108 - Adam Elmore

Adam Elmore is an independent cloud consultant helping startups build products on AWS. He is also the host of aws.fm—a live audio show and podcast about all things AWS.

You can learn more about Adam here.

Items:

• Artifox Desk (White Oak) This desk is so thoughtfully designed, and it ships in packaging that Apple would be proud of. The cable management features are exceptional and I also love the headphone pegs.
• Herman Miller Embody I previously owned an Aeron, but I'm loving the switch to an Embody. Given that the Artifox desk isn't a sit+stand desk, I spend all of my working hours sitting; the Embody helps make that as comfortable as possible.
• Apple M1 Mac mini (16GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 10G ethernet) I have the Mac mini mounted to the underside of my desk and I love how that simplifies cable management with the Artifox desk.
• Apple 32" Pro Display XDR (w/ Nano-texture glass and Pro Stand) I know this is a pro display with lots of features I probably don't care about, but I love the look of it and also love having a single 32" display with 6K resolution.
• Keychron K3 Keyboard w/ brown switches I used to use an Apple magic keyboard, but missed the clickety-clack of mechanical keyboards; the K3 is low profile enough to feel familiar, and the brown switches quiet enough to not drive my wife crazy.

• Custom coiled USB-C cable in dark gray from Mechcables
• Apple Magic Trackpad I moved to a trackpad to encourage me to use my keyboard more, and it's mostly worked.
• Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO This audio interface takes my XLR mic inputs in and provides real-time processing—compression, EQ, background noise removal, etc. I route the processed vocal to my camera when creating video content, and to my iPhone when running my live audio show on Twitter Spaces. This audio interface also powers my Sennheiser headphones.
• Apple AirPods Max They look and sound great. Also, the switching between Apple devices is painless and the noise cancellation is excellent.
• Shure SM7B Mic I use this mic when I don't care about the mic being in the frame on video, and when I'm recording anything while my kids are awake; it's really great about isolating sound and keeping the sounds of kids playing outside my office out of the mix.
• Cloudlifter CL-1 The SM7B is notorious for needing a ton of gain from your preamp and Cloudlifter helps feed it. I mounted this to the underside of my desk alongside the Mac mini.
• Rode PSA1+ Boom Arm I love this boom. It keeps the mic exactly where you position it.
• All of my mic cables are Mogami Gold.
• Adesso Director Floor Lamp It's a lamp. It fits the mid-century modern aesthetic along with the desk and storage cabinet.
• Blu Dot Peek 6 Drawer Dresser Another piece of white oak furniture that fits into the mid-century modern style of the space and allows me to keep cables/etc. close by but out of sight.
• Sound Absorbing Panels by GIK Acoustics I have these panels around the perimeter of the office, and also hung 3 larger panels over my desk. My office is mostly square and the acoustics were awful with hardwood floors; these panels worked wonders.
• LEGO modular series buildings are the highlight of my backdrop and feature custom lighting from lightmybricks.com. I've lit half of the buildings, so far, as it's super labor intensive: I'm drilling holes through bricks to run the wires inside the walls so that no wires or lighting components are visible. The end result looks great, but it's taken 100+ hours thus far, so it's a bit of a long term hobby.

• I also have a custom LEGO calendar in dark gray. I bought the classic calendar and then sourced replacement parts from bricklink.
• All of the plants in my office are real and I purchased them from Bloomscape.