Whats on my desk – December 2024 edition

Saturday, December 7, 2024

These last few months have been transformative in many ways. I have been, as I have outlined in a previous post, Ejecting Things from my life, as well as changing some workflow things, both physically and digitally. I know I did an update reasonably recently, but now it feels a little more ‘final’ and I think this may even be the last desk update for a while.

At this time I have ejected around 30% of the non-essential items I owned. This is a conservative estimate but it feels about right. Once I started ejecting things, I wanted a simpler desktop and started thinking about the things I do and why. Did I need a big monitor since I stopped playing games as a major pastime? Once I put my laptop on my desk, I had to ask, did I need those external hard drives plugged in all the time? Did I need the keyboard, trackpad and mic? Did I need that web cam?

The purging took a hold of me and what I landed on was far, far simpler than even I expected. But, because of it being a focussed desk now, there is far more motion on it than there once was. let me explain…


This (above) is how my desk looks about 70% of the time. An iPad Air (M2), iPad mini (6) and my MacBook Air (M2) To the left behind the iPad is a battery powered bluetooth speaker. The speaker is actually the newest addition to the desk, I got it quite cheap on sale too, which was nice. To the right is a lamp, which has a built in wireless charger.

this ‘loud-out’ allows me to sit and write and have my iPads on charge. I use the one of the right as a second screen quiet often too, thanks to the power of ‘Continuity’ or whatever Apple call it.

You may notice that the lamp is quite literally the only thing that requires being plugged in. My desk is totally wireless save for the bi-daily charing which happens when things it around 30% battery.

Turns out I don’t need a mic, because the laptop, and iPads all have really, quite good mics. The webcam in my MacBook is actually better quality than the one I was using for YouTube (an old Logitech C920) and once they had gone, it felt really odd plugging in a USBC hub which only had two hard drives attached to it.

For a little while I needed the hub to connect the usb-to-mini-jack converter that allowed me to use my speakers, but the new speaker resolved that issue.

The setup works fantastically well for me, because I enjoy being able to pickup my laptop and walk away,  to hang-out elsewhere. There isn’t even a power cable attached most of the time! 😁

Being such a minimal desk though, I have even more options, which I actually use.

A good portion of the time, I use my iPad and laptop interchangeably. There are some things which are better on iPad and some which are better of macOS. It’s not really a matter of fact as much as preference. I prefer writing on macOS, by a massive margin, but I like to do Banking on my iPad, because the app is nicer than the website. I also like playing a few casual games on iPad which are not on macOS, not a problem, just move it over on the desk. boop! done! Given that the iPad screen is basically the same size as the MacBook, there’s no down side.

When Im drawing I like to use my art-board. Sometimes I connect it to the laptop to stream my ‘art’ to my friends while we chat.  It takes almost zero time to transform my desk from writing mode to art mode.

Sometimes I just want the iPad, also easy to do, and you can see how fast I cant switch it over as the blue light on the speaker shows that it only just noticed that the laptop was closed. 😁

I often even have a Kindle out. Though, I have to admit to curating these images a little because usually the iPad screens are off and my feet are on the desk… or my dog is.

The down sides.

As much as I enjoy this new desk minimalism, people have raised some pretty reasonable critique and commentary. In theory, having a screen so low maybe bad for my posture, but my desk is tall, my seat is low, and reclined. I have felt not ill effects in using a laptop in this way (as designed) if that changed I will get one of those floating trays for it and go back to using an external keyboard. I use a laptop as ‘intended’ at work a lot and have never felt it to be problematic.

A lot of the time I really am just sitting with the laptop on and two iPads with black screens looking at me. I’m okay with that because I can tap them and they are instantly usfeful, however, yes, it likely would look nicer if I got into the habit of not leaving them out.

my input audio quality is lower, and yes, I do make videos, so in theory it’s an issue. The reality is, however, that I am far less of a YouTuber than I once was and it’s not really a major factor for me any more.

if I spill something I could take out my entire setup – Yes. But, also, if nuclear war breaks out it could get exploded. I don’t live my life for ‘what if’ events. I have AppleCare+ on my devices and honestly, a little spilled coffee or Pepsi won’t take out a computer. Maybe my mouse… maybe.

The up sides.

I really like it. I am using way less power than I have, basically ever, the portability and flexibility has been good for my creativity (yes. really.) Also, and I think I mentioned this… I like it.

What’s next?

I don’t like the lamp. I want to change it for something way more subtle, and, given that I don’t really use that wireless charger it has built in, I think I could use a good quality battery powered reading lamp and be just as happy, more so, if I like the aesthetics.

I really love the idea of powering my entire setup from a solar battery. I think it’s probably doable. It’s likely a pipe dream, but one I may one day chase.

I may, at some point re-paint the wall so that I don’t have to use those stickers at the back of the desk to cover the chipped paint.

Software!

As part of this simplification, I have stopped using Alfred on my laptop. I have instead switched back to spotlight and began using Keyboard Maestro to manage the keystrokes and shortcuts. Alfred is excellent, however, Keyboard Maestro offers infinitely more flexibility with remapping, scripting and customization without robbing me of the slightly more nuanced Spotlight search results. It seems to be working better for me, over all.

I am still using Scrivener as my only ‘writing hole’ and it’s wonderful! DevonTHINK Pro is still my note platform of choice and for art I’m using ClipStudio on iPad, I have it on macOS too but I prefer the Affinity suite. Pixelmator pro is still my favored, quick and dirty, thumbnail maker.

Current things, specifics.

People often ask, so here is some specifics

Thank you for reading. Questions and discussions are encouraged, but only if you want to. I don’t plead for ‘metric’ engagement, there are no advertisements and I don’t want anything from you.