What’s on your desk, Nathan Edwards?

Nathan Edwards has been at The Verge for a few 12 months and a half as senior evaluations editor, enhancing evaluations and managing a part of the evaluations staff. He additionally works on our purchasing information program. He provides, “Aside from a few quick freelancing stints, I spent most of my profession earlier than this at Maximum PC (RIP), a print journal, after which at Wirecutter, the place I labored for seven years. So it’s been evaluations and shopping for guides and writing about shopper tech just about the entire time.”

He took a while to inform us about his workspace.

That’s a cozy-looking area. Where in your house is it?

Thanks! It’s a examine close to the entrance of the home. It will get some good pure mild, partly shaded by a few oak timber exterior. They are at present paving the yard with acorns. Really going nuts this 12 months. 

I see two desks. Are each yours? They seem like they’re used for various functions.

They are each mine. My spouse additionally works from residence most days, however she is in calls all day, and I like mechanical keyboards and never overhearing convention calls, so we desire to work in separate areas. The greater, nicer desk is my work desk, and the opposite one is for all the things else. Aspirationally, it’s for tinkering. Right now, I’m fixing my sister-in-law’s laptop computer on it; often, it’s simply lined in piles of papers. I used to have my PC on that desk, and if I begin enjoying PC video games once more, I’ll most likely transfer it again.

Tell us about your desks and why you selected them. 

The massive one is an Xdesk (formerly known as NextDesk) Terra. It was the Wirecutter standing desk choose once I purchased it a decade in the past. It’s held up high-quality. The white one is a hand-cranked Ikea Bekant we purchased after we lived within the Netherlands as a result of we left our desks within the US and wanted desks. It is ok. Neither has any drawers, so I’ve a rolling cart subsequent to at least one and an Ikea Alex subsequent to the opposite.

The inexperienced one is a Steelcase Leap. It was additionally the Wirecutter choose once I acquired it a decade in the past. It is a superb chair. No regrets by any means. The different chair is a few OfficeMax factor my spouse purchased someday up to now twenty years. It is a chair. 

There’s additionally an Ikea Frosta stool with an eye-searing orange seat. That one simply makes me completely happy.

Here comes the large one: inform us in regards to the tech you’re utilizing. There’s a number of it right here!

On my work desk, I’ve my work-issued 2020 M1 MacBook Air on a Rain Design stand and my self-built Windows 11 PC in a Sliger SM550 mini-ITX case. I like small kind issue computer systems, however I made a tactical error with this one. When I constructed it in 2019, I reused my graphics card, an Nvidia GTX 1070. I assumed that midrange graphics playing cards would preserve getting smaller and extra power-efficient. Reader, they didn’t! In order to improve my GPU, I would want to get a extra highly effective energy provide and a much bigger case. Fortunately, I don’t want to improve. 

The PC has a ninth-gen i5 and 32GB of RAM; it’s loads quick for what I really do with it, and the 1070 nonetheless does alright with the little little bit of PC gaming I can squeeze in. 

Both computer systems hook right into a 32-inch BenQ 4K monitor with a built-in KVM change and never fairly sufficient USB ports. It has three USB-A ports within the again, and I’ve a three-port USB hub plugged into one among them. That offers me simply sufficient ports to keep away from having to make use of a Thunderbolt dock, but it surely’s a detailed one. Here’s what plugs into the monitor:

• The Insta360 Link webcam a number of Verge staffers use. 
• A set of B&W MM-1 audio system I’ve had for the reason that Maximum PC days.
• A few USB-A-to-C cables for keyboards and peripherals.
• The Stream Deck Mini, which I purchased from Dan Seifert and principally use to regulate the Elgato Key Light. 

A lightweight you possibly can solely management via 2.4GHz Wi-Fi? Whose concept was that? The Elgato Key Light principally simply retains my ZZ plant completely happy. Most of the opposite lights within the workplace are Hue bulbs, which I management with a RunLessWire change on the wall. 

The headphones are Sony’s WH-1000XM4.

The mouse is a first-gen Logitech MX Master. I preserve having to open it as much as repair the scroll wheel, but it surely’s hanging in there. It’s on a mousepad one among my children made in preschool. 

The different desk has an eight-year-old Dell UltraSharp monitor, Blue Yeti mic, and 10-year-old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop computer I’m going to place Linux on. I purchased a number of Wirecutter picks, seems. It additionally has a Ploopy trackball, which I like however which doesn’t have the MX Master’s scroll wheel. My iFixit toolkit is there — one more factor I’ve had for a very long time as a result of it’s match for function.

I’ve a number of Field Notes notebooks hanging round.

I see you’re a keyboard fanatic — at the very least, I see a number of keyboards, together with a very implausible outdated typewriter!

For a very long time, I had one mechanical keyboard, and I used to be proud of it. Then, in 2016, I purchased a smaller one with completely different switches and a few fairly keycaps to go together with it, and I fell into the rabbit gap. I’ve three or 4 I exploit usually and a number of other extra that I ought to most likely promote. 

The keyboard on my desk within the images is a Leopold FC660C with Topre switches. Over the previous six years, I’ve swapped the controller board for one with USB-C and VIA compatibility, added silencing rings, re-lubed the stabilizers, swapped the keycaps, and put a few MX sliders on it. And as a result of somebody will ask: the domes are inventory.

The quantity pad is a MurphPad that I constructed with a nice!nano so it has Bluetooth. I additionally put MillMax sockets within the PCB so I can swap out the switches. The keycaps are principally SA Dasher.

Aside from the Leopold, the one I exploit most frequently is a Grid 650 with the Array module. Right now, it has Kailh Deep Sea Islet silent linear switches — that are pretty near the wonderful switches within the HHKB Studio — and CRP Tulip keycaps.

The brown one close to the typewriter is a modded and cut-down 1993 IBM Model M keyboard from my brother. It has a Yacobo controller he designed.  

The typewriter is a Nineteen Fifties AZERTY-layout Hermes 3000 my spouse inherited from her grandparents. It wants a brand new ribbon and a superb clear, but it surely’s useful.

The artwork on the desk with the typewriter is nice as properly.

Thank you! The portray is by my sister Naomi, and the postcards are from my good friend Steve Schaberg. He will ship you a screenprinted postcard for five bucks every month. 

You have an enormous variety of different fascinating tchotchkes in your workplace. Are there any others that you just’d wish to name out? (The timer, for instance?)

The timer is for pomodoros once I keep in mind to do them. I’ve a Flipper Zero and a Beepy as a result of my self-conception is of an individual with much more time and pc engineering information than I even have. Ditto the Raspberry Pi tucked away someplace. And the “intro to electronics” package in a drawer. 

I’ve a Home Assistant Green right here that I must arrange. I preserve operating into issues I’d like my sensible residence to have the ability to do, and invariably, the way in which to do it appears to be Home Assistant. Or simply return to a dumb residence, which is equally tempting. 

You know that you just’re the rationale I spent 20 minutes of firm time wanting up writer John Joseph Mathews, proper?

He was a fascinating and complex dude, and he was my great-grandfather. I grew up listening to tales about him from my mother and her sisters, although I hadn’t learn lots of his books till comparatively just lately. Still working on the large one. I even have some language and cultural assets on that shelf; I’m taking a (very) newbie Osage language class and studying a ton. That shelf additionally incorporates a Strandbeest, which is unrelated.

My nemesis, the HP OfficeJet printer, lurks within the nook. Also, I moved a number of packing containers and piles of papers into the hallway to take these images, and the cupboards and drawers are completely jammed stuffed with cables and dongles and outdated arduous drives and miscellany. Please don’t think about that my workplace often seems to be this tidy. Although now that it is tidy, I’m making an effort to maintain it that method.

Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge