On Decorating Your Computer Room?

jaxle asks: "I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what they have in their computer rooms to make it less... dreary. I love having windows, but like me, for many of us I don't think that is an option. I have most of my computer stuff in the basement, and I find that my eyes usually get sore and I can't stand being down there any longer. So far I have a fish tank that I got recently which adds a nice ambiance to the room. I am planning on buying some plants too in the near future. Any body else have ideas or tell us how you decorate your computer room. Also, what kind of lighting most represents real sunlight?"

Comments

A Fireplace

[Pathwalker]

The time when I was most productive, was when I had my main workstation in a basement room with a fireplace.

The flickering light of the fire mixing with the glow of the screen was very relaxing, and I was able to work long hours, getting a lot done and still feel relaxed.

Plus, when I got stuck, I could poke the fire, throw another log on it, or go split some wood, taking my mind off of the problem for a while.

solar tubes

[zogger]

these things are nifty

http://www.skylights-of-hawaii.com/news/page4.ht ml

No electricity required, about as "natural" as you can get for lighting. Obviously only useful during the daylight hours, but a good way to get that natural light that humans absolutely need for both good physical health and psychological health. And you can grow plants then as well down there without using additional electricity or artificial light. And here's a tip, once when all I had was an apartment, I wanted a garden, a veggie garden. So I just went for it, instead of "normal" house plants I grew like 6 foot tall staked tomatoes, etc inside. People always liked it when they came over, and it actually provided some nice fresh salad action. I had tomatoes and pole beans and peas and cukes, etc all growing inside in front of windows. Was really neat! The coolest one was a large rose bush, quite the nice odor inside a small room.

Googling will find you more sources for these and different lighting ideas. All of them more or less use a periscope type action with just ultra shiny pipes to move the light around, and there is a japanese company I have forgotten the name of now though that uses fiber optics to pipe sunlight around to various places inside office buildings.

My strategy

[slaker]

There are presently 16 computers in my 1000 square foot apartment, inculding a fullsized rack, external hotswap RAID cabinet and a Catalyst 5005. Most of that is crammed into one room, and the REALLY loud and ugly stuff is in a closet in that room, but of course the whole apartment had air conditioning running until just last month.

A number of issues present themselves.
1.) Exposed cabling - I went hardcore and rewired my apartment with cat5, in-wall, replacing the ancient 4-prong block connectors for phone, and adding four ethernet ports everywhere I found a jack. That helped things a lot.
Because the electrical demands of my apartment are slightly, well, extreme, I put waist-high bookcases everywhere, and ran bundled extension cords and power cables behind them. I found a bunch of cheap but not unappealing ones at Kmart for $5 apiece.
The bookcases are incredibly imposing, if I do say so myself. They're all full, either of books or CDs.
2.) Noise. *HUGE* problem. A lot of my PCs are simply enclosed somehow, either in closets, my rack or in computer desks. The RAID array and Catalyst are the biggest offenders, but my solution to that issue was to put them and the rest of their rack in an unused closet that I lined with carpet scraps. I went from being able to hear all those Barracudas while I was in the shower to having to open closet doors to make sure everything was running.
For the rest of my apartment, I've chosen various tapestries and other cloth wall-hangings to deaden noise. This is quite effective but it DOES make speaker placement for my various home theater equipment more difficult.
The final part of my noise-deadening and asthetic strategy is fake plants. I hit Lowe's, Sam's Club and Michael's for a selection of fake trees, branches and shrubs. I went out and hunted up some interesting-looking rocks to put around their bases. Fake plants do a great job absorbing noise. It's not that hard to wind cords through all those rocks, either, which helps with speaker and power cables.

My apartment is fucking gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Mission-style oak furniture (O'Sullivan even makes decent oak-finish mission-style computer furniture, and it's inexpensive), the trees and bookcases... it's a wonderful asthetic arrangement, and I was able to hide my computers well enough that those who visit, only able to see a couple of computer monitors and a pair of speakers, ask where the rest of my stuff is.

The only down side? I have to do quite a bit of dusting. :(