Coding Blocks - Accessories for Programmers

Episode Date: March 18, 2014

Q: What do developers love more than developing? A: Expensive accessories!!! This week we’re talking about our Christmas in July lists. Dream keyboards, mouses, office furniture and tablets…oh my! Lots of links below. Click and drool. Keyboards Joe’s favorite is The CODE Keyboard Mike’s favorite is any old plain keyboard – previous was the Logitech […]

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Slash plus slash c slash comment. And don't forget about Flickr. Flickr.com slash photos slash coding blocks yeah so totally hello with that welcome to coding blocks i'm alan underwood i'm joe zach and i'm michael outlaw so if you haven't figured out that today's episode is going to be just pretty much a a fireside chat here of things that we like and need and utilize. Yeah, that's a good point. When we get to burn something.

So today, there are conversations that come up all the time. If you're a programmer and you sit around other programmers, there are things that drive you nuts. Like, you know, we all have slight touches of OCD, and if we don't, then we probably shouldn't be programming. Some of us have a little more than that. It's on the record. I only have a touch. Yeah. It's only a touch of OCD.

He'll be seeing his specialist or his psychiatrist later. God, I watch Wapner. So we really want to just talk about the kind of things that come up in in our daily you know use of of peripherals and and things that you are constantly around when you're programming or or as i like to put it tings i like tings he likes so my the big thing and what brought this up is i just went on a quest for a new keyboard for work and it's because my old adeso decided it was going to start flaking out and just doing weird stuff basically locking up my computer at various times it adido it did adido and it was

really frustrating because i personally am a huge fan of ergonomic keyboards. I love them. And my Odessa had the trackpad built into it, so I never had to take my hands. That's nice. Oh, dude, never had to take my hands off the keyboard. I hated that keyboard. Hold on, hold on, hold on. It was horrible.

No, but this is why it was so great. Not only... This itty bitty little trackpad that was for a midget. That's all you need. I'm very precise. This thing, you got, like, two 24-inch monitors to scroll across. But, dude, you can move your finger across that little two-inch space and go all the way across all your monitors if you want. No way, dude.

It was fantastic. I use shortcuts anyway. It wasn't even, like, abook pro has a larger trackpad than this all right but so check it out so here's the beauty right like you had your you had your hands laying on this keyboard at the perfect angle right like perfect you didn't ever have to take your hands off the keyboard you just move your finger over and you can just be moving around the screen so that's nice i'm actually a big fan of mechanical keyboards but there aren't a whole lot of those that are ergo but there is one that i forgot the name of right now the adeso

the adeso the adeso kinesis no not i'm sorry not adeso the kinesis freestyle is what you're talking about okay yeah which is a 300 gargant 300 dollar gargantuan keyboard but but okay so so ergonomic keyboards are are fine and well and do and i know there's a lot of people that like them you're a big fan of them obviously and i know yeah they're all ergonomically correct but i i tend to not like the ergonomic keyboards because i like the lowest common denominator and like more often than not you're going to be given a flat keyboard that's right like like like laptops look at the three of us right now the laptops that are in front of us right now we all have flat keyboards that came on that you take what you're given all the time though well no but it's my point is is that i

might as well get used to like what's there because that's going to be more often than not what I'm going to be using, rather than something that's shaped like a spaceship. Hold on, hold on. I disagree. How long do you sit at your computer at work programming on your computer? Well, all day. Right, so we're talking 8 to 9 to 10 hours a day, correct? But then when you go from one computer to the next computer,

you might as well get used to it's already there i disagree whatever you are working on whatever you're working on i'm not saying that my wrists are healthy for it let's take the 80 20 rule 80 percent of the time you're going to be at your desk working on whether you're at home or whether you're at work you're going to be working on something now when you take your laptop and you go sit in a chair somewhere fine i get that you can deal with that but what i'm saying is the comfort let's take your same thing so we'll we'll go back to this in a minute but your big thing is chairs like you have a mac daddy chair we'll come back to the hold on hold on hold on why are you gonna get used to that one when you know most of the time you're not gonna be sitting in that chair. We'll come back to that, but, but no. So, okay. So

speaking of keyboards, right. Uh, I too recently went cause my favorite was a simple plane Logitech. I don't even remember. It was like a K five 20 or something like that, but it was simple. It was flat and I liked it. Uh i had a really nice feel to it and and more importantly to me was that the keys were laid out well the the function keys the number keys the controls the alts yeah all that all that was just laid out like it's supposed to be um so that i'm a big fan of that key keyboard, but then I had to replace it. And, uh, what I replaced it with at work was, uh, another Logitech, the Logitech wave, which isn't quite your typical split design, split keyboard design ergonomic,

but it's somewhere between that, uh, split keyboard ergonomic design and a cross between that and the Kinesis where there's this multidimensional level of keys. It's somewhere between that. So I thought that was nice. It's a good looking keyboard. One of the frustrating things about it, though, and the reason I ultimately did not buy this keyboard was when I looked at it, most of the keys are good. It's not curved enough for me for the ergonomic feel. But what did it in for me and just absolutely killed it was this layout of the home, the delete, the page up, page down. I will admit, I do hate that.

Yeah, I can't. I mean, I look at that i can't tell you how many times i have i have gone looking to thinking i'm hitting the end key only to find out i'm hitting like i don't even remember what it was like the insert key or something like that like that like those those keys are wrong and they did it wrong there's another problem with that one though too is that the um that i don't like and i didn't notice this before I bought it, but the caps lock. There's no indicator on the keyboard itself that you have

enabled caps lock. Well, if I'm dropping some money on a keyboard, I better be able to reassign that caps lock because I never use that button and it's in prime time location. But dropping some money on a keyboard, how much are we talking? I mean, keyboards literally range from $10 to $15 to $1,000, right? Not my keyboards.

No, they come with the computer. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Is your caps lock re-assignable? When I reformat to Linux again, we'll see, I'm sure. I will say, though, that another keyboard that I'm a big fan of, and I don't know if Logitech still makes this anymore, but I think it was called the Logitech Dytek.

I have that keyboard for home, and it is awesome. Oh, I'm sorry, not Dytek, Dynovo, I guess is how you would pronounce it. They had a Mac version and a Windows specific version, and it was really nice. Again, if you're into a very flat keyboard.

Yeah, non-ergo. It's very non-ergo. Yeah. So here's what I ended up going with. So looking at his Wave real quick, it actually has a neat little feel. Like you said, the keys kind of curve in on it. And it was one of the contenders for me but what what did it for me was that little cluster of the home and all that the

function keys are not exactly in the right place which i think michael actually brought up to me at one point usually they're in groups of four and these are all in groups of three which isn't terrible i mean it could be dealt with yeah it's got its pros pluses and pros you know or pluses and pros and its pros and cons um yeah i it i've had the keyboard now for probably three months now and i still find it a little odd getting used to some some of those keys yeah so i mean i literally i don't know what it is it's my little bit ocd but when i went searching like i literally spent days googling i was on amazon i was on every site on the internet looking for keyboards and it really boiled down to just a handful for me the wave was one it was

a contender but it ended up losing out. The Microsoft Comfort 5000 is actually what I ended up going with, and I'll get to the pros and cons on that in a second. I was looking at the Kinesis Freestyle, which is $300, and here's the thing. If you're a programmer and you do this stuff all day every day, and it's what you make money with, it's your tool, right? It's the tool for your job. You spend money on components for your computer.

So a keyboard is not something you replace all that often, right? I mean, generally speaking, if you have a computer sitting there and that keyboard's working, you're not replacing it. So at $300, it is expensive. But I considered it. My only problem was I read a lot of reviews for programmers and some of the keys like your bracket keys are in odd locations and so it takes a lot of getting used to now what is cool about it though is because of its curved design it forces you to sit in a proper way and there's a lot of keys right there at your thumbs so it gives you the

option to use your thumbs for something that you typically your thumbs just dead weight they're waiting for the space bar so it was kind of cool um and then i was also looking at the truly ergonomic keyboard which honestly if that one wasn't so mind-boggling frustrating with some of the placement of the keys that would have been the one i got because it makes a lot of sense but the keys on that keyboard um ergonomic keyboard i gotta i gotta pull this up and look at it because i've got to explain the frustration with this thing um if i remember right like the shift key was moved up and the control key was in the wrong place like every every function key that you use as a programmer that you've been using for the past however many years

were all moved. And you couldn't do anything about it. You couldn't swap them around. But the layout of the keyboard is beautiful. Like everything's in an angled pattern and everything's right there at your fingertips. Like you literally don't have to stretch your fingers to get to anything,

but ultimately it just lost for its sheer maddening uh relocation of keys so i ended up getting the 5000 long story short the keyboard feels good it has a nice curve to it it's not like a true split ergonomic um i'm a little bit frustrated with it because the function keys are tiny they're like right in between the number keys and up at the top a bunch of application keys, which I'll probably never use. So, you know, my thing is, why not give me the full-size function keys? Because we hit F5 a lot. We hit all these things for building and stepping through applications, and it's frustrating.

So Joe mentioned the mechanicals like you like the mechanicals yep but see i'm the exact opposite that was another reason why i liked that uh k520 because it was a quiet keyboard and the wave that i have now the logitech wave it's not as quiet as the k521 not loud though but it's not got the clicks it's not got the mechanical click not mechanical clicks but it is it is i i don't like a loud keyboard and to me like mechanicals are just loud unnecessarily i like to feel like i'm attacking something when i'm coding i want it to to hurt you know and uh one keyboard you want to feel like it's the 1920s and you're on like you know a room full of you of secretaries writing out letters to somebody.

That's right. That's random. Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. There's a code keyboard. This is kind of designed in part by Jeff Atwood, and I'm a crazy fanboy of his. But it's actually really nice. It's a mechanical keyboard, but it's also got some kind of modern niceties, like backlighting,

and it's got a really well-thought-out design and some cool switches for doing stuff like, you know, changing that stupid caps lock button. Wait, I'm trying to pull this thing up. I'm interested. Dude, I don't think I came across this when I was scouring. Yes, I did, because I had the switches. But it's flat!

Yeah, it is flat. God! Because, like, a good keyboard should be. be look there's a graph here of the tactile bump and the operating point and the reset point yeah i mean that's cool there's actually uh another site that i hit that i may actually um i might go crazy on and eventually do this it's called geekhack.org and these are people that custom make their own boards um you can relocate keys and it's called geekhack.org and these are people that custom make their own boards um you can relocate keys and it's driven by open source software so that you can reassign keys so you can basically buy the switches that you want if you want that cherry switch mechanical type

thing you can buy it if you want backlit keys you can buy them you can you can literally redo the entire keyboard and put the stuff wherever you want yeah but this code keyboard i can choose to buy one with o-rings or without o-rings i mean this is a machine does it have gaskets too cool i wish man if this thing ran on diesel i would be so happy yeah it dude the flat kills me i need an ergon. And, you know, so this kind of like goes down a little path. Okay, so the Chiclet-style keyboards, right? Like this is definitely not that, this code keyboard that you're talking about. What do you mean by Chiclet?

Well, like the MacBook Pros, right? Oh, those little baby keys, those little tiny things that you don't even know when it's down or not so they're i love them yeah my my meaty man hands can't tell when the button's down but you can't because you'll see a bunch of z's go across the screen we apparently have little girly hands okay no i i don't know i actually like the chiclet style i tried to uh nobody nobody had the microsoft sculpt ergonomic on display anywhere that i could touch i really wanted to try that keyboard out the one that looks like a big man array sitting on your desk i would have done that it had the chiclet style keys on it but um i couldn't i could never put my hands on it i couldn't pay 70 for it when i couldn't even touch it so you hands on it i couldn't pay 70 for it when i

couldn't even touch it so you know and i like i'm a big fan of the microsoft surfaces but the keyboard that kind of the um they advertise with the one that is one that really drives me crazy and i'm glad that it's there i get that it's a tablet but man i cannot tell when those keys are down or not i just don't get that tactile sense i feel feel like I get more tactile response. I do get more tactile response from my iPhone. Well, I will say this. Well, he's talking about the touch-type Surface keyboard, not the full keyboard one. Because Microsoft has also released another version of that type cover,

which is backlit. And then there's another version of that coming out i don't think it's out yet of the of the surface uh type cover that's going to be also an additional battery pack oh nice as well so it'll charge it yeah but but i will say this being an owner of of a surface pro with a with a type type cover keyboard. I love that thing. It is by far one of the most used devices I have, but that keyboard can get frustrating to type on a lot odd. Oh, it's small.

Yeah, because it is cramped. But, I mean, that's the nature of the Beasts, right? Yeah, it's a tablet. Tablet, but... Well, but is it? Because it really crosses that line so well. It does cross the line. You can run Visual Studio on it.

Yeah, I know. It's awesome. But getting back to it. We didn't want to talk about tablets specifically, but I've got to say, in the things I like category, the Surface Pro is definitely on there. And I want to get a Surface Pro 2, but I just can't talk myself into it because I already have the Pro.

Yeah. So we would like to hear what you guys are using. I mean, heck, it might lead us into finding another keyboard, another device that maybe we overlooked. So let's talk about mice. Oh, man, there's a mouse that I want. I'm not sure which version. So with keyboards, I kind of feel like I can buy one online because I'm going to adapt to it. But a mouse is typically something that I want to go touch and feel.

I want to make sure it's big enough, it's not too big, it feels good. But there is one mouse in particular that I think I would be okay with buying online if I could bear it apart with the bones. And that is the Mad Catz Rat. So this thing is crazy if you've ever seen it apart with the bones and that is the mad cat's rat so this thing is crazy if you've ever seen it looks like a transformer and it's actually got all these little screws and dials and weights that you can add and you can fully adjust all the little pieces of this thing and it's it's a monster and it looks radical yeah it's just i've wanted it i i for a while now i i have tried to talk myself into buying it because it is fully customizable.

You can alter everything about it so that it fits the shape of your hand the exact way that you want it. But they're wired because it's really for gaming. And I really prefer a wireless mouse. And they do make one, if I recall, wireless. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that upped the price even more. Yeah, this thing already cost three Raspberry Pis.

This is like a $100 mouse. I'd never even seen this thing until you guys started talking about it. It is so fantastic. It looks like a transformer. It's got counterweights in it that you can move to make it more comfortable for you to move it around

and depending on how much weight you want you can add or remove the weights to it i mean it's really a well thought out design so that in terms of uh allowing you the ultimate flexibility to make it conform to your hand. But it's not a cheap one. So the wireless version is the RAT 9, and it is $160. Yeah, that's pricey. But, you know, when it comes to mice, you know, going with the – I like how he just moves on. That's pricey, but –

Yeah, there's a reason. So here's the deal, right? Going with the tool analogy, a mouse, for the most part, they're kind of like laser pointers. Well, this thing is a freaking chainsaw, right? If your mouse is a laser pointer, this is like a sniper rifle.

Just look at it. We'll have a link in the show notes. Just go look at this thing. Send us your wallpaper for a couple months. I mean, it is absolutely fascinating. It is cool. You do kind of like, there's a part of you that when you do look at, you do kind of get a little bit afraid that it might, you know, come out and attack you. Like you're expecting like little red beady eyes to come out of somewhere, you know, and say, I'll be back.

Yeah, it's funny because I am so anti-mouse. As I mentioned, i had an adeso keyboard with a built-in mouse pad or trackpad like i actually went and spent money for the apple magic trackpad i love trackpads like i prefer not to use mice i think it's a waste of movement of my arm i should be able to move my fingers and do whatever i need to do so you're a fan of the trackpad i love the trackpad i love it you uh i love it i do love it but i also play video games and actually if you guys hit me up on coding blocks i will add you to my steam friends list and i will blow your face off and load out look at this thing this thing has it looks like a cloth cable and this is just a beautiful mouse

i don't you know i haven't even looked at any other mice. I don't even know what's out there. This is it. I'm not a fan of trackpads, but I do have the Magic Trackpad, but I prefer the Magic Mouse over the Magic Trackpad, like hands down, without even questioning about it. But there are a lot of crazy gestures that Apple supports on it. The four-finger pinch, the swipes. Yeah, and not all of those gestures are available on the Magic Mouse, but the Magic Mouse just feels so much better to me.

It's a weird thing because I like it because there's less to go wrong with it, right? I mean, it's basically just one big click button on it. I would agree with that. And nothing to touch on it. Unlike the RAT, where you could lose an infinite number of screws on that thing. You fix it yourself with duct tape. Yeah. Okay, so it's sponsored by NASCAR.

But I do really like an ergonomic mouse though too so it's kind of like that the magic mouse is uh it gains on one side by having less moving parts but then losing on the other side because i'm pretty sure that's not an ergonomic mouse no not even close i will say ergonomic mice are okay i still don't like using them, but I like the feel of them. Yeah, because you like to use a little bitty two-inch touchscreen to go zooming across multiple monitors. It's fantastic, man. So, yeah, those are some of the things that, I mean, we use all the time. So it's important.

And I'm just curious what other people have found works for them because, I mean, I moaned about this thing for days when I was looking for the keyboard. And then I ended up getting the mouse and all that kind of stuff. And I'm somewhat happy with it, but not fully. So I got to imagine for that, when you had your Odessa, you must have had your mouse sensitivity just like through the roof. Oh, it was the highest setting it would go. Like literally I could go across two screens with one swipe because I had acceleration turned on and everything it was beautiful i miss it i do miss the acceleration up but i don't go crazy with it yeah i mean you know you didn't have a two-inch touch yeah yeah

so um one of the other things that comes up for us a lot are chairs and uh me and joe hate ourselves because we sit in these flat plasticky hurting you destroy your back and everything throughout the day and and outlaws over there on vacation chilling in his in his mesh back air on so yeah if you're not in a in the herman miller uh air on then then you just hate yourself if you spend as much time in a seat as we do as developers, then I can't imagine any other chair. Yeah, it's beautiful. But the price is – I don't know what it is about me. I can't spend that much on a chair, but I will totally buy a new video card every six months.

That's totally fine. Well, I think another thing that makes it confusing, too, is they sell that chair. I mean, this would be like the Mad Catz rat version of chairs, right? I see that. Because it is so configurable, right? And there's so many different configurations of it. And there's places they'll sell pre-versions that they've already configured that they'll sell. And you'll look at it and say, like, oh, that's an awesome price.

I have never seen it that low. And it's because there's a lot of the features that you're giving up for it so the the herman miller uh arion chair is um is the most ergonomic chair or at least one of the most ergonomic chairs that you can get out there but if you get all the configurations on it so and be prepared to spend i mean yeah the hd tv you're looking at you might as well just back burner that thing yeah i dropped the money on a few of these because like uh yeah i think i just threw up in my mouth a little well if you think about it like this like you probably spend you know some some good amount of money on your bed right and you're spending as

much time probably in your computer chair as you are in that bed so maybe a lot more no definitely well okay so sadly i spend more time in the chair but i mean it is one of those things i mean again when it comes down to cost and all these things we're all cheap right like it will kind of it depends on me yeah apparently not mike but no he is though no it depends on everything else like like his chair, he'll ball on. But the rest of the stuff, like he's... Keyboard? I can't do that. No, it's more than $10.

I can't do that. So, I mean, we all have our things. And really, we probably should be more concerned about our chairs. Chair and monitor. Yeah. Oh, and the monitor. Oh, my God. So we're going there?

If you're a programmer. So this is where my cheapness comes in because i refuse what there's the monitor that i want and then there's the monitor that i have well hold on though but you got a 1080p monitor so yeah i i think 1080p is horrible it's it's okay that's like the minimum resolution that you should have my surface has 1080p but hold up hold up well you can't read anything on your surface at 1080p. Oh, come on now. Whatever. I read just fine on that thing.

But no, no. Hold on, hold on. So follow me here. For $120 nowadays, you can get an LED, edge-lit, 1080p monitor, right? Two of those babies and you're rocking. See, I don't see that you're rocking. I say that you're getting by. No, you're not that you're rocking i say that you're you're getting by like that no you're not you're not that's minimum if you are a programmer now and you're not using

two monitors whether it be your laptop plus a monitor or just two monitors sitting next to each other you have no idea what you're missing i will say i will say the only advantage to having the 1080p monitors is that pretty much anything you throw at it can drive multiples of them yes that's the only advantage to the 1080p monitors because if i had my way about it would be like six 30 inch monitors going just wild that that don't get me wrong that would be awesome i want there's people some people are audiophiles and they want surround sound. I want surround vision. I want a monitor all around me, just 360 degrees. Any way I look, I'm going to see, like, oh, that's the code.

You know, Oculus Rift. Yeah. And we walk it through the solution. That'd be fantastic. And maybe that's going to be my solution. I mean, don't get me wrong. If I could talk myself into it, I'd have dual 2560 by 1600 monitors sitting around. Although, we're stepping into 4K territory nowadays. I was about to say, I think I need a new Mac Pro just to drive the monitors that I want. Because that thing can drive, like, what?

Was it four or six 4K monitors? No, I think it was two 4Ks plus an additional others. Was it more? No, it think it was two 4Ks plus an additional others. Was it more? No, it's more than two 4Ks. It's at least four, if not six, if I remember right. But I'm pretty sure it's four 4K monitors that it can drive. See, I'd love to have that many monitors, but I don't really have the desk for it. And they really do take up a lot of room on the actual desk space.

Yeah, so there's some really cool mounts out there that you can get to uh to mount those um shoot i've seen some beautiful ones uh unfortunately i'm renting now so i've been a little uh reticent to to hole up the wall but man i've seen some ones uh yeah i don't even know what they are but it's like you can kind of swing them around they slide back and forth oh it's three 4k monitors the mic pro can do three 4k displays uh okay pansy stuff um i don't have any yeah no i'm with joe like i mean you gotta have the space and all that stuff i dude i would i would kill to have a couple of uh some high high definition whether it be 4k or the uh w what xqga whatever it is um would you really want 230s though oh absolutely yeah are you kidding me

i guess if they're far enough away then it's all right oh no i want them right up in my eyeball you know when i moved out went to college like my tv was smaller than you know 30 inches by far and i lived with that thing for a long time but now maybe i'm getting older yeah i got more money i'm telling you right now like you know who was it uh biggie this said around like mo money mo problems yeah no no notorious big not all problems are created equal you know i'm saying i mean i don't know i monitors are one of those things like yeah god once you have it, it's hard to get away from it. Yeah.

But there's this one company though that I found, uh, called Ergotron and they make some just fantastic mounts for, uh, for if you're going to have multiple monitors and you want to mount them, they're like really like these, these are mounts that you, you don't mind.

Um, you want to put them somewhere. You don't put baby in the quarter. Okay. So these are ones that you're going to like, let people see them somewhere you don't put baby in the quarter okay so these are ones that you're gonna like let people see because they're pretty and they're not that expensive right shiny oh god no they're expensive oh for for for a mount they're like a couple hundred dollars oh come on it does too but uh but they're they're among the better looking ones but yeah they you know that's why i said you that's why i said you

don't put baby in the corner now this is for a spaceship now i can get behind this yeah it was funny because we were talking about all this stuff and joe he was like man on the keyboards but they have they have different ones some of them were like if you're going to stack your monitors one on top of the other or if you're going to say put them out side by side yeah you know i mean whatever i buy i'll buy a regular one for 50 bucks but but what what struck me is funny though is we're talking about all the stuff and joe who who's a gamer you think he'd care about the keyboards not so much a little bit the mice he was big on. The monitors, eh. But the desk. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. That is your castle.

The chair, you don't even see your chair, right? You are sitting on it. But the chair is your throne. I can't even see that throne. The desk is my domain. I am the ruler there. This is my land. Bring it home, Seinfeld.

Bring it. I do like a desk and i i'm okay with little holes for the cables but for the most part i want to be flat surface nothing on it oh i agree now this never happens unfortunately yeah i end up with all sorts of crap and and one thing we've been talking about lately is um to draw or not to draw because it's nice to have the leg room you know you're gonna squirm around especially if you're in a chair for a long time but you gotta have a drawer get that crap off the desk yes i agree i made that mistake with my current desk because it doesn't have drawers and let me tell you i regret it and this is one of the things you don't get one of those every year

oh no you hang on to those for a decade right it's so sad yeah i mean and come on let's be real most of us have desks that we bought from Office Depot that was a solder or whatever, and the freaking top scratched off of it. It's down through that. So I will say there's one that I have not been able to talk myself into because it's one of those situations where they don't tell you the price, and I always was raised to believe that, well, if they don't say the price and you've got to ask, then it's probably too much.

Yeah, it probably is. But it's a company called uh tbc consoles and for anyone who's ever worked in any kind of broadcasting environment you already know the type of desk that i'm talking about they are made to order and uh you can specify how big a desk you want it. You can specify if you want, um, the desk has the ability to have some small lightweight rack storage in it. So, um, and you can have those rack bays in groups of one, two or three pods, depending on how much you want.

Now say lightweight, because you wouldn't want to put like a, a rack of storage in these, because these are being hung at a, um, only from the front yeah only from the front of the of the device and um they're being hung at an angle so this would be great for like lightweight equipment like broadcast if you're gonna have broadcast monitors or

breakout panels to plug in external audio sources or ins and outs for. And you can also specify that you want external satellite stands for speakers to sit on. You can specify how many monitors you want to hang on this thing, and it will include the racks built into it. It comes with the secretary it'll include uh you can specify that you want the uh to have a tower computer uh mount for it and then the you can get it so that the uh desk is uh mechanically uh you can mechanically raise and lower it for all you guys and it'll raise everything with it he has a tear running down his cheek right now.

Oh, my God. It's so awesome. If they don't deliver this thing in a limo, I'm going to be disappointed. It is fantastic. And I've used them many, many, many, many times. And they are so fantastic. But, yeah. You're going to have to take out a second mortgage on your house just to get it.

To have one for home use is not really their market and so uh no think fox cnn yeah you definitely like talking about your broadcasters and like these are the type of things that you would see in the edit bays but they are fantastic yeah they're beautiful i mean i'm actually thinking about building my own desk because all the shortcomings that we've talked about before, like, you know, not having the drawer or not having enough desk space or just or having a cheap desktop, which is annoying. Like, I'm thinking about, you know, buying some some hardwood plywood and doing my own thing, you know, create the little rack mounts on the top for it. You know, you don't want to get a solid door. i don't want to ask nah don't no no door desk they're not wide enough like i'm actually so the standard depth of a desk is about 30 inches which by the way you don't

realize how useful that is until you start piling your laptop up there and then you have all this other crap and because i do video stuff also i have so much garbage sitting up there that I need to plug in, and I never have enough room. I just basically have... And if you had a TDC console, a smart track, you could just plug it all in right there in front of you. Yeah, not happening. We're talking thousands, right?

No, probably tens of thousands. TDC console, smart track? For the Dream Desk setup. For the one that I was talking about. Um, no, you're, you're talking,

that's probably somewhere five ish. Yeah. It's not, I, and I, you know, that's a pretty strong guess, but,

uh, yeah, it's not a cheap, it's not a cheap one, but, but if I do one myself now, granted, it's going to take me a couple of weekends to put together,

but I'll be able to get most of what I want. And, you know,'t know, $500 or $600 in the thing, and it'll be custom. I'll have my drawers. I'll have a nice finish on it. I'll have my speaker stands. I'll have my monitor, places where those things hook up through the mounts and all that, and it's going to be perfect. I'm adding this stuff up here. I'm looking at everything we've kind of talked about, like the dream equipment. So next time someone asks me what it takes to be a programmer, I'm going to tell them, you know, you want to be the best programmer ever?

It's about $7,500. That's not too bad. That's without the computer, right? Best programmer in the world. Yeah. Well, I think that number might be a little bit low because if we're talking about if we start talking about having multiple 4k monitors oh yeah i mean that right there's 7500 and then you got to have the computer to push that yeah that's true and the mac pro is

three grand and those are constrained right now oh and the headphones or the headphones are a must you got to have headphones okay okay so okay. So we've all been there. You're sitting in an office environment, and there's somebody that you just kind of want to drown out. So you put on some headphones. What's your cans of choice? They've got to have either wireless or modular cables because I'm done ruining headphones by you know wheeling back see i would love to be there with you on the wireless but i haven't found a set that just work as well like i don't want two double a's sitting up on my eardrums you know

no i gotta say like i have a decent set of wireless and i wear them more for convenience than anything else like they're they're pretty comfortable um that's the weird one uh the vox was yeah the voxel hd wireless that's actually a good set of headphones um they're comfortable but they don't grip on your head very well just feel like they're gonna fall off they do like they slide they don't like the whole time you feel like you can't move your head fast yeah you you're kind of aware of it the whole time yeah they don't have a ton of grip. They look nice. I mean, Joe's got a fairly inexpensive set of headphones that do a pretty good job, and they are modular. Yeah, they're like $17, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, those are the Monoprice 8323s. God, I wear so many different sets of headphones. I'd probably say my preferred choice, I don't even know, man. Well, for leaving at work or for bringing home and taking home in the suitcase. There's different levels of headphones. I don't know what you're referring to. So, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

I definitely have a few that I try out. I mean, headphones go up to thousands of dollars, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can spend. There's actually some out there for $5,000, $6,000. But no, I mean, for the most part at work, I'm typically wearing something that's around the ear that blocks out enough noise. I usually don't go for the noise canceling myself.

I do, because sometimes I just don't want to listen to you guys. Yeah, fair enough. I get it. I totally get it. As we're over there moaning about our keyboards in the morning. canceling myself um but i do because sometimes i just don't want to listen to you guys yeah fair enough i get it i totally get it as we're over there moaning about our keyboards breathing yeah um but i like around the ear drinky drinky definitely agree on the uh the cups have you guys seen those um with the sony walkman headphones that they actually sell in bottles of water and vending machines at the gym oh no oh these are the craziest things i guess the idea is that they're waterproof and you can go swimming with them and they're marketing the swimmers so they set up these vending machines where you go and put you

know probably 40 bucks in the vending machine you get a bottle of water with headphones i can go swimming with my headphones but as soon as i go in with my iphone it's dead it's like the cockajacks toy except you know it's kind of expensive headphones yeah i don't know that i'm into that like the in-ear headphones i love those but they are really a pain at work because every time you start typing somebody comes up behind you and taps you on the shoulder you gotta pull them back out well the only thing that's kind of a hassle with that though is that with the in-ears i do prefer the uh the foam type tips on them yeah so it takes time yeah so so you end up having to like roll them and squeeze them and everything and then push them into your ear hold it for a minute while it compresses back out but those are fantastic for blocking out sound oh they're

as good as noise canceling and oh well they're if you travel if you if you're a frequent flyer they're even better than that because um i used to travel a lot and i used a pair of shurs for that and i had a similar tip on there and the beauty of it was is that uh i wouldn't have any problems with my ears popping uh when i would get off the plane because i would i would you know soon before plane ever even closed the door i already had them in i was listening music or whatever and uh i just left them in the whole time and it was fine yeah you know by the time i got off but um i i am with you though that like for in an office environment it is easier to have uh just a normal set of but i i prefer a closed uh can you know that sits over my ear not on my ear but over well my favorite thing about the big cans is that when someone does interrupt you,

you get to make a big production of taking those headphones off. Like, hold on a minute, let me pause the music, grab the cones, take them off slowly. Like, what is it? Yeah, the other thing about them that's nice, I don't know if you guys do this, I do sometimes, I just leave them on my head so people leave me alone right yeah yeah i mean i may not even have anything playing but they're there and they can see them well so so the the set that i i use a lot is a set of um audio technicas uh where they're the anc7bs i believe and they are uh a they are modular so you can swap out the cables but they are also

noise canceling and there is quite often I won't even have the cable plugged in but I will have the noise canceling part turned on just because I want to just drown out the other sounds and just focus in on whatever it is that I'm working on at the time. Yeah, I mean, headphones really are almost an invaluable tool when you work in an office. I think for a software developer, it's got to be like, you've got to be able to get into your own head sometimes. Yeah. I had a good friend of mine who, he was mostly deaf.

I mean, legally he was, but he used a hearing aid, and when he wanted to get serious about something he was coding, he would just turn that hearing aid off. And you wouldn't know it, and so you're trying to call his name the whole time. But, yeah, he would have it off, and he was unaware. One other thing. What about lighting? Like, I know where we work.

There are several of us that have unscrewed the light bulbs up above our our uh our desk because the glare off of the monitors would just kill your eyes during the day and it's not because we want to live in a cave it's just that when you stare at a monitor all day that that glare can really get to you yeah i really like i'm lighting behind the monitor so like above my office at home i've got like a lamp that sits behind the monitor that kind of shines out against the wall and so it's like a soft, refracted lighting. I have a similar setup both at home and at the office. Yeah, like a little backlight for it. Yeah, a little mood lighting.

It is, although I think technically I don't think it's that great for your eyes though. Yeah, probably not. But it feels like I'm in a spaceship and that's what I'm really going for. That's a rat now, so it's a rat now so it's over and as someone who has to wear glasses um you know i do uh you know at times i'll get the special lenses that have you know uh coatings for it for um i don't even remember like all the crap that they call it now but uh anti-glare coatings and and whatnot or if you're going to get the anti-fatigue lenses which is like the set that i have now um yeah yeah i mean it's amazing what a difference

it can make i'm talking to you guys about glasses but you know since you guys don't have to wear them yeah i get yeah and we could talk about computers you know but that's like a whole another episode yeah and and we all probably have strong opinions on that stuff wait real quick Yeah. And we could talk about computers, you know, but that's like a whole other episode. Yeah. And we all probably have strong opinions on that stuff. Wait, real quick. i5 or i7 or i3? I don't even know.

This is a commodity, right? I have an i7 in this. Yeah, I do on my MacBook. But, oh, there we go. So let's talk about coding real quick on computers, not necessarily the components themselves. But I actually prefer a MacBook Pro for two reasons. One, they are just built so well. Flat keyboard.

Whatever. And then two, no, I'll be hooking up an ergonomic to that bad boy. But no, and then the second thing is I can run both windows and mac osx on there and there's linux and linux i mean like yeah people could argue that you could build a hackintosh and all that but you're not guaranteed that it's going to work and if you are actually using some stuff in osx you know it's really hard to get around it so so i have had a hackintosh in the past and uh it was fun you know i mean there was the challenge of doing it and everything but um where where i found that it fell short was it

really depended on what you wanted to use it for yeah um if you were just using it for simple things then then the hackintosh was okay but uh and and if everything was gonna be third party it was okay but if you had to do if you needed anything that was from apple no you probably weren't gonna be able to install it and so that you know it started its usefulness for me started to uh fall short because of that so your preference is linux right for laptops yes but i would say that my favorite tablet is a laptop my favorite laptop is a desktop so i definitely uh more of a like i want a keyboard and uh you know my ipad's fine for going to bed and for you know planes but i definitely prefer a desktop so to me like even

you know thinking about like a work machine and a laptop at the same time it just kind of doesn't make a lot of sense but i know i'm a minority there i actually prefer a laptop as the same time. It just kind of doesn't make a lot of sense, but I know I'm a minority there. I actually prefer a laptop as long as it's running. I'm not a fan of tablets. And desktops I'm fine with, but I don't like the fact that I can't pick it up and move it where I need to be. Yeah, in my opinion,

any kind of developer shop, you'd have to have some really good reason why you're using desktops because laptops make so much more sense to me. That's true. You know, you don't lose, if there's a power outage, you don't lose anything because you have a UPS built into it. Yeah.

You know, if you have to go to a meeting, you know, there's so much more productivity reasons that it's like, a laptop just makes more sense. But then it's like, if you're going to be cross-platform, it's like, it kind of makes sense to standardize on the Mac hardware because you can just run whatever OS you want on it. That's true. But when it comes to desktop, I can just pop in another hard drive, install another operating system, no big deal. I love upgrading the RAM.

That's fine if you're if you're trying if you're trying to standardize your it shop your developers on a platform you want to you want to have a bunch of desktops to support that's true and then have to worry about like if the power goes out like you just lost a bunch of productivity because you know they all just lost their source code and it's also a lot uh easier to get them working from home and uh all the time snowpocalypse! That's right, snowpocalypse.jam. So, yeah, I mean, that's pretty much what we want to do, is just share our thoughts on some of the things.

What about, I mean, he kind of hinted into tablets, and we kind of... Yeah, he wants to talk about tablets. I hate tablets. Yeah, hate them. I love reading comic books on tablets. The XComics, comiXology app is fantastic it's pretty on it i will give you that i don't even know what i like doing a tablet maybe maybe browse the internet a little bit if i don't have to type anything i'm good with a tablet now

there are a bunch of really good board games on ipad and it's to some lesser extent android as well but man if you're a board game geek uh stuff like small world settlers of katan all that stuff fantastic for airplanes yeah i will say that if um my my ipad mini is my favorite kindle uh but i do i'm a big fan of my surface pro which like we've already said really really muddies the water of PC versus tablet. Yeah. If I were going to go that route, the only one that would truly make me happy and probably just get me to jump on board would be the Lenovo Yoga 2. That's because when I want it to be a tablet, it could be. I can just flip it around flat, and I could lay in bed with that thing.

It's going to be a little bit heavy, but fine, whatever. But when I want to type, I have a real keyboard, a real full-size keyboard on that thing that I can use. And that thing is attractive. Oh, it's beautiful. It is so lightweight and small. It's beautiful. That is a device done right.

But generally speaking like tablets i find so many times that i like to check my email on them i like to maybe browse the internet and maybe play a few games but like typically i want a keyboard i want to be able to type and and i hate tablet keyboards i hate phone keyboards i want something i can click on with my fingers so i i don't know that it is not that there's anything wrong with tablets obviously there's lots of people who like them but they're usually consumers of things they're not creating things so from a programmer's perspective i find them almost useless um yeah i mean like i said you. I haven't written any code on my iPad.

Yeah. And I haven't made any, I haven't tried to administer any remote service on my iPad. Although I know there's apps out there to do crazy stuff like that. Yeah, it's just, it's not convenient. It's not the way it's supposed to be done, right? You use your iPad and your Android devices to consume content. I will say, there's one thing that I love it for, and that's battery life. You use your iPad and your Android devices to consume content. I will say there's one thing that I love it for, and that's battery life.

If I want to stream from my Slingbox and I want to watch TV anywhere in my house without having a TV set up, I can pop that baby right there and watch it anywhere in my house. Okay, so this kind of takes us into a tangent on this same subject, though. But so at home, from my desktop setup at home, though, I do have multiple monitors hanging from the back of the desk. But there are plenty of times where I might have one of the tablets playing the local news or whatnot. And just so that it's not taking up one of the main screens and i can move things around and uh but i can still see like what's going on so yeah no i mean they're they're fantastic it is a great second screen yeah media consumption is killer but other than that like for anything creative whatsoever hey well there's two other places there's airplanes right yeah but also um the places

where my ipad really shines is uh the kitchen you know recipes oh yeah yeah yeah the bathroom yeah well now it got weird although i will say they are getting better at creating applications that makes your your tablet more of a surface control for other things so like i don't know if you guys have messed with any of like the uh and this is more for fun but like the uh uh not midi but like synthesizer programs you can literally use it as like a control surface for doing music. And, you know, and that's really cool. That's fun.

For about five minutes. Yeah, exactly. Before you're just bored and you're done on the toilet, right? Well, you say that. There's a program that I use called Mobile Mouse, mobilemouse.com, that's available for iOS for both for for ipods iphones tablets whatever and uh it's a great little um mouse app that that'll allow you to uh um control like a home theater pc um okay yeah wirelessly cool so so i think we've hit on most of our stuff now yeah that's pretty much my christmas list

yeah so uh we didn't discuss desktop speakers audio i don't even care about it anymore now i'm into headphones headphones only yeah even when i'm gaming like i need to hear if they're on the light right or the left um yeah yeah i would agree i have some i have some studio monitors for mine but i find that I'd rather plug in the headphones. Avid makes a reasonably priced set of desktop speakers that I really, really want to talk myself into. But when I say reasonably priced, I mean, they're still a few hundred dollars for a five-inch speaker. But they look fantastic, and they've gotten some pretty good reviews from everything I've seen. But, yeah, I haven't been able to talk myself into it.

I don't know. Headphones give you so much more of a personal experience. And also, you're not bugging anybody else, right? Like, you can crank those up as loud as you want. No one is going to hear NWA, but you can crank it up. Who's aging who here? Jennifer Lopez. I meant Miley Cyrus.

Right, yeah, of course, wrecking ball. Yeah, that's pretty much it. We have now given you kind of what we think about and what we use on a daily basis or what we don't use or what we'd like. Yeah, I'd love to know if there's some great tips out there for, like, alternatives that we haven't suggested. Absolutely. Yeah, because, I mean, I'm sure much like us, you guys all have a bit of OCD

and you've found solutions that work for you. Like if a chair, if any of you guys know of a chair that is good that is not a Herman Miller, then we can get for a third of the price. A third of the price. That'll never happen. Let us know. You should just break down and buy one. I'm telling you. I can't do it, man.

Yeah, just tweet us or email us comments at codingblocks.net or on Twitter, we are at Coding Blocks. And Facebook, as we said earlier, facebook.com slash codingblocks. Do you want me to repeat the Google Plus? No, no, I think we're good with the Google Plus. But yeah, definitely check us out. Subscribe to us on iTunes,

Stitcher, anywhere else, and please, leave us a review. I know this particular episode was a little bit um different from our other ones but you know we wanted to uh just kind of get some feedback get some interaction going so uh definitely come up check us out leave us a comment and in your reviews on itunes and stitcher or your other uh favorite podcasting source would be very helpful for us and uh help others to find us as well yeah so very much appreciated and i think that's a wrap guys peace out later © transcript Emily Beynon