Studio Re-Design (part 1, the before)

I’ve been yammering on for weeks about the work I’ve been doing preparing to rework the studio/home office, but it occurs to me I’ve hardly broached either the why or the how of all that. And I’ve skimped on pictures, too. So let’s fix all that.

The current space looks (more or less) like this:

Studio before.

Yowch. That’s not pretty. To be fair, there’s a bunch of stuff prepped in those bins for the install, so it’s a fair bit more cluttered than “normal” right now. But still.

I’ll break down part of what you’re seeing. On the left far wall- that’s all analog stuff. Sewing, typing, book binding, soldering, crafting… all that stuff happens over there somewhere. There’s about eight feet of desk there between the two tables, but it’s crowded and not great. The right side is all digital stuff- that’s some rack gear on the ground, four monitors (for two different machines), and a laptop. And another rack underneath. And it’s a hot mess of cables and clutter. No good.

The plan is something like this (all along the right hand wall):

IMG_3897

In case you can’t read my writing, that’s two seven foot desks (with a bit of overlap) mounted to the wall, and a freestanding (on casters!) 28u rack on the far right. That extends my computer standing desk from just under four feet wide to seven, and adds a considerable amount of storage above for all the other supplies I need to keep around.

The 28u rack I’ll be building is 30″ deep, too- so it’s going to get all the audio, video, and computer gear I have strewn around. All the hard drives. All the dead media format devices (VHS!) I keep around. All of it, in one place, neatly. Both computers go in there, too, along with (I imagine) the in-the-mail NAS I’m putting together.

I’ve got most of a parts list (and most of the cut-list, too), but I need to take some more measurements and finally do a proper scale drawing of the whole thing (with markings for the studs in the wall) to know exactly how many brackets of which type I need to buy. And then there are a couple of specialty parts (24″ shelf brackets, 28u rack mount rails, etc) that need to be special ordered, so I’ll have to get those en route.

So that’s where I’m at: an hour with the stud finder and some tape away from a full shopping list. Then it’s time to mount stuff to walls, cut and glue a bunch of shelves, and get going on the rack case.

SitRep

Updates on projects.

  • If you’ve been following along, I’ve been working on the redesign of my home studio office. Right now it’s cobbled together from a selection of existing desks and tables, but I’m moving the entire thing to a wall-mounted shelving system. It’s going to clean things up a TON and give me more/better working space, but it’s a lot to do- there are a lot of considerations for hardware and use cases, and I want this system to work for the foreseeable future. I’ve recently started organizing and compiling the gear that’s going to go into this, and the first of those new parts start showing up shortly. I’m moving to a Synology DS418 NAS box for storage and access, and I’m moving my Plex install from my XServe to a Mac Mini that’s going to (mostly) do just that. I’m likely to end up with something like 12TB of storage, which should be plenty for backups and media and whatnot. I can’t actually really start to build this thing for a bit longer- I need the temperatures to get up enough that I can do finish work on the wood parts, and it’s still feeling like winter around here. Soon, though.
  • I’m really excited to get back on the bike and filming again. I’d made some headway late last year with producing more riding videos, and I liked the extra push to be creative both on the bike and behind the camera. I’m looking forward to doing more of that, and I’ve been getting the camera(s) ready and the bike(s) ready as well. I could use the exercise, too.
  • I’ve been working slowly on a new bag project for a while now- I need a new riding bag that’s built to handle not only tools and whatnot, but also filming gear. I’ve been in the development phase for a while, but I’m making good headway with the design brief, and I’m hoping to get started on the pack soonish. Maybe when the new sewing table is ready.
  • After the studio overhaul, it’s time to overhaul the garage. I’ve got (mostly) enough storage, but I really need to do a better job optimizing it. That means, in this case, ripping apart what I have and reworking it all. Again, I’m waiting for things to be just a teeny bit warmer before ripping into that.
  • IMG_3696I’ve been wearing my “Space Shoes” now for a few months, and they’re holding up pretty well- and so I’m just starting to think about what a summer pair might look like in the same vein. I’m also looking at some changes to construction- building certain aspects of the shoes somewhat differently and learning from the first pair.

SitRep

Updates are needed and warranted.

  • My love for Hypercard has been re-kindled, it seems. I used to love playing with it, building games and data sets and whatever, but… it’s been gone a long time now, and I’ve never found an especially good alternative to it. The solution was to grab an ancient laptop off the shelf that still boots Mac OS9, and install Hypercard. Looking forward to playing with this more.
  • The Studio Desk v0.3 work continues. I’ve been working on the electric plans for this- figuring out what gear goes where and how things should be wired for maximum flexibility. It’s currently looking like two 7′ desks (wall mounted) and a 28u rolling rack unit besides it (for A/V gear), as well as a rolling rack for my computer underneath. I’ve started compiling hardware as well- breaking down the current setup a bit and sorting out the bits I’m going to need once the desks are built. I’m also going to have to build a second Mobile Parts Rack for analog tools overflow, so there’s that, too.
  • Slowly getting back away from proprietary formatted document storage (gdrive, evernote, etc…), and moving back towards txt and rtf files. They’re robust and wildly compatible, and within the bounds of the formatting the offer, they’re elegant. I’ve re-installed nvALT for the first time in a long while, and it’s going to be my home for a lot of those reference files I keep.

Research List #41

Currently Researching:

  • DIY Motion Controlled camera sliders (with, ideally, pan and tilt, but that’s likely outside what should be the initial scope of the project)
  • Better rivets for clothing (closer to what’s used on jeans)
  • Modular Panel Mount connectors (for new desks)
  • NAS solutions (it’s hard to find decent non-Atom based units for reasonable money)
  • Alternatives to the GShock GA100
  • Backup generators (given the number of multi-day outages I’ve had in the last two years…)