Office Cable Management

Continuing from the Organizing Your Workspace post, today I try to reduce and clean up those horrid cables under the table. Its always been like this down there and I only just recently managed to clean it up a bit during the end-of-year big clean out.

While unplugging everything, for some reason I was left over with spare power taps - but I was sure I used them all ^^;
All the lights around the desk are plugged into one tap so that I can turn them all on/off with a single switch.

When will we start to get wireless electricity?

If you got a tangle of wires like this, always make sure to keep them free of dust because dust can actually lead to fires.
What happens is that the dust that gathers around electrical points absorb moisture in the air and when that comes into contact with an electrical flow then something bad happens.
Scroll down a bit on this page to see a photo of what happened when a mound of dust caused a fire. Over 1000 accidents with fire are said to be caused by dust like this in Japan every year.

Getting 1 new wireless router enabled me to get rid of all this - LAN cables, hubs and the power for the hubs too.

Got these boxes from Amazon at 2182 yen each. I could have gone for the Blue Lounge Cable Box that seems to be popular but they cost twice as much - these elecom ones come with ventilation holes at the bottom and little slits for charging iPhones and wot not.

Heat does build up inside so the ventilation holes do come in handy. But as you can see from the groove on the edge of the box - its rather shallow so the lid only feels like its resting on the top - not a major problem if you dont touch it though.

Got these power adapter plugs from Amazon too at about 500 yen each.

These L plugs come in handy to reduce cable mass.

The L plug attached to the PS Vita power adapter.

Less cable = good.

The shorter power adapter cables also help to reduce cable mass.

I use the shorter cables for my Mac power adapters like so.

Still messy but not as bad as before. Now I need some wireless USB hubs and thunderbolt ^^

The inside of the cable boxes are a wee bit of a mess though.

Charging stations for batteries help save time - the eneloop charger enables me to charge 12 batteries at once - in TV production I need at least 8 for the wireless mics for a days shoot - 4 for standby. The regular charger that only charges 4 means that I waste time waiting to replace/charge.