Steve's Seaside Life

Tagged: HomeWorkSpace

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My Home Office

In another post I am going to talk a bit about why I think multiple monitors are really important, but first I want to introduce you to my home office, so you can see my personal working practice in its full context.  First things first:

  1. Everything I need is within arms reach

  2. I try to scan all my paper, and its all there in PaperPort, see below

  3. I have two desks, a computer desk where I have my three monitors, and drive all my clients and servers from one keyboard and mouse and a layout, reading etc desk where I have space to organise.  The kids use this desk at night if I am happy to be disrupted a bit.

  4. I have a web cam on top of my primary display, again more on that later

So what does it all look like.  First the nerve centre:

One large desk with three monitors and one keyboard and mouse

The Main display, a 19″ flat screen running @ 1280*1024.  This is where I do all of my reading and writing.  Its a fab display very bright and crystal clear.  Its DVI connected to my main server, which runs Windows 2003 …

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Workspace design

One of my favourite topics just started to get an airing on the web, Work Space design.  It’s been an interest of mine ever since I can remember, it’s the frustrated Architect in me, (I was never good enough at art to take it at University).  Anyway what really bugs me about the topic is my belief that it has a huge impact on individual and team effectiveness, but receives very little focus and even less investment by many companies.  Even companies that reap huge profits from their consultants tend not to invest in their productivity.  I talked about this in a previous post, but mainly from an IT SW perspective. 

Since I have been working from home I have invested quite heavily in my own work environment and I certainly notice a huge improvement in my productivity.  The biggest improvement comes from two large monitors driven from the same desktop PC, supplemented by a management console that I use to monitor my lab and anything else that I need to check frequently.  I also have a dedicated portable that I can just pick up and carry away whenever I need to move around the house, I use a …

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WIndows 2003 Server, anywhere access

It’s TechED Europe this week and Microsoft have announced more details of the next release of Windows 2003 Server.  The area of most interest to me is, “anywhere access”, which Neowin reports on. Anywhere access enables users to use terminal services over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC), Outlook over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC) and also file shares from within corporate LANs over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC). 

These are very interesting developments, the WTS capabilities removing one more advantage that Citrix has over Microsoft.  The file share access is interesting, as file share access using WebDAV is already available I can only assume that this is CIFS access tunnelled over HTTPS, this would be a big improvement over WebDAV as it would support more applications, the properties dialog and other features not available today using DAV.  I thought Outlook over HTTPS was already part of Exchange 2003 server, so I am not sure why this is included in a feature list for Windows 2003 server unless its actually provided by the OS or probably IIS rather than Exchange.

These HTTP access mechanisms are useful not just in providing internet access to corporate resources but also for corporates wishing to provide controlled access on their WAN for …

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The Joy of Working from Home

A little book that concentrates mainly on opportunities for working from home.  If you already have a job and are looking to work from home then its not so appropriate.  But it does give a few hints on issues you might face working from home like feelings of isolation etc.  Not my best find on the subject.  In fact I would recommend te following web site as an alternative to any of the books I have read:

http://www.flexibility.co.uk/index.htm

All Posts / Living Well

My typical working day

  1. I get up at about 7:30 and have breakfast

  2. Then before 8:00 I start working,  normally I try and get some good quality work done for about 2 1/2 hours

  3. By 10:30 I am ready for a break, so at that point I print off some reading material or download it to my tablet

  4. I then go for a walk and usually end up at one of my nearby beachside cafes, where I settle down for lunch, and review whatever paperwork I have taken with me, and then wander home for about 12:00 – 12:30

  5. I then try and get another 2 1/2 hours work in until about 2:30

  6. Then I go for another walk, usually to my local health club and spend about 30 minutes swimming, probably spend 15-20 minutes reading and then head back home, usually arriving at about 4:00.

  7. I try to get another hours work done then and then have tea with my wife and four kids

  8. Depending on kids activities then I will generally get another hours work done sometime before bed.

All Posts / Chronic Illness

Why home working?

I called this blog, ‘adventures in home working’.  Why did I choose this title?  Well it sort of sums up a lot of things for me:

 

1.     I have this disease, AOSD,  and home working is more suited to people with this condition

2.     I am an IT guy, and for a while I have wanted to see how viable it is to work from home

3.     I have 4 children, and I wanted to spend more time with them, and be able to arrange my work life more flexibly

4.     I have always been a person who works better with people I know and interacts with them face to face.  I wanted to get beyond these limitations and extend my circle of friends and contacts