Adventures in home working » WorkSpace

My new home office

Steve Richards — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:39:52 +0000

Sam asked me a couple of weeks ago to blog about my new Office. I’ve been resisting because I wanted to spend at least a month working in it before I felt ready to really comment on how it’s changed my life. Seems a bit of a bold statement “changed my life” but I don’t think I’m overstating it.

I’ve always been very focussed on workspace design, I can remember over 20 years ago convincing my boss to radically change our office around and – inspired by the book peopleware – I’ve been working to improve the working environment of my teams every few years since then. I’ve previously written about the great opportunity I’ve had in the past to design a couple of offices from a pretty blank sheet of paper and I think we did a pretty good job and I learned a lot.

Last year though was the first time I’ve ever designed a workspace for myself and it’s been great fun. I started with these objectives in mind.

I wanted a space that I felt was my own, the rest of the family, friends and colleagues would be very welcome to visit but it would be on my terms and I wouldn’t be storing any of their stuff.
I wanted a space that allowed me to seamlessly and easily transition from work to play to exercise. I suffer from a rare form of arthritis and low intensity, varied but long days are a must for me. The ability to work for an hour, chill for 20 minutes, work for another 30 then exercise for 20 suits me perfectly.
I wanted to feel as relaxed as possible throughout the day, so the space had to feel less like and office and more like a holiday home.
I suffer a little from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I wanted as much light as possible
I wanted to be able to able to work in a range of different positions, seated, standing, exercise bike, sofa, to keep my joints and muscles working and moving and it’s just more fun
Collaboration and team working are important to me so I wanted to be able to have effective virtual and physical meetings

This is how it turned out:

I decided to build a conservatory, it was a pretty cheap option, addressed the SAD issues, has been plenty warm enough through a cold January with mostly no heat required during the day and radiators at night. I’ve invested in window blinds that have been essential and have worked well. I’m waiting to see how many days this year I’m driven out of the room due to lack of roof blinds in the summer. Roof blinds are expensive and the top investment priority right now is to turn our old shared office into a great lifestyle space for Debbie, and that’s where I will retreat to on hot summer days as well.
I’ve got a huge glass wall (between conservatory and lounge) that has roller blinds behind it to turn it into a massive whiteboard, it also works great for tacking up A3 slides that a group of people can scribble on together. I have a Bluetooth eBeam (electronic whiteboard) that suckers onto the glass for virtual meetings.
I’ve got a 4 seat sofa that I retreat to whenever I’m on the phone, I just love sitting back and looking up at the clouds on those long conference calls, with my Tablet PC on my lap when I need it. I’ve a wireless DECT headset that lets me move freely around the whole house (thanks to a repeater).
From the sofa I can watch conference DVDs and downloads, PowerPoint presentations etc on my 27” Dell high res display which is attached to a media centre PC so I get to watch TV as well. I’ve previously struggled to watch more than 20 minutes of video on a computer, but the big screen “TV like” experience from the sofa makes hours at a time practical. The big screen is great for watching while doing the ironing as well.
I’ve got an exercise bike and it’s perfectly positioned for watching the big screen too.
I’ve got all my favourite reference books and books i’d like to read – right there in full view to remind me not to buy any more for a while and hopefully to inspire me to chill out and read for at least 30 minutes a day.
Previously I’ve been a dedicated user of 3 displays and It’s still a great setup, but this time around I decided to go for 2 screens, one 27” 1900*1200 and the other 1280*1024. I’ve loved the extra screen real estate from the large screen and as I’ve already mentioned it’s enabled the “work from the sofa” scenario, further helped by a wireless media centre keyboard and remote.
I don’t have a desk chair right now, I’m loving using a – cheap – exercise ball. It’s great fun and I can feel it strengthening my back already.

From a green perspective it’s mixed:

It’s turned the lounge from the coldest room in the house into the warmest, and the conservatory keeps warm with a couple of small radiators with the thermostatic valves cranked down
All the lights are ultra low power LEDs or fluorescents
When I suspend my desktop PC, all the displays and peripherals auto power off
The blinds and glass are both coated to keep heat inside in winter and out in summer

The end result:

I’m able to work for longer
I feel much more relaxed
I feel more effective
I’m having a lot more meetings at home, and we’ve had a great Carvery restaurant open just on the sea front that’s perfect for business lunches
It’s much nicer to be able to work and interact (through the glass) with the kids without being disturbed and for them to be able to see when I’m disturbable and pop in for a chat or a hug
Debbie and I are having more lunches together
I enjoy doing the ironing
I’m watching more TV – perhaps the only negative
I’m getting more exercise
When I’m not working we have a great family room
The Sofa is actually a sofa bed, so we have a guest room and the girls love having sleepovers there and watching the stars
It’s definitely been a worthwhile investment

Co-working facilities

Steve Richards — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:38:00 +0000

Years ago I setup a collaborative working environment for my team, the idea was for the environment to be really social, we had lots of breakout rooms, large tables where people could sit together, comfy seats, whiteboards everywhere a library area and of course quiet space for when you needed to concentrate.

Lots of people would ask if they could come and hot desk in the office and in the end we said no because it was getting too crowded. When I saw this article – and the photo above – about co-working facilities for people who wanted to get out of the house, but not into the office – it reminded me of those times gone by.

I really like the idea, of a space where you can pop in and meet like minded professionals in a great working environment with food and drink. For me that’s not the office, I work on global projects with virtual teams so I have little in common with the people in the nearest office, and theres no desk space anyway.

The hat factory is a great example:

The Hat Factory is community office space for geeks and media hackers. We’re a group of open sourcers, video bloggers, Drupal developers, and more who are tired of working from coffee shops and home every day

It’s a really cool idea, and I bet a lot of real social networking goes on here, not just sharing contacts, sending messages and reading blogs! There’s even a video.

Previous posts I have made about work spaces can be found here and about home working here

Morale, that’s an employee issue!

Steve Richards — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:23:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I heard a manager say that employee morale was not a management issue, I hope I heard wrong, but I don’t think I did.

To be fair though I don’t think the manager concerned really meant what he said and was in fact referring to an employees response to his remuneration was a personal issue. Morale in contrast is much more than a response to remuneration and is very much a management issue.

I am not a great manager, however in my years I have learnt a couple of lessons about morale and the most significant being that individuals often tend to keep their morale troubles to themselves, sometimes grumbling to friends but not always. I always found this really worrying because I know for sure that a persons peer group and manager can do a lot improve morale, if they know about it.

Over a couple of years my team leaders and I came up with a pretty good approach, which is worth sharing:

Each week everyone in the team (including the team leads and I) posted a highlight report to a shared folder
At the end of the highlight report they scored their overall satisfaction in the following areas: frustration, too much work, too little work, skills, training, overall happiness
Our wonderful admin consolidated all the cores into a spreadsheet so that we could spot trends across the 30+ people in the team

I noticed some great benefits:

Everyone seemed much happier being honest in providing these happiness scores than they were with explicitly going to their team leaders directly, because they were concerned they might be seen as moaning
The team leads and I found that everyone understood us a bit better and the “what does he do all day” question never seemed to arise!
We explicitly defined the scores so that a person could indicate that their level of satisfaction required some intervention and how urgent that was
All the team leaders and myself scanned every highlight report each week and were very proactive and imaginative in addressing the issues, we were also much more relaxed about management because we had a great way of tracking team “health” overall
Very often we didn’t need to do much because when a person indicated an issue their team mates almost always rallied round and helped resolve it before team leaders got a chance
Team leaders shared the responsibility for everyone in the team, we often found that the best person to help address a persons motivation issue was not their direct team leader

I’m sure this approach isn’t in any management handbooks but it worked for us so I thought I would pass it on, one point worth noting is that the issue was almost never money!

The joys – not not – of telecommuting

Steve Richards — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:42:00 +0000

For me telecommuting means I am able to work, so it’s wonderful and liberating. I do miss the office though and the sort of team dynamics that develops only when you work with people day in day out for years. For anyone contemplating teleworking I have only a little advise:

Live somewhere you love, so that you don’t get tempted to stay in the house all day
Meet up with colleagues whenever you can, I like to go out for lunch
Create a great working environment, one that you really enjoy working in – remember your employer is no longer in control and that this is a room where you will spend most of your waking hours, so treat it with that level of importance
Put the money you save in fuel in the bank and spend it – without guilt – on improving your home working experience
Make sure you go into it with a positive attitude, it’s not perfect, but the more energy you put into making it so the better it will be
Don’t give up on it, technology is moving at breakneck speed and the social down side of working on your own will rapidly decrease as high definition video, combines with high speed networking and multiple large screen displays

There are lots of books on the subject, but I recommend reading the comments on this post from lifehacker and this one from Joel on Software.

and no, the house isn’t mine!

Multiple monitors in Vista

Steve Richards — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 03:51:22 +0000

Anyone you read my blog knows that I am a big fan of multiple monitors. In Vista support for multiple monitors is slightly more restrictive, here’s a summary:

Multiple monitors attached to a single card – no problem
Multiple monitors attached to multiple cards with the same driver (which normally means the same chip set family) – no problem
Multiple monitors attached to multiple cards with different drivers – no support for Glass

or more details check out this link

Paperless office

Steve Richards — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:23:00 +0000

I used to laugh at the idea of the paperless office, over the last 20 years I have presided over a number of projects that I thought would reduce paper but actually increased usage, so I am pretty cautious now. However having seen for myself that the combination of a desktop scanner, 3 monitors and a Tablet PC can almost totally eliminate paper from my lifestyle I think there is a viable way forward. I have written a few posts on this topic myself, and have just come across a useful discussion of the topic over at Silicon.com, this comment was particularly useful:

Andy Jones, a director at Xerox Global Services, explains a crucial change in the way we use paper. “Thirty years ago paper was the definitive record of so many things that happened within business. Today it is increasingly the case that the electronic record is the definitive copy, while paper is becoming much more a work-in-progress medium,” he says.

I agree with the work in progress role of paper, and its this role that multiple monitors and a Tablet PC address. The Tablet is great for sketching, note taking, review and markup as well as reading on the plane/train. Multiple monitors avoid the need to use paper as a reference copy while you work on another document on a single PC display.

tags: paperless, tabletpc, multiplemonitors

Workplace design at Microsoft

Steve Richards — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:55:00 +0000

I am a big advocate of well designed workplaces, so I was interested to see this post about the Workplace Advantage activity at Microsoft. One of my favorite principles is to provide a flexible environment that the teams can change easily to suit their evolving needs and I have written about my experiences in this area before if you want to check them out. I do agree though with many of the comments on this post that workplaces need to have different zones that allow people to work quietly in isolation when they want to and to do adhoc and intensive collaboration in other areas when that’s needed. The relative degrees of quiet work and isolation change over time as do team sizes hence the need for flexibility.

Recently though I have been working from home and I have realized the benefits of Workstation design as well as workplace design, so I think it’s also pretty important to provide some way for people to dock laptops into different styles of workstations and to work in private “offices” when they need to. In my case I like to work with three screens which is now easy to provide in shared work areas for laptop users by using devices like these from Matrox.

Two screens are better than one and three are even better …

Steve Richards — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 23:21:54 +0000

Readers of my blog know only too well that I love screen real-estate having 3 19” screens and I certainly would never go back, what amazes me is the fact that the productivity benefits are truly amazing and yet are largely un-tapped by most businesses. According to Microsoft Research you can expect between 9 and 50% improvements in productivity, which equates to an ROI of significantly less than 1 month for most people. In my case these are the main benefits I see:

I am more relaxed
I am bout 30% more productive for about 2 hours per day and 10% productive for another 3 hours (I work a short day)
I hardly ever print anything, in fact I have purchased a Tablet PC (TC1100) in 18 months just from the savings in ink cartridges, let alone the savings in time, space, paper and increased security associated with not using paper.
My desk is paperless, meaning its much easier to focus, tidier and more productive
I can manage interruptions much better, instant message conversations can be placed in my right monitor while I work uninterrupted on my other two. when I am sharing my screen in a web conference or watching someone else share theirs I can still have a screen for IM conversations and another for reference material or note taking.

My Desktop PC

Steve Richards — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 23:59:00 +0000

I use my desktop PC for about 4 hours a day, it’s very important to me. You can see a picture of it in this post, here are the details of how I have it setup.

Hardware

Dual Core processor
4 GB memory
2 * 2500MB hard disks, one backs up to the other every night using a robocopy script, the scripts also does a backup of the SQL server databases.
4 head Nvidia Quadro
3 AG Neovo 19” TFT displays, DVI
Sennheiser USB headphones
100Mb wired network connection to the hub

Core software:

Vista 64
Connected PC backup
Carbonite PC backup
Maxthon Browser (free), the best browser, see my other posts
Skype (free)
PamelaPro for Skype – provides recording of Skype calls and voice mail
MSDE (free), ie free SQL server database
Synergy (free), allows me to use desktop keyboard and mouse to control my Tablet and my Laptop, useful when I don’t want to use RDP connections
X1 amazing desktop search products (free, in version from Yahoo), I have tried them all, this is the best for serious searching, I have 10,000 documents that I regularly search through
DAEMON tools virtual CD drive (free), for mounting all of those MSDN ISO images!
Ultramon, to make best use of those 3 monitors
PowerShell (free), the new shell from Microsoft
WinDirStat (free) to keep an eye on my hard disk useage
VMWare Workstation v5.5
VMware Player (free)
VMware Console (free) , for accesing Virtual Machines running on my Server
Microsoft Virtual PC console (free) for accessing Virtual Machines running on my Server
MSDN (free) download manager
FoxIT PDF reader (free) , my pain PDF reader, very quick
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 (free), for when FoxIT PDF reader has a problem
RSIGuard, to make sure I don’t work too hard
Foldershare (free), for synching up copies of the kids files onto my PC’s F: drive before they are backed up
Nero Express (free), for DVD writing
Microsoft Intellimouse and keyboard software
MindManager viewer (free), for viewing maps embedded in web pages
MindManager Pro 7
Microsoft ActiveSync (free), synch to Windows Mobile/SmartPhone (not currently used)
Blackberry Desktop
WinZip, compression and archive manager
SmartFTP (free), upload client to Streamload, my large file sharing service (lets me send DVD images etc by email)
Filezilla FTP client
Robocopy (free), command line utility that I use for all disk synchronisation and backup
Inctrl3 (free), utility that watches and records what happens when you install software
Regmon and Filemon (free), utilities to monitor registry and file activity
Process Explorer (free), task manager on steroids
Sun’s JVM (free), Java Virtual machine
Microsoft Reader (free), eBook reader
Citrix ICA client
Windows Live Meeting Client
Sametime web conferencing client
Interwise web conferencing client
WebEx web conferencing client
iShadow multi-window RDP and ICA client
K-Lite Video Codec pack
Dot Net Framework 2, 3, 3.5
Silverlight 1 and 2 runtimes
Flash runtime

Security

Acronis – full system disk image backup
Allwaysync - bidirectional replication of data between laptop and desktop
AVG AntiVirus
Microsoft Defender (free) – anti-spyware
Maxthon (free). Ad, popup and everything else blocking
Firefox (free), for comparison with IE and Maxthon

Telephone, Audio, Music and Video, TV

Audacity for general audio post processing, conversions etc
Levalator – levels audio levels in WAV file recordings
Windows media player
Winamp for music (free), because it is integrated with Skype
Media Player Classic
Cool MP3 Splitter for 2 click splitting of MP3 files into segments by size of time
Xilisoft WMA MP3 convertor
Skype (free), for calls to international land-lines and for recording conference calls. I use the phone for everything else
Pamela for Skype, records to WAV and MP3, records Skype calls and Skype Voice Mail
DTMF Dial (free), for when Skype DTMF fails me
DigiGuide UK TV guide
Quicktime (free) because my camera produces quicktime movies and I download some
Logitech video camera drivers
Canon printer drivers

Pictures, images, scanning etc:

Microsoft Flash (free) for screen captures and simple image editing, scale, crop, format conversion etc, it shipped with HTML Help a long time ago
SnagIT screen capture
Paint.NET (free) for more complex image editing
PaperPort Pro for scanning of all of my paper, it really is a great product

Notes and research

eWallet for everything I need to remember, cards, licence keys, cars etc etc. Syncs with my Tablet and my Treo 650
OneNote 2007 for all other types of Notes and records
Notepad 2 (free), instead of Notepad
NetSnippets, integrated with Maxthon my main browser for capturing and storing web pages

Authoring:

Work 2007
Powerpoint 2007
Excel 2007
Windows Live Writer for blog writing
Camtasia Studio for multi-media authoring, screencasts, videos etc
MindManager 7 for most of my idea generation and meeting notes
CmapTools (free) concept map drawing software
OpenOffice.org v2, for comparison to Microsoft Office, and to get around issues with readonly fonts in PowerPoint

Collaboration, Email, RSS, IM and Organisation

Twhirl twitter client
Lotus Notes 7.02, my companies email system and my master contact database
Microsoft Outlook for personal email
FeedDemon for RSS reading
Doublelook, extracts my Notes contacts and copies them over to Outlook
Pidgin, for Sametime, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL
MSN Messenger (free) just in case there is an issue with Pidgin
Groove 2007
Polycom PVX, video conferencing client

Disks:

C: system disk
D: secondary data disk
E: primary backup disk, also stores master copies of DVD’s copied to disk and MSDN downloads
F: Primary data disk

Backup, each night:
C:\documents and settings backed up to D:
All databases backed up by script
F: backed up to E:
F: backed up to Tablet PC and to Server
F: backed up off site using Connected PC backup from Iron Mountain and carbonite
D: (MSDN and DVDs) backed up to Server disk E:

War rooms increase productivity

Steve Richards — Sat, 28 May 2005 17:20:00 +0000

Some of the best years of my working life were spent in an office environment I designed to promote collaborative work. It had many of the characteristics of a “war room”. With quiet areas around the sides, tables in the middle and loads of break-out areas, white-boards, flip charts and a design review/presentation area. I described this environment in a previous post. I have generally been frustrated at the lack of discussion about workspace design in the IT press, so I was pleased to come across this article that resonated strongly with my experience:

Recently, many companies in the software industry have been experimenting with putting teams of workers into “war rooms” to enhance communication and promote intense collaboration, explains Stephanie Teasley, an assistant research scientist in the U-M School of Information’s Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work.

Instead of toiling in separate cubicles, workers sit at wall-less workstations in one big, open room. The room is typically outfitted with central worktables, whiteboards and flip charts to facilitate group discussions. While companies expect benefits from such arrangements, workers sometimes balk at the idea, fearing they’ll sacrifice privacy and the quiet they need to concentrate on demanding tasks. The U-M researchers say their study is the first to closely examine the effects of what they call “radical collocation” on both productivity and worker satisfaction.

Teasley collaborated on the project with Mayuram Krishnan and Judith Olson of U-M and Lisa Covi, who was at U-M when the work was done but now is at Rutgers University. The group studied six software development teams at a major automobile company, all of which had little or no experience working in war room settings. The researchers evaluated the workers’ productivity using measures commonly used in software development; then they compared the war room teams’ scores with productivity data the company had collected on software development teams working in traditionally arranged offices. The researchers also interviewed the workers and had them fill out questionnaires at the beginning and end of the project. In addition, they made detailed observations of two teams—sitting in on meetings and conference calls, watching the teams solve various kinds of problems and photographing them in action.

Teams in the war room environments were more than twice as productive as similar teams at the same company working in traditional office settings. In a follow-up study of 11 more war room teams, productivity nearly doubled again, making the war room teams almost four times as productive as their counterparts in ordinary offices. The setting alone may not account for all of the productivity differences; teams working in the war rooms also used techniques designed to accelerate software development. However, those techniques could only be carried out by radically collocated teams, says Teasley.

The before-and-after questionnaires showed that workers liked working in the war rooms better than they expected to and were not as distracted by nearby colleagues as they thought they would be. In interviews, the workers said they learned to tune out distractions and tune in when something important was happening. Indeed, overhearing one another’s conversations and watching one another’s activities probably had a lot to do with the productivity surge, the researchers believe. When a worker was stuck on a software-coding problem, others passing by would stop and offer help. And when one team member was explaining something to another, others could overhear and interject clarifications and corrections. The privacy issue was resolved by having a few private cubicles, equipped with telephones and computers, available near the war rooms. Workers used these mainly for making personal phone calls, such as calling a bank to check on a loan or phoning a doctor’s office for medical test results.

“Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, for coordination, problem solving and learning,” says Teasley. “With the growing push for using technology to allow people to work in virtual teams, this study shows us the value of having seamless access to team members and helps us to envision how technology might best be used to support teams that cannot be radically collocated.”

HotRecorder, Skype and My Life Bits

Steve Richards — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 04:05:00 +0000

Inspired by listening to talks about the Microsoft Research project, My Life Bits, I decided it would be a good idea to record my telephone conversations when I can. Fortunately it turns out to be really easy if you use Skype and the free program HotRecorder. The product is not the prettiest I have ever used, and the UI is a bit quirky but it gets the job done. Recording quality is good, and you can add key words and the name of the person you called to each recording making retrieval easy. The ad-supported version is free and the premium version is only $14.95. Well worth trying out, if only to listen to the different responses you get when you tell people you are recording the call, from the slightly guarded/worried to the “where can I get a copy”, so far!

If you want to get up-to speed on My Life Bits I recommend the recording on IT conversations, which I listened to on my Treo while walking along the beach last week.

My Life Bits progress so far:

Photo’s
Emails
Web pages
Documents read
Documents reviewed
Audio listened to
Contacts talked to, or want to talk to
Bills, receipts, letters, certificates and most other paper etc

Experiments with Skype

Steve Richards — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:34:00 +0000

After an initial abortive attempt at using Skype I started to use it again yesterday with impressive results. Certainly BT to BT calls seem excellent, BT to cable was where I had the problems last time I tried. In fact I was so impressed that I purchased a SkypeIn number and unlimited voicemail for £24 for 12 months, which is a lot cheaper and more flexible than installing a business line. I then setup my Treo so that when I am at home all of my calls are automatically forwarded to my SkypeIn number and hence to my main desktop. When I leave home all calls revert to my Treo.

Anyone wanting to test out the quality – if you know me – ring my mobile on Wednesday; chances are it will divert you to my SkypeIn number, even better get Skype yourself!

If it all works as expected then my wife will be pleased because I won’t be hogging the home telephone line, and it’s much easier working with my microphone and PC speakers than with a conventional phone/speakerphone. I need to test it later on my Tablet over wireless so that I keep my home mobility.

Whilst investigating I also came across a really useful web application called Public Mind, which Skype is currently using to gauge demand for new features. I found it because I searched google for “Trillian Skype” because I wanted to know if Skype had a plug-in for my favorite Instant Messaging agregator/portal Trillian pro. anyway they didn’t but 286 other people have voted for that feature. On their site they say:

Public Mind is helping Skype to find out what new features its users want the most. This is a free service that lets you join with others to leverage the Internet and get what you want. Use it to gather critical mass, demonstrate real demand, and get Skype to take action. Zero spam

This stuff is now mainstream, Skype has over 1 Million customers who have signed up for SkypeOut, the gateway to the analogue voice system. As I write there are 2.3 Million people on-line using the free Internet Skype to Skype service.

New workstation design!

Steve Richards — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:10:36 +0000

I have gradually refined my workstation design, and its changed quite a lot since the last time I posted. So I thought I would provide an update. This first image shows an overview of the whole environment, there are some key points to look out for:

First I two PC’s shown at the bottom, the one on the left is my desktop, running Windows 2003 Server, with 2GB of memory and VM Ware Workstation and all of my other applications. This PC drives the three monitors via two ATI graphics boards.

Behind the PC’s in a curtain that my wife made for me that hides one hell of tangle of cables!

On top of the centre monitor is a USB web cam. On the CRT monitor is my headphone jack and volume control and my Secure ID token (dual factor authentication) for my company VPN connection.

The two monitors centre and left are 19” TFT’s that run at 1280*1024. The one on the right is a 19” Flat CRT. I tend to use the one of the left for email, reference materials, instant message discussions etc. The one in the middle for writing, presentations and reading, and the one on the left for Trillian Pro (docked far right) and web searches, and web reference material I am gathering up as I work as a set of tabs in Maxthon.

Lets look at things in a bit more detail now:

Working from the left again, right next to my keyboard is my HP TC1000 Tablet in slate mode ready for jotting down notes etc. I syncs wirelessly in the background with my email and files and I can use it wireless anywhere in the house and garden, further afield it has a GPRS connection. When I don’t need it it slides under the shelf out of the way.

Then there is a wireless mouse, that slides under the shelf as well. You can see just above the mouses cubby hole is a small pad of paper, sometimes I still prefer to make notes on paper.

The on the right is one of two DECT (wireless) phones. These phones pick up my landline calls and my mobile calls when my Treo in its cradle, because the reception is better on the wireless phones than on the Treo and they are easier to hold. We also have phones through the house, so i don’t have to carry my Treo everywhere I go in the house just in case I get a call.

On the top of the shelf is my speaker phone. Its on a long cord so I can drag it onto the main desk and then I can sit back in my comfy chair with my feet up making notes on my tablet when I am on conference calls.

Whenever I go out I suspend my Tablet and drop it in my backpack and grab my Treo and I am off. My backpack has everything I need when I am out walking and has a swim kit just in case I am tempted to pop into the pool. It’s really small and light, but is ultra comfy which is important to me as it minimises the load on shoulders which are often in pain.

On the other side of my keyboard you can see my Treo in its cradle. As soon as it slots in the cradle it forwards calls to the house phone number, and when I take it out of the house, it switches off call divert (unless I ask it not to). Then in the tray under my desk shelf is my TO READ pile, I still get a few magazines. Another pad of paper sits between the paper tray and the shelf and above that with the green glowing light is the microphone for skype calls.

Finally their is another PC (2GB again), which is running GSX server and my lab environment. which is currently running, Windows SharePoint Services, Red Hat Enterprise linux 3, Windows XP VPN connected to my company network, Windows NT 4 to remember what things used to be like and Red hat Linux 8. VMWare is just so cool!

Way over to the right tucked away in the corner is my printer, copier, scanner. Its a HP D125xi with a sheet feeder and two paper trays, one with good quality and one with cheap paper. My wife makes more use of it than I do as a printer, but I scan almost everything into PaperPort Pro which converts everything to PDF files.

Anyway thats a pretty good high level introduction. Follow the links above for more details.

Tablet PC Podcast

Steve Richards — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:12:00 +0000

James, author of the jkOnTheRun weblog, covering all thing mobile, emailed me yesterday to let me know about his new podcast on all things Tablet. I have recently been getting into podcasts and listen to them when I am out walking or swimming. This time though I listened to James at 5* speed in Windows Media Player at home while I followed the products and sites he mentioned in my browser. All in all the combination of the 5* speed and the excellent content made for a very useful 10–15 minutes. Podcasting has definately got a future!

Check out the podcast, James covers a wide range of topics, including:

The under utilisation of speech recognition
Inking strategies and the effect of inking on the creative process
Alternative pen input applications including ritePen, OrangeGuava and a rumour of a Tablet enabled version of ActiveWords.

Here is a list of the main sites he mentioned, snipped from his blog.

Tablet PC Buzz- Spencer Goad, Rob Bushway
Tablet PC Talk- Chris de Herrera
What is New- Lora Heiny
Tablet PC Weblog- Marc Orchant
Tablet PC Questions- Layne Heiny (newsgroup)
Tablet PC Post- Lora & Layne; software info and downloads
The Student Tablet PC- Tracy Hooten & Trevor Claiborne
Tablet PC2- Linda Epstein
Incremental Blogger- Loren Heiny
Rob Bushway’s Blog
Bootstrapped- Iggy Kin
Tablet PC Place- Christopher James
Life on the Wicked Stage- Warner Crocker (apologies to Warner- he is a Theatre Director and not Stage Director)

Home office ideas

Steve Richards — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 03:50:00 +0000

If you read my blog then you know I am pretty passionate about office design in general and have a category devoted to related issues. So I was interested to see dave’s ideas for creating an office for writing, where in particular he describes the benefits of consolidating all of his computing needs onto a single device. Bryan responds that he is struggling to cope with 3 computers.

I found both interesting perspectives, especially since I have quite a number of computers, and largely find the experience quite rewarding. Here is a snapshot of how I work.

I have a main machine, its powerful, and drives three 19″ monitors, and a great wireless keyboard and mouse. When I sit at this workstation its optimised for writing, analysing and information gathering. I have everything to hand and hopefully will soon be getting a optimised chair so I can work for more than half an hour without too much pain. My main PC is a Windows 2003 Server which allows me to work without admin priv, and always have an admin RDP session open for when I need it.

I have a lab server because my main machine needs to always be available, and always connected to the Internet – It’s the heart of my home network – I don’t take risks with it. So I have another server that runs VMware GSX server that I use for all my testing, and I have one virtual machine running XP on the server that I reserve for connecting via VPN into my company network. This machine is very clean and well protected by firewalls, AV and all the latest patches and almost no software. I never browse the internet from this machine or access email, but it does pickup patches from the net and AV sig’s daily). I can access the consoles of any of the Virtual machines from my main PC, and display them on any of my 3 monitors. of course I can also use RDP to access the host server.

I have a Tablet. I need to move around a lot, because of my medical condition my docutors recommend that I get out and about as much as I can, working in different locations in the house and cycling and walking. When I stop for breaks for example at a cafe, in the park, on the beach etc I like to do reading and reviewing, it helps break up my day. I want my Tablet as light as possible and I want to focus my time away from my desk on reading and reviewing, so I don’t want a keyboard and I don’t want loads of apps or Virtual Machines etc. When I am at home my Tablet lays flat on my desk just like a paper notepad and I use it to jot notes down in OneNote when I am conference calls. Robocopy scripts run in the background constatly keeping my “To read” “To review” “To watch” “To listen to” and “web snippets” folders up to date on both machines. The final bit of the Tablet mobility puzzle is that I create collections of web pages I want to read as groups in myIE2, these groups sync to my Tablet and just before I leave I open the groups and download maybe 20-30 web pages which I can then read at my leisure.

I find the whole tablet experience very liberating, and the maintenance of the two machines in sync effortless. I also feel that my Tablet is a very personal device, its my music, mobile video, eBook, photo album, notepad, eWallet, mobile filing cabinet (everything paper is scanned using paperport).

I also have a company laptop which is kept very clean, just like the Virtual machine which I connect to the company network when I am actually physically in the office. Robocopy scripts keep this machine up to date each day so I always have everything with me at work, and a backup as well.

There is more detail on how all this hangs together in the rest of my blog for anyone who is interested.