In the past few months I’ve been asked several times what my new planned Home Office will look like, whether I plan to take any pictures, and if I already know what hardware will be running in the new Office. The short answer is; yes. I will be posting pictures as stuff arrives, will be writing posts and reviews when it makes sense to do so, and I will be creating the new Home Office 7.0 pages in the process. However, this time around it’ll be a bit more of a dragged out process. Because of logistics, international transport, timing, and really a TON of other practical details I will be splitting the full build of the new office into 3 stages.
The first stage is to get the electricity and power requirements sorted and made available and to furnish the new office with plenty of desk space. Then I’ll be adding the first new bits of hardware to it, for the time being a small server, a big PC workstation, and about the biggest baddest Mac Pro money can buy (12-core, 64GB RAM, 2 x 480GB SSD, 4 x 3TB RAID10 HD’s, 12TB external RAID5 storage).
Confused? Surprised? More Apple stuff? Yes, more Apple stuff, you read that correctly. The first stage will also require some 1500VA UPS’es, metered power distribution, a fresh 24-port gigabit switch, and for starters 3 fresh 30″ Dell UltraSharp monitors that will form the new main “work area”.
There is, of course, a lot more involved but specs on the hardware are still being adjusted based on requirement projections and I have not yet decided on a preferred vendor for who gets to supply me the new custom servers and workstations. Because I like to do business locally when possible and need a professional place that actually not only understands what they’re required to build but will provide top notch warranty and service it’s an on-going search and decisions are “pending”.
You can imagine, I bet, that any vendor would be more than happy and roll out the red carpet for a customer like myself who burns through more hardware than a QE lab does. Well, not quite that much but… substantial enough.
If you know of any professional kick-ass custom system builders in the San Francisco Bay Area who could build the kind of systems you’ve come to expect of me, let me know by e-mail stefan at (the domain you’re looking at).
The other thing to expect from the new office is a lot more LED lighting around the desk surfaces at the back and in “strategic” places (mostly to accentuate things a little bit and create a fitting “mood” that will match the glow of the monitors).
Once the first stage is completed and while I wait for other practical issues to be dealt with this will be the temporary setup I’ll be working with. After that stage two will require the transport of the current Home Office 6.0 (I’m not going to be shipping everything, though, just all the big stuff). Systems will be given a new purpose and different tasks and integrated with the temporary result of stage one. At that point it probably will look a lot like the current plan:
The current six 24″ screens are integrated, the iMac gets integrated near the main 3 x 30″ monitor area, and the real fun of velcro and cable management will probably take me a few days to deal with. Depending on yet more practical matters this stage 2 result will remain like that until space for expansion is available. The exact details on how that will look are unclear at this time but I have some ideas. I always have some ideas. I’m not posting them here because I get accused of “going overkill” so I certainly wouldn’t want to show anyone what real overkill might look like! 🙂
The real “nice” photos will have to wait until stage 2 has completed because all my camera gear will travel with me as carry-on when I fly back and forth to arrange the international transport of the office. Until that time I’ll have to work with considerably less in terms of cameras and lenses.
Don’t do the wrap around yourself, it becomes a pain. I had an office LIKE that once: http://poweredbyone.com/open/PIC-0070.jpg it’s overrated. I’d stick to the way you are doing it, maybe lean the 30s in a bit? Now I have 3x 30 DELL UltraSharps myself http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/217306_10150153954220670_550705669_7209289_1761028_n.jpg (Dell XT2 on the arm there) If I can’t do it on these monitors, I delegate it to someone else 😉 I am going to post pictures of my office on a site I have in mind …someday. I will cross-link you. I use Windows Layout Manager BTW, TY for that. Once you get to San Fran, stop by this place: http://www.noisebridge.net
I don’t think I’ll be using the wrap-around as a full day-2-day work area but rather that the 3×30″ area will be the main work area and the other 3 “areas” are more a “secondary” thing. Since the 3×30″ will give me the same width as the 4×24″ I also figured, if I can’t do what I need to on that I’ll have to change what I’m doing. 🙂
Noisebridge! I’ve heard of the place, actually. Never been there before, though. It does look like fun.
Good stuff, good you hear from you, I’ve been coming to the site and doing this stuff for years, never posted a peep, LOL. I’ve never been to Noise Bridge, I just know the guys from HOPE, Mitch is awesome, I think he’s in charge down there? You’ve also gotta come to HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth), from ‘TheNextHope’, which was the last hope, but not ‘TheLastHope’ http://thenexthope.org/ Someone @ Noise Bridge will explain that “Joke”. LOL
It’s going to get a bit claustrophobic in that panoramic box 😉 What do you do about temperature? I moved a large amount of hardware to the basement and tools and supplies to a work room, so I am spread across 3 rooms. If you look at the pic here of the old office, I currently have 83ºF at my desk and 77ºF at the desk at girlfriends desk(The one to the left of the window). What about noise? I’ve considered one of those white noise generators or something like that, though I’ve never really seen it in action. You should video your building of the office, just tripod a camera and turn it on and off as things go, maybe even speed it up, time lapse? I know it will take place over a longer period of time.
Also… 2 laptops?
Old pic of office: (I’ll post updated once I am done making changes and I put up new site)
http://tinyurl.com/3c3vzk3 (girlfriend sitting at my desk in picture)
Basement:
http://tinyurl.com/3p5pkok – http://tinyurl.com/3sa7fm5
Work room:
http://tinyurl.com/3w2su4n – http://tinyurl.com/3ku5ka2 – http://tinyurl.com/3mm3fg9
I actually know about HOPE. Never been, though. Certainly won’t make the next one in NY (it’s before I target to depart for CA).
Panoramic box!!! Nice one. I’ve been sort of thinking of “The Hole”. Except of course I won’t be spending (a consecutive) 30 Days In The Hole. 🙂
Temperature, good question. Having researched AC options I have come to the conclusion that in the first and second stage of the new setup there’s just no way I can get that done (the place is a rental so I can’t just randomly start sledgehammering things and “upgrade” it, that’ll have to wait until stage 3 with the “full office” plan comes into effect). On the other hand, I plan to spend a lot less time in the office so on hot days I’ll probably just be doing different things. Of course on really hot days one can usually find me hibernating in the freezer. 🙂
Noise has never been much of a problem. I work with my headphones and music on most of the time. I’m also giving some systems a different purpose so there won’t be as many 24/7 servers turned on (a lot of the core stuff is moving off-site to some rack hosted servers).
2 laptops… more like 3 or 4. The big heavy Clevo (Windows), the MacBook Air, the 17″ HP Mobile workstation (Linux), and likely will be adding a MacBook Pro to the mix as well. I don’t think all of them need their own specific spot on the desks, though. It’s one of those “will see how it works out” things.
Also, why go Mac? Just go linux…?
It’s a little difficult developing OSX and iOS software on Linux. 🙂
But why to develop for those toys when there are better ways to earn money? what about Android and the upcomming Windows 8? that are far more better platforms than Apple /&(/&/&%
Can you define “better ways”? And what you do think I earn (or should earn)? 🙂
I’m skipping the whole Android thing. Looked into that a while ago. Can’t stand the whole Java thing and all the many different flavors and inconsistent API’s out there.
HI
Dunno how much you earn, but i would like to have that amountof money to spend on computers hahaha.
Well i mean better ways, in the form of developing to other platforms, thats why i told you about Android and the upcomming Windows 8, also in the linux community is a lack of programmes, if you know (understand)what i mean.
Anyway, in another post you mentioned that you have installed Mad OS X in common hardware (as if Apple doesnt have common HW) can you tell me please how did you installed? have you used a “distro” like iDeneb, Hazzard, etc, or if you installed from an original disk from Apple, i have installed it onto my HP DV6000 and is running smoothly, its just curiosity.
I never said I was switching exclusively to developing for OSX and iOS. 🙂
I know that Linux lacks a lot of things, which is one of the reasons I’m not using it on the desktop but only for some internal server related stuff that just seems to run smoother and with a lower footprint. But most of the work I do doesn’t involve Linux (or not much of it, anyway). Also, it is often more difficult to develop proprietary software for clients because of all the various open source licenses and key parts of Linux that could spin a proprietary project into a legal nightmare. Or at least a nightmare with long delays for the corporate lawyers who have to deal with the details.
Before I decided to throw some money into Apple hardware (and because I was offered a project that involved OSX and iOS) I wanted to have a look at XCode and examine in more detail how development in that area works. So I installed an iATKOS on one of the older PC’s and played with it a few days. Then noticed there were some debugger issues with XCode running on that machine and I decided, ok, let’s get an iMac for the actual development. After that I added a Mac Air simply because I wanted a lightweight system that would let me keep my iPhone and iPad in sync while I’m traveling. And then decided to continue to add the iOS and OSX development to my services but wanted something a little more than the iMac, which is the reason I went for the Mac Pro (more power and easier to swap a harddisk if one should fail, something that’s not all that easy with an iMac).
My short experience with the iATKOS stuff was that while everything appeared to work, there were clearly some deeper compatibility issues when using the debugger in XCode. To avoid potential problems, not to mention any legal issues, it just makes more sense to spend a few bucks on Apple hardware if there’s serious development going on.
Fine, so have you tried using a retail disc from Apple? and make a fresh install using any EFI? i think that incompatibility its because of the “customized” OS X version.
I haven’t tried the retail + EFI route. Though, after getting the Apple hardware there wasn’t much point in spending time on that. My goal wasn’t creating a sustainable Hackintosh but just to look at a few things before making any purchase decisions. 🙂
I wish I’d thought of all of this in one message instead of posted a mess, LOL. This is what you need: http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/hpcc-cray-cx1-iws.aspx 🙂
I’m secretly hoping for another big CUDA project that would allow me a business reason to get one of those! 🙂
Hi Stefan,
Really love what you did (It’s crazy & cool..lol). I’m into DB adminstration & I’ll love to setup something like this (though not as massive as yours) very soon though I live in a place (Lagos, Nigeria) where power supply is near zero. Looking forward to Home Office 7.0