⇥ What’s on your desk?

For some reason that I do not quite understand myself,  I have always been fascinated by other people’s desks. This is not a fetish of mine—far from it, it’s genuine interest in understand how others set up their workstations.

There’s a lot to be learned about the way someone works by observing the way they set themselves up for work. Besides, you never know when you may learn a trick or two just by watching how someone else solves the same problems you face every day.

Therefore, I have a challenge for all my readers—show me your desk. You can just upload them to flickr and give them the desksurvey tag. Don’t forget to add a little description of what you think makes your desk unique. I plan on collecting some of the most interesting response and post them in an article for phparch.com (thus, please license your pictures on a CC/share-alike license).* Leaving me a comment would also help

To get the ball rolling, I’ll start with my desk:

Although I have a “formal” desk and office, most of the time I don’t work on it. My kitchen (assuming I am around the house) doubles as my office instead—much, I must admit, to the chagrin of my wife.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I do not actually need anything other than my computer and my mouse to work—and I can do without the latter in a pinch, since a laptop is now my main machine. I also do not need any reference materials—all my books, magazines and other relevant purveyor of day-to-day information is available to me in electronic format wherever I go (except private information, which stays safely in the office inside an encrypted external hard drive).

More importantly, however, I like to work in an informal environment—particularly where I can see outside (my “real” office faces a wall). It’s not at all uncommon for me to simply pack up my laptop in its pouch and drive over to our nearby park during the summer—bandwidth courtesy of my cell phone.

So… what’s on your desk?

*Note: I know this is not an original idea, and I don’t care. I just want to see what other people who read my blog have on their desk.