Laptop Hood

Laptops are great. Computing power you can take anywhere.

Sunny days are great. Nothing like being outside under a blue sky.

Sunny days and laptops together? Not so great. It is tough to see the screen.

A laptop hood is a good solution. I bought a Think Tank Pixel Sunscreen V2.0 from amazon.com. It has worked well for me. My dad and I used it on our recent R&D Expedition, October, 2020.

I have one piece of advice when using a laptop hood. Be mindful of wind. When I worked at SRC I was out in the parking lot doing testing on code I had written to control and use an inertial navigation unit. It was a nice, sunny warm spring day and I was using a laptop hood. It was also a little windy. While I was away from the PC there was a gust of wind followed by the sound of a laptop and the parking lot getting better acquainted. You have been warned.

Laptop Stand

Laptops are great. Computing power you can take anywhere.

Laptop stands are great, a convenient place to use the laptop.

I bought this Quiklok Music Stand (LPH003) from Amazon.com a while back and have been pleased. I use it when I do radio stuff outside.

When not doing radio stuff, the laptop stand lives down in my wife's basement exercise area. She uses it control the computer in her workout area.

Cable and Adapter Storage

My son and daughter-in-law lived in a tiny apartment for a number of years. They got good at "going vertical" and other clever storage strategies. I think this re-purposing of an over the door shoe storage hanger is exceedingly clever. Much better than my own strategy of storing in a plastic bin so the cables all become irrecoverably, frustratingly tangled in a big ball of wire.