Slashdot Mirror
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?"
They might take special light fixtures, and the bulbs are expensive as hell, but they are well worth it.
For one, they last a long time. I'm not sure about the cost per unit of life, but if you find the right full spectrum bulb it shouldn't be much worse than incandesent.
For two, they really are like real sunlight. You'll all probably be much happier people (since you probably don't get to see much real sunlight if your office has no windows), and you'll get more vitamin D to boot. =D
Oh yeah, and the plants will thank you for it, too.
I love having windows, but like me, for many of us I don't think that is an option.
Easy solution: Use linux!! =)
I don't have a real 'computer room' but I have a room full of electronic stuff, and I find it important to no make it too 'high-tech looking'. Therefore I have two wooden bookcases, a wooden table (2x1 m^2, the bigger the better!) and even a wooden floor. And lots of plants and pluche animals.
-- Cheers!
I don't know how well Eclipse Workstation Lights mimick sunlight, but they're great on the eyes.
As far as designing a room, I always liked neat computer rooms. I like having a shelf with software boxes, all the peripherals neatly aligned, and a clean desk. It's weird. The rest of my rooms look like hell, but not my computer room.
I would personally move out of the basement, and into a loft conversion room if you have one. You can then install a Velux window - great for getting lots of natural light into the room, and then you can have a cool motorised blind for when it gets too sunny that you can rig up to your PC and then control via a temp/sunlight sensor :):)
Although you have realised the benefits of natural light, no artifical light will ever be as good, so make the effort and get yourself into a nice, light room!
Arc
PS: Oblig Simpsons quote: "Ahhh! Natural Light- get it off me, get it off me!" [Barney]
I generally use old computer parts, empty beer bottles, and dust to decorate my computer room.
cp -R
what kind of lighting most represents real sunlight?
real sunlight. get out some.
sig sig sputnik
Cover every surface with mirrors.
Muahahahah! James Bond will never guess which one of you is the real one!
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
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.
these things are nifty
t ml
http://www.skylights-of-hawaii.com/news/page4.h
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.
We have a spare bedroom upstairs that's the full "geek room" for the house. It's just decorated with white walls, curtains (provided by my wife), a pair of daylight fluorescent bulbs in a wall fixture, and a couple of framed photos of the Vineyard. For furniture, there's two desks, one with my Windows gaming box, and one with my Powerbook. I also have a nice wooden bookcase, a magazine basket, and a relatively ugly metal shelving unit that holds my server, network switch, and a couple of other computers that all share a monitor and setups via a KVM switch. The closet used to keep a lot of tech junk, but was renovated by me into a clothing closet last year.
Then down in the cellar we have my workshop and a rec room. It's a big open layout that's kinda subdivided into three rooms by painting different colors and themes. One third is just pretty much open space, with a closet and some storage items. One third is my workbench, along with my tools storage, another PC setup (a simple, but nice-looking PC workstation unit and a comfy leather chair), along with our exercise gear (a weight machine and bike). I can work out, build stuff, or geek in peace.
Then there's the third "room", which is a pseudo-living room. There's a small area rug, an old sofa and loveseat with slipcovers, our old 27" TV with an old DVD player, and we use a lobster trap as a coffee table. The walls around that portion were painted by a friend of my wife's - she painted an underwater themed mural on the two walls that enclose the area, with a blue paint and rocks, seaweed, and fish painted in. It looks really cool and separates the section. Lighting is a mix of stuff - there's lamps around for individual use but overhead shop fluorescents throughout if needed.
Basically, paint is the key, I think. You can do some really neat stuff with paint that can dress up a room or change it's mood entirely. Good quality furniture is a must, too - it should be unobtrusive and not cheap-looking. Hide as many wires as you can, also.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
daydream on ...
...
...
OSDN TV-
Welcome to todays episode of Slashdot Trading Spaces. Our crack designers will transform drab computer rooms into works of art.
Cut to homeowners dremeling case window into furnace.
Cut to Macaquarium's big brother PDP8 Aquarium.
Electrolumescent wire everywhere. Multicolored network cable everywhere. Leds. Neon. Argh....
daydream off
Scary.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
- A room without carpeting, so our rolling chairs would roll
- A door with a lock so we could not be bothered
- Incadesent lighting with a DIMMER so that we could set the appropriate level
- An interior office so there would be no windows
- A stereo system so that we could play our favorite music
We tended to leave the lights to almost off, very very dim, the music up high, and the door locked. We could easily go to each team members station merely by kicking and scooting around in our rolling chairs. It was a fantastic environment.These days, however, I live in Hawaii. My workplace has greatly changed. Since I work out of my house I can design just about anything I wish. My lab is currently on the 2nd floor of my house and has huge windows on two sides that face North and West (I'm on the east side of the Big Island so this avoids morning sunlight problems). I look out over my landscaping which is full of fruit and flowers.
Of course, some things don't change... I still have the rolling chairs... I still have the stereo... I still prefer to get up at 4:00 AM and work awhile in the dark... but when the sun comes up, and the rainbows come out... and the exotic scents and birds arrive... it is a very nice programmiing experience.
Aloha
I think we're in need of the first Slashdot sponsored episode of Trading Spaces
I'm surpised that Air Quality wasn't mentioned here. I have all of my computer hardware in my basement too and I find that sometimes the air can get a little to dank. With the lack of windows in the room the poor ventalation I find really affects me when I'm working on my computer. Recently we installed a central air exchange unit in the house and it makes a huge change in my opinion.
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
your tactical officer gets tired of standing all day long.
I post links to stuff here
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.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
You could set up a rock garden waterfall that doubles as a water cooling solution. The water falling over the rocks can be used as a radiator for your PC. The water falling over the rocks will create a soothing sound and look very nice while at the same time cooling the water and getting rid of that horrible PC hum.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)