writing desk

Following my piece with an animated GIF on the evolution of the writer’s desk over the past 34 years, I thought I’d share my own – set up afresh this week following a kind donation from a buddy who’s moving apartments. Tucked away in the corner of my new apartment is my new writing desk – tooled up for grinding out TeleRead coverage and all other wordsmithing purposes.

As to how this desk is equipped and gadgeted up for the new era, please note: on the right, next to the power bar, the Raspberry Pi 2 B, plugged in to the monitor and set up with Ubuntu MATE as a productivity platform. The Raspberry has a WiFi dongle for my apartment network, and a Bluetooth dongle for the Bluetooth keyboard and the Bluetooth mouse on the desk. With Ubuntu MATE, it can run LibreOffice, and connect to the cloud for working in Google Docs or Evernote. There’s also a USB stick in the Raspberry for physical memory and saving files.

On the left, you have my fourth-generation Kindle Basic charging in its charging cradle (from a Scottish discount store), and my Lenovo A7-10 tablet, for reference, some writing, and general ereading purposes. Soon to be joined by the Amazon Kindle Fire 7. And for all these devices, you have a bunch of styluses and screen cleaners in and under the shelves.

Lest you think I’ve abandoned paper entirely, there’s a wad of reference books above the desk, for those times when Wikipedia and Dict.org just won’t hit the spot. Plus a copy of Thomas Ligotti’s Teatro Grottesco collection, for upcoming review purposes.

Not shown in the picture are my Acer Iconia w500 notebook, now running Windows 10, and the giant Samsung flatscreen TV with my Chromecast plugged into it. But whenever I want to stream YouTube videos to the big screen, I can use that side table and write while watching it.

So that’s my new-era writing desk. Compare and contrast it with the 1981 version. I wouldn’t have anything less.

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