My “office” setup — Part 2

Yeah, so listen

We’re going to need a blog post detailing the gear and how you arrived at it

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ (@DanielMiessler) May 22, 2021 [https://twitter.com/DanielMiessler/status/1396031403242844162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] Ok @DanielMeissler, you got it :P

1. Ikea Kivik Chaise [https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/kivik-chaise-longue-orrsta-light-grey-s59011389] and foot-stool [https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/kivik-footstool-with-storage-orrsta-light-grey-s59011394/] . If you’ve not met me in real life, you could be forgiven for not knowing that I’m a pretty tall dude — 6'6" in fact, which is getting into “most things weren’t designed with people your height in mind” territory. While this is useful for lot’s of different things (reaching stuff on the top shelf, seeing over crowds, always getting to see the band play, etc…) it’s a bit annoying when it comes to finding things that fit. The chaise is a good size for me on its own, and the footstool serves as a storage space, place for folks to sit and jam, or as extra length to stretch out. Nailed it.
2. Elgato Green Screen MT [https://www.elgato.com/en/green-screen-mt]. I’ve already talked about this guy in the other post, but I didn’t show a picture in the last post, plus I’ve reoriented the room, which I’ll get to in a sec. A call-out here is that I’ve got the DEF CON flag, stickers, the Crikeycon poster and a bunch of other hacker-ish paraphernalia behind my seating position and in view of my camera. If, for whatever reason, it makes sense to do a quick sudo hustle.sh I can just pull the green-screen down and call up an appropriate business backdrop of choice.
3. DIY desk return. Nothing fancy here, I mostly wanted extra space for “things that should stay on top of the desk but need to be out of the way”. I moved the Ikea ADIL legs from the main desk to this return after getting the drawers (#7 in the picture). What’s a little more interesting is that the need for this extra space prompted some experimentation with overall room setup, and I ended up settling on rotating things 90deg clockwise… I can’t understate how much of a difference this has made to the sense of space! Before, the desk was centered and below the window — logical, symmetrical, and worked fairly well — but rotating the room feels like I’ve doubled the available space. Obviously this isn’t mathematically true (or possible), and I’ve no idea how it worked (interior designers, feel free to enlighten us if there’s some sort of magical room physics I’ve accidentally unlocked here), but I wanted to share it as a cheap and quick potential win if you’re feeling a little cramped.
4. Plastic 4x4 component drawer. One of the things I, someone weirdly in hindsight, grabbed and packed before we left for Australia was as many Bugcrowd and disclose.io stickers that I could find. I’ve been mailing them around to folks, and getting some lovely swag and paraphernalia in return… Kind of a virtual sticker swap in lieu of conferences and whatnot. Anyway, that adds up to a lot of stickers which become a bit tough to keep organized and in reasonable conditions. This little guy was $10 in one of those random nick-nack stores, and takes care of that problem for me.
5. Glide Gear TMP100 Teleprompter [https://www.amazon.com.au/Glide-Gear-TMP100-Adjustable-Teleprompte]. You know that thing where you’re presenting or on a Zoom call and you’re looking at “all the things” as you’re trying to have a conversation, maintain meaningful eye-contact, and engage those you’re talking to? This is to help solve that problem. I looked into DIY teleprompters [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2xybrpllcY] for a bit of fun and got that working, but wanted a more stable and long-lasting solution so I went for the make/model that streamer buddies like STOK all seemed to recommend. It’s being feed by an iPad Mini which I send video to over wi-fi using OS X Sidecar.
6. Bedroom-style door lock. I’m not a fan of keeping the door locked, but there are almost always other folks at home, plus it’s the simplest way to avoid interruptions, especially when doing presentations or recording stuff which needs to go down in one take. It’s not keyed — so if, for example, there’s a legit emergency my family know how to open it and get hold of me. I’m noodling with the idea of a big “ON AIR” sign which lights up outside the door at some point — mostly because that would just be a fun thing to do — but for now a simple lock works quite well.
7. Pair of Ikea Alex [https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/alex-drawer-unit-white-40473549/] drawers. I posted a picture of the setup on Twitter and the response from a lot of folks was envy of how clean it all looks… I’d like to thank the Alex’s and the Kivik footstool (which doubles as storage) for creating that illusion ;)
8. …Yeh, it drives me nuts too. At some point I’ll put some time aside and untangle them.

The sticker-drawer of doom, with subtle shout-outs to @C_C_Krebs, @ThinkstCanary, and @jilles_com ❤Desk-view of the TMP100 and iPad Mini.As it was with the last one of these posts, hopefully this has been a helpful read! :) If you’ve got any questions, feel free to drop a comment or hit me up on Twitter @caseyjohnellis [https://twitter.com/caseyjohnellis].