Well. Cable management is likely my biggest hate. If I could live in a world without any cables at all I would be a happy man. However in this line of work I really need various bits and pieces all that come with their own cables.

A while back I implemented a way of storing some of that stuff out of sight, but right at hand.

Over the years I have collected a couple of old iMac stands, one pulls duty as a laptop riser, the other I adapted to work with my monitor.

 

 

 

 

 

The second thing I use is this great double sided tape, its a thick gel like tape thats pretty strong, but can be removed fairly easily without leaving any marks behind. I used this to attach my USB hub, the screens power pack (In a more sensible place) along with a SD card read and a DVD drive.

I use a mixture of RapStraps and velcro ties to tidy up the cables. It’s still not perfect, but its a lot better, with most of the hard drives I need kept off my desk. Overall it works a treat. I have a few other bits hidden away underneath my desk, like my subwoofer for my speaks and a back up drive.

 

 

A little visual rundown of all the pens I use. Some of these are used daily, others only come out on rare occasions. I have a draw full of other ones, but these are the favourites.

Also included are a few others bits like rulers, scissors, tweezers and my pointer metal thing, which is used for all sorts from opening letters to prying things open.

 

Of course the internet loves to refer to them as ‘Pets’ but really they are just a plant. However it is easy to see why so many people fall in love with these little fluffy things.

While commonly referred to as ‘moss balls’ they are actually a type of algae. They obtain their ball form by the movement of the waves. When I first started working for myself I bought myself some lucky bamboo to have on my desk (I very much recommend them as a ‘my first desk plant’). 5 years later I have a second bamboo and the original one is still doing fine.

I decided the bamboo needed a friend so set about making a terrarium, which didn’t do very well. It was then that I stumbled across the Marimo, which turn out to be as easy to look after as the Lucky Bamboo.

I had this perfect piece of old chemistry glass which is basically ideal for the Marimo to live in. I popped a few stones in for decoration, but the Marimo doesn’t need them.

The best bit is, the place I ordered mine from gave me a little baby Marimo as well.

 

I thought I would start giving you all little tidbit tours of various parts of my working day. Primarily focused around how and where I work. First up is a fairly recent addition, a new mechanical keyboard.

I don’t want to get too technical, but let me tell you a little about mechanical keyboards. They come in a whole range of different sizes, but their primary difference from a normal keyboard is that each key has a little switch underneath. In my case Cherry MX Blues (No, they don’t make a MX Pink).

The next difference is that a lot of these boards are somewhat niche, while there are mainstream options from brands like Razer and Corsair, a lot of these keyboards are small runs and group buys. In my case the Vortex Poker I have is designed/made by a forum of keyboard enthusiasts. However there are no end of smaller group buys and one off builds. All of this is to get a layout that suits each individual. In my case its a super compact layout a ‘60%’ keyboard

You may think its missing some important keys like for example the arrow keys (which are a staple for any designer when it comes to nudging and moving around objects. However all these keys are actually hidden on a function layer. It basically means I press and hold a key (In my case the caps lock) then I have a whole keyboard of extra keys to play with.

While this way of operating may seem a little odd, my left hand is always hovering over the keyboard to hit modifiers and short cuts. The overall advantage is that my hands are always in the same position over the keyboard, rather than shifting my right hand between 3 or 4 positions, I just have two, on my mouse or on my keyboard.

Another difference is a lot of these keyboards are programmable, which means you can reassign keys to do different things. Including swapping around modifiers between OSs. Different keyboards have different levels of programmability, some via software, some you can just program by mashing keys

The final difference is that you can customise different parts of the keyboard. You have a range of different switches, then you can change the key caps to something custom, with a whole world of different colours and fonts to choose from. The 60% size has a somewhat common spec, which means you have a choice of cases, wooden, plastic, or in my case aluminium