My Workspace for 2025

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Since I went to the trouble of actually straightening up my office (well…mostly…there are still a few random piles here and there, but that’s par for the course here), I figured I’d record it for posterity here.

A large with a PC laptop with an external monitor and a Mac Mini with two external monitors. There are two keyboards, one trackball, one track pad, and one drawing tablet towards the front of the desk. A printer sits on the right side of the desk. On the walls behind the desk are speakers and artwork, including a black-and-white cartoon sketch and a white-and-blue painting of a figure with a round head and two large blue circles for eyes, wearing a red fez.

My desk is actually an old drafting table, 3′ deep by 6′ wide. To the left is my work laptop and secondary screen, with an old wired Apple keyboard and a Kensington trackball.

At center are the two screens for my personal Mac Mini, which can be seen under and to the right of the monitor stand on top of a Blu-ray drive; under and to the left of the monitor stand is a four-bay external drive. The Mini uses the wireless trackpad and keyboard, along with the wired Wacom art tablet.

To the right of the Mac Mini is a printer (a reliable, no-fuss, Brother black and white laser printer — “Just get a Brother, they’re fine.“) under a cassette deck from when I was digitizing audiocassettes; on top of the cassette deck (along with a pile o’ crap) is a small amp to drive the speakers mounted on the wall.

The art directly above the monitors is a cartoon sketch of me by Shari Chankhamma; the art on the wall to the right is the logo of my brother’s punk band Beefadelphia from back in the ’90s alternative scene in Anchorage, Alaska, painted in ’94 by Aaron Morgan. That painting used to hang on a wall at Gig’s; when the club closed, I was able to snag it for myself.

Another view of the same room, with the desk to the left of the image. On the wall opposite the desk is a series of bookcases filled with books and various trinkets and memorabilia. A grey lounge chair sits to the right in the corner of the room. A green curtain hangs to one side from a curve plastic rail mounted on the ceiling.

And here’s looking the other direction, showing the shelves that are my backdrop most of the time I’m on Zoom from home. The furthest to the left is primarily graphic novels, oversize books, and books that don’t fit the categories of the other shelves. The next two shelves are all Star Trek, and have my Star Trek DVD/Blu-ray library sitting on top. The next two shelves are all science fiction and fantasy, with my camera and lens collection sitting on top.

The same view as before, only now the green curtain has been pulled along the ceiling track to form a curved green screen between the desk and the bookshelves.

And here’s what that ceiling track is for — when I’m doing something where I want something other than my bookshelves behind me, I can just pull the green curtain around to form a nice curved green screen behind me. Works great, and if you regularly Zoom from home and are looking for an easy way to manage a green screen, I can highly recommend this setup. It’s just the ceiling track and a photographic green screen backdrop that I punched holes in and added grommets to hang from the track hooks. Simple and effective!

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