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I guess I can do one of these a day or so. I've collected some novelties over the years.
First up is a Curta mechanical calculator. Before electronic calculators became a thing, these were the best portable calculators in the world. Notably, they were the calculator of choice in rally car sports.
They work by a series of helical gears that act as registers. A series of internal gears and value assignment switches apply an adjustable number of incrementations to those gears, multiplying gears and the tracking gears, once per "grind." The result is output as a number on top of the device. The "clear register" function is lifting the top ring, which releases the reverse lockout on the gears and a clockwise turn on the ring then resets them to their zero state.
They were designed by Curtz Herzstark, partly before WWII and partly while he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. He had filed a patent for it in 1938, shortly before his family's manufacturey became a weapons factory. During his imprisonment, in addition to nearly starving to death, he completed his plans for manufacturing of his calculator.
It had fun names like the, "pepper grinder," and "math grenade."
15 -
My daughter made me two things:
1) She found a rock in the shape of an “alien” head. Knowing I love to research UFOs, she used nail polish to decorate the rock like an alien. And I just love it!
2) I have a reputation for being just like Charlie Brown with my luck in life. I also suck at math. Like, really, really bad. I was diagnosed with dyscalculia 22 years ago. It’s a running joke at our house such that I even have the t-shirt she depicts me wearing in this painting of “me” she did for my birthday.
2 -
A turret (white) from Portal 2
A silver RWBY logo
Two foam dice as memorabilia from my previous job
A plush 😈
Plus a collection of various things saved and hidden from the scary hands of destructive children monsters.
We used to have a portal gun (both full size and mini) and a gravity gun on the dresser. But with the advent of children, they’re safely back in their boxes. -
A box with 20 blotters of LSD, a bottle of Tawny Port, some rock climber's hand strength training clay which is great against RSI, a very undomesticated purring feline, some leatherworking tools (making a new folding case for my phone), 2 sesame bagels with cream cheese, a piece of cherry wood, two routers (one woodworking, one internet), one Ducky Horizon and one ErgoDox keyboard, two boxes of baby wipes and a bottle of formula, an expired ticket to a corona-cancelled concert, my sleeping newborn daughter wrapped in a black hoodie, a bottle of cognac, 3x 1440p displays, a chunk of chocolate, one freshly brewed cortado, a bottle of dimethylsulfoxide, 3 laptops, a TV remote, a glass of water, and one bolt which was left over from an IKEA box but I'm unsure which furniture item it belongs to.4
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Well my home office is a proper mess currently. It isn't so much an office as a corner desk in the child's nursery, but house hunting went on hold.
It features the likes of my devrant ducky, crazy aarons thinking putty, a stuffed gnu, and a galileo thermometer among other paraphernalia; also a plastic goat that screams when I push down on it. That last one is a huge help to me these last few weeks.
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Since we're limiting this to things on my desk I can't do any more deep cuts out of my calculator collection, but this one is still somewhat interesting.
The HP 32S was my friend throughout university, it replaced the 15c I used before which does not live on my desk. The notable thing about the 32s is the fact it's an RPN calculator. RPN calculators are the best way to have friends never ask to borrow your calculator. The exchange will start by them asking to use it, you saying sure, and them handing it back a few minutes later without saying a word.
There's two kinds of people in this world. People who go "wtf" in an interview when asked to create a calculator program using a stack, and people who were oddballs and for whatever reason used reverse polish notation devices.
For those not familiar, rather than entering values into the calculator in "10+10" fashion, you instead provide it a compositional set of values until an operation is provided (10,10,+) at which point it executes. The why is, this type of operation allows the calculator to more naturally process operations, and eliminates the need for parenthesis which makes the operations less error prone in practice and easier to track.
The 32s had a 4 year run before being replaced by the 32SII. In the same way using a Curta will give you a significant understanding of how radix computations and floating points work. Using an HP 32s (or any of its predecessors) will do the same for algebraic functions, because you had to program them yourself using a basic label address system that also had subroutine support.
Kids who grew up with graphing calculators don't know how good you had it 😋
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My monitor is standing on top of a tower of comic books which lift up to level with my head. Most are Tintin adventures.4
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I like to paint miniatures. So I keep a small collection of what I've done sitting on my desk. I also keep drawing stuff beside me too in case I feel like doodling.
4 -
I have many things, bust most notorious ones:
- a bottle with one of my wife's tooth
- a cactus
- a matryoshka
- a figurine with detachable bottom(from an eroge)
(cable mess can be an ornament too!)
11 -
On my desk, relics from a lost computing civilization.
I'm curious if anyone recognizes what these are.
I'll post what they are later today if nobody knows.
14 -
A bunch of pictures of friends, a train dev duck, a wooden train toy, a pair of demon horns, a tiny hand1
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I have a hand thrown ceramic mug, a scratchpad, and a kuru toga mechanical pencil. I keep a plant when my desk is large enough. Less is better for me.4
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Besides assorted craft materials and PC my desk has a dual purpose crocheted rubber duck: it serves as a pin cushion and my debugging friend! I made him and he has lived there since my first year of university.
I also keep a mug from my university, scented candles, notepad and pen (for all my tech savvy-ness, quick notes are still better handwritten) and whatever crafty project I'm working on.
My desk is honestly a mess (I have to clear it ~three times a week to have any space to work on) but they say creative people have messy workstations so I take my inability to keep an orderly environment as an expression of my creativity.1 -
Nothing fun/artsy.
Everything there is functionally relevant. (sticky notes, one pen, reading lamp)
I abso-fucking-lutely hate clutter, plus, a clean desk inspires me to innovate/create.2 -
I no at all into work desk deco so my desk have cables and more cables only. But some years back boss borrowed me his PSP and I played Silent Hill games there and I really liked it and I told him so. Then my birthday he gave to me this. I think I searched before where this from but I can not find it online. It came also with box when he give to me and Silent Hill soundtrack CD and art books
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None...
My work desk is ordered chaos. It's an unspectacular white desk.
To the left paper for taking notices... And a collection of notes highly unordered.
In the top left corner of the desk the router.
Middle (front to back): Color sorted post it's with my backlog and all the stuff that I need to keep track off.
Keyboard, Monitor
Right (front to back): mailboxthingy, post it block, utensilo (made of bamboo)
That's the working desk. Like the "shining knight in armor"....
Next to the working desk is the play desk, a large kitchen table with a 5mm thick black rubber (keep your dirty thoughts for yourself ;)) as insulation and scratch prevention.
There is usually utter chaos.
Banana PI R2, test router, old hardware, hardware storage cabinet, screw and other small part cabinet....
And to the right is a large chest of drawers where I cram everything in that doesn't belong anywhere.
I'm pretty boring I guess.
Except you are kinky for old hardware and lots of weird stuff noone uses nowadays...
Then you're in heaven I guess.1 -
cables. lots of cables. also, an ethernet switch.
But the toys I have (and other ppl keep burrowing) is a dalek, tardis minuatures - about 6cm Height (2.1"), and lvl 5/6 hanayama metal puzzles.
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A monitor
A lamp
A chinese pocket watch
A box with figurines, pens and die for DnD.
A box of pendrives
Ergo mouse
BT Headset
Guts of a laptop
Two identical bottles, one full of vodka, the other water
Five coffee cups
Thomas the cockroach in a sealed bottle. I found him today and I'm waiting for him to suffocate because he can fly and he's 6cm so I'm not gonna risk letting him out by opening the bottle until he's definitely dead.2 -
Well I like to keep my room clean so I don't really have anything on my desk, except WATER, I have like 5 big bottles of water so that I remember to drink, and always have enough
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Halo and COD Megabloks or whatever the fuck they've rebranded as now figurines, and a few fidget toys.2
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I have a Rubik’s cube that I solve when I need to clear my mind. That thing passes time SERIOUSLY well.2
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I just have this guy on my desk. And every single time I look at him rick shouts " I'm Pickle Rick"!
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I got a new formula 1 model of one of my favorite racers (Sebastian Vettel)
It looks so great on my desk
5 -
Rubik's cube, fidget cube, pipelike fidget toy, a bunch of happy meal toys, another bunch of Kinder egg toys, BB8 paper cup from ANA airplane..collection of lighters & tons of paper notebooks - doodles & my handwriting are each a very rare and unique art form noone quite understands.. 🤣🤣🤣
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I like my desk clean. Just copy, pen, water bottle, some eatables. sorry no toys, arts blha blha..3
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Rubics cube, standard format and also another one that changes cube shape (mirror cube) but most of the time just i don't have toys or stuff, just a bunch of notebooks and books all over the place.
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[wk224 - stuff on my desk]
Cant post a picture because the office is closed again, but a ceramic cat chopstick holder from tokio, a harry potter mug, some 3d printed hex boxes for sd cards and usb sticks. -
Depends on which desk we're talking about...
Office desk: an empty can, a tophat well as a demo and some Russian paracetamol I found from a pocket of my winter coat.
Home Office #1 desk: the keyboard for another computer, a plant, a bunch of magazines and newspapers belonging to someone else, a roll of kitchen paper, someone else's meds, a cup of cookies, another cup of small tomatoes, a Swiss army knife, a bike computer and a tablet.
Home Office #2 desk: wife's laptop, a bunch of chargers for a myriad of devices, a Kindle, some envelopes full of stickers, others with bills, a lot of random crap, and usually when I'm at the desk, one or two purring felines -
Books ( stieg larsson, randall munroe, ...), and very old first aid kit,, 2 handmade ludo games, several keyboards, two ood screens, two notebooks, several harddrives and more stuff that should go to recycling.
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Lots of thumb drives. My laptop used to not have much storage and most of my files would be on those thumb drives.
My first one was 8GB, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, now 256.
Each time I got a new one I would copy the old files to it, kinda like these crabs https://youtube.com/watch/...
All of them are in a little box on my desk right now, I use the old ones for backups. I replaced the laptop's hard drive a few months ago so now I'm less dependent on thumb drives :)2 -
Not much, honestly! My "desk" is actually a really shallow IKEA shelf - for a while I had a small collection of game figurines, bobbleheads and snowglobes lined up next to and on the base of my monitor stand, but more recently I had to make room for a Raspberry Pi, emergency bottle of HP Sauce and a drinks coaster.
My desk is tiny. Also I'm almost out of HP Sauce, please send help. -
I have 4 pencils 1 black pen a sharpie marker an 14 year old book on web dev because its the only one my school library had an really shitty school iPad which is my only computer that i somehow managed to teach myself multiple programming language's with an developed my love for code using nothing but an online IDE and whatever i could find online i also have two marines recruiting pan-flits and a business card for the local Air Force
recruiting office an old worn out deck of cards an the antenna from an old baofeng uv-5r ham radio that i had modified which my mom decided to throw away because "it looked like trash" a few months ago even tho it still worked perfectly ...............
Pretty boring desk3 -
nothing interesting really I kinda like minimalism but I keep a rubik's cube, a wooden puzzle and a dice on my other desktop
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