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Stefan Didak

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You are here: Home / Stefan Didak’s Home Office Desktop / Home Office Version 7 Setup ‘Making Of’

Home Office Version 7 Setup ‘Making Of’

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

This page is dedicated to “my biggest fan”. 🙂  A lot of thanks to Chris and Andrew over at ComputersUSA 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”.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NOCTURNAL LIGHTING

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

I like LED lights. I like them even more if they flash. I like them the best when the color and flashing actually also serves a purpose. If it was just for LED’s I’d have found a WAY CHEAPER way of having lots of twinkling little lights in the office. Really. 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

I like working in a dark office. The darker the better? Not really. The light emitting from the screens can sometimes be a real pain in the eyes (and yes, I know how to turn down the brightness and contrast). So what you want to do is get enough ambient light in there to offset the harshness of the screens. I’ve experimented with many different solutions over the years and found that being able to increase and decrease backlighting behind the screens and areas where you can’t really see the lights themselves works best. Plus it has a nice aesthetic feel to it when walls light up and provide ambient scattered light without really seeing where the lights, leds, or bulbs are located. The picture above shows average ambient light.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

More ambient light, backlit, behind the screens. There’s a few high powered LED USB lights behind there which I can turn on and off with a remote control. The USB lights themselves can be set to 3 different levels. In the picture above it uses full power. Via a remote control you ask? Yes, easy. You get some of those devices you plug into the outlet and are remote controlled, then stick the USB HUB power adapter in there and voila, you’ve got remote controlled USB LED lights. I’ve got about a dozen of those device triggers in the office. Each remote control can control 5 of those devices. Really great and not too expensive for like $19 each.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A picture with just the ambient light in the office coming from the opposite side of the office where a few monitors were casting a bit of ambient light around.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Same shot, this time with the monitors turned on. Just in case you were wondering.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The ambient light, or lack thereof, when I’m only working in the main “area”. Dark, yes!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A little more light in the corner to break the darkness just enough to not feel like a mole.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

And another high powered LED light turned on to provide even more light. Once I start turning on all the USB LED lights in the office it is light enough that it’s almost as if there are regular bulbs and lights in there. Plenty of light to work by. Don’t believe me? Check out the next shot then.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Yep. Plenty of light at night!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

One of the remote controlled USB LED light clusters that sits behind the monitors. Being able to adjust the angle is great but you know, once you’ve got them at the angle you like you hardly ever fiddle with them again. Which I guess is a good thing because I’ve got so many of these around the office it would be a day job just to fiddle with them in order to see the various lighting patterns it can create. 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.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Multicolor LED strips mounted behind the desks and underneath. For “extra effect” and coolness.

SOME STUFF IN MORE DETAIL

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

In the meantime I got myself a great 16-battery charger to deal with volume charging of tons of Eneloop batteries for the Nikon Speedlight flash units. This thing cranks through rechargeable batteries like you wouldn’t believe.

Stefan Didak Home Office FAQ

More battery chargers. This area of the office mostly deals with charging the various Nikon batteries as well as a Nightcore charger that I am using for both Li-Ion and high-drain IMR 18650 batteries. If anyone knows what I might be using those for, great! You can guess but if you guess correctly there’s unfortunately no prize for the winning answer. 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

More pictures of the Mini ITX Xeon Servers on my Flickr.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about these after I posted some pictures to Flickr and Twitter and I bet the questions will continue to come so here’s the specs. And in case you need to know, at the time I got them these things ran somewhere $1200 each. Great for building a small server farm where you want a little more individual metal vs. a huge large box that has combined memory and storage (and use up many more Watts to run).

Intel DQ77KB Mini-ITX MB
Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2 Ivy Bridge 2.5 (3.5) Ghz 45W Quad Core
Intel BXHTS1155LP CPU Cooler
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 RAM
256GB mSATA SSD
Lian-Li PC-Q05B Mini-ITX Cases
19v/8.4A 160 Watt AC-DC Power Adapter
2 x 1TB 2.5″ 7200rpm HDD’s

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The cables at the back of these three Mini ITX Xeon servers.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Notice that I use USB extension cables at the back and route them to a place I can easily get to. This way I don’t have to crawl under desks or move systems around if I need to plug some USB device in. I use this trick on many systems that are not as easily accessible. Works great. I know you can also do this with USB HUBS but I prefer to only use those if needed because USB HUB’s often require external power. That would be a lot of external plugs that need power in my specific case. So extension cables are easy, don’t take up much space, you can use various lengths to get your inputs exactly where they are most convenient for you.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The Mini ITX Xeon’s don’t run all that hot but they are small cases and you can stress them into something that I find a little to hot for my liking. So I got a few 140mm fans that I can turn on as needed and will provide some extra airflow through the side of the Lian-Li cases.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Powering the fans is easy. You just get one of those DC to Molex power bricks from the Cooler Guys and hook up the fan Molex connectors to a splitter and voila, you have instant power.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Vantec external USB 3.0 drive arrays. One with JBOD and one with RAID5. These are connected to the small Atom machines that run the DNS and other automation tasks on my network. They also do duplicate automated local backups of other systems as a “third” level of backups (and versioning).

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The two Atom’s there in the MiniBox (mini-box.com) cases with picoLCD displays are configured as:

Intel D2500CCE Mini-ITX Motherboard
4GB RAM (2 x 2GB) SODIMM
One with 2 x 30GB mSATA + SATA converters.
The other one with a 480GB Sandisk SSD.

THE MAKING-OF AKA CABLE MANAGEMENT

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The first thing you want to do when building an office like this is to plan ahead. Plan ahead well in advance. In fact, you might want to spend several weeks planning the space, the cables, the power distribution, and make sure everything works on paper. Then when you discover it works on paper but not in real life you go back to the drawing table with some extra tools as pictured below…

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

After redoing the plan on paper for the second or third time you should be good to go. If you’re not I can recommend Glenmorangie Artein 15yr old to assist. Well, actually, scratch that. If you start doing that your paper plans will never work out at all. But you might get the point here; planning is important. Planning is the key to everything because there’s nothing so frustrating and annoying as to be knee deep in cables only to discover you needed another 20 amp outlet somewhere or you are dealing with cables that are too short and you have to order more or create more cables at the right length. Plan ahead. Then plan ahead some more! As for the bottle there, you can read more about it here.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

You will want to get loads of this. VELCRO. It’s your best friend when doing cable management. Especially if you are doing the cable management the way I have found works the best for me. The stack of velcro rolls pictured about are just a small portion of velcro used in the entire cable management of the office. I think a total of 37 rolls of the stuff went into it. Also make sure you get all the colors you can get because those will help a lot when bundling cables of a certain type or purpose together. It makes your life so much easier later on down the road when you have to change something.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The same goes for network cables. Get CAT6 or the best you can get because you don’t want to replace a ton of cables at a later stage. If you’re doing speeds that don’t require CAT6… get CAT6 anyway. The price difference is really of no concern. The picture above also shows that the cables from the switches and main DSR router are neatly guided through a guide panel at the bottom of the rack. No way to trip over them, they are easy to deal with and it looks fairly neat as far as 50+ ports go.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

You might notice in the next series of pictures that things moved around a bit. Which would likely lead to you thinking I was stark raving mad. Which, I’m sure I am, but not because stuff kept moving around. Some of these pictures were made after I decided to change things around a bit because the original plan didn’t work out as efficient or ergonomic (for me) as I hoped. However, the pictures were already made and I didn’t feel like doing a whole series while dealing with cables and stuff.

Here are some pictures of the first attempt at getting this 7.0 office going.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

I started out having three of the main workstations next to me, under the desk there. It didn’t work out for me and when I started adding a few more I ran out of space to keep things together in a logical manner. It was also causing problems with power distribution and cable lengths so I moved them after the fact.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Starting to take shape with just the first 3 x 30″ DELL monitors.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

You can tell from the box fan there that I had to get some extra air flow going. Not for any of the systems because most of them are all liquid cooled (I got away from fan cooling a long time ago). But it was really hot, it was summer, and the airconditioners (the central one and the extra mobile one in the office) couldn’t flow the air in the directions I wanted. Box fans are great for this.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Half the office was still looking very empty because all my other stuff was still in Holland. Also, the newer systems I hadn’t even ordered yet because I wanted to plan ahead and make sure that the new purchases would be in line with whatever it was I was going to be doing. At the time I was still in the planning stages.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Cables and more cables waiting for systems that hadn’t been ordered yet, hadn’t arrived yet, but I wasn’t going to wait with building the office. So I made sure all the cables I needed were already in place and ready to go.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

This is what it looks like when you undo all your velcro and cable management because you decided to start over at that particular stage because something wasn’t working out. What a mess!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

So sad. Just one monitor on the desk… it looks so… lonely. 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The other two were not too far off, though!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Moving systems to the other side of the office, for good reason. Only to discover another cabling issue.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

At least I managed to take care of storage. Not the digital kind.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Let’s try this again.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Getting ready to hook up the rack

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

If you pay close attention to the side of the rack you will notice there are 2 x 2 of 8CM fans there, which are USB powered through a small USB HUB. I created a venting hole on the side so I could get some extra air flow through the switches at the bottom. Those switches, especially when stressed with several simultaneous gigabit speed transfers tend to get a little hot and the HP switches I use don’t have fans in them (I picked them for that reason because I hate fans inside devices breaking down!).

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A labeler is a useful thing to have. Get one!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Laying out the network and audio cables and making sure there’s enough slack to hook up systems and when moved into place will still have enough slack to move forward in case of replacement or emergency maintenance activities.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

I used cheap plastic towel bars that I screwed firmly into the bottom of the IKEA Galant desks. It’s easy to loop velcro loops around them and the cables and fasten/secure them and provide a clean and pleasing look. In fact, you can hardly see any cables when you walk into my office. You have to physically crawl down below the desks to even see where most of the stuff is running.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Just a bunch of network cables.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Moving the rack and the monster UPS into position where I eventually ended up deciding they had to go.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

More plastic crates of cables waiting for me to deal with them.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The office looked so empty and clean before I started adding all that stuff to it, doesn’t it?

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Getting ready to hook up the rack in its final location. Am I the only one who ends up with a bigger mess in the office while doing the cabling or is this a normal phenomenon that it has to all turn into a bigger mess prior to it getting any better? 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Audio cables. Power cables. Network cables.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A bit more of a clearer view on the back of the rack. I threw a bit more light on there. When mixing power cables, network cables, and AUDIO CABLES in a rack that offers only limited space to spread out the cables you want to make sure that all the audio cables are as far removed as possible from power cables and network cables. If you don’t the interference from the cables can cause strange static noise on the audio. You do NOT want that to happen and certainly not after you spent a day building the rack and putting the cables in and you’re still a day or two off from being able to properly test it. I used a small media player to test each of the ports to ensure no noise would creep into the audio.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

So far so good. Got the 12-core Mac Pro with 128GB of RAM in there on wooden boards I got at Lowe’s and then wrapped in sticky black plastic. Call me a stickler for aesthetics but I couldn’t stand the wooden/white look of those boards. The monster APC is also on a board like that, with some coasters I put underneath, because that thing is so heavy you just can’t move it, especially when it’s placed on carpet.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Things are still a total mess while the cabling enters day 2.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Running the length of network cables from the back of the rack to the other side of the office where the systems will be placed that need them.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Another towel bar. Wonderful stuff.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Always ensure there’s enough slack in the cables. And tie them up and down as needed. Bundle groups of cables by their purpose and location. Cables going to one side of the office are bundled with velcro. Cables going to the other side get their own bundle, etc.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

When running out of space for towel racks the IKEA Galant desks have enough metal frame to run a few twist wires or twist ties through to use as holders for the loops of velcro needed to “hang” cable bundles off of.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A close-up shot of what I just said.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

How long it takes me to put all those cables in, all cables, and build up the office as you see it taking shape here and how you can see it in its final form? Around 4-5 days. Full time. Yes, it’s a bit of a chore. But worth it.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The rack is starting to take shape but up to this point it was already a good half a day of effort.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

But I am pleased with the results because those cable bundles are about as perfect as I could make them. I joked around not too long ago that it took me 25+ years to finally get the hang of it and have enough slack, enough length, and enough velcro. Don’t skimp on the velcro. Use more if needed. Always use more than you plan. Which means, always order more than you think you will need. Just like monitors, servers, and workstations, get more than what you think you will need because for long you will actually need it. 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

It might still look like total madness but it’s actually quite clear. You can’t see the labels on the cables all that well in this picture but trust me, everything is labeled.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Nice little bundles.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

And another shot of cables for you cable lovers out there.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

A wider shot to show just how neat things can be if you put an effort into it.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The two white shelves there are to cover up cables that run on the ground. You can tell they are white shelves but you have to look for it. Otherwise it just provides a cleaner look to what otherwise are ugly thick black power cables.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Bundles are getting ticker as more stuff gets wired up.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

The rack now has all its audio cables hooked up. Blue velcro = audio.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

So much cable and yet not a single system hooked up yet. Day 3.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Moving the monitors into place.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

And for more stuff to hook up we need, guess what, more cables. It just never ends!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Hooking up some workstations with their required cables. Notice the slack in there? Give your cables enough slack (I can’t emphasize this enough!) and you will be happy when moving stuff in and out of their locations.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

While hooking things up the cables will still look like a pile of crap that nobody could ever make sense of again but once you have things hooked up you will use… more velcro!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Hooking up the StarTech Display Port switches. The DELL screens didn’t have enough DisplayPort ports for me too hook up what I needed at the full 2560×1600 resolution per screen. So I got three of these StarTech devices and they worked out great. It also allowed me to use a few shorter cables running to the monitors. Not cheap, though, those things are about $75-90 each. But what’s a developer to do when you want full resolution on various machines and be able to switch between them? 🙂

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Another shot of the StarTech Display Port switches. They do need power, though.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

White and lengthy DisplayPort cables. Blue and Black network cables. And some more cables!

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

Blue velcro for audio cables. Red velcro for power cables. Yellow for monitor cables. Black for other stuff. White for external devices and green for USB cables.

Stefan Didak Home Office 7 Making Of

My “best friend” in the office. 12000 BTU of cooling power. The office would be bearable if it wasn’t for the fact that we live in a place where 100+ F (40+ degrees C) temperatures are quite normal. We have 9 months of sun and summer out of every year. I had Gable fans put into the roof (the office is upstairs) which help but there’s nothing like having a central airconditioner plus an additional mobile unit in the office. I use two box fans to distribute the cold air through the office so that systems pick up cool air. Well, that and myself, when I’m in there. 🙂

Updates by E-Mail

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Beware of Copyright

Read all about how AwareBear, a company owned by Andre Leite Alves, stole one of my pictures, pasted himself in it, and used it on their computer repair brochures.

Also, please visit the
Office Thieves Hall Of Shame!

About Stefan Didak

Hi. I'm Stefan Didak
...and I do not work at NASA
...and also not for the NSA
...not even for the CIA
...and not at CERN either!

The pictures on this page are of my home office desktop which, since I first published these pictures, have been causing a lot of chatter on various web forums and blogs.

The attention my home office has received is quite stunning and way more than I would have expected. Since things have gotten out of control in terms of questions regarding the setup, the hardware, and what on earth I am using all this for, and what kind of electricity bills it results in, I have decided to setup a FAQ and a comments page where you can read what others had to say, or leave a comment of your own.

Swag?

My wife has been trying to convince me that I should start offering crazy-home-office swag like t-shirts and coffee mugs. While I think that would be hilariously funny I'm not sure I should put in the effort to set something like that up. Perhaps I should ask the visitors of this page what they think of that idea. If you like the idea of crazy-office swag, leave a comment.

The Specs

People have asked me to list some specs on the systems in the home office. I will make an attempt at that but am not sure how up to date I can keep it since there are expansions, upgrades, changes, and quite a lot of enhancements taking place every few months.

Summary

The 7.0 office:

  • 18 Workstations/Servers
  • 4 Laptops
  • 548 TB of total storage
  • Some stuff not pictured here

The 6.0 office:

  • 14 Workstations/Servers
  • 5 Laptops
  • 125 TB of total storage
  • Some systems not pictured here

The old 5.0 office:

  • 9 Systems
  • 3 Laptops
  • 38 TB of total storage

Some 7.0 Specs

SYSTEM 'ARGON'

Base:
Intel S5520HCR
Dual Xeon X5680 6-Core 3.33Ghz
64GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Arena 2000B

Storage:
48 TB RAID-6 storage
4TB WD RED x 12

Details:
3 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-16i4e + BBU

Network:
Intel E1G44ET

System weight:
A whopping 72 Kg

SYSTEM 'XENON'

Base:
Apple Mac Pro
12-Core Dual 3.33 Xeon's

Memory:
128GB RAM

Storage:
16 TB Soft RAID-10 storage
6 TB Backup storage
1 TB SSD storage
2 x OWC Electra SSD 480GB
4 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000
2 x 3TB Ext. FW800 Storage

SYSTEM 'POSEIDON'

Base:
2 x Intel Xeon W5580
Supermicro X8DA6
64 GB DDR3 ECC RAM

Chassis:
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80

Storage:
32 TB RAID-6 storage
16 x 2TB Seagate

Details:
4 x Lian-Li EX-H34 cages
Adaptec 51645 RAID
20 ports SAS PCI-X
With 512 MB Cache
Single 1200 Watt PSU

Graphics:
Asus GTX285 HTDI/1GD3

SYSTEM 'ATLAS'

Base:
SuperMicro X9SCI-LN4
Xeon E3-1265L V2 Quad Core
32GB (4x8GB) ECC DDR3 1600

Chassis:
Fractal Design Black Pearl XL R2

Storage:
24TB RAID-5 Storage
8TB "Transit" Storage
60GB System SSD
8 x 3TB WD RED (RAID6)
4 x 2TB Seagate (Icy Dock)

Details:
1 x IcyDock MB454SPF-B
8 Port LSI 9265-8i RAID + BBU
Hydro H80 CPU Cooler
Cooler Master Power Supply 800W

Network:
4 x Gbit LAN

SYSTEM 'ZEUS'

Base:
SuperMicroX8SAX
Intel Xeon W3670 6-Core 3.2Ghz
24GB 6x4GB DDR3 1333

Chassis:
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80

Storage:
24 TB RAID-6 storage
3TB WD RED x 8
OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SSD 6Gbps

Details:
2 x IcyDock MB454SPF-B
LSI MegaRAID SAS 9265-8i + BBU
Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000
Corsair H100 Hydro Liquid Cooling

Graphics:
EAH6970 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 2GB

Network:
Intel PRO/1000 Quad Port

SYSTEM 'ARIES'

Base:
Intel DQ77KB Mini-ITX
Xeon E3-1265L V2 2.5-3.5Ghz 4-Core
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 SO-DIMM

Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-Q05B Mini-ITX

Storage:
250GB mSATA SSD
2 x HGST Travelstar 1TB 2.5" 7200

Details:
Intel BXHTS1155LP CPU Cooler

SYSTEM 'ARTEMIS'

Base:
Intel DQ77KB Mini-ITX
Xeon E3-1265L V2 2.5-3.5Ghz 4-Core
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 SO-DIMM

Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-Q05B Mini-ITX

Storage:
250GB mSATA SSD
2 x HGST Travelstar 1TB 2.5" 7200

Details:
Intel BXHTS1155LP CPU Cooler

SYSTEM 'ATHENA'

Base:
Intel DQ77KB Mini-ITX
Xeon E3-1265L V2 2.5-3.5Ghz 4-Core
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 SO-DIMM

Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-Q05B Mini-ITX

Storage:
250GB mSATA SSD
2 x HGST Travelstar 1TB 2.5" 7200

Details:
Intel BXHTS1155LP CPU Cooler

SYSTEM 'NITROUS'

Base:
ASUS Rampage III Extreme
i7-990X 3.46GHz 12MB LGA1366
24GB 6x4GB DDR3 1333

Chassis:
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80

Storage:
16TB RAID5 Storage
Intel 510 250GB SATA3
8 x Hitachi 2TB 6Gbps HDs

Details:
LSI MegaRAID SAS LSI9280-8e + BBU
2 x IcyDock MB454SPF-B
Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000
Corsair H100 Hydro Liquid Cooling

Graphics:
Asus EAH6970 2GB DDR5

SYSTEM 'OCTANE'

Base:
ASUS Rampage III Formula
i7-990X 3.46GHz 12MB LGA1366
24GB 6x4GB DDR3 1333

Chassis:
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80

Storage:
16TB RAID5 Storage
Intel 510 250GB SATA3
8 x Hitachi 2TB 6Gbps HDs

Details:
LSI MegaRAID SAS LSI9280-8e + BBU
2 x IcyDock MB454SPF-B
Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000
Corsair H100 Hydro Liquid Cooling

Graphics:
Asus EAH6970 2GB DDR5

SYSTEM 'OXYGEN'

Base:
Dual Xeon E5472
Supermicro X7DWA-N
32 GB RAM

Chassis:
Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P80

Storage:
32TB RAID5 Storage
Intel 510 250GB SATA3
16 x 2TB HGST HDD

Details:
Adaptec 51645 RAID
20 ports SAS PCI-X
With 512 MB Cache

SYSTEM 'CORTEX'

Base:
Intel D2500CCE
4GB RAM (2 x 2GB SO-DIMM)

Chassis:
Mini-Box

Storage:
2 x 30GB mSATA SSD

SYSTEM 'VORTEX'

Base:
Intel D2500CCE
4GB RAM (2 x 2GB SO-DIMM)

Chassis:
Mini-Box

Storage:
480GB SATA Sandisk SSD

SYSTEM 'BORON'

Base:
Apple 27 inch iMac
2.93Ghz Quad Core i7

Memory:
8GB RAM

Storage:
1TB HD

Graphics:
HD5750-1GB

SYSTEM 'HYDROGEN'

Base:
HP NW8710w Mobile Workstation
Intel Core2 Duo T7700
4 GB RAM

Storage:
120 GB 7200 rpm HD
500 GB WD Passport
500 GB WD Passport

Graphics:
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M 512MB
17 inch 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA)

Details:
Linux!

SYSTEM 'HALON'

Base:
Advance VX7670
Intel i7 975 Extreme
CLEVO D900F
12 GB DDR3 RAM

Storage:
3 x OWC 480 GB SSD

Graphics:
nVidia 280M-GTX 1GB RAM

Details:
Yes, it's a laptop!

Weight:
Heavy! 5.5 Kg.

Power:
A 240W Brick PSU.

SYSTEM 'HELIUM'

Base:
Apple 13 inch MacBook Air
2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM

Storage:
256GB SSD
1TB WD Passport
1TB WD Passport

Office 6.0 Specs

SYSTEM 'ARGON'

Base:
Intel S5520HCR
Dual Xeon X5680 6-Core 3.33Ghz
64GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Arena 2000B

Storage:
24 TB RAID-6 storage
2TB Seagate's x 12

Details:
3 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-16i4e

Network:
Intel E1G44ET

System weight:
A whopping 72 Kg

Power:
1200 Watt PSU

SYSTEM 'INDIUM'

Base:
2 x Intel Xeon W5580
Supermicro X8DA6
64 GB DDR3 ECC RAM

Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-P80

Storage:
13 TB RAID-6 storage
300 GB WD Velociraptor x 4
1000 GB Spinpoint's x 12

Details:
4 x Lian-Li EX-H34 cages
Adaptec 51645 RAID
20 ports SAS PCI-X
With 512 MB Cache

Graphics:
Asus GTX285 HTDI/1GD3

System weight:
A whopping 35 Kg

Power:
Single 1200 Watt PSU

SYSTEM 'PENTANE'

Base:
Intel i7 975 Extreme
Asus P6T7 WS SC
24 GB DDR3 RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BA-01B-B-B

Storage:
8 TB of storage
2000 GB x 4

Details:
3 x Nvidia Tesla C2070
Each with 6GB RAM

Graphics:
PNY Quadro FX 5800

System weight:
Only a mere 26 Kg

Power:
A 1200W PSU

SYSTEM 'KRYPTON'

Base:
Intel Core i7-965
Asus P6T Deluxe V2
12 GB DDR3-1600 RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BA-01B-B-B

Storage:
12 TB RAID-5 storage
1000 GB Spinpoint's x 12

Details:
1 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
Adaptec 51245 RAID
16 x SAS PCI-e
With 512 MB Cache

Graphics:
Asus ENGTX280 HTDI

System weight:
A whopping 29 Kg

Power:
Single 1000 Watt PSU

SYSTEM 'HEXANE'

Base:
Intel Extreme Quad QX9650
Asus P5Q WS
8 GB RAM

Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-P80

Storage:
6.4 TB RAID-5 storage
300 GB WD Velociraptor x 8
1000 GB Spinpoint's x 4

Details:
3 x Icy Dock MB454SPF
Adaptec 2820SA RAID
8 x SATA PCI-X
With 128 MB Cache

Graphics:
Asus ENGTX280 HTDI

System weight:
A whopping 28 Kg

Power:
Single 1000 Watt PSU

SYSTEM 'BORON'

Base:
Dual Xeon E5472
Supermicro X7DWA-N
32 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BA-01B-B-B

Storage:
6.4 TB RAID-5 storage
300 GB Seagate Cheetah x 8
1000 GB Spinpoint's x 4

Details:
1 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
Adaptec 51245 SAS RAID
16 x SATA/SAS RAID PCI-E x8
With 512 MB Cache

Graphics:
Asus ENGTX280

System weight:
A whopping 42 Kg

Power:
Single 1200 Watt PSU

SYSTEM 'OXYGEN'

Base:
2 x Dual Core AMD Opteron 275
Tyan Thunder K8WE
8 GB RAM

Chassis:
Procase Palo-Alto 501 Blue

Storage:
9 TB RAID-5 storage
750 GB x 12

Details:
3 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
2 x LSI MegaRAID SATA-150 6
6 x SATA150 RAID
With 256 MB Cache

System weight:
A whopping 42 Kg

Power:
A single 800W PSU

SYSTEM 'HYDROGEN'

Base:
Advance VX7670
Intel i7 975 Extreme
CLEVO D900F
12 GB DDR3 RAM

Chassis:
Clevo D900F

Storage:
1.5 TB RAID-0 storage
3 x 500 GB 7200 RPM

Details:
Yes, it's a laptop!

Graphics:
nVidia 280M-GTX 1GB RAM

System weight:
Heavy! 5.5 Kg.

Power:
A 240W Brick PSU.

SYSTEM 'HALON'

Base:
Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5W64 Professional
4 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BA-01B-B-B

Storage:
6 TB RAID-6 storage
750 GB x 8

Details:
Areca ARC-1220LP
8x SATA300 RAID PCI-E x8
With 256 MB Cache

Graphics:
nVidia EN7950GX2

System weight:
A mere 38 Kg.

Power:
A single 800W PSU.

SYSTEM 'HALON'

Base:
Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5W64 Professional
4 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BA-01B-B-B

Storage:
4 TB RAID-6 storage
500 GB x 8

Details:
Areca ARC-1220LP
8x SATA300 RAID PCI-E x8
With 256 MB Cache

Graphics:
nVidia EN7900GTX/2PHT

System weight:
A mere 38 Kg.

Power:
A single 650W PSU.

SYSTEM 'NEON'

Base:
Core 2 Quad Q6700
Asus P5E WS Pro
8 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Bravo BH-01B-B-B

Storage:
4.0 TB RAID-5 storage
1 TB x 4

600 GB RAID-0 storage
150 GB Raptors x 4

Details:
2 x RAID Hotswap Backplane
Areca ARC-1220LP
8x SATA300 RAID PCI-E x8
With 256 MB Cache

Graphics:
EN8800ULTRA/HTDP 768MB

System weight:
About 25 Kg.

Power:
A single 1000W PSU.

SYSTEM 'RADON'

Base:
Dual Xeon 5060
Tyan Tempest i5000PX
16 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec Dragon

Storage:
6 TB RAID-5 storage
750 GB x 8

Details:
AMCC 3Ware 9500S-8
8 x SATA150 RAID
With 512 MB Cache

Graphics:
ATI X800 PCI-E

System weight:
A mere 34 Kg

Power:
A single 800W PSU

SYSTEM 'THUNDER'

Base:
Dual AMD Opteron 254
Tyan Thunder K8WE
8 GB RAM

Chassis:
Chieftec BX

Storage:
1.2 TB RAID-5 storage
150 GB Raptors x 8

Details:
Areca ARC-1220LP
8x SATA300 RAID PCI-E x8
With 256 MB Cache

Graphics:
nVidia EN7900

System weight:
A little under 26 Kg

Power:
A single 700W PSU.

SYSTEM 'ISIS'

Base:
Asus T2-AE1
Athlon 64 4000+
2 GB RAM

Storage:
320 GB SATA x 2

Details:
Additional Intel Pro 1000+ NIC

Power:
A single 300W PSU

SYSTEM 'OSIRIS'

Base:
Asus T2-AE1
Athlon 64 4000+
2 GB RAM

Storage:
320 GB SATA x 2

Details:
Additional Intel Pro 1000+ NIC

Power:
A single 300W PSU

SYSTEM 'OCTANE'

Base:
HP NW8710w Mobile Workstation
Intel Core2 Duo T7700
4 GB RAM

Storage:
120 GB 7200 rpm HD
500 GB WD Passport
500 GB WD Passport

Graphics:
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M 512MB
17 inch 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA)

System weight:
Very portable at 3.4kg! :-)

SYSTEM 'NITROUS'

Base:
HP NW8240 Mobile Workstation
Intel Pentium M 760
2 GB RAM

Storage:
80 GB HD
500 GB WD Passport
500 GB WD Passport

Graphics:
ATI FireGL5000 Mobile
15.4 inch 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA)

System weight:
Very portable at 2.8Kg! :-)

SYSTEM 'XENON'

Base:
Sony Vaio PCG-809K
1 GB RAM

Storage:
60 GB HD

Graphics:
15 inch 1400 x 1050 TFT

System weight:
Less portable than the HP!

SYSTEM 'ATLAS'

Apple Macintosh:
27 inch iMac
2.93Ghz Quad Core i7
8GB RAM

Storage:
1TB HD

Graphics:
HD5750-1GB

System weight:
Heavier than it looks!

SYSTEM 'HELIUM'

Apple Macintosh:
13 inch MacBook Air
2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM

Storage:
256GB SSD
1TB WD Passport
1TB WD Passport

System weight:
Like a heavy frisbee!

ADDITIONAL NAS & SAN

38 TB of central storage
Of which 4.8 TB of SCSI storage
And 3.2 TB of XHD storage

TOTAL STORAGE

58.6 TB of central storage
67.4 TB of systems storage

Business

  • 3am Solutions
  • Animagic
  • Author-izer
  • Fileslinger
  • Ignyter
  • Ignytion
  • Manticore Labs
  • Podcast Asylum

Favorite Tools

  • Altap Salamander
  • Input Director
  • MaxiVista
  • Power Pro
  • Powershell
  • Powershell Plus
  • Synergy
  • Visual Studio
  • Windows Layout Manager
  • XCode

Home Office

  • Home Office 5.0
  • Home Office 6.0
  • Home Office 7.0
  • Home Office Comments
  • Home Office FAQ
  • Home Office Older than 5.0
  • Home Office Thieves
  • Home Office Your Comments
  • Making Of Home Office 6.0
  • Making Of Home Office 7.0

Home Offices (Others)

  • Daniel Heth
  • Dennis Klein
  • Kevin Connolly
  • Mike Dixon
  • Mitch Haile
  • Scott Hanselman

Personal

  • Stefan on Flickr
  • Stefan on Twitter

Recommended

  • Bay Area Consultants Network
  • SF NewTech

Small 6.0 Office Images

Tags

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Latest Blog Entries

berkeley-city-hell

Berkeley City Council – Too afraid to have their lies corrected on the record!

We went to the Berkeley City Council meeting on September 9th (the day after we got home from Ontario, CA. where we were to attend some meetings and ECC) to set the record straight after the city council and our opponents (the body parts people such as the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Tobacco Free Kids, etc. and the various other tobacco control groups) had done a hostile and violent bashing job on electronic cigarettes and vapor products at their previous meeting on the same topic on July the 8th. At the time only two people were present to oppose the ordinance. We had no reasonable expectation to “win” (in short; “because it’s Berkeley”) but needed to address it regardless. For about a month I put out the word and request to join us at the next council meeting, in various places including several specific to vapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had not expected a huge turn out but what we got was beyond disappointing. But let me get into that a little later in this report and start off with out strategy and what transpired.

Sallie speaking in support of SB648

A positive victory for vapers on California Bill SB648

This is probably going to be a lengthy summary of the second death of CA SB648 and one that is particularly difficult to explain in detail and with all its facets so I’ll try and keep it short and to the point because in reality, this is not any longer about a common sense bill that both vapers and industry supported but about how anti-tobacco groups (including the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society CAN, and California Medical Association) opposed a bill that would protect minors from having access to e-cigarettes via vending machines. It is about the true face of tobacco control and their true motives. I will spare you the long history of SB648 and how it went from the bill it once was into a bill that focused solely on vending machines and preventing minors from having access. Instead, I will go back to June 25th when we were at the State Capitol in Sacramento for the SB648 hearing in which we wholeheartedly supported the bill. You can read more about that on my wife’s website in the post about California SB648 Turns on a Definition.

oakley_ecig_ban

Ignorance Abound! City of Oakley lawyer fears vapers may exhale flu viruses!

The following is a breakdown and post analysis of the recent Oakley City Council meeting on the subject of banning the outdoor public use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs, which we refer to as vapor products and Tobacco Harm Reduction alternatives to smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes). I am sad to provide this post analysis by highlighting the kind of blatant ignorance that not only us here, in Oakley, but millions of vapers (users of vapor products who are usually ex-smokers!) are confronted with on an almost daily basis. Let’s start you off with the video of the agenda item here. I will insert relevant parts of the recording along with time stamps.

itaste

Sorry Tom Baker, you’re just not important enough

Tom Baker, of “ECF fame”, had asked me a few times to debate him. He recently did so again in the most recent broadcast of Click-Bang radio with Russ Wishtart. Because the debate with Tom kept going on, and on, and on, like an endless downward spiral into madness, then plan was to have another episode with Tom next Tuesday June 10th at 9PM EST. I said I was going to call in. I was looking forward to that but just learned I will not be able to make it at that time because of THIS. I just, moments ago, received an e-mail notifying me that the electronic cigarette usage ban in Oakley, CA. has been put on the agenda for the city council. Unfortunately the time of the meeting intersects directly with Click-Bang. I’m sorry I will have to miss out on Click-Bang and Tom but when it comes to making a decision between fighting a local ban we had been preparing to do and going on air to battle an intellectually unarmed opponent the choice is not that hard. Tom and the entertainment value associated with him is just not important enough to distract me from what we’re really supposed to be doing.

ab1500-1

California AB-1500 hearings, “Adults are not interested in flavors”

The reason I am calling Assemblyman Dickinson a LIAR, in public, is because written testimony by many adult vapers has clearly stated many times before that we adults like flavors. We adults like flavors as much as children do. In fact, we love our e-juice flavors because it is part of what helps us stay off cigarettes. For him to state this “adults are not interested in flavors” as a fact is beyond infuriating but maybe this was Mr. Dickinson’s intention. If so, it shows what a horrible person he is. He doesn’t know any adult who likes flavors… and yet several were sitting right behind him that morning and many more told him clearly before these hearings.

softimage_logo

Autodesk, the metastasizing cancer of the 3D world

Unfortunately it is much more than just a catchy title. It’s a reality for many of Autodesk’s current Media & Entertainment customers. And no, this is not a blog post to say “I told you so” to 3ds max or Softimage users but something of a much larger concern that I think is being overlooked because of the current and more specific destructive mayhem that the Autodesk disease is causing. This is about how I’m seeing a single company, single handedly, through mismanagement, incompetence, and above all, complete and utter ignorance, is doing rampant harm to a wider industry on which at least a part of their own existence depends. Combined with an unhealthy dose of disrespect for their customers this is nothing more than a recipe for disaster. A recipe that, unfortunately, is cooked up and served to its customers to chow down on.

vape_station_1

Vape Station

After my recent “epic sized” blog post on ignorance about vaping a few people asked to see some pictures of my “vaping gear” in The Office. Well, I’m happy to oblige since I’ve now finally set things up in a way that work for me. It is, in part, thanks to one of our cats, Bece, that I ended up with more plastic display stands than I originally planned to get. As I was ordering a few things online she jumped up and walked straight over my MacBook Pro Retina. As I tried to get her to move her butt off of it she trampled a few times on the trackpad and it wasn’t until I placed the order that I noticed there were a few more things in there than I planned on. Ah, well… such things do happen. I guess she just likes vape gear and decided I should get more. Lots more. Perhaps I should “blame” her for all my vape related purchases, right Anyway, I have a few more mods, RBA’s and RDA’s on the way and thanks to Bece I know have enough holes to last me a while. Luckily those plastic stands were cheap so it didn’t result in any holes in my wallet.

itaste

Ignorance and laziness prevails in Oakley, CA over electronic cigarettes

Mr. Galstan, could you please list and describe the “known carcinogens” present in electronic cigarettes (or the e-Juice used in such)? The American Lung Association has repeatedly failed to do so, so why are you parroting them? Do you have any clue at all what is generally used in electronic cigarettes (or e-Juice)? I do. Many others do as well. And none of them are carcinogens. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that nicotine itself is not known nor has it ever been listed as a known carcinogen. If you are going to be a mouthpiece of an organization that has direct financial interests that are at total odds of people giving up smoking (after all, the association would no longer have a source of funding nor would they be able to pressure companies into handing them money for their “programs” which as a lot of us see it is not too different from mobster like extortion) then please be ready to back up your statements and claims with actual facts and substantiate them. Perhaps you may need to inquire at the American Lung Association so they can provide you with a canned statement that will, as per usual, not really answer the question.

ubuntu-logo32

Mental Health and NL Ubuntu Forums

I know, I know, I don’t normally post anything in Dutch on my site but I’m making an exception this time since it’s specifically aimed at a group of Dutch people. I have no idea what an online translation service would turn this into but I bet it would be hilarious. Ik kreeg onlangs een e-mail met daarin een aantal forum posts welke in een Nederlands Ubuntu (http://forum.ubuntu-nl.org/offtopic) support forum gepost zijn. Ik heb door de jaren heen wel eens het een en ander aan vreemde veronderstellingen en uiterst ongeïnformeerde uitspattingen gezien maar deze posts lijken het tot een compleet nieuw niveau weten te tillen. Op een of andere manier zijn een paar compleet ongeïnformeerde figuren daar helemaal overtuigd van hun eigen paranoïde waanbeeld dat ik daar in het forum links naar mijn site loop te posten. Op zich verbaasd me dat niet helemaal daar er in de afgelopen decennia best wel een aantal mensen en bedrijven zijn geweest die zich via de foto’s van mijn office(s) of voor mij hebben uitgegeven danwel hebben getracht de indruk te wekken dat het hun office was of op een of andere manier er bij betrokken zijn geweest. Een kleine collectie daarvan is te vinden op http://officethieves.com/.

Stefan Didak Famous NEW Home Office

New Home Office Pictures VERY SOON

I know, it’s been long overdue. But I’ve finally got to the editing of the pictures. Selecting the images for the “making of” section has really been a pain in the butt because there were so many and I have to pick the right images to reflect the things I’ll be writing about (and hopefully explaining). Tonight, and possibly tomorrow night I am going to shoot the night-time pictures, which is easier said than done because it still involves setting up some flashes and lighting to make the pictures actually reflect what it really looks like. With lots of reflective surfaces and areas of extremely low and high contrast (the environment versus the light emitted from the monitors) taking these shots is not as straightforward and easy a task as it might look. But I’m confident they will come out just fine since I had a few test runs over the past months.

wordpress-logo

Making WordPress Fly with APC, Varnish, Memcached and more!

It appears that after my previous presentation on developer tools at the East Bay WordPress Meetup I’ve found myself doing another presentation, this time about how to make WordPress fly. Like a bat out of hell. That, of course is both a BatCache and a MeatLoaf reference. Pick whichever suits you based on your age category. 🙂 This presentation does NOT cover the regular caching plugins but rather on how you can optimize your server (and your code) to make use of a much higher performant level of caching. I will be very quickly covering the levels of caching supported by WordPress itself (the run-time cache, transient cache, object cache, page cache and fragment cache).

chamber_logo_1-198x150

Resigned from the Oakley Chamber of Commerce

On October 1st, 2013 I resigned, effective immediately, as a board member/director at the Oakley Chamber of Commerce.The date is actually irrelevant though. The question I will be repeatedly asked now, is “why”. So here’s why. I expect the board of directors at a Chamber of Commerce, most of which are business owners, to act and make decisions in a business-like and professional manner for the organization as a whole, its members, its board, and of course for themselves. When important decisions need to be made you need to rely on everyone doing the right thing and bundle all that business experience into something that forms a solid and cohesive decision. At this, however, the board has unfortunately failed and in a way that is incomprehensible to me.

Ignyter Network

WordPress, Ignytion DDT and the Home Office (aka the Ignyter Network)

I use WordPress. I use it a lot. I use it for most of my personal sites, business sites, I hack around with it and contort things to do what I need them to do. I’m not, however, one of those WordPress fanatics. In fact, you will hear me say a lot of nice things about Drupal, for example, even in public and even when talking to WordPress fans. I believe in using the right tool for the right job and in this case you can consider platforms of choice to be no different from any tool. One way I use WordPress is for something that nobody ever gets to really see (unless you visit my office and I happen to show you how I manage and control things): managing my vast number of systems, laptops, devices, and most of all the growing deployment of virtual machines. I used to keep track of network port diagrams via Microsoft Visio but since I am not using Windows as much these days and also don’t want to go back to keeping ASCII notes or document files I decided to put together a more proprietary and automated way to keep track of IP addresses, services provided systems and VM’s, passwords, installation and deployment notes, hardware notes, driver information, etc. And for that I decided to go with WordPress.

dreamhost-problems, compromised by hackers once again

Dreamhost compromised by hackers AGAIN!

n other words, the people who configured the Dreamhost network were a bunch of incompetent fools that didn’t know what they were doing. And I believe most of Dreamhost is still in the same frame of expertise these days. Instead of resolving an external MX record they used local DNS (cached perhaps, I don’t know, but certainly fully internal in a way it should have NEVER BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE) and mail would go to any domain that was perceived to be local whether it was TRUE OR NOT. I outlined everything in detail, my findings, my repeated tests, and the full proof in the e-mail to them (because they couldn’t be bothered to take a call for which I offered to pay myself) and the response I got was that they COULD NOT FIX IT. In fact, let me just dig this up for the record because Dreamhost deserves some public shaming for this. “Jeff” responded back to me on January 5th 2007 saying…

A real developer

My “real developer” presentation at the East Bay WordPress Meetup

I’m pleased to announced that I’ve recently acquired the domain for arealdeveloper.com. Details on its content and my future plans for that domain will be revealed later. Possibly quite a bit later. I’ve always thought it was a great domain name so you have no idea how happy I am that I’ve now got it. Most of you KNOW that I am NOT a “web developer”. I am, however, setting up a large scale SaaS project that happens to be web-based (what a surprise!). I frequently encounter people who say they are web developers and yet have never heard of basic things like XDebug, Profiling with XHProf, SASS, LESS, versioning, virtualization and local development servers, etc. So what happens when “arealdeveloper” enters the world of web development? You start looking for the right tools, buying the right hardware and software, invest some time in learning how to make best use of them, and before you know it you’re doing a presentation at the Easy Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, CA about developer tools. You can download the 69 slide presentation here.

The Death of the VFX industry

The DEATH of the Hollywood Special Effects Industry

Over the past many years, going back at least as far as the past decade, I have been hearing and seeing the hurt and imminent death throes of the VFX (visual effects) industry and its many great artists that made it the industry that it has become over the past several decades. Even thought I have not been an actual “artist” (if I ever was one, since I considered myself always more of a “crazy scientist developer annex artist”, which most of us were back in the founding days before there even WAS a VFX “industry” to speak of) in this field since the very late 80’s, or early 90’s at best, I have most certainly not failed to noticed the direction things have been heading in for a very long time. And I am sad to say that many of the things I saw coming have been coming to a pass in a very rapid pace the past 2 to 3 years. It does appear, however, things are in an even more hyper-accelerated way the past year.

Tactical Assault Rifle

Home Office Security and Update

I know, I know, you had hoped for a major update with pictures of the new final completed Home Office 7.0 and instead you’re getting something completely different! In the meantime, people often ask me what I do about security and protection at home, especially with the office being a possible target of ill-willed criminals and other likeminded varmint. I normally don’t go into details about that and answer in rather broad terms that we have an excellent alarm system that is being monitored 24-7 by a professional security company. However, recently we extended the “home office defense system” (ha ha) with a new firewall and a thing that can fire very nicely at any kind of wall. And not just walls. Meet the home office protection device! You might wonder what on earth I’d need a tactical assault rifle for, amongst other things. The answer to that might be a long story.

Steven Dray Home Office Tattoo

The Home Office Tattoo?

This morning I woke up and checked my e-mail and found a message from one of the big fans of my office and website, Steven Dray. Attached were two images that certainly surprised me, to make an understatement. Steven has posted the images to his Facebook page and on Twitter but considering the content of the images I’m also posting it here with a little bit more information. It is, I suppose, flattering, but at the same time it brings up a few questions. I asked Steven Dray how he made the image because I couldn’t see any artifacts that are usually present when photoshopping or compositing an image. With my background in 3D computer graphics, rendering, and pixels in general, I would be able to tell and I couldn’t. So either this was a really amazing photoshop skill or not. I asked Steven about it and he told me it wasn’t a composite, it was real.

Mitch Haile and Stefan Didak in the New Office

Mitch Haile and Stefan Didak in the New Office

I have a quick update on the current status of the new (7.0 final) home office for you all. Pictures are being delayed by several factors. One factor being that it’s real busy here. The other factor being that two machines arrived with some serious problems after transport. They’re being looked at now but this is going to be an insurance claim situation. Of course, if you are a fellow crazy home office aficionado, you get “first dibbs” on seeing the current new home office “live and in the flesh” or is that “live and in the metal?” 🙂 So for those few crazy people out there who blog about how Mitch Haile and myself are adversaries in some kind of home office contest, we’re not. We get along just fine! And yes, Mitch is the first fellow tech guy who’s actually seen the office as it is right now.

The new USB LED lights

Getting ready to build the new home office

However, I have most of my camera gear here and the other half is being shipped along with the majority of Home Office 6.0, my books, and tons of boxes with other stuff that still needed to be shipped from Rotterdam to California. With a bit of luck everything should arrive in perfect order sometime near the end of the year. This of course means that starting 2013 I’ll be (finally) constructing the final office 7.0, the combination of the current California office and the previous office.

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