Stefan Didak – Stefan Didak's Home Office

Stefan Didak’s Home Office Desktop

Are you looking for my other, previous, insane multi-monitor home office setups?
Version 6.0, Version 5.0, Before 5.0, The FAQ, and also:
Making Of 6.0, Making Of 7.0

This page is dedicated to “my biggest fan”. A lot of thanks to Chris and Andrew over at Computers USA for building some of my new systems to-order and doing an amazingly wonderful job at it.

Other pages relating to the entire process of setting up this office can be found:
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

On this page, it’s all about the current version of the office, known as “version 7.0″.

CLICK THE PICTURE ABOVE IF YOU WANT TO GO TO THE OLD OFFICE PICTURES

THE NIGHT-TIME / NOCTURNAL PICTURES

A top view on the new office. Note that a lot of the pictures here were made with a Sigma 10-20mm lens because even though the office has quite comfortable dimensions, taking pictures to show an overview is very difficult because it needs a very wide angle lens. A fisheye would have worked better but then the images would be so warped they’d look weird and really bad.

Another top view, from the other side.

The main work area where I spend a lot less time than you might think.

Fewer lights. Read all about lighting in the Making Of section. The two monitors that are rotated at a 90 degree angle are the Eizo Flexscan S2431WH ones. The 3 x 30 inch screens are the Dell Ultrasharp U3011 ones (with a resolution of 2560×1600 per screen)

The server area with multi-color LED’s for backlighting. I just like the blue but the 12-strip LED lights can be (remote controlled) set to produce almost any color imaginable. Whatever the mood happens to be.

Same thing without the multi-color LED strips but some of the USB LED lights on. The monitors there, except for the iMac of course, are the HP LP2475w monitors.

Or having all of the sets of lights on. The few dozen USB LED lights around the office are sold under many different brand names but you might be able to find them if you Google for 26 LED USB Lights.

Or just no lights at all except for a small one lighting up under the desks.

Have you noticed I like the LED lights? On a sidenote, what you are seeing on the monitors is not a screensaver of any kind but a large high resolution background that spans the monitors. A little creative cutting and fitting is in order to get it to look like that but it’s real easy. It just takes some planning.

A different angle.

Big Data. Big Servers. Big Storage. How I control a small little network like this? You might want to read this post I wrote a little while ago.

Seamless backgrounds.

A view from the top.

Not too great a panorama attempt.

I should redo these shots because the background images don’t come out too well.

OK, well, let’s turn the screens off then, shall we?

Workstations.

Laptops and NAS storage.

THE DAYTIME / AFTERNOON PICTURES

An attempt at a somewhat more panoramic view.

Daylight in the office. NASTY! I don’t like daylight. But I also couldn’t just board up the windows, you know. The blinds are good enough to keep the sun out but but not good enough to take these pictures during the summer months when streaks of sun would still manage to creep through.

More daylight.

Daylight hitting the “server” area. OK, sure the iMac is not a server, actually.

The “server” work area.

The “server” work area on the left and the “workstation” work area on the right.

Decided to “tarnish” the server work area with the iMac because it was more convenient for me to have it near where I would use it the most. The old Sinclair ZX-81 is still on the wall there if you pay close attention.

Difficult to take pictures like that because I’m only so tall and holding the camera that high without knowing what you’re aiming at. This picture took a few attempts but I think it was worth being able to show a “top” view of the office like this. There’s an easter egg in the picture. Hint it’s in the little top alcove near the top of the roof. No prizes if you guess what it is there…

Laptops and mobile stuff.

Big storage. Big data. Big servers. That and cameras and lenses I use frequently.

A view from behind the monitors on the “server” area.

Workstations! Linux, Linux, Windows, Windows.

A top view from the other side of the office.

Someone asked me for pictures underneath the desks. Well, there are plenty of those on the “making of” page that goes along with this version of the office but just in case you missed it… underneath the desks.

Mac Pro. Beast UPS. Rack with audio, networking and power. And a VMware ESX system. The two switches at the bottom of the rack are a HP Procurve 1800-24G and a HP Procurve 1810-24G, both with 24 gigabit ports. Above it sits a DLink DSR-500 WiFi router (dual WAN).

A stack of Mini ITX Xeon servers and a few Atom’s that run the DNS and automation on the network.

A somewhat different angle.

StarTech DisplayPort Switch Boxes. And my “dock” for the MacBook Retina.

Rack goodness. Pushed in far enough below the desk so cables won’t stick out. The audio equipment in the top of the rack is made up out of two Behringer Eurorack Pro RX1602, 16 channel line mixers that provides me a central place to control the volume of many of the systems while being able to hear all of them without having to go over the speakers. There is also a Behringer DEQ1024 (Digital Stereo 31-Band 24-Bit/96 kHz Equalizer, Feedback Destroyer/Dynamics Processor) and a Behringer DEQ2496 digital equalizer. The small box at the top is a Behringer MiniAmp AMP800 headphone amplifier with multiple inputs and outputs (since I have headphones on quite a lot).

The Mac Retina with its skull and crossbones. Just because it was funny.

VMware ESX Xeon Server with 8 x 3TB WD RED drives and 4 x 2TB storage.

USB 3.0 HUB for the Macbook Retina. Nothing attached at the time of taking this picture.

A few handy things I keep around in easy reach.

Big Data. Big Storage. Big Servers. Heavy.

Because I ran out of network ports on the other side of the room I had to get another small switch in there. I can really recommend these small Cisco gigabit switches. Lots of config optios.

Tablet. Mouse. Extra keyboards to switch depending on what I’m doing.

Mobile storage.

Workstations with lots of storage.

That’s my NAS box. More storage. Can never have enough storage!

The Netgear CENTRIA is not actually running the main internet connection in the house but rather is used because it has great WiFi that reaches all way throughout and around the house. And there’s a few more WiFi routers on my network, actually. They have really funny names but I can’t publish those here because the government would likely not think they’re funny at all.

Sometimes are regular calculator is much more efficient than a computer.

The little number 9 guy next to a stack of 3 Mini ITX Xeon servers.

Atom servers on the Ignyter network. You can have a lot of fun with those LCD displays on those boxes. Some extra storage that keeps extra backups of the most important stuff on the network.