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  • Author Author: spannerspencer
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Father's Day Badge-a-Thon: Shed Dweller

spannerspencer

The shed is the universal domain of the dad. This probably isn't news to you.image

 

But that's nothing to do with the shed itself. What draws the old man to the garden construct is the solitude it promises (aside from the colony of spiders, but their company is necessary to facilitate the absence of other humans), and the tools and toys he can tinker with therein.

 

So to kick off our week's worth of exclusive Father's Day badges, I'd like you to post a comment below, with an accompanying photo, about your current favourite piece of tech that you enjoy playing with alone; whether it's in the shed, your workshop, your office or the cupboard under the stairs where you're allowed to keep all your junk.

 

And let's all show our appreciation for that most noble of structure, the garden shed, by liking this blog post, too!

 

Remember, to get the rest of the Father's Day badges this week, you'll first need to earn this one!

 

You have until 26th June, 2016, to get all the badges, so don't delay!

Top Comments

  • I'd have to go with my desktop computer - since it's the one universal piece of equipment I use every day and helps me get along with all the other equipment on my "bench" (I mean, bedroom).

     

    It's not a particularly lean beast, and it's been through many an upgrade. It probably deserves to be retired owing to the hefty energy consumption. It's done over 30,000 power on hours since I got the motherboard and CPU - at its heart is a second hand, unwanted AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE overclocked to 3.90Ghz on a Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 cooled with a Noctua NH-D14, 16Gb DDR3 1333 RAM (since it won't do 1600 on four sticks, and it won't take >4Gb sticks), a Palit GTX970 Jetstream running 4 monitors (three via active DP to DVI, one via on-board DVI), an OCZ Vertex 3 120Gb boot SSD, a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB "work" SSD, with a Hitachi 3Tb 7200rpm, WD 3Tb and 4Tb Green, Hitachi 3Tb 5940rpm hard drives. To top it off, it also has two separate USB 3.0 controllers (to maximise USB bandwidth), a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtrememusic PCI to add more inputs/outputs (to switch between speakers without needing to plug/unplug, and receive audio from radios), an LG GGW-H20L Supermultiblue with HD-DVD readback, and a relatively ordinary DVD+/-RW drive pulled from an HP desktop for more optical goodness (since my favourite Pioneer BDR-209DBK died). Power comes from a Thermaltake TR2 850W power supply - overkill, since formerly it used to run two graphic cards - a GTX580SOC and a GTX560ti in "independent" mode, which guzzled a lot more power. The user "interface" is a second hand DasKeyboard mechanical keyboard (which I got for half the price after the first owners' wife complained it was too loud) with a Mionix NAOS 8200 laser mouse. Four different monitors are used - a Dell 24" (1920x1200), a BenQ 22" (1680x1050) FP222W, a later BenQ 20.5" (1680x1050) G2000W and an Asus (1366x768) VW161. I've always meant to update to a complement of identical IPS monitors, but I've never let the "age" of something stop me from using it. Despite them all being TN monitors >3 years old, they continue to serve well, even if some of them have been hacked to stay alive. Because of the odd XL-ATX form factor of the motherboard, it is housed in an especially large Antec Eleven-Hundred case.

     

    It's been a faithful companion, albeit quite dusty. Even overclocked, it is barely a match for even an old Core i7-2500k at stock rates, but that doesn't stop me from using it. It rarely ever sleeps - running day and night to find the answers to the questions that I dream of. I did the later years of my undergrad, my whole PhD, my whole blog and every RoadTest on and with this machine. I'm not sure it looks the part, because it was really built from random bits and pieces, but it works and I suppose it deserves to be pictured ...

     

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    Oh, and I forgot to mention - it also has a TBS 6925 Professional Blind-Scan satellite card with support for 16/32APSK modes as well, for my satellite feed hunting goodness. And yes, that black side-panel fan is a thermal-sensor Saniflo fan salvaged from an old Mac G4 that was thrown out by the university, whereas the top fan has been replaced by a BitFenix held on by cable ties due to non-standard 200mm fan mounting holes.

  • in reply to jkutzsch

    I bet you don't get anybody as a  passersby.image

  • Well my Shed was a lot more useable prior to the move and relocation out beyond electricity.  But the plus side is that eventually I will have a complete indoor office/library/mad scientist area available.

     

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