A couple of years ago I was involved in a Focus Group that was asking about my own personal technology setup and they wanted photos of the gear you were using and how it was being used during your activities. Recently I discovered those images while re-organizing some folders and putting things in proper places and thought it would be fun content for the personal blog so here we go with an overview of my creative workspace and its relatively neat order on the day I shot it.
The monitor is a 21″ flatscreen and its the Dell brand since it came included with the system. I have another spare smaller screen in my possession but the room is just not there on the desk for me to connect it to the desktop. Maybe if I move the All-In-One device. As you can see I approach the media office with maturity and have a couple of Spider-Man action figures sitting there protecting the sanctity of the writing world for me. Since my mouse is on the right hand side I use the left side space for the things I am examining and you can see a few CD’s and stickers here that I just didn’t move when I snapped the photo. On top of the screen is a small Microsoft Camera for those times when I need to do any sort of video chat. They are great for the band interview but I mostly use this to keep up with the folks who have moved a few states away since I first snapped it.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I do NOT do a lot of printing anymore but I do scan and need to occasionally send a fax here and there so this model HP “All-In-One” has done the trick. I love everything about this device except for the fact that the inks now expire whether you have used them or not and they get pricier as your unit gets older. What a scam.
The top space on the desk doesn’t have sufficient room for all the stuff that I need it to and this makes sense since one often does not have the printer right in front of them. In this photo you can see the rather ramshackle way that I have my speakers on the desk but honestly I always listen through headphones when I am sitting here if anything at all. Generally I am scribbling about the music releases from my Living Room Annex to the Creative Command HQ.
The Desktop being used is a Dell XPS 8300 and its got a 1TB hard drive and about 8 GB of memory. Its a fast and powerful machine but I have come close to filling up the hard drive in the last year based on just how many photographs I have been taking. One of these days I need to sit and go through folders and delete any of the absolute junk images that got shot. Believe me in terrible lighting situations you can come back with hundreds of them and at a few MB apiece that will fill a drive up fast.
Sliding over to the “Annex” that I just joked about, here we are in the living room at the coffee table which serves as my other desks extension. I generally am just using my laptop which is a Dell Studio 1537 model from about 2009 I think. It’s still running Windows Vista while the Desktop you just saw is running Windows 7 Home edition. The smaller Netbook is my travel machine and also has W7 but is not as powerful as the laptop. I’m hearing that Windows 10 is coming down the pike so perhaps I can upgrade all three of my systems to the one single OS. The Netbook was actually part of a premium once offered by Verizon when you got their DSL Service installed. The unit still runs and serves me well when I am on any sort of overnight trip or vacation and want to get some stuff done. That system also runs W7.
In one of the other photos you could see my mobile device propped on the keyboard and that phone was the Droid RAZR Maxx but since the time of that photo I have upgraded my device and been using the Galaxy Note 4 which is a beast of a phone and I love it. No iPhone for me at all, this is a PC and Android OS household. I’m also using an ASUS brand tablet that I got for cheap at the Microcenter shop. Since the phone is so powerful I didn’t need to spend a ton on a tablet and only wanted to see how the new version of the PiercingMetal website was rendering on such a device. For my current needs it worked out fine but perhaps in time I will get a slightly more powerful one to do a few more tasks outside of testing.
The latest part of the puzzle is completed by this WD Cloud Storage external drive. Its 4 TB in terms of space and offers a personal cloud for you to save and access files on. I still have to get my cloud storage in place and running to make sure that I am covered in case of an emergency.
So there you have it, my little technological enterprise. All of the means that make these Internet Outlets of mine a possibility (well, with the exception of the actual cameras that do their part of course). I hope you liked this little examination/revelation and I’m wondering what kind of stuff you are using to make your own personal magic online if you have a similar pursuit. Let me know in the comments.