How do you feel about wires?

[Melooon]

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Today I would like to talk to you about the exciting topic of wires! I know! settle down!

    

There are all sorts of wires for things, mouse wires, power wires, lamp wires, long wires, monitor wires etc! There are too many wires! But I'm also conflicted! I don't like peoples obsession with hiding wires, I think there is a kind of honesty and utility in having lots of visible wires. But they also stress me out!

I really enjoy having long headphone wires, I have a 7 meter extender so I can walk around the room with my headphones on and its comforting knowing that my sound is prudently contained inside its wire and not floating around wirelessly like some sort of galumphing herd of radiowave bison 



I'm also a fan of transparent wires, although they seem to be a lot less popular these days. When I find whoever is responsible for that they will suffer 

How do you feel about wires?

[sloth_army1]

I'm a big fan of wires. I briefly owned a pair of wireless headphones for my PC, and it just felt wrong. If I'm not surrounded by as many wires as possible at any given moment what's even the point of using a computer? I need to be tangibly able to feel and see as much of what is going on and around my computer as possible. Also on a less arbitrarily emotional level I just prefer to deal with plugging something in than connecting it to bluetooth most of the time.

I have an attachment to USBs, but I'm getting more used to USB-C chords too.

My favorite type of wire is probably an HDMI chord. Kind of an obvious one, but having one on me has solved too many problems to not give it credit.

I also have to give props to the thin copper wires that they give you to shove into breadboards in into electronics classes. It's always enjoyable to feel them slide into place and see your circuit start to work.

[Dan Q]

Let's take a look under my desk too. Promise not to judge?

My cables aren't so much tidied away as just... there. My primary concern is that they don't get snagged on anything when the desk raises or lowers! I've glot plenty on top of my desk too.

I love that USB-C is fast-becoming "the" standard for connecting things, but I still keep a plethora of "legacy" connectors too. My bike lights charge off USB B Micro, and my GPSr charges off USB B Mini. And my watch charges on a stupid proprietary connector that I hate. (I'm also not a fan of Apple's return to the MagSafe connector, and I charge my MacBook through one of its Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, which I'm glad is still supported.)

In fact, in general I dislike charging things off wires. Wireless charging is magical! I even retrofitted a second-generation Amazon Kindle (from circa 2009) with an induction loop so that it could wirelessly charge! But I can't fit induction coils inside smaller devices, and some devices just aren't suitable for them, so I've still got a lot of stuff that needs plugging in.

Probably my favourite connector is RJ45, which you might think of as an ethernet/wired networking connector. I've got a crimping tool and whatnot so I can make my own ethernet cables of whatever length I need (I made a long Cat6 run around the outside of my house to bring high-speed networking to both ends, which was necessary because I live in a building with a stone core and WiFi doesn't penetrate it well). It's surprisingly fiddly!

I love the satisfying click of an RJ45 connector getting plugged in. I love how many different colours you can get ethernet cables in, and that if I were more organised mine would all be colour-coded. I love the fact that though it's sturdy, you can just-about "crease" it around a corner or under a door. I love that while it's "for" networking, you can push just about anything down it so long as the current's not too great: I've used it to deliver electricity to low-powered devices; I've used it as speaker wire; I've used it to light an LED bulb!

I don't mind that my wiring is perhaps only comprehensible to me. Consider this for example:

That's a USB-C hub providing USB-A ports and an ethernet port, which I use when "docking" a laptop. But then on top of it I've zip-tied a USB extension cable from a different computer. That gives me two USB-A ports, right next to one another, that connect to entirely different computers.

Some call me mad, but there's genius at work here (or so I tell people!). I have a USB-MIDI piano keyboard that I use for musical purposes: it uses a USB-A (to full-sized USB-B!) cable. Sometimes I want it connected to the docked laptop; sometimes I want it connected to the desktop under the desk; either way I want it to live in the same place on my desk when it's in use. This Frankenstiens-monster of a hub lets me do that: pulling it out of one port and putting it into an adjacent port swaps which computer it's connected to! (And, surely, makes anybody visiting my desk question my sanity.)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Long time ago, I did an anti-wire graffity after terribly stumbling over one (at a rather bad spot, as well: It send me airborne, and I flew into a pile of crushed rocks) while going bombing with some friends (this is surely time-barred by now). But my reservations about this class of object was only caused by the momentary pain - I actually like wires, and prefer them over wireless connections any day - they are faster, more secure, and more reliable ;).
I always thought that I have to many wires in our flat, but seeing the pictures of you guys, I seem to be a rather harmless case.

[ABlueRose]

I love having wires! Wireless typically means having to charge things, and having to keep everything charged is too much of a bother for me, although it sounds bad when I put it that way  but I just really like being able to use things when I want to use them, instead of, say, getting on my computer    and five minutes in my headphones die. Being able to plug them in is so much easier for me, and wired things seem to last longer than wireless in my experience