New year, new desk

Post 00057 | January 01st 2025

Happy new year everyone! Hope the hangover did't hit too hard. My last project of 2024 was to do something about my desk that has been in a state for the longest time. It has been littered with burn craters from the soldering iron, coffee stains and an assortment of odd screws from begone projects. It’s a shame, because I end up not using the desk because of it. That’s why I decided to spend my Christmas holiday doing something about it.

New desk

I quickly came to the realisation that even if I did sand down the craters and stains, the old desk was just way too bulky. It had sections with drawers on both sides with everything being made in inch-thick oak. It has served me well, but now I feel it’s time to move on. I wanted something smaller, more minimalist, that didn’t have room for unnecessary clutter. I ended up buying a 200 x 40 cm mahogany shelf from my local hardware store and slabbed four hairpin legs on it. Voila, table. It’s spacious enough that it doesn’t feel cramped, but too narrow to fit a CRT, a second PC, speakers or other things that summons a spaghetti dish of cables.

Ikea Skådis

I love this things! I have always thought pegboards were the coolest thing, even though they are pretty uncommon here in Denmark. You can visualise what you have and move it around as needed but unlike drawers, you can’t just discard stuff in there willy-nilly, hoping it will go away. Compared to normal pegboards, the holes in the Skådis are oblong which makes has quite a few advantages: It’s easier to route cables and zip ties through them, and as you often see with Ikea furniture, people have shared quite a few designs online for 3D printable accessories which I will be putting to full use.

I picked three boards up on the second hand market. It was cheaper, was delivered to my door, and came with a lot of accessories like hooks and clips. I did still order a few extras from Ikea however. I didn’t feel like drilling in my wall to hang the boards, so instead I picked up a couple of these brackets that allow you to clamp the board directly to the desk. An unforeseen advantage of this is that I now can use the back side of the pegboard as well - what a game changer! Power strips, wall warts, cables and switches can now all be zip tied away, out of sight. It’s like having a dual layer PCB. I honestly don’t think my desk has ever been this neat.

TV

I also felt like treating myself for this endeavour. After upgrading my graphics card, my current 1080p monitor feels a bit… underwhelming. Not to mention its mediocre speakers, which necessitates a pair of external speakers to clutter up the place. I figured that as this was going to be my only monitor, I wanted to make it count. It’s difficult finding a monitor where the speakers aren’t an afterthought, which is what made me look into using a TV instead. I was lucky to find a demo model of the Philips 42OLED809, a 42” 4K OLED model. It has a 1600€ MSRP, but I was able to pick mine up for 980€ because of a damaged box (as if that’s important). This is still about the same you’d pay for a comparable new LG model, which appears to be the go-to pick for other people who go this route - So why did I pick the Philips instead? It still has a panel form LG, so you should be getting the same screen quality. It adds Ambilight to the mix which I have always thought was the coolest thing. I know you can make your own DIY Ambilight, but that’s just an added expense and it is usually only set up for one of the inputs; Having it integrated is a lot more convenient. Finally, while LG uses WebOS, my Philips set runs Android TV. Nothing against WebOS, but Android TV is just infinitely more developed. It’s nice being able to fire up an emulator without needing to turn on a computer.

So far I’m very happy with it. She’s definitely a big girl, especially considering how narrow my new desk is. It’s doing wonders for my back. I have this terrible habit of leaning forward to be closer to the screen, but this isn’t an option with this big screen. Instead now I find myself leaning back in order to be able to see the entire screen. It is taking some getting used to, but its the good kind of getting used to; Instead of feeling like you have to adapt to it, you constantly realise how much potential the extra screen real estate brings.

The TV has a quad core P5 processor with AI and if it has AI, it must be good. Jokes aside, while I have seen AI do a worse job of processing video, there were many occasions where the AI artefacts were noticeable. Thankfully, selecting the Monitor or Gaming mode seemed to disable this tomfoolery. So, how does a P5 processor without AI perform? Menus are pretty snappy, as was Jellyfin. The heaviest lifting my processor will be doing is emulation. Sadly, I reached software limits long before hardware limits. Lots of emulators were missing from the Play Store, and while I was able to sideload some of them via adb, heavy hitters like Dolphin and Citra were a no-go. Having Retroarch is infinitely more important though and luckily had multiple versions available. After downloading, I tried a couple of the more demanding consoles that had cores available, namely PlayStation and Nintendo 64. I played it through the opening stages of both Chrono Cross and Banjo Kazooie; The latter had some minor graphical stutters but both ran perfectly playable. Annoyingly, after copying roms to a USB drive (The TV only has a few gigabytes of storage built in) I found out that Retroarch isn’t able see external storage, apparently due to change in Android 11’s storage API. I found some workarounds on Reddit, namely manually editing a Retroarch’s config file and/or using a front-end for launching games, but at this point I was over it. I cannot fathom how an OS can be this unhelpful. It’s twice the shame, as the TV seems to have more than enough horsepower to do what I want it to do, but having to deal with workarounds, vague popup messages and artificial barriers in the name of security that still seems to be easily circumvented by simply editing a config file? They could have gone “This app uses an outdated API. These are the risks. Are you sure you want to risk it?”, but no. Let’s make the user guess what’s wrong instead and not give them a logical way to fix it. For now, maybe I’ll stick a few 8 and 16 bit roms on the TV, but otherwise rely on my PC for emulation. It’s a shame, but here we are.

As for other specs, there are the speakers which are fine. They’re the kind of speakers you’d find on a flatscreen TV. They won’t blow you away, but they are better than what you’d find in a monitor because TV customers expect to be able to listen to their TV. There are 2 10W speakers and a 10W subwoofer. This is a vast improvement to my old monitor that only had two 2W speakers. Still, if it isn’t enough, the TV both has analog and optical audio out. Personally, I’d probably just use my headset if I want a better listening experience.

The Picture in Picture feature is also pretty cool. I know it’s a common feature, but this is the first time I have seen a screen being able to display two different HDMI sources at the same time (normally its a single HDMI source and a TV channel). I can see myself using this for playing a game on the Switch while waiting for a progress bar to complete on the PC.

Two of the HDMI ports are able to deliver 4K at 144 hz, which is a stupid 1.2 gigapixels per second. It’s definitely a lot for the Golden Rabbit to handle, though thankfully the telly also has variable refresh rate, meaning it on the fly will adapt to whatever framerate the graphics card is able to produce. Also, I play mostly older games as well as well as Japanese games, which usually targets the Nintendo Switch for a performance baseline, resulting in games that look good without requiring that much graphics power. If some day I would like to play more demanding games, modern graphics cards support integer scaling - 4K is a perfect 4x of 1080p, so I can dial down to full HD and have the graphics card re-upscale the game with perfect, albeit chunkier pixels. I’m not really too fuzzy about these things, especially seeing the only way to remedy it would be to buy an even beefier GPU which is not going to happen anytime soon. More to come While I am almost done setting everything up, there are still a few things, I want to add to it. I’m mainly waiting for parts with most of the stuff being in the mail.

I’m waiting for a USB switch to arrive. It will essentially work as a KVM, without the video switching part (a KM?). It will allow me to switch four ports with four different computers at the touch of a button. The button pad is on its own wired remote, so I can have the USB switch behind the pegboards and the buttons in front. Anyway, the ports will be preoccupied by a keyboard, mouse, webcam and microphone.
I’m also waiting for a network switch. I’ve been upgrading to 2.5 gigabit around the flat so I figured I might as well put in a switch here. I’m contemplating putting it on a smart plug to save money and to make sure Android TV doesn’t have a constant connection set up with Google servers.
I’ll also be adding a USB-C docking station to the mix. I’ve recently gotten myself on a work-from-home scheme. I rarely use it, but it’s nice to have the option readily available, should I need it. Anyway, I have the dock, but I want to add it connect it to a USB extension lead which is in the same parcel as the switches.
Then there’s the USB-C cables I need to wire up. I had a spare 6 port USB power supply lying around, but I still need to wire everything to its current place. The holes in the Skådis are precisely too small for a USB-C lead to go through, but by using a Dremel with a sanding wheel, I have been able to get my way so far. Anyway, it will be hooked up so that the controllers, headset, mouse and wireless charger all have a constant flow of power available.
When everything is wire up, I’d like to make it a little neater behind the board. Sure, it’s out of sight, but I still would prefer to manage it should I ever need to troubleshoot or upgrade something.
Someday I might put up a secondary, low power computer up for day-to-day computing and emulation, especially after the fiasco that is Android TV. It is kind of waste of electricity running the PC just to surf the web, so something low wattage that I could keep on 24/7 would be nice. It’ll probably end up being a Raspberry Pi or a Mac Mini. That said, I can buy a lot of electricity for the prices they are charging on those things. Perhaps one days if I find a good deal.
Finally, I would love to make something more practical for my soldering equipment which is currently placed in the Hatsune Miku pencil case to the left. This is the beauty of a pegboard though - you can always move things around should you need it.

All in all, I think I have been a very productive boy this Christmas; I’ve cleaned up the most unsightly place in my flat and turned it into something a lot nicer. I find myself using it every day now, and even getting a better posture from leaning back more.