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Show HN: Workstation – Showcase Your Setup

206 points| dope | 6 years ago |workstation.is

133 comments

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[+] PascLeRasc|6 years ago|reply
If anyone's really into "setups", I'd highly recommend checking out usesthis.com. There's some great discussion on why people like certain tools, and some high-profile people on there from all walks of tech life (writers, podcasters, musicians, mechanical engineers). Here's a few of my favorites:

Aaron Schwartz: https://usesthis.com/interviews/aaron.swartz/

Mike Hoye (Mozilla): https://usesthis.com/interviews/mhoye/

Drew DeVault: https://usesthis.com/interviews/drew.devault/

Naomi Wu: https://usesthis.com/interviews/naomi.wu/

[+] SexyCyborg|6 years ago|reply
You can't really see it in my article there, I use a rolling cart with my laptops (Apple or Xiaomi depending): https://i.imgur.com/0OB23tw.jpg

Better look: https://i.imgur.com/ydgpMus.jpg

I avoid having a desk surface because it just gets overwhelmed with crap. This way I can't just set things down- they need to be put somewhere. Also I can move it out of the way for shooting YouTube videos, roll near the window when I want more daylight, roll near the printers when I am tweaking them etc.

[+] dijit|6 years ago|reply
The improvements section/conclusion in Aaron Schwartz article is actually very possible today.

>I wish all my hard drives were consolidated onto one big drive. I wish I had SoundSticks. I wish my G1 was much, much faster. I wish that Terminal would have built-in support for screen so that different screens would appear as tabs and it would auto-reconnect. I wish that there was decent todo management software that deeply integrated with my email. I wish that everyone had perfectionist levels of attention to detail.

Phones are much, much faster, NAS’s (synology for example) allow you to merge a whole bunch of drives on a network. And Iterm is integrated with tmux, which makes it feel supremely native.

Not sure about the todo or attention to detail though.

[+] ukyrgf|6 years ago|reply
Hey, another site that was built on a Mac and not tested on anything else.

So, Avenir Next is not a system font on Windows or Linux. On Windows, this means you get the browser's default stylesheet fallback, which means Times New Roman. So your site essentially looks like a Word 97 document to all your Windows visitors, and who-knows-what on the various Linux distros.

Take a look at https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/using-system-ui-fon... and get yourself looking correct for those non-macOS users!

What did you use to build that stylesheet? A framework of some sort?

[+] vijucat|6 years ago|reply
Suggestion:

a) let the user add their commentary and

b) get folks to mention which chair, too. Some of us invest in ergonomic chairs, and those who don't would benefit from opinions on which chairs are good

For what it's worth, I got this chair recently (a Torch Iris Gold) in Hong Kong, and found it incredible value for money, at least compared to a Herman Miller Aeron, Mirra etc; : it has a bunch of adjustments that the Aeron and Mirra do not. Obviously, this advice isn't that useful if you're not in Hong Kong.

https://shop.freemax.com.hk/eng/product/%E9%9B%BB%E8%85%A6%E...

[+] augstein|6 years ago|reply
Indeed. Added my setup just now, comments (and votes) would make this much more interesting.

Also please fix scrolling in the submission form on mobile (iOS) with the -webkit-overflow-scrolling CSS property.

[+] maxaf|6 years ago|reply
Please tell me you're stripping EXIF tags from all images; otherwise this is just a "rob these people now" list.
[+] dope|6 years ago|reply
I'm not, I completely overlooked this :/ I'm adding this to the upload form now and I guess will have to go through and manually remove everyones exif data. Thanks for raising this.
[+] jolmg|6 years ago|reply
I wish cameras wouldn't default to include location data. Most people don't even know pictures can include that type of info. It really should be an opt-in feature.
[+] OberstKrueger|6 years ago|reply
First image I checked for this, full EXIF data is intact, including GPS data.
[+] zerr|6 years ago|reply
There is nothing extraordinary though, especially for HN crowd.
[+] grumpy-cowboy|6 years ago|reply
There is a lot of "fake" workstations: everything is so clean! No Fritos bag, no Coke bottles, no paper, no trash, ... just clean desks! Fake! lol :D
[+] hermitdev|6 years ago|reply
At a previous job, when I was working on a complete rewrite of a critical backend financial data system for a hedge fund, I had a massive tower of empty mountain dew cans on my desk. It nearly reached the ceiling and was probably around 30 cans at the base. I had to stand on my deal to add new cans. It stood as a monument to all of the sugar and caffeine I consumed on the project (I was planning on taking it down post release).

Sadly, CEO was bringing some investors around and was mortified, and I was ordered to take it down. I didn't receive any backlash beyond bring told to take it down. Also, sadly no photos exist as it was against company policy. It Took something around 2.5 50 gallon garbage bags to dispose of.

Today, my desk is spotless. Just a notepad and pen on it when I go home at night.

[+] daniel_iversen|6 years ago|reply
Actually I don’t think that’s the case! I find keeping my workspace relatively beautiful and clean (in my eyes - I’m sure it’s still a little bit messy by some standards) makes me feel better and more productive - and I think there’s science somewhere as well that says that messy work places adds to stress (I think the last place I saw it mentioned was in the book Deep Work, but it’s been known for ages).
[+] DRW_|6 years ago|reply
Not everyone lives like slobs ;)
[+] c22|6 years ago|reply
I have a directory full of photos of every desk "setup" I've had since 2002. They all look very tidy, like in these photos. Nothing like the project-strewn desk I'm sitting in front of now. I realized this is because the only time I ever take a picture of my desk is right after I have set it up.
[+] dope|6 years ago|reply
Sorry for the NSFW image, it's been removed. Also temporarily removed the ability to add a station while I figure out next steps.
[+] aaronarduino|6 years ago|reply
This is a cool idea. One suggestion though, it would be nice when viewing a setup to be able to use arrow keys to advance to the next setup.
[+] heroHACK17|6 years ago|reply
I love the single-screen setup. I have tried dual-monitors, laptop + monitor, etc., but found that everything else on the screen is just a distraction. Most of the time I'll just work on my laptop or plug in a monitor & close my laptop!
[+] codyb|6 years ago|reply
That’s me as well.
[+] bovermyer|6 years ago|reply
The battlestations subreddit has a lot of really epic setups.
[+] mhd|6 years ago|reply
Most of those I saw were pretty much the same. Towers with windows and those ugly LED wall triangles, often aiming for a "vaporwave"/CGA look.

There was definitely more variety when beige cases were the rule and you had to paint and dremel things yourselves…

[+] dope|6 years ago|reply
It really does! It's massively inspired by that subreddit and /r/macsetups too. I wanted to create this to hopefully fill the gaps a little when talking about your setup in detail. It's a very early Alpha so it isn't very feature rich but planning to build on this more in the future.
[+] unixhero|6 years ago|reply
And /r/retrobattlestations !
[+] eps|6 years ago|reply
There also used to be deskography.org
[+] arendtio|6 years ago|reply
I am a bit surprised there is no vertical multi-monitor setup there yet. I have my 2nd monitor above my first since a few years now and I don't want to go back to the traditional horizontal layout.

The only thing I might change is adding more monitors or increasing sizes, but that isn't really a priority as I tend to have enough space most of the time.

However, I love the idea, of this site as the photos offer a better impression of the work experience in those places (e.g. compared to usesthis.com).

[+] seanmcdirmid|6 years ago|reply
I tried that once, lots of neck pain after a couple of days. It turns out my side to side neck muscles are much more developed than my up down ones.

Edit: this was two horizontal side by side 27” displays in portrait. I’m sure it would have been just as bad as verification side by side landscape.

[+] phyrex|6 years ago|reply
Could you explain why you like this better than a traditional multi monitor layout? And how wouldit compare to vertical monitors horizontally next to each other?
[+] istjohn|6 years ago|reply
I tried a vertical monitor for a day once, but I found I ended up holding my head at an uncomfortably high angle too much.
[+] codr7|6 years ago|reply
Heh, I feel very tempted to go all in with pictures.

After 15 years of using nothing but the latest and greatest, I'm now stuck with a refurbished HP desktop that smells like burned plastic and an arbitrary collection of questionable-quality accessories on top of a retired kitchen table with a garden chair to sit on.

And the only thing that really bothers me is that the computer might stop working any second and I can't afford a new one.

Life moves in mysterious ways :)

[+] alexott|6 years ago|reply
It’s interesting to see that’s there are not so much systems with ergonomic keyboards mice... Are people underestimate importance of that?
[+] bsmith|6 years ago|reply
I don't use an ergonomic mouse. I am using my keyboard probably ~20x more than my mouse, so it just doesn't seem that important. Mostly I am using my mouse to scroll around and navigate webpages, but when coding it's mostly Vim, tabbing between windows, typing commands in the terminal, etc...
[+] SamReidHughes|6 years ago|reply
There are other ways to deal with that, like physical conditioning. Ergonomic keyboards don't cut it when you need to carry a laptop.
[+] vmurthy|6 years ago|reply
As a regular visitor on /r/macsetups, I find your site's navigation cool! I look forward to more setups :-)
[+] wa1987|6 years ago|reply
Something's up with the retrieval of images. Getting errors (402 status code) from Firebase storage / Google. — EDIT: seems to be fixed!

Fun project though! What are your plans with it? Like to hear about your ideas.

Some – unsolicited – suggestions (feel free to ignore):

- describing (primary) usage(s) – e.g. workstation, gaming, web dev, music, audio, etc.

- describing setup components by selecting items from a parts list

- adding benchmark results

- filtering / searching setups by varying properties

- breaking down components even further.. there's a huge community around mechanical keyboards for example, these come in all kinds of shapes.. users may have desires along the lines of: "I'd like to see setups with wireless 60% keyboards"

- listing similar setups ("if you like this, you might like..")

- capturing setup updates (and displaying VCS-style diffs :-))

- recently updated systems

- in the same vein: build logs

- image annotations

- up- / downvoting

- comments

Fun stuff to come up with.

[+] dope|6 years ago|reply
These are great suggestions, thank you and it's exactly what I've posted it for tbh - It feels like this project could have endless possibilities but I also want to know what others care about too.

My next steps (I posted below but happy to post here too)

- Multiple image upload support

- Like setups

- Build collections out of setups

- Search (tags, product names, setup titles etc)

- Tagging products on setups (like how Facebook does but you know, respect peoples data etc)

I think after that or even during, I'll need to definitely come up with a more structured roadmap.

Again, thank you for the suggestions!

[+] xwdv|6 years ago|reply
Cool, but I’m sad that a picture of my “workstation” is basically just a Thinkpad.
[+] bitwize|6 years ago|reply
Soooo... everybody's a neat freak with a Ph.D. in cable management.
[+] chair6|6 years ago|reply
Suggestion - one-click navigation from one setup to the next would be nice, instead of having to click back, reload the list, and choose another...
[+] technological|6 years ago|reply
I wish something like this exists for UI or work bench setup. How people work with different screens and how editor or other tools setup
[+] dope|6 years ago|reply
Working on the image fix now slowly dying inside

Edit: Fixed!