My wife has very kindly spent the last week renovating my study, and we spent the vast majority of today putting stuff back into it. She's replaced the horrible carpet with laminate flooring to match (most of) the rest of the house, painted a couple of walls and put some exceedingly 80s-inspired wallpaper up on two of the walls. We're not quite finished putting everything back in there yet, but I'll be sure to share some photos when everything is where it should be.
Like most projects like this, it's been an opportunity to take stock of what I have, what I want to keep out and readily accessible, and what can safely go in the loft or bin. We already had a fairly ruthless clearout of stuff into the loft a few weeks back, but these renovations have been the next step. While it is nice to have all one's Stuff out and accessible, there comes a point where you have to consider if you're really ever going to use Timeworks DTP for Atari ST, or if it was just out on the shelves because it looked nice on the shelves.
The basic summary of what we've done is thus: I've kept out all the Atari ST games and the few Atari 8-bit games I have non-pirated copies of. These are both a nice backdrop for my videos and handy to refer to when making said videos, even though I actually make the videos using emulation of various descriptions rather than real hardware. The real Atari 8-bits and STs have, regrettably, made their home in the loft for the moment, as although I love using them both and will never fully get rid of them, emulation for both is in such a good place now that there's really little benefit to having the real things out, particularly as video capture from emulation is about a zillion times easier than capturing from real hardware.
I've also rethought my previous setup of having all the consoles hooked up and ready to go, with just a SCART cable needing changing to switch between them. Instead, I have just the consoles out on display on the shelves, and the power bricks and SCART/aerial cables are in a set of drawers under the desk, easily accessible. This means I don't have to worry about the horrific tangle of wires that was down the back of the desk, particularly as we've fitted some desktop plug sockets to make plugging in and unplugging stuff super-easy. It also leaves me with a lot more desk space, and means that I can play with the console a bit closer to me when I do want to use the real hardware — very helpful for easily changing cartridges or just hitting "reset" to go back to the various Everdrive menus.
The one thing we haven't quite had the energy to do today is move my home office back to where it should be. I'm going to continue working from the downstairs living room for tomorrow, and we're going to take care of putting the office stuff back in its appropriate place tomorrow evening. Then it will all be done, and I will share photographs and you will be in awe. Or at least you'll think "that looks like quite a nice room", I hope.
Anyway, we're both very tired, so it's time for a nice sit down and then a big sleep. Or, at least, a regular-sized sleep until we both have to get up for work tomorrow. Boo!
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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