Stefan Didak

Office 7.0 Beta 3 (stage one) is final… for now!

December 20, 2011 by Stefan Didak 30 Comments

Stefan Didak's New and Second Home Office in Oakley, California, Final Intermediate Stage

Yes, it’s a milestone. Office 7.0 (beta 3, by now) is officially done, functional, installed, running, and ready for action. I’m not going to make any final “beauty” shots of the current state because there’s not much point in doing that until the other half of the office completes the current ensemble and that won’t be for quite a number of months yet. I’ll just have to make do with this setup in the meantime. And yes, you can imagine it’s painful and under-powered and under-monitored, and boy am I missing the extra pixels… not. 🙂 I’m quite happy with the 3 x 2560 x 1600, actually. But of course, the office won’t be complete until it’s complete. And besides, my camera gear is all in The Netherlands anyway, so there’s no point in trying to create perfect RAW shots and then editing them for a final “beauty” pass. I didn’t take shots of other parts of the office since nothing has changed there but if you want to see then anyway I refer you to the other Office 7.0 beta blog posts and images. There’s a server, a workstation, a second workstation, a Mac Pro, the MacBook Air, and the Clevo laptop. That should be enough for the intermediate stages of getting up and running. The three Lian-Li cases look nice together and all have watercooling for the CPU’s. ATI 6970 Eyefinity cards take care of the two workstations, each of them hooked to the 3 x 30 inch Dell U3011 monitors using StarTech DisplayPort switches to allow for an extra set of DisplayPort ports on each monitor. The server is hooked up via DVI connection (and also capable of doing 2560×1200) while the Mac Pro is using 3 x DVI where one of those is run from a mini DisplayPort port via an Apple converter that turns it into full dual-link DVI.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office, Personal Tagged With: Audio, Cables, California, Monitors, Multi-Monitor, Network, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Pictures, Screens, Switches

Computers USA / BTO Diablo and AngelFire

December 4, 2011 by Stefan Didak 2 Comments

The new Home Office is starting to take a little more shape every day but there’s still much to do and a lot of things to complete before I can consider having properly settled in. This post, however, is not about the office itself but the people who have built the new systems that are in it. The company is called Computers USA and are the home where BTO Diablo computers and BTO AngelFire servers are built to spec. They are local to me with both stores (a short drive to Brentwood or a slightly longer drive to Clayton) and I think people should support local business more. Instead of telling people that I hope to lead by example here. Don’t be fooled by the website that needs some work. These guys know what they’re talking about and really have tons of clues about what they’re doing. That’s a rare thing to find these days when it comes to computer stores that claim they can build machines with amazing specs. In my experiene most don’t but these guys certainly do! If you’re around the area here and are in need of great quality and support, definitely check out Computers USA.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: Brentwood, BTO AngelFire, BTO Diablo, Clayton, Computers, Computers USA, Custom, Hardware, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Quality, Servers, Shop, Store, Support, Workstations

Time for a change: An Autodesk Free One!

December 1, 2011 by Stefan Didak Leave a Comment

It’s time for a little announcement and yes, you heard it here first… I’m officially Autodesk-free! And what a great feeling that is to not have to deal with an entity “where software goes to die” (can’t remember who first came up with that one but don’t mind me quoting you). Not having to deal with lacking and/or online only docs and the poor state of the Civil 3D API is not unlike wearing shoes that are too small and being able to them off… a feeling of relief, that is. Development has not been as fun and exciting as it was prior to Autodesk acquiring Dynamite VSP (and rebranding it as Civil View, integrated with 3ds max Design) and because of my 6000 mile relocation and in particular other plans I have for my business and the directions it should be heading into it seems about the right time to leave the Dynamite development arena so I can reclaim the time I normally spent on it and put it towards cool and new things. You can learn about the cool new things on ignyter.com and ignytion.com once I am (legally) able to unveil those. Which, granted, may be a while yet before I can, and will.

Filed Under: Personal, Software, Software Development Tagged With: 3AM Solutions, Autodesk, Civil 3D, Civil View, Dynamite VSP, Engineering, Software, Visualization

New home office cabling complete!

October 15, 2011 by Stefan Didak 16 Comments

Stefan Didak's new second home office, in the setup stages

It’s time for another installment of pictures and updates in the ongoing Office 7.0 Beta Buildup. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that I have completed the cabling of the new office (and that I got married while the cables were still shipping out to me). The bad news is that I am waiting for the new workstation and server systems to be completed by my new (local) dealer. I will not be making any major pages with photos until the full office is complete (and that, yes, will take some more months actually) and when I have my full camera gear with me, which I do not at this time. But just to give everyone who’s been asking an update of how things are looking, here you go, a whole page with pictures. Made with Sallie’s Nikon P100. I swear, large heavy cameras just seem to work better for me than the ones with a ton of cool features and are light enough to swing from your pinkie. Some of the images might look a bit familiar to all of you who follow me on Twitter.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: 30" Monitors, Cables, California, Desks, Furniture, Galant, Home Office, IKEA, Images, Multi-Monitor, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Pictures

The New Place: Getting it together

September 25, 2011 by Stefan Didak 1 Comment

Office 7.0 cables received in two huge heavy boxes

Let’s start by the good news. The quotes for some new systems are starting to reach me and the new cables have arrived. Another poor iPhone camera shot, but that’ll have to do because I’m not about to waste too much time trying to get really nice shots of the office. I’m saving that for when everything gets together and I can do a proper job at a new “making of” with all the details. I’ve been asked a few times now whether the pictures I showed in my previous post are part of me trying to do different configurations with the desks. No, they’re not. It’s just a larger office than the previous one so there’s more desk space and, likewise, more desks, involved. Just to clear up any confusion, though, here is the original layout I planned for the space and it has come out pretty much exactly like this. The yellow block is a 27″ monitor (the iMac), the green ones are the 24″ monitors, and the blue ones are the three new Dell U3011 30″ ones. The old Aeron and the new Embody (once it arrives sometime in the next days) will complete the seating arrangement. Since it’s impossible to use that much screen realestate and that many pixels as a single overview and the 3 x 30″ provide a very nice area by itself, I have decided to split the monitors into islands of their own where, along with the computers that’ll hook onto them, are more task-based and defined as to their use and purpose. The 3 x 30″ area will be the new “main” area.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: Cables, California, Desks, Furniture, Galant, IKEA, Images, Multi-Monitor, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Photographs, Pictures

The New Place: Early Results

September 22, 2011 by Stefan Didak 11 Comments

Stefan Didak's Famous Home Office Reborn

It’s true, I haven’t been posting much. Then again, I have been rather busy with that thing called “life” and in particular the move to the new place. But things are starting to slowly shape up. The emphasis here is on the word SLOWLY. Things are not going as fast as I had hoped for. So, no, no new office pictures, won’t be any for a while, it’s going to take some more time. But, in the meantime, I can show you some of the current progress. Pictures taken with the shaky camera of the iPhone. Those are pictures of the same office. If you see something that looks like it had been modified, it wasn’t, it’s just that the office is really big and has more than one work area. So, definitely, lots and lots of desk space for… lots and lots of workstations, servers, monitors, and a few Mac’s thrown in for good measure. Oh, yeah, about them Mac’s. Going to the Apple Store in Emeryville was a major disappointment. They didn’t have anything I wanted, didn’t have anything I needed, and the result was “best to just order it online from us”. Yeah, that could’ve saved me an hour’s drive from Oakley (not Oakland!) to Emeryville. Why those stores even exist, I have no idea. It was very busy, but people there were clueless. And with people I mean the staff, not the potential customers in the store. I bet those had more of a clue. The big battery backup stuff still has to arrive and I am still waiting for a quote on some systems from my potentially new hardware builder out here in this area. Until that time I will allow the wires and the office to be a mess. I might allow it to be a mess until the new office and the old office get reunited in the same place. Depends on how things go. We’ll see.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: Apple, California, Home Office, Images, Multi-Monitor, Network, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Photographs, Pictures

The New Place

August 27, 2011 by Stefan Didak 1 Comment

It’s official. The new location of the Home Office 7.0 will be in Oakley California. That’s OAKLEY, not OAKLAND. Not even nearly the same. Oakland is a dump IMHO and Oakley is a nice low-crime no-grime area towards the east of the San Francisco Bay Area. Don’t mind the odd copyright notice on the image. That’s the image of the real-estate company that had it advertised. I’ll be posting better and nicer images once I get around to it and once I get to actually have some decent content to show. Now the real fun starts; getting the electricians over to see what we will do about getting tremendous power routed to the new office space, furnishing, getting hardware and systems installed, all that good stuff. Or if you will, all that frustrating stuff.

Filed Under: Home Office, Personal Tagged With: Black Widow, California, El Cerrito, Home Office, Oakley, Office 7.0 Beta, Snakes, Spider

A serious bloggable delay, powering down!

July 25, 2011 by Stefan Didak Leave a Comment

No matter how well you plan something and how much detail you put into it, there are always things that can throw things off. While most of the detail planning of the new office is still valid, the general timing is going to be way off thanks to an unforeseen relocation to a new location. A new location that at the time of writing has not been found yet, I should add. Recent discoveries about our place in California has left us no other option than to find a more suitable location. I’ll spare you all the details regarding the sub-standard piss-poor third-world electrical wiring. Instead, let me just tell you there’s no way in seven hells I’d consider hooking up a ton of expensive computer equipment to the electrical network as it is. And the required overhaul is not what I would ever consider spending on a rental. We had several electricians check things out and provide quotes for the kind of overhaul required to bring the place up to snuff.

Filed Under: Home Office, Personal, Rant Tagged With: California, El Cerrito, Electrical, Electricity, Fire Hazard, Fuses, Inspection, Panel, Third World, Wiring

A peek inside the madness of Home Office 7.0 (beta)

June 21, 2011 by Stefan Didak 7 Comments

As you are reading this various new parts of what I consider the infrastructure requirements of the new setup have either already arrived at its destination or are in transit. In the next few weeks a bunch more stuff will be shipped from the various different vendors and with luck most of it will be waiting for me by the time I arrive. The DLink DSR-500N has already arrived. The Honeywell HHT-149-HD is in transit. And a bunch of APC Performance SurgeArrest 11 Outlet power splitters will be arriving in the next few days. Most of the other hardware, computers, workstations, servers, monitors, cables, and just about everything else will have to wait a little longer because I first need to get the office in proper shape, which means power distribution circuits and outlets, carpet, and desks and furniture. In that order.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: Audio, Hardware, Home Office, Network, Planning, Power, Rack, Router, UPS

You really think my local storage is insane?

June 2, 2011 by Stefan Didak 12 Comments

A lot of external USB and eSATA harddisks

Of course it is possible to travel with a few dozen virtual machines! After looking at the stack of external USB and eSATA harddisks I use to travel with essential materials I just had to take a picture of it. Sorry about the quality that isn’t up to snuff but I used the iPhone to take the snap. Over the past year people have asked me, “when you have so much local storage, how do you decide what you travel with and how do you carry it with you”. Well, the picture here probably says more than a thousand words. Not that I couldn’t write a thousand words on it, if I really wanted to. And no, it is not a joke. I really do travel with 22 external HDD’s (over 13TB of storage). Since I travel with the Clevo D900F “laptop” (ahum, sort of, mobile luggable workstation) I also travel with enough storage and data that if I need to grab a VM and do a quick fix on a bug somewhere, I can do so without having to wait until I can return to the larger workstations.

Filed Under: Home Office Tagged With: Storage, Transport, Travel

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