Desk Memories

This is a collage of photographs of my desk in Brienz, where I’ve spent many long hours since moving upstairs in 2005. All of the websites I’ve developed in my time here have passed across these monitors. The main screen is a aluminium Mac screen, on which I design and programme using a Mac Mini, while the (here dark) screen is connected to a second computer, used purely for debugging layouts and designs for those poor people who still stick with Windows.

I change my desktop regularly, both the colour and the background picture, to give myself a different view from time to time. Mostly, I use my own photos which remind me of lovely days I’ve had away from work. If it all gets too much, then I shrink down all the running applications and have a look at the photo, to remind me that there is a much bigger world out there.

On the right of the photo, you’ll see an unopened sandwich, which has become a standing joke amongst my work mates. Always, every day, I have a ham sandwich to accompany whichever other food I’ve chosen. I love ham sandwiches and I have been eating them every lunchtime for as many years as I can remember. Unigate Dairies, sitting in the post room with Ashley way back in 1993; Cable & Wireless (sitting in the car listening to Classic FM); Artsoft, usually in a pub garden; here, either at my desk or out by the lake.

Aside from that, there’s my trusty lone speaker, which I inherited from my predecessor and which takes a special touch to turn on, as the internal wires have always been loose. The mobile phone used for receiving newspaper competition SMS. (Silent since 2006.) Beneath the main screen, a little red helicopter from a local helicopter company: as I’m now too old to become a professional helicopter pilot, that’ll have to do.

To the left, shutters open partially to allow a view of the Brienzersee next to our offices; sufficiently open for the view, but strategically closed to stop sunlight from shining onto my screen and desk. On the filing cabinet on the right, a promotional poster for the new D.J. Antoine tour, for whom we’ve recently produced a music video, and the meeting desk at which my work friends eat their strange Swiss fare.