What’s on your desk, Nathan Edwards?

Nathan Edwards was in the edge For about a year and a half as Senior Reviews Editor, he edits reviews and manages part of the reviews team. He also works in our Buying Guide program. He adds: “Apart from two short stints as a freelancer, most of my professional life before that was spent in… Maximum computer (RIP), a print magazine, then in Wire cutterWhere I worked for seven years. So there have been reviews, buying guides and writing about consumer technology almost all the time.

He took some time to tell us about his work space.

This is a comfortable looking space. Where is he in your house?

Thanks! It is a study near the front of the house. It gets some good natural light, partly shaded by the oak trees outside. They are currently paving the yard with walnut. Really going nuts this year.

I see two offices. Are both yours? They look like they are used for different purposes.

They are both mine. My wife also works from home most days, but she’s on calls all day, and I like mechanical keyboards and not listening to conference calls, so we prefer to work in separate spaces. The larger, nicer desk is my work desk, and the other is for everything else. Ambitiously, it’s for tinkering. Currently, I am repairing my sister-in-law’s laptop; They are usually covered in piles of leaves. I used to put my computer on this desk, and if I start playing computer games again, I’ll probably put it back.

Tell us about your offices and why you chose them?

The largest is Xdesk (formerly NextDesk) Terra. It has been Wire cutter Choosing a standing desk when I bought it a decade ago. It has held up well. The white one is an Ikea Bekant that we bought by hand when we were living in the Netherlands because we left our offices in the US and needed desks. he is fine. Neither of them have any drawers, so I have a rolling cart next to one and an Ikea Alex next to the other.

And green is A Steelcase leap. And he was too Wire cutter Choose when I got it a decade ago. It’s a great chair. No regrets at all. The other chair is something my wife bought from OfficeMax sometime in the last two decades. This is a chair.

There is also an Ikea Frosta bench with an orange seat. This one just makes me happy.

Here comes the most important thing: Tell us about the technology you use. There’s a lot of it here!

On my work desk, I have a work-issued MacBook Air 2020 M1 Rain design stand And my Windows 11 PC is in a file Sliger SM550 mini-ITX case. I love compact computers, but I made a tactical mistake with this one. When I built it in 2019, I reused my graphics card, an Nvidia GTX 1070. I assumed mid-range graphics cards would become smaller and more power efficient. Reader, they didn’t do that! In order to upgrade my GPU, I will need to get a more powerful power supply and a larger case. Fortunately, I don’t do that Need To upgrade.

The PC has a 9th generation i5 processor and 32GB of RAM; It’s pretty fast for what I actually do with it, and the 1070 still performs well with the few PC games I can squeeze through.

Both devices are connected to a 32-inch BenQ 4K monitor With built-in KVM switch and not completely USB ports are sufficient. It has three USB-A ports on the back, and I have a three-port USB hub connected to one of them. This gives me enough ports to avoid having to use a Thunderbolt dock, but it’s close. Here’s what’s connected to the monitor:

• the Insta 360 link Webcam a lot of edge Use of staff.
• A set of B&W MM-1 speakers that I’ve had for a while Maximum computer days.
• Two pairs of USB-A-to-C cables for keyboards and peripherals.
• The Stream Deck Mini, which I bought from Dan Seifert and uses mostly to control the Elgato Key Light.

A light you can only control via 2.4GHz Wi-Fi? Whose idea was that? the The gate is a light switch Mostly keeps my ZZ plant happy. Most of the other lights in the office are Hue bulbs, which I control with a RunLessWire Switch on the wall.

The speakers are Sony WH-1000XM4.

The mouse is the first generation Logitech MX Master. I always have to open it to fix the scroll wheel, but it’s stuck there. It’s on a mousepad that one of my preschoolers made.

The other office has The Dell UltraSharp monitor is eight years oldAnd a Blue Yeti microphone and a 10 year old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop, I’ll be running Linux. I bought a lot of Wire cutter Chooses, it turns out. It also has the Ploopy trackball, which I love but doesn’t have the MX Master’s scroll wheel. for me iFixit Toolkit Is there – something else I’ve had for a long time because it’s fit for purpose.

I have a lot of Field Notebooks hanging out.

I see you’re a keyboard enthusiast – at least, I see a lot of keyboards, including a really cool old typewriter!

For a long time, I had one mechanical keyboard, and I was happy with it. Then, in 2016, I bought a smaller one with different keys and some nice keycaps to go with it, and fell down the rabbit hole. I have three or four that I use regularly and several others that I should probably sell.

The keyboard on my desk in the pictures is A Leopold FC660C With Topre keys. Over the past six years, I’ve swapped out the control board for a USB-C and VIA-compatible one, added squelch rings, re-greased the stabilizers, swapped out the keycaps, and put a pair of MX sliders on it. Because someone will ask: The domes are stored.

The number plate is A MurphPad That I built with Nice! Nano So it has Bluetooth. I also put it mil max intakes In the PCB so I can swap the switches. The keycaps are mostly SA Dasher.

Aside from Leopold, the one I use most often is Network 650 With matrix unit. Now, it has happened Kyle Island deep sea Silent linear switches – which are completely Close to the excellent keys in HHKB Studio — and CRB Tulip Keycaps.

The brown one near the typewriter is a modified 1993 IBM Model M keyboard cut from my brother. she has Yakubu console He was determined.

The typewriter is a 1950s AZERTY Hermes 3000, which my wife inherited from her grandparents. It needs new tape and a good cleaning, but it’s functional.

The art on the table with the typewriter is great too.

Thank you! The painting is by my sister Naomi, and the postcards are from my friend Steve Schaberg. He will send it to you A $5 printed postcard every month.

You have a ton of other cool tchotchkes in your office. Are there any other people you would like to contact? (temporary for example?)

the temporary Reserved for Pomodoro when I remember to do it. I have flipper zero and baby Because my self-perception is of someone who has a lot more time and knowledge of computer architecture than I actually do. Ditto the Raspberry Pi somewhere. And an “Introduction to Electronics” kit in a drawer.

I have a green home assistant here that I need to set up. I keep running into things I wish my smart home could do, and Home Assistant is always the way to do that. Or just go back to a stupid house, which is equally tempting.

You know you’re the reason you’re spending 20 minutes of company time researching author John Joseph Matthews, right?

he was Fascinating A complicated dude, he was my great-grandfather. I grew up hearing stories about him from my mother and her sisters, although I didn’t read many of his books until relatively recently. Still working on the big one. I also have some linguistic and cultural resources on this shelf; I’m taking a (very) beginner’s Osage language class and I’m learning a lot. This shelf also contains Strandbeestwhich is irrelevant.

My enemy, the HP OfficeJet printer, lurks in the corner. Also, I moved a lot of boxes and stacks of papers into the hallway to take these photos, and the cabinets and drawers were completely crammed with cables, dongles, old hard drives, and miscellaneous. Please don’t imagine that my desk usually looks like this. Although it is now He is Tidy, I make an effort to keep it that way.

Photography by Nathan Edwards/The Verge