Roads, the running geologist, author, and author of the roadsofstone blog recently published a picture of his desk, picking up a nice idea that had been in The Guardian. Every desk tells a story.
Here’s mine. It’s a black tabletop on a child’s desk in the corner of what was a bedroom and is now a study (books floor to ceiling on the wall behind). I care little for the desk but quite a lot for the contents and, call it my techno feng shui or info-ergonomics, how things are organized — quietly and within reach. Putting computer screens up against a large window is not a good idea, I know, especially on a sunny day. However, there aren’t too many of those yet and I am blessed meanwhile with a fine view.
The picture on the wall is Escher’s Night and Day. I was fortunate to see it in an exhibition of his work in Rotterdam. No reproduction does it complete justice, especially to the brilliant luminosity of the windows of the village at night. It’s beautiful, clever, and very perfectly Dutch. It reminds me of the years I lived in Holland and my affection, especially on flying home there, for its strange, entirely man-made landscape. It’s a visual metaphor too for so many things with a yin and a yang.
There’s an echo of sorts on the desktop. Yes, I did use an Escheresque bird from Windows 95, as my desktop wallpaper for years (the flock.bmp file) — I changed it to my favourite blue, evoked here by the chair. Microsoft had to withdraw it, I have read, under pressure from the Escher estate.
However, I refer to the screens and the computers, behind the cupboard door, to which they’re connected and their software, not the wallpaper. One, black, running Windows Vista Ultimate and the other, white, running both Ubuntu Linux and, for a little longer, Windows XP Pro. The smaller, 17″, monitor is connected to both PCs and serves as a 2nd monitor for the Vista PC. Both computers are small, reasonably powerful, and above all, quiet, systems that I built from components. To the right, out of the picture, is flatbed Canon scanner. The printer is an HP colour inkjet. Beside it, out of sight, is an iPod cradle.
Behind the curtain is a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone. There’s a traditional cordless phone on a bookshelf, and a Palm cellphone on the desk or nearby. The webcam with built-in microphone, sitting on the smaller monitor, works with Skype. Likewise, the headset on the cupboard door, but the speakers, connected at the rear are not so easily switched between PCs. The Vista box is also a TV and video recorder, though I use it as a radio more often. There’s a tuner installed, and the speaker on the right has an infra-red sensor for the TV remote control, attached with a rubber band. Both computers are connected to a UPS, a relic for one of tropical life and power cuts.
Out of sight and hearing, is a disk storage system. It lives in a utility cupboard in the hall, beside the electricity meter and fuse box. It contains all our digital photographs, music, software, documents, computer backups, digitized home movies — almost everything digital, except recorded TV for now (the PVR box has only a wireless connection). It serves MP3 music via a Slim Devices Squeezebox to the living room hi-fi, with no need for any PC to be switched on.
On the desk is a Microsoft Office keyboard, model RT4950 with an extremely useful scroll wheel on the left. Shamefully, it’s unsupported by Microsoft Vista and needs obsolete software that Vista complains about in order to work. For years I’ve used a keyboard, video and mouse or KVM switch to share one keyboard, video screen and mouse among two or three computers. Alas, it doesn’t work with either today’s DVI video or USB devices and, least of all, with a wireless mouse that I depend upon (I use a Logitech with rechargeable batteries); so I am temporarily using two keyboards plus a mouse and a trackball. A planned replacement KVM switch will allow me to go back to one keyboard and share speakers and scanner, webcam, USB external drives etc. without any unplugging.
A few other bits and pieces of hardware are not really part of my everyday desktop setup, so I’ll pass over them. So… that’s it, my desktop. The tools and connectivity that make it work are an integral part of it.
I installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10 as soon as it was released last Thursday — on an old laptop, seen here. For the first time, and as I expected, setting up wireless networking was a piece of cake.
The next day someone asked my advice about fixing a Windows PC that may have some malicious software on it. How often have I been there and sorted that out? No more.
Get Ubuntu or a Mac. They’re better.
I said. If you already own a PC it’s not a hard decision to try Ubuntu. After all, it’s free. And it’s not just free, it’s better.
I didn’t say that Microsoft’s monopolies are houses of cards and that they could lose profitability surprisingly quickly. Only yesterday has Microsoft decided to compete as the European Commission would like. Bill Gates has always argued that the market for Microsoft products is really quite volatile and that regulation is therefore a waste of time. He would say that wouldn’t he?
I have no ideological axe to grind. Take a look at the first bug reported for Ubuntu and realize that these people are serious and they’re delivering. That is what matters. Microsoft isn’t delivering. That is now the night and day difference between Microsoft and the competition.
Even the cat likes Ubuntu 7.10 (that’s 2007-Oct)! Strangely, ever since I installed it he’s decided that my desk is where he likes to be. He arrives daintily via the sofa and the windowsill and turns a Microsoft ear to protests. I’ll be surprised if the black box isn’t running Ubuntu by the time it moves to the bottom shelf, in a year or so.
Microsoft will have had nine lives on my desk by then: DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. CP/M was there before it. Something else will follow it. Perhaps not in the cat’s lifetime, but more likely in mine.
My first desk with a computer retains a special place in my memory. I wrote my MS thesis on the deck of a log cabin in the woods of South East Ohio, surrounded by birds and other wildlife. I sent my first email there, with a Hayes 300 baud modem. And I smelled my first skunk too!
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Night and Day on The Desktop…
Did you see this post at wombatdiet.net…
Well, I did, oddly enough :-)
…despite Vista locking up horribly as soon as I had posted, as if it KNEW. I think it was a Firefox problem, and if so it would not be the first, but Vista shouldn’t need rebooting afterwards.
I’m right behind you, Wombats. 2007 was the year I ditched IE7 for Firefox.
Ubuntu ? Well, I only learned to spell it this month. But give me a year or two, and you just never know …