  
• 4 gang mains extension (from the UPS)
  
• 8 gang mains extension (non-UPS)
  
• work laptop power brick
  
• work laptop USB dock
  
• personal laptop power brick
  
  

This way the only cables that hang down are:

• 1 power cable (from the UPS to the 4 gang extensions)
  
• 1 power cable (for the non-UPS extension)
  
• 1 network cable (to the switch)
  
• 1 HDMI cable (to the ESXi box that lives on the floor)
  
  

It's an unholy mess under there but it keeps the cables away from my knees. Due to the layout of the desk in the room there's no real way to see the mess under the desk unless you bend down.