While Stefan takes it slowly with moving around stuff (well until this time), I have a fable for moving stuff around and also moving between rooms. You may wonder why I plan to move my office again. The answer is a bit delicate and I’ll try to explain it without sounding rude (what I am NOT).

It’s pretty easy: I work at home and our house was build in a new housing estate with the result that we have a lot gardens here. My office is (currently) facing our garden, and also the neighbors one. When it turns to spring and summer, neighbors put their kids (and friends of them) into their garden which increases the noise level dramatically. As mentioned before – this is not meant rude – I just prefer to sit in a silent room and rarely listen to music while working. As this is a housing estate that’s my own fault – I could rent a small office in a technology park, but that’s kinda expensive. So I spend some days on measuring the temperatures of the current office and the attic. The results are kinda funny: At 3pm, it’s around 24.7°C in my current office with the Mac Pro running + 2 HP screens creating heat. The attic is at 23.1°C – I was a bit surprised – sure, the Mac Pro will add some heat to the attic but I think it’s not as worse as I thought before, looking at the thermometers.

But back to the planning. I plan to use the following hardware in the attic office (8.0beta) (will not buy new stuff).

- Mac Pro Quad Core 2.8 2010 model / 16GB RAM / SSD
- ATI Radeon 5770 – 3x HP Z24r 24″ screens
- GeForce GT120 – 2x Samsung 22″ screens

† As long as she survives †
- MacBook Alu 2008 13″ / 4GB RAM / SSD

And my wifes stuff
- iMac 21.5″ i3 / 12GB RAM
- MacBook White

I went through the process of testing a lot different variations of desktops. Even buying new VIKA AMON or GALANT series was planned. The best option would be to get 2x GALANT with some additional stuff from this series, but that would be expensive – ~900€ + transportation home (too huge for our car ). So we planned again using the IKEA Home Planner tool (2010 version – not available from IKEA directly – but Google is your friend ) and this is the result:

Heat
In the past I had complained about the heat at the attic sometimes – that was the main reason I moved downstairs into the current home office 2 years ago, but because of already mentioned reasons, I will get used to it. In the end, it’s not much warmer there. If it get’s way too warm, I need to escape with a MacBook or finally get a cooling unit (which is more expensive in using (power costs) than buying it initially.

Lines
The good thing is, that I have a lot great connections upstairs. Ok – I don’t need ISDN anymore and Sat is meanwhile tunneled via the Network, too, but to be able to use 2-3 lines of GBit/s speed is always welcome

Storage
Of course – no overhauling talk without also highlighting this topic. Currently, and I say currently, because it’s a kinda imperfect situation, but it works, I’m running a Mac mini in the basement, pimped to 8GB of RAM and 80GB Intel SSD. I’ve installed OS X SL Server on this particular machine and connected 2x Onnto boxes (4x 1TB + 4x 1.5TB) to it. The speeds are “ok” – up to 60MB/s via the GBit network and I would not complain if playing a media file (even a simple MP3 files) would work without interrupting while I just browse on the same RAID device. That it kinda annoying. I’ve tried to sell the components of my Filer, but the truth is, that this stuff seems to be too special – not one single person is interested in my LSI/Intel SASUC8i, 24GB ECC RAM or my AMD 245e CPU. I will let it run for the next few days, but when I can’t sell it, the idea of a dedicated filer will come back into my mind – and believe me – I currently have WAY to much HDs laying around (somewhat of 25TB). So – let’s see what will happen here The pro with the lines is, that I could theoretically use up to 2Gbps between the basement and the Mac Pro if I connect it directly.

Otaku
Started this hobby in the mid of last year before I paused for several years. Meanwhile more than 20 figures made their way to our Home Office (it’s a mixed collection of my wifes figures & wall scrolls and mine). Also, a bunch of wall scrolls are hanging in the current office. OF COURSE, all this stuff will move to the new office

Screens / Cinewall
Looks like a lot people liked the “cinewall” I had installed, got some “shocked” feedback when I said “Hey, I can live fine with only one screen”. Oh me fool Luckily I haven’t sold any display – I love multiple screens – it’s somewhat handy when coding on complicated functions and modules for ctrltweet. So, yes – the cinewall will be back (and better) in the new office. I will upgrade my desk to 5 screens. Yes. 5 2x 22″ will make it to the left and right (onto the brown/black Expedits you can see on the graphic above).

That’s it for the plans – we already bought some nice stuff (like a 3rd 4×2 Expedit) today and the main movement day will be tomorrow. I will keep you updated!

Ciao
Dennis

See all photos on flickr

Enjoy!

Ciao
Dennis