Stefan Didak – Hardware

Home Office Security and Update

February 19, 2013 by Stefan Didak 34 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office, Lengthy Tagged With: Assault Rifle, Gun, Red Dot, Tactical

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

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

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

Some pictures of my older office versions

February 5, 2011 by Stefan Didak Leave a Comment

Stefan Didak OLD Home Office from even before version 5

My colleague Bruce just asked me why there weren’t any pictures from my home office versions prior to what I call “version 5”. Good question. Probably because the pictures aren’t too great and I don’t actually have all that many. I can’t even find a single decent (or indecent!) image from back in the earlier days of the office. But I did find a few older ones that predate the “version 5” so I’ve given them a nice little page of their own. Don’t ask me what the specs were on the systems that were there at the time since most of these date back to, I believe, between 1999 and 2001. So yeah, these are a decade old and most of them were shot with an Olympus E-10, one of the first digital SLR’s on the market back then. For those who pay attention, yes, there were still a fewAmiga’s around at the time but even in the 1999 period I didn’t use them. A friend once said I only used those Amiga’s to keep dust of my desks and in a way he was right about that. My use of Amiga’s died off sometime around 1991-1992.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: 3D, Graphics, Hardware, Home Office, Images, Multi-Monitor, Network, Photographs, Pictures, Software Development

Mac OSX Experiences – The Pictures

October 1, 2010 by Stefan Didak 8 Comments

When using the Mac along with the other systems I just pull it forward a little so it’s in easier reach. The little rolling desk was a recent addition because there just wasn’t any way I could fit a big 27″ screen into the current setup and doing an overhaul was not part of the plans I had, certainly not in the current space and certainly not in its current location. The next overhaul will be huge and will be “elsewhere”. Insiders will know what I’m talking about. Anyone else, you can just keep guessing what I mean by that.

Filed Under: Hardware, Home Office, Lengthy Tagged With: Apple, Archos, Experience, Home Office, iMac, Images, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, OSX, Pictures, Software Development, Tablet, Wacom

Mac OSX Experiences From The Dark Side

September 9, 2010 by Stefan Didak 3 Comments

Yes, it’s true. Get over it already. I bought an Apple Macintosh. A 27 inch 2.93Ghz Quad Core i7 with 8GB RAM, 1TB HD, and HD5750-1GB. I understand this has caused several people to exhibit signs of severe confusion because I’m really mostly known as a “Windows Guy” (more appropriately, a .NET guy). For a little while I’ll refrain from posting any pictures, though. Wouldn’t want people to die from either laughter or heart-attacks.

Filed Under: Funny, Hardware, Home Office Tagged With: Apple, Experience, Home Office, iMac, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, OSX, Software Development