🖥️ The Command Battlestation
Welcome to the cockpit where the chaos gets compiled; and occasionally extruded in molten thermoplastic.
This is my daily driver: part developer workstation, part hardware museum. Every cable, macro pad and monitor is exactly where it needs to be; mostly because it’s been there so long it’s developed squatter’s rights.
The main monitor runs enough terminals, consoles and dashboards to make NORAD nervous.
To the left: a MacBook Air, perfect for pretending to be normal.
To the right: a Framework 13 running multiple Linux distros, because some problems are best solved with a spartan distro and a passive-aggressive script.
Front and to the left of centre sits the PCPanel Pro, lighting up like a Christmas tree on amphetamines; because I enjoy tactile volume control and RGB is cheaper than therapy, along with a nice scientific calculator. A StreamDeck XL with hand-labelled macros sits beside it doing everything from launching test pipelines, controlling audio using my AudioDeck tool to muting meetings I regret joining.
An auxiliary 10.1” screen serves as mission control for media, monitoring or doomscrolling when builds fail. I didn’t plan on becoming a multi-display maximalist... However, here we are.
Audio is handled by the Focal Bathys ~ a HiFi headphone setup that gracefully moonlights between Discord chaos and ambient deep-space synthwave. Wireless. Ridiculous. Perfect.
Also running alongside is a pair of tablets: one for GameGlass, the other serving as a browser-based cockpit UI for my Elite Dangerous Colonisation Assistant. Because space truckers need dashboards too.
Flight Sim / HOTAS Setup
For high-immersion dogfights and questionable docking maneuvers in Elite Dangerous (and other flight sims but let’s be honest ~ it’s mostly Elite), I run a full HOTAS + pedal setup:
- VKB Gunfighter IV joystick with premium base
- Virpil CM3 throttle with all the throw and tension tuning a digital pilot could want
- MFG Crosswind v3 rudder pedals in graphite, because even my feet deserve nuanced control
Everything is mounted to MonsterTech hardware, which is just German for “no wobble, no mercy.” The entire cockpit snaps into place like it was meant to launch me into low orbit.
Input Devices
Input-wise, the setup is unapologetically niche. I have a small collection of Finalmouse devices because, yes, I am that kind of nerd. The mouse pictured is the Achilles model - one of only 2,500 ever released. Light, sculpted and probably worth more than it should be.
The keyboard is a DurGod Taurus K310 with Cherry silent red switches - quiet, precise and borderline therapeutic to type on. However, it may soon be demoted: I’ve got a Finalmouse Centerpiece Pro on the way. That model features a transparent keycap design floating above a full dynamic display and is arguably more futuristic than most sci-fi UI mockups. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, I’m excited. No, I don’t expect it to make me type any better.
Peripherals and controllers evolve ~ what matters is the workflow they enable.
3D Printing Zone
In a separate room lives the Printer Room, housing a curated trio of industrial-grade desktop 3D printers. Each is fed by a meticulously organised filament armory below. It’s a shrine to heat, motion and calibration agony - but also where entire machines are born, layer by painstaking layer.
3D printing caveats...
No, I do not print guns.
3D printers like mine use plastics - useful for brackets, enclosures and mechanical parts; entirely unsuitable for anything ballistics-related.
If improvised weapons are your concern, you are looking in the wrong workshop.
This is a printer room, not an armoury.
Final comments
This setup has shipped production APIs, 3D-printed entire machines, debugged firmware over serial and hosted at least one panicked git revert at 2AM. It is a monument to function over form; and somehow still standing.
Yes, I dust it. Occasionally. Don’t @ me.