Be Excellent To Each Other

I don't think we have a thread about this. Here's a pic of my desk in the office, where I do most of my 360 gaming. Click here to go to flickr and see the annotated version, with notes discussing what all the stuff is.

What a horrible, cramped desk.
YOU HAVE MY SYMPATHIES.


Not that my current computer set up is any better...it's basically on the floor and I'm currently sat on a pile of clothes.

Nah, it's fine because I don't do serious work here; it's mostly for gaming.

I confess to being a completely spoiled brat. Even though I built and paid for the friggin lot I'm still spoiled (in a self indulgance kind of way).

I like having two pcs. Was actually talking to a mate about it last night and we were in hysterics because of my reasons (he's one of those mates that will blatantly tell you when you're stupid, silly or incoherrant.. perfect friend basically). So he was ripping on me for having two and playing devil's advocate (he has three the coont) and I said.

"But dude, when I use the one downstairs (lian li silver one) it feels like I'm cheating in a love way"

Him - "EH?!?!"

Me - "It just feels so different dude. This PC feels fast (it would, it's a very basic set up for gaming because it's slower than the beast) and the keyboard is different.. Kinda like I popped out and shagged another bird and my wife (the pc upstairs) had no idea.."

Cue us pissing ourselves with laughter.

Anyway. Here is the beast. Quad cored phenom, 4gb ram 9800GTX 1tb storage. This runs games, media center, dvds, music etc and has a lovely 22" monitor.



And here is my mistress. C2D @ 2.4ghz 2gb ram and a 1650pro radeon. It was cobbled together in true Womble fashion and I got the monitor for 25 quid. The monitor is old, but at the time held the record for response time so it's great for gaming. Even though the monitor is 9 years old it looks like brand new and didn't even have any dust in the crevices.



The silly part is that my fave part of all are the desks. I always loved glass desks (because I'm OCD cleaning and you can see when it's dirty in a heartbeat) and they were only 30 quid from Argos with chairs. I don't use the chair upstairs in the office (phenom rig) because I got a leather recliner, but for 30 smackers they're simply the best desk I have ever used (and I have had stupid big ones in the USA that cost hundreds)

After xmas my pal from Oxford is coming for a couple of days, so we're gonna network them and play some Grid and stuff

God, you must be bored
And, drinking wine out of mugs FTW!

We all know what a toilet looks like, that's where I get a lot done. And the living room too, I guess, but with less shitting.

Nothing special.

Big monitors ftw

haha just noticed you had to turn it sideways to cram it in there. Kickass !

edit 2.. Everyone has a cup or mug on their desk

Yay, just found a couple of pics of my stuff in America.

Here is my game unit. Big and ugly but held lots of consoles

N64, Cube, DC PSX and PS2. And tons of peripherals



And next to it was this. The ImacDV was being used as a webserver.

retor setup at the second floor



in this green thing are wii&360 (this was the day the grern thing arrived, so now a vbit less bare)

It's only a 20" widescreen. And it's a bit cramped, but it'll fit head on if I want, just I'd tilted it towards my bed last night to watch The West Wing.

I'm not sure whose mug that is. People are forever messing up my desk!

I'm still surprised that not everyone has HDTVs yet..

Bloody hell is that a Vetrex or whatever they're called on the left? rare as rocking horse poos.



Hehe it looks like a giant xb360. Love the color.

Also; it looks really bad for your posture. Your hand is about a lightyear under where the monitor resides. Meaning you're either looking upwards at an angle, or if you're above your monitor then your arm is very (a ly) far away. I onced used a desk like that at a friends house.... I refused to ever use his computer again. It's the first time I've ever had COMPUTER RAGE!!! and it's all down to the horrid desk environment.

The best desks, in my opinion, are just really big bits of flat wood. The kind sound engineers buy just to stick a massive mixing desk on.


edit: Also, a lot of you have desks with "keyboard drawers" and have the mouse on another highter/lower plane.... another horrid, horrid thing that MUST BE DONE AWAY WITH.

We'll take a piccy of ours tonight-when I have hoovered :/

It's not great, although I don't find the height a problem when using the underslung keyboard shelf. I suffer with my back if I sit wrong and this desk doesn't cause that on the keyboard/mouse shelf. The laptop is a different story as the keyboard is too high, causing me to bend my wrists and put strain on the carpal tunnels; but using laptops on a desk is almost always an ergonomic nightmare anyway.

I bought this desk for cheap to fit in a small room. It does the job I got it for (fitting a lot of stuff into a vertical height), but I wouldn't claim it as being ace or anything.

Indeed, the classic "door over two filing cabinet" look. When I did work at home, and did value my space, I had this:


(more pics)

Yes, note that there is a mouse underneath for the main PC: the one on the upper surface is for the laptop. And I had to measure the width of the undershelf to make sure a mouse fitted, because of many of them are just as wide as a standard keyboard.

This is my set-up in the spare bedroom.

It contains my computer desk, my computer, monitor, XBox360, Virgin Media box, scanner, canned air, a shredder and a big tellybox. And a chocolate reindeer half eaten on top of the shredder. Though I have since completed the eating.



The Wii and PS2 (used purely as a DVD player) are in the other room.

Lots of junk in the xbox area. The rest of my stuff is in the front room.

You have a bobblehead?

I fucking hate you.. Where did you get that you jammy son of a swine?

Available in the ltd edition Fallout3, or off eBay which is what I did.

I hope you used that hammer to SMASH that terrible looking red and yellow box.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of purchasing this as my gaming HQ:
http://www.amsprop.com/brentwood_house/index.html

I'm happy to sublet any of the lower floors to Sinclair users. Commodore users can fuck off.

For the eagle eyed among you, that URL indicates that Amstrads HQ is up for lease and if you look at Amstrads website they've moved a few doors up the road (literally 400 metres) to a new HQ. Presumably Sir Al owned Brentwood House via his property arm rather than Amstrad themselves so now Amstrad have been sold he evicted them.

How many world famous computers were designed in that building (a kick in the bum for the first person who says "none").

Wadda beaut. That's the sort of desk you want.



My experience with those EVIL TRAYS is that:
a) they only _just_ fit on smallish sized keyboards
b) they extend the moment of the whole thing and cause exess force on the poorly constructed (£30, right?), very thin, back support legs.. The one at my dads basically snapped on those rear supports Cheap desks = lose. And the traditional "very long table" look doesn't really suffer from that kind of nonsense...


What a sad desk area.

I never claimed to be off with you hip children.

I was refering to the morose bit

WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! *raises ear trumpet* TURN DOWN YOUR HIPPETY HOP MUSIC!

hmmm, I think I see why everyone favours the Xbox series of consoles here. Basically, they're all consoles sitting right next to their PCs- whatever happened to people actually playing consoles on their TV, in their living room!?!?!? ;-)

Unfortunately my gaming rigs are a bit more boring. Wii under the TV in the living room. GC, DC and Saturn under the TV in the spare room (with the DC being an excellent choice for also playing the Atari ST, Commodore 64 and Speccy computers and NES, Neo Geo, Megadrive and Mastersystem consoles- in emulation)!! And now that I've discovered the power of the Snesorama, I'm going to spend the next week or so playing old skool Saturn games!

Although point goes for the person who has the Arcade sticks- I've got one of them (picked it up from TK Maxx a couple of years ago for 50 quid) but never had the room to bring it out of the cupboard!!

/goes to ebay.

Sorry to be a copycat but I simply must own one of those.

THEY WANT HOW MUCH? 25 QUID !?!?!?!?!

Edit : what the hey man. For the pc ltd ed it's 72 quid on amazon, for the ps3 one its 28 quid.

I've got my Wii and PS2 9aka DVD player) in the living room. If I had my 360 in there I'd never get a chance to play the bloody thing!

The whole point of the 360 is to play downloaded stuff on the telly, so yes, it's in the front room under the telly

Technically, I have three gaming areas but only the first of these gets any use -

360, PS2, Wii, Neo Geo AES


Dreamcast, Multimega, Saturn, PC Engine, two PSOnes with screens.

(That's my old CRT monitor in the pic so I wouldn't be able to hook up the Saturn, Multimega and PC Engine up to it anyway)

Amiga 1200, Modded Snes, N64, Gamecube

Yu[ it is, a Vectrex, bought it for only 40 euros from the man behind vectrex.nl, he was still collecting all games, so he had 2 vectrexes spare which he got with a collection. Protector, the homebrew version of defender Alex Herbert made, is such a triumph, and one of my favourite retro games, see this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSCwxflTzoo

i have the same tv

I used to have that tv.. but took it to cash converters when I got my new one.

I have a different TV.

That's an old pic - Gamecube has now gone and there's a Wii to the right of the amp with the PS3 to follow once I've got a decent HDMI (Only one input on the TV) and Optical (Only two inputs on the amp) switch.

From where the pic is taken there's another three speakers behind for Dead Space shittery uppery of the highest calibre.

Reason I opted for that setup? Keep everything out of reach of the inquisitive 2 year old. Also very few wires on show as a result so the wife doesn't moan too much when I bring home yet another console.

"If the Victorians had consoles"

The main gaming area, containing an Xbox 360, a (chipped) Xbox, a PS2 and uh... that's about it, actually. TV is a Hannspree 32" Xv-S, very good for the price.


The PC area, on which no gaming really happens any more as it's more a business computer now.


And for your Brucie bonus, me wanking while looking at laptop porn. Or I'm asleep, I can never tell.


Photos by Shin.

I take fucking ACE piccytures!

There's me beer aswell

Living room STILL needs redecorating...TANYAAAA!

It's *still* not done. His nibs asked today if I'd help to decorate his parents living room too, excuse me while I curl up in a corner and die. Tell Gaz I'll strip for red wine.

I'll take a picture when it's all done anyway.

I don't know what kind of house you think I operate here, missus, but you're quite wrong.

Are you sure?

Has your heating failed you, GazChap?

Is that Engrish for Handsfree?

*Shrugs* Works for me! Did you want a Stowells?

I've gotta start stripping in the kitchen yet :/ gonna take me ages!

Oh my god! What the hell hour is this!? I don't wake up this early gotta go ta supamarket (Yorkshire accent) ta get some snacks tun that

Was that what you were saying the other day?! I wonder wtf you were on about! I am not today though-I am up early!

Gaz has also bought a new table thing for the laptop-it looks like a childs desk for school...I am very worried...I may get a picture of it with the lappy as that is technically a gaming part of the room too

I have no heating.

He doth not joke.