A Cable Instead Of A Table
Ding! went my brain. As I posted to a few platforms:
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That moment of simple joy when a solution shows up without asking for it.
By getting that forgotten cable
I can hook up this display
to my laptop sitting in my lap
while I sit in my big comfy chair
which means I can watch movies without perching on a stool.
#TinyHouseLife
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I thank my subconscious for finding a solution to a nagging problem. I now have a new place to work from, a place to watch movies from, which is also a place to take naps in. Life got better with one scrounged cable.
Since I moved in, I've been pestered by a simple situation that I couldn't resolve. My tiny house has a fold-down counter that acts as a dining table, as well as a home for my laptop and its attendant larger monitor. Two screens! Productivity! But to watch a movie meant perching on an office stool (which is an antique that slowly shrinks itself as gravity readjusts it).
Six feet away, because nothing is far away inside a tiny house, is My Big Comfy Chair. It began as a place to lounge, nap, and read. Then I realized I could use my laptop in my lap as a workspace. Eventually, I added a side table to store the laptop, and while there's a table, I guess I should add a coaster for my inevitable cup of tea (Kettle Pot Cup).
Hmm. The view is of the kitchen rack I installed, and if I cleared one rack and bought just the right DVD player/monitor, I could watch the DVDs that were hiding in the storage unit. Hello, again, old friends. Bogie & Bacall, Dogma, Shakespeare, et al. But the sound was weak, so speakers were added.
That solution persists, but there are more movies than what I own on DVD, so most of the movies I wanted to watch were really only available for streaming to the big screen on the counter. To watch them, I had to perch on the sinking stool for hours. To hear them, I had to plug in headphones. When I was determined to watch an epic like three hours of Lawrence of Arabia, I'd rearrange the furniture, move the big comfy chair, and have to stare up at the monitor. At least the furniture is light. I made it all work, with obvious compromises.
Months go by.
The DVD/monitor on the kitchen counter was built for RVs. It's a little squirrely. It isn't a smart TV, so there's no streaming to it.
This solution is probably already apparent to most readers, but it was in one of my blind spots. Because I associated the monitor in front of the comfy chair with DVDs, I'd relegated my movie viewing to be either streaming on the sinking stool versus DVDs from the comfy chair.
Duh, dude. Take a look at the back of the monitor part of the DVD/monitor. Hello, HDMI. Is there a companion connector on the laptop? Yes? Yes! A simple cable test later, and I can stream to the DVD/monitor. I can even use it as a second screen for doing things like typing on the laptop while improving the ergonomics of watching what I write. Did I just alleviate yet another ache that has baffled me and my doctor? Cool!
Great for me, but why bother you with this story?
Tiny house life enabled a simple solution, and it's cheap, too. For about $10 of HDMI cable, I've expanded the capabilities of my house to house a basic element of modern life.
If I was in a multi-room over-a-thousand-square-foot house, I'd probably fall into the conventional solution of designating a media room (which has a value of hundreds of dollars per square foot), and buying appropriate tables, chairs, supports, and probably even lights and maybe sound systems to accommodate the need.
Conventional life ~ thousands of dollars
Tiny house life ~ ten bucks
I'd put my mind into a paradigm that was acceptable, but far from ideal. How common is that? Of course, it is common. We humans are silly creatures. Usually, we just put up with stuff and become comfortable ignoring the issue. Go ahead, apply that to more than things. It may be simple, but I worked myself into a blind spot that had a simple solution that I overlooked even as it sat there, a few feet away from me every day. How many other aspects of my life had solutions so affordable and simple? How many problems do we attempt to solve by building bigger or spending more? I can't know.
I can know that a simple cable created a new source of reflection, a way to escape, and to work.
Hmm. Maybe I should unbox my ROKU and see what it can do...