Scott’s New Office × The Levelup Lodge

Monday. Monday. Monday.

Open wide dev fans, get ready to stuff your face with JavaScript, CSS, node modules, barbecue tips, get workflows, breakdancing, soft skill, web development, the hastiest, the craziest, the tastiest web development treats coming again hot. Here is Wes Barracuda

Boss and Scott

CSD.

Welcome to Syntax.

On this Monday a hasty treat. We are gonna be talking about the LevelUp Lodge, the, the Syntex Scott office, the, I don't even know what else I could come up with here, but it's we're gonna be talking about my office and the stuff I have in my office, the way it's set up, The way it's configured, why I made some of the choices I made, and just all about it because this thing kicks butt now, and it's getting better all the time. So my name is Scott Talisky. I'm a developer from love I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me, as always, is Wes Bos.

Hey. I'm excited to hear about your office. So you've been moved in for, what, like, 8 months now? Yeah. Just about. And, you know, it's funny because my office

Kind of took the back seat for all of the house projects because it's just like I gotta I gotta do so many other things in the house. I gotta, you know, spend all this time. In fact, it. This weekend, I finally got to do a lot of yard work time, which is something that I I've missed the past couple of weekends.

So, You know, there's it's just like there's so many projects. And at the end of the day, my office always ends up getting the big screw job. Yeah.

Yeah. I am. We just bought a house as well. We're not moved in yet, but I've been going down the rabbit hole of Figuring out what desk legs to get and what kind of desk I want, and the I have to soundproof it so the the walls are open.

So I'm just thinking about, like, what do I want to run? And you had this great idea of running X LR into the ceiling. And now I'm thinking, like, should I run Should I run plugs in the ceiling so that I could run I could put, like, a softbox but hang it from the ceiling?

There's so many ideas running through my head. Yes. So many ideas. Yeah. Those are all great ideas too because I I actually wish that I mean, the this office for me is Part of the garage. So to give you an idea about, like, how our house is set up, we have a house in Denver. It's very common to have a detached garage in an alleyway. It. So we have a detached garage in the alleyway.

The previous owners, the not even the previous owners, but the previous previous owners Decided to take this and turn it into some sort of a workspace.

Now from what I understand, they built This addition onto the garage to be part of the garage as his, like, I think he was doing even, like, some sort of, Like, actual working. Like like like, actually non digital working. I don't know what he was doing in here, to be honest. But the previous owner it. Was like an accountant and and drywalled it and turned it all fancy and got some fancy plank flooring in here and stuff. So, He turned it into a nice little office for an accountant or what would be me. So when we were looking at this house, it it was really a Standout feature for me especially as somebody who's, does audio recording for a living just that I could have my own oasis to be out in record and is the best.

Yeah. In our previous house was a 100 year old house with, pane glass windows. Or is it plate plate glass or pane glass? I never know what the It's a pane. I can tell you that. It. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But they're the the wavy kind of ancient windows that just let in any sort of sound. The doors were all ancient, And, there's absolutely nothing I could have possibly done to make that room soundproof. In fact, over COVID, You know you even putting the kids in the basement while I record you could still hear them. So for me it was just such a giant problem to be able to Record whenever I wanted to. So having this sort of little oasis for me to record in has just been a giant, giant productivity boost.

It. It's not soundproof, Wes. In case you're wondering it is not soundproofed.

It is just a little little building here but it has modern windows, modern door and it's all sealed. It. So, therefore, it does in fact feel like it's quite a bit quieter.

So it yeah. My office that the cottage is not soundproof either. And it but it's not an issue because you're not sharing walls with anyone.

Yeah, right? I share a wall with the garage. So only if somebody's coming or going do I get like a garage door and that's it. Yeah. The only thing for me at the cottage is that sometimes the kids are playing side like a swing set. And it's it's not the end of the world. The the if my, like, recording were to overlap, that is not the end of the world. But. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it down. But let's talk about our sponsors before we get too further in.

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I deployed on Friday. Guess how many times I did it. I did it twice. Even though there was no problems with the 1st deploy, I just added to deploy something else. I said, you know what? I did one. It was fine. I'm gonna do another one. Watch me do it. Crazy. You're so crazy. Granted I did this early. I did it At, like, 9 in the morning, 10 in the morning, so I had all day just in case, just in case something went down. It wasn't at 4 o'clock on a Friday. So, but you know what? Sentry gives me the confidence to be able to do stuff like that because I could check my Sentry and just leave it open all day and say, hey. If if something up with is up with one of these deploys, I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna find out early and often, and I'm going to see it in my Sentry dashboard. And I'm gonna be able to take care of it before the weekend hits, and then I am unable us. To, do so without kids yelling in my ear about it. So yeah. So Sentry, gives me that confidence To track all of my errors and exceptions that tie them to releases, users, browsers, all that and more, head on over to century. Io. Use the coupon code tasty treat, all one word, all lowercase, and you'll get it. 14 days, and you'll get 2 months for free, not 14 days. So thank you so much for Century for sponsoring. Alright. Let's get into it. Tell me about your your full what do you call it? LevelUp Lodge. Tell me about it. Yeah. LevelUp Lodge. You know, it I don't have an official sign yet, so I gotta get that. And and one thing I didn't mention off the jump is that I got a mini split back here. You can kinda see it in some of my videos directly above my head. So, I got I have AC and heat in here, which has been a big awesome thing during the winter when my office is freezing or soon to be when my office is super hot in the hot Denver summer here. So good. Can we talk about those mini splits for a second? Because I put 1 in mine. Yeah. And

I.

It heats as well. Your heats as well, right? Mhmm.

Yeah. So these things are amazing.

It heats Yeah. Like I came in, flipped it on in, like, the minus 20 degrees Celsius, And that thing was had my office cooking in, like, I don't know, 10 minutes or so. Took a little longer for the chair and stuff to warm up, but, unreal.

And it would stop every couple of hours and defrost itself because the way a heat pump it go Shout out to Technology Connections YouTube channel! He's got, like, 3 or 4 videos on heat pumps, and he explains how heat pumps work. And now it's got me thinking like, maybe maybe I need a heat pump for a new house to set up a furnace, you know?

Yeah. I don't I don't know anything about heat pumps. I don't know. It's a thing. I know it's like a thing in electric cars, but that's all I know about. It's the opposite of a so Essentially what it does is the air conditioning

will, run a compressor and put the hot air outside and the cold air inside, and then when it gets cold it does the opposite it just essentially air conditions the outdoors and pumps that hot air into your

okay into your office interesting

interesting pretty pretty neat

pretty neat yeah So okay. Well, let's get into I have this broken up into different different topics. We can talk about lighting, the deck, sound, tech stuff, miscellaneous stuff. It. I have, lighting is pretty good in here. In fact, Wes, is is looking at me right now on camera. And it it is one aspect My office is that my camera is really stinking good in low light. I have a Sony a 73. It's a mirrorless camera. It's amazing in low light.

I don't even have my it. Lights on. I don't even have the cans on in my my office. I have 1 somewhat decent sized window. It's not a massive window, and then I have a door with a window on Right in front of me.

So it's getting a little bit of natural light in here. But for the most part, this room is pretty dark, and it looks pretty decent on on on video right now. So, it. Many of these lights I bought from my old office, which didn't like, it got good light, but the light was right in my glasses reflection side. So Those of you who do don't do a lot of video recording or those of you who don't have glasses, you might not realize that anytime light bounces off your glasses, it Creates a reflection. Like, right now, even the computer screen is a reflection on my glasses. So in my old office, I had these 2 great windows for natural light, but they just happen to be Just that if I had either of them open while I was doing my audio recordings or my video recordings, you wouldn't be able to see my eyes. I'd look like, Gendo Ikari or something. I have these, like, shiny glasses eyes. And so because of that, I never got to use all that wonderful natural light, And I I certainly couldn't do it without my glasses. I need these glasses.

I don't really like contacts. So, either way, I bought a whole bunch of lights, And I don't actually end up using them that much though. The light I end up using in here the most, and I do end up tuning it a little bit. I I point 1 light at the ceiling to get that sweet White reflection bouncing. Just fill the light off. I have 3 LED, panels. So one of them is this nee er one. See a Ne

near. Neewer. Neewer. Neewer.

That that

this one's nice because it has it.

Both, like, warm tones and cool tones in it, and you can control them separately. So I'll typically use that one to bounce off my face it. To give my my skin a little bit, cooler or no warmer temperature. And then I have 1 light that I've almost now just used as a backlight to go against my backdrop and then I have one that I'll point at the ceiling to sort of fill the room with more light with really intense light And I don't have any of them on right now, but I will when I'm doing recording just because I can tune it all quite a bit. The lighting does make a big difference, but, this camera is really super good in low light. It. Now one thing I did add to this lighting setup in this office that I did not have in my other one. In my other office, you really couldn't get into the office. It was a small little room, And you walked into the door, you could basically only walk behind my desk. So I didn't have to worry about kids bumping off the lights or anything like that. But, it. I have had my lights hit the ground a couple of times in this new office because they're big tall lights. They're in the middle of the floor, And they're all over the place so I bought some, studio sandbags for these things. So there's these big yellow, nylon bags that you fill with sand Then you put over the stands, and now my stands don't fall over anymore. Thank goodness. That's You're not playing cornhole with those, are you? It. Not playing cornhole with them.

They they are massive, so they would, they would be very difficult. I'm also terrible at cornhole. So, anybody, if you ever get into an environment where I'm there and a court whole bull board is there and you wanna challenge me, please do so and Watch as I just get destroyed in utter humiliation. I'm I'm for some reason, I'm really bad at it. I don't know why. I'm I'm I'm I would have go as far to say I'm very good it at it or at least think I'm very good at it. We've we've got a set at our cottage, and I I love playing with our kids. Love it too. Yeah. Courtney and I are both not good at it. Although, she might she might say that she's better. I don't think she is.

But we were we were gonna get some boards, and And I kid you not. We are gonna get some boards at the house just so we could both practice. So that way, next time we played with some people that we wouldn't get destroyed like we always do.

So she she's she's we're both, like, very competitive people. She's, like, very ultra competitive. I'm ultra competitive. So, like, Losing all the time is not great for us. We we would probably really relish in being able to destroy some people in court hall. Oh, man. Awesome.

Alright. Let's talk about the desk. Desk. Tell me about your desk. What's up with this desk? So I've had this desk for a little bit, but it's got gotten supercharged at this house because I've I've really gotten the setup dialed in dialed in. So, basically, it's a giant IKEA countertop. It's 72 inches wide. It's a Kirlby, And it's it's fine what it is. It's like a veneer.

It looks like it's a solid piece of wood, but it's a veneered wood surface. So it's, you know, it's fine. Whatever.

But it looks nice. That's all that matters for me.

Looks nice, and I I treat it well. So, but, yeah, I I have this desk. It is a giant Carl b countertop sitting on top of it. Fully Jarvis legs, which are the standing desk legs. They go down really low, get up really high, and they have one of those preprogrammed settings Where I can say 1, 2, 3, 4 on the settings. My one setting is for sitting. My 2 setting is for standing. My 3 setting is for it. Doing the front splits at my desk and the 4 is for my treadmill.

And so I have a treadmill underneath my desk that we'll talk about a little bit too. I also have a a is it a a 3 3 vertical I don't know what you call the vertical in like a studio racks

oh. I have u.

3 u.

U. Yeah. U is how they Oh, it's actually Oh, it's a 4 u rack. I thought it was a 3 u. It's a 4 u rack that's meant it. To actually be installed on the wall, like, on the side sideways on a wall for, like you would start install yourself side stuff Sideways. I don't know why you would do that, but I guess people put them in closets that way. So, I installed it the opposite way. I installed it upside down hanging underneath my desk it. So that it's it's kind of where my knees are, but to the side so that I can have all my my gadgets and stuff to the direct left of me and underneath my desk, get that, PrimeDesk real estate, and not have to have, like, a well, the cool thing is since this is a standing desk, it's always moving with my desk, which is the big challenge. You you wanna kinda strap as much stuff to your desk as possible with the standing desk especially if you're going up and down a lot because you don't want cables and whatever coming up and down so I really try to minimize the amount of cables coming up and down. That's what I'm going through right now, is that I'm thinking about

doing a a huge sit stand desk at my new office. Yeah. And you have to have, like, everything either attached to your desk or to the wall and that your your monitors can move.

So I actually went and found a photo of how you had that because I've been talking to the Guys at this this company called Desk House.

Oh, like h a u s. And they're from they're from Holland, Michigan.

And they make a they make a sit stand desks that can support 600 pounds Most of them can support like like 15,200.

Yeah. And I was, like, asking on Twitter, like, what's the, like, most beefy desk that doesn't wobble a single millimeter? And someone somebody said this desk house because I'm gonna get, like, a dining room table and put that on legs, I think. No. No. I was gonna say mine doesn't wobble at all,

and it and maybe it's just how I have it set up. Mine's also a tank. So, like, when you say This is a really a good one. The fully what? Jarvis.

Jarvis. That's what a lot of people are recommending. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, definitely don't get the IKEA ones because I saw you You posted about the IKEA ones or you were in IKEA looking. Those were in IKEA. One was at the bay,

which is a department store and another one was at Mobileia, and they were awful. And I think that they were put together poorly because, like, I was like, A lot of people are like, I have the IKEA. There's a couple levels of IKEA and the most expensive IKEA one has Triangles on the bottom, which makes sense.

The one I'm looking at just has 4 posts instead of 2. I think that will help. But a lot of people also said once you put your gear on it, it becomes more sturdy because it's heavier. And I think that's probably plus, like, you get People like me walking around shaking everything in the department store. It doesn't help.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's probably loose and then a little bit, It's it's been it's been shook. You know, it's funny because you you said that, you know, that you're the one that you're looking at holds a ton, and mine is probably just at the limit. Because, Honestly, if I put my finger on the top of the desk and I push down with 1 finger, I can get it to be like, nope. I'm not going up. Oh, really? I I I, Yeah. I don't know if it's like I think there is some sort of resistance mechanism in these where, like, if there if it meets a certain amount of resistance, it will, Quit. It will will not try to do it. But, I mean, I have a ton of stuff on this desk. I have in fact, I'll I'll Talk everything about I have everything mounted to my desk. I have a, my my video my video camera is mounted to my desk. My microphone's mounted to my desk. My monitor my giant Apple monitor is mounted to my desk. I have both of my studio monitor speakers on top of my desk And then I have all of my audio gear, my, compressors and all that stuff mounted to the underside of my desk. So I have a ton of stuff on this desk weighing it down.

So maybe that's a big component of it. I was talking to the guys from Desk House and they say the motors, Like the motors have amperage cutoffs, which if they're pulling, the more the harder a motor has to work, the more amperage it pulls from, like the wall plug. Right.

And at a certain point, it says this is too much, and it will stop, which is good. Otherwise, you fry your motor. Right? Yeah. I think that too. I'm also sure I'm sure it's like a safety thing too because if it's going if the there's There's somebody underneath the desk, and it's going down and it hits resistance. Yeah. Right? It has to be able to stop.

So okay. Let's get into my audio stuff because, you know, obviously, I sound good. My audio is good.

So what's up with my audio gear? I have the M Audio b x eights. They're my studio monitors. They're my speakers. I've had them forever. I used to have some Alesis ones that were really nice but then they just a capacitor blew in them and, They're kind of dangerous because they're powered, so I don't want to get into

the speaker. So I just tossed them at that point. Oh, yeah. And I had them for a decent amount of time. How do you plug those? I was looking at that because I was listening to some music without my headphones on the other day. And I was like, oh, it'd be nice to have like a set of it. Instead of just my laptop. Like, how do you plug those into your computer?

So okay. It's actually kind of an interesting setup. So, maybe I'll Get into that after I talk about the sound panels, but it is an interesting setup. So I have, to to make my office sound nice, I have, Eleven high density sound panels which, in as opposed to like like foam squares or something like this. This is like legitimate, it. Thick insulation rock wool stuff to prevent sound. I have a giant bass trap in front of me. I have 4 corner bass traps. I have a cloud ceiling so I have 2 of them on the ceiling and then I have 4 of them on, or 2 of them on either side of me and they're all installed on the walls. See it. They look like these giant black, cloth pictures essentially but they're thick. They're about, half a foot or maybe even a little bit more than that thick and it's just straight up pull on insulation. And I kid you not. Like, the moment I put them into this room, it went from being an echo fest to being, like, just You could, you know, hear a pin drop in here. It's so quiet when you walk into this this room now. And, Wes, I got my My latest sound addition here for the Reaver is I got a couch.

We ordered a couch in 8 months ago, and it finally showed up. So I got our old crappy IKEA couch. Let me tell you. The dogs love it. The dogs had no no place to be in here when I was in here with the the dogs, and now they've got they have a couch to lay on. So,

But the couch is a big reverb suck too because it's just a lot of padding. So Yeah. Office is sounding good now. I think one thing we should know is that When I've been doing research on soundproofing, and there seems to be a lot of, like, misconception between those sound squares being soundproofing.

And so there's a difference between, like, What you've done is acoustical treatment, which is there is hard surfaces in your room and those sound waves bounce off and that causes Echo. Right? Yeah. And by putting up these, sound panels, it just, like, sucks all those up instead of having to bounce around.

And it's amazing how, like, my parents have a kitchen. And if you sit in 1 chair in the corner of the kitchen And you talk. There's just this, like, like, very weird vibration that happens as you're talking. And it just is so off putting. Like, you can't I can't even sit there and eat dinner. And it's it's amazing. Once you go into a room that is well padded and you're talking like, oh, that's it. Something about this room feels nice and that's what that is. Yeah. And next time you're in a,

a restaurant, look at the Ceiling. You'll see these things. They're on the ceiling. They'll put them on the ceiling in these places because it reduces, like, the overall noise in a room because it's reducing all those reflections.

Right. Your your treatment? I I noticed it everywhere I go now.

It's funny. One of the schools we were were touring, we were touring our local schools. It. The kids' lunchroom was in, like, a basement, which was just like a concrete box in the basement, and and they just, like, Build that room with these sound panels because, otherwise, I'm sure that would be like a nightmare with all those kids screaming and the reverb and the reflections everywhere.

It. If you're if you're looking at at, like, actually, soundproofing things, you know, the my my buddy who's an audio engineer always talks about how, You know if air can get through there then sound can get through there so like yeah you kind of find the areas it. And then, like, a door sweep makes a big difference if you have a a door or a hollow door. I'll never forget that guy, was renting an apartment, And he wanted a studio. He drilled a hole in the door and filled it with sand in a rental.

And I was like I was like, oh, you're the the landlord's gonna kill you. He's like, I made it better. It's quiet now.

I'm just like, oh my god there. That's so that's something you should be doing.

This is gonna rip the door off the hinges.

Oh, man. But, yeah, I I am going to be soundproofing my office as well because it is in the basement.

I'll talk about it. Essentially, I've talked to a couple a couple of people who are like previous engineers, and now developers reached out and they really helped me. Basically, it's like double drywall, the stuff called green glue in between the drywall, which is like, apparently, you got to be thinking about different types of sound waves and decoupling Like you told me one time your friend says the only way you could soundproof your old office is if you built a room inside of your room, which is 100% decoupled it from because That's the thing about sound is that it's a lot of it is vibration as well. So I'm going to be I bought a drywall lift the other day. I'm not going to be doing all the drywall at the house, but I'm going to be doing the soundproofing myself.

Sick. I'm so deep in it. I'm really excited to have a nice quiet space. Make sure one thing you think about when you're planning all of this too is, like, air because if it's soundproof, it's kind of airproof and you can it. You could build yourself a tight tight little airproof box that, suffocates you. You gotta have some sort of, like, system for getting air in and out that is Also quiet. There is a,

event and a return in there. And But that's, like, a downside as well. Right. Those are vectors for sound. Those are those are huge vectors for sound, so I'm not sure I have to get in the space yet, but I'm I'm pretty excited about doing that. Yeah, man. Sounds a whole thing.

Alright. Let's talk about some of my tech stuff. I'll tell you how my my speakers are set up. So I have this this number 1, with a bullet here is the Nero monitor controller so when I have my speakers here which are my studio monitors those are run into the Nero monitor controller My headphones run into the Nero monitor controller.

My audio from my computer run into the Nero. And so this Nero is Basically, like a control surface you'd find them in a in recording studios. And I have a big knob that turns my main speakers it. That, turns on the the the main big speakers, and then I have a smaller one for my headphones, and then I have a subwoofer in here as well That I can all toggle and tune separately.

And so I can I can have inputs coming in from various places whether it's a turntable or my computer or Bluetooth or whatever and then they they all kind of end up is it ends up being like a mixer? Right? Like, it's almost like a headphone mixer is what you occasionally hear these things being called.

So, basically anytime the audio is coming in or out of my computer it goes into my Scarlett first which is the digital to analog converter analog to digital converter that goes into my computer so my audio is always run through that So it goes Thunderbolt to my CalDigit, which is the hub, which then goes to the Scarlett, which then goes to the Nero, which then goes to my speakers. It. Love it. Right? It's, it's I used to have this, West, you you you would like this. I had, like this Nero is stupid expensive for what it does too, and I hate it. I hate the how much it cost, but I used to have this Samson, headphone amp that was, like, $49.

And it was, like, the best thing ever, and it died on me. And I I couldn't figure it out. I'm I'm not Skilled enough to fix it. So, yeah, I had to toss it. They didn't they didn't make any more. And yeah. So I had to get this new one.

You can't just plug the The speakers can't just go directly into the headphone port on your laptop or your cal digit because they know they could Like they don't need an amp in between them? Okay. These are powered. So the these have the amp built into them. Yeah.

Okay. Then you don't get that separate control. Like what's really nice, Wes, is that I can, tune my headphones and the speakers separately, to based on where where I want everything and and then Turn the sub on or off or any of that sort of stuff. So it gives me more control over how I have it all set up. It's not necessary, but it it gives you more control.

It. I I used to have it set up the way you you were talking about them, but I'm always unplugging and plugging things in, and now I can just have it set up. I have a a cloud lifter For my microphone which is like a preamp that boosts my signal I have a d b 286, s which is the Compressor, gate, all that stuff for my audio which makes it sound good and and pulls out all the background noise which of of course there isn't in now because my room's tuned. I have the Scarlett 2i2 for the audio digital conversion I have the CalDigit 3 t for my dock.

I'm currently wearing these TS3 plus

You're you're missing letters on everything you're saying. Dpx 286s.

Okay the it's in the show notes. It's in the show notes. It.

And then I have the Audis LCD one headphones. They're open back, which I should have not gotten open back headphones because they bleed into the microphone, but It sounds good. What does open back mean? It means that there's there's closed back headphones and there's open back headphones.

So if your headphones have a hard shell back on them that means there's no audio getting out of the back of the headphones and it all Comes in to your ears. With these, it's you can't you maybe I don't know if you can see it. It's like a grading in audios. Literally, you could hear what I'm listening to outside of the headphones.

Yeah. Okay. Is that so that people

can talk to you while you have them on? No. It's so it it it has to it, like, tunes the sound. It makes it feel a little bit more open and more natural, it. But Okay. There's some, like, trade offs there.

And that these are great headphones. Don't get me wrong. The my favorite thing about them, Wes, is that they have a These the the ears come you know, you can pull out each ear individually.

But get this, if I pull out the cord from the left ear and put it into the right ear, the audio signal the headphones are smart enough to know that the left side is still the left side and the right side is still the right side. Wow. I don't know how they do that, but they do that.

Yeah. That's a good question. That work? Who knows? But it sure does. I've never had any headphones that do that. Usually, it. If you goof up the the cable into which one or whatever, it it switches the the line, so that's nice. And then, last thing on my tech stuff, if I said, like, I had my cameras, the Sony a 7, 3. It's incredible. It's the best camera ever, and I love it very much.

You didn't tell us about your

monitor. My monitor is the fancy Apple monitor. What is this thing called? It's like the pro Display Max Ultra thing. I don't even know what this thing is. It's too expensive as is what it is.

And it's good. It's a great monitor. Yeah. Yeah. It's 6 k.

6 k. It couldn't be any better. It couldn't look any nicer. Is it worth the money? Probably not.

But at the end of the day, we got write offs and stuff we gotta we gotta have. Gotta write it off. Yeah. Gotta write it off. I needed I need some, expenses, some, hardware expenses. So and, also, I I broke my old monitor. You know, I'm, like, so careful with all my tech stuff, and we we had just finished moving into this house. It. It was seriously the last load of stuff moving into this house, and I popped my wife's trunk open. And then my my fancy ultra wide, 38 inches monitor just came flying out. Oh. He crashed into the ground. I was just like, we just moved everything so successfully, and then I destroyed my monitor and the last load of stuff coming into the house. I couldn't believe it. So do you miss having a wide monitor? Because I'm sitting here with my 34 or 32 inches 34 or whatever.

And every time I see somebody with one of those ultra wides, I'm like, If I could just get a high DPI ultrawide that was, like, not a cost of a Honda Civic.

Let me tell you why I don't miss it, because I really loved the ultra wide. I loved the ultra wide. But let me tell you why I don't I don't miss it. This Apple monitor, Wes, Yeah. 16 by 9. Perfect. 16 by 9 aspect ratio, meaning that I don't have to I don't have to fiddle with the the when I'm doing screen recordings, For those of you who don't know, 16 by 9 is, like, the standard aspect ratio for 4 k.

And so I can just record my entire screen without having to worry about it. And, honestly, That right there is is is maybe not worth the price of admission, but it is, like, one of those things that, like, greatly improves my recording time every single day. It. Takes 1 more thing that I could possibly mess up at the beginning of my recording out of it because there's nothing worse than finishing a recording and then finding out your Your aspect ratio was off or you recorded something weird. Honestly, there's those things may seem silly. And people ask us this all the time, like, why are you buying all this Hardware equipment when you could be doing it all like virtually and digitally.

And the answer to that is that we just want it to be set up And the line in is is the best quality it can be, and there's no fussing with it after the fact. And, like, it just works. And, like, there's one more thing where you don't have to crop your screen or or set up your windows appropriately. It just goes. Right? And that that those things are huge for us. The less v s t's or it. Audio plugins or video plugins or anything you have to use, the better the end product's gonna be. You want clean signals. You want good video. You want good audio. You want all that stuff.

It. Alright. Last little bit. I have some miscellaneous stuff. I have a, treadmill underneath my desk, which I thought was going to be ridiculous.

I got this for my birthday this year. This is my birthday present. It was a treadmill for under my desk. I gotta get some steps in. I just said, hey. You know, I'm not getting enough steps in. I I feel like I'm I'm missing some opportunities there, it. And I I've just been become more sedentary lately. So I, got this treadmill. It's, like, 299 And I I can pop up my desk and I can walk while working. And let me tell you, I thought this thing would be a nightmare to work with, but I find myself being able to work for 2 to 3 hours at a time. Maybe, like, maybe not 2 to 3. Maybe 1 to 2 hours while walking on the treadmill.

It. The only problem that I've had with it is the one time I didn't wear socks, and I, like, literally wore my feet raw walking on this thing. But It's funny because my buddy was like, by the way, just don't walk on it without shoes or socks. You'll you'll regret it. And then I was like, I'm currently regretting that I just did that. It. But either way, I can get, like, 300 calories burned just walking on this thing while answering emails. And you would think that it would be a big bother, but it's really not a bother at all. I I find myself being able to walk on it for a long periods of times without even noticing that I'm walking on it.

I also have some big old hunkin' knee pads, like some big thick foam padding that I use to stretch. So I do like my, like, front splits or my lunges and stuff underneath my desk.

And I have some hand stand blocks in here that'll pop up and do some handstands on when I'm bored, because sometimes you you gotta get the blood moving a little bit. Do you do you Sorry. Let me cut you there. Do you have one of these standing mats that has, like, all the bumps and grips and balls on it? I do. What do you think of that? I'm so I'm I've for everyone listening, I've never oh, yeah. So it's just a nice big square. Yeah. I have one that you would like, In the Amazon I'll I'll link you to the one that I have, but the Amazon Okay. Thing that I have shows that being used in, like, a kitchen or anything like that. Yeah. Fatigue, man, helps. Yes. It definitely helps when you stand flat foot for a long time on a hard surface.

It's no good. So this definitely makes it, you fatigue way less. I've been looking at those and the ones that have, like,

bumps and stuff on them so you can, like, it. Put your foot because, like, I I have a, lacrosse ball, and sometimes I put my foot on that. It feels so good.

I think it'd be cool to get in a mat. Like, I got lacrosse balls around the house, but not in here. It. My kids to huck the lacrosse balls across the house. Those things are, like, £5. Oh, they weigh so much. My kids love throwing them. In in Brooklyn, I don't know where she learned how to throw, but that little 3 year old, she can throw a ball like nothing. She's Got an arm on her? She's got an arm on her. I don't know where she got that. Not for me. Last thing I'll talk about is I have 4 rare Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie posters in my office that are like my pride and joys here, that they hung in I don't know where they hung it. Was it in Hong Kong or China? These are Hong Kong films.

But they're they're for my 4 films that I really love, Buddha's Palm, Human Lanterns, Man of Iron, and the Blood Brothers, The Shaw Brothers films, it's a big hobby of mine was watching these. I have, you know, seen over, like, 200 of these films. So I have these these 44 posters. I got them on eBay, And, some of them are pretty rare, and I'm pretty psyched about them. Although they're they're currently living these really janky frames from Target that I I gotta get some nice fancy frames that that match the Quality of these cool posters, frames.

Can we talk about how expensive frames are? Why are frames so expensive? You ever get something framed and it's like like

at $6,000. That's like the whole thing. It's like, I don't wanna pay to get these framed with a capital you know, take them in to get them framed. But then again, like, if you go to the store to buy a frame, you're just like, Here's a bunch of, dog s h I t options of Yeah. They're not the right size. Yeah. Who knows what? Yeah. These these are, like, These are, you know, from Hong Kong films that I don't know if they're a standard size or anything like that there yeah.

Nothing ever fits. I, I bought a bunch of like framing oak the other day. I was at like a like a restore with these like Habitat for Humanity restores, and they sell like building material.

They had all this, like, like wood to make frames for super cheap. And I was like, Oh, I got a miter saw. I'm going to learn how to make frames.

It's always like, I want to frame that. And it's like, okay, like, okay, we spent, like, $10 on this piece of art. Now, how much is it going to cost to buy a frame for it? Like, $600.

But then when you get the glass for that, you get glass cut. We, that's my little known thing is that go to a glass store. We a couple of days ago. No, a couple of months ago, Poppy broke a frame, at our house and it just cracked the glass.

And there's a there's a glass place literally a 1 street over. So I called them and said, hey, you cut me a glass. You just measure the inside size and you say, give me in, like, 2, 3 millimeter, however big.

And they had it ready and, like, I'm not lying. Within 20 minutes of her breaking it, it was fixed and back on the wall.

It was, I don't know, $20 for,

a I don't know if they could buy 3 glass doors near me. Oh, for sure. Every everywhere has a glass door. Like, what happens if your window breaks? If you Google Denver Glass stores, you're going to get something different. You're going to get, like, bongs and stuff.

Yeah. You have to, like, Glacier or something. But, man, that's people always think, oh, the glass broke. That thing is garbage.

It is very affordable.

Glass. We had a desk once for my wife made out of an old door,

and we just got a huge piece of glass cut for the top. We had it tempered, and it was like a $200 or something like that. Okay. The whole yeah. I found here the Glass Guru, which that actually sounds like a, a bong shop, but it's not. It is actually a Glass custom oh yeah, we can get some glass for our gym that's what we need. Oh like some mirrors or Yeah. Yeah. It. They do mirrors too. Same stuff. Yeah. That's what I'm seeing. That's what I'm seeing there. Alright. Cool. Well, that's it. This is my desk. If you have any questions about it, I gotta take some fancy photos, it. After I get the cape I have, like, a little basket for hiding the cables, but, like, I gotta recable everything. What I gotta do is I gotta unplug everything and then spend An hour replugging it back in and zip tying it and putting cable ties on it. It looks like a freaking day. Yeah. Because it's it's It's ugly right now. It's functional, but ugly. So. Yeah. All right. Well, by the time this goes live, Scott will post a photo on Instagram. That's your desk photo. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I'm I'm really stoked to hear that you got that all set up. It's I just love talking about offices. We've done a couple of these episodes of 4. So it. Oh, yeah. And I'm a tweaker. I I too not like a not like a You are a twinkle. Yeah. User, but, like, a tweaker of my desk. I I tweak tweak my desk it stuff constantly, so I'm a big fan of this stuff too. I watch all their desk YouTube. So good. Alright. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We'll catch you on Wednesday. Peace.

Peace.

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