ALMOST REWIRING THE OFFICE USB SPAGHETTI: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

You reach a shaky point at which you are forced to embrace the thorny porcupine of change. I took the opporchancity to upgrade a USB hub, bub. But that brought its own awkward problems. Now I had two powered USB hubs, but only one plug to provide electrical service. Well. Damn.
   My solution came from on high. In other words, I looked to the heavens, and there I saw…the top of my bookcase. Before me sits the Great Wall of Books. Introducing a new bank of sockets would take some doing. I did some doing, and lived to tell the tale without sparks flying from my eyebrows.
   But, as usual, to move this thing I had to shift that thing, and arrange those things, while taking that thing away from the other things to provide easier access. It’s a whole thing involving things.
   If you are going to tackle this level of mayhem then either do it all at once or in stages. Alternatively, do it all at once in stages. I could only do this in stages.
   It meant relocating a media storage unit to another room. Then I could move banks of sockets around. The Great Wall of Books creates a great well of darkness, even with the light on. And so, to counter the darkness, I’d added various lights clamped to shelves…
   With a new bank of sockets coming into play, I’d have to march a few lights around so that their relatively short cables had somewhere to reach to for the life-giving blasts of electricity. This is why I stared at the top of the bookcase. A few books had to leave, and shuffle around, to make space for the clamps on the lamps.
   Luckily, all I had to do was switch batches of books on two shelves. Yes, a miracle.
   After that, arranging controlled chaos was an effort. We’ll call it Heraklean. Or possibly Herculean. I had to unplug a lamp, undo a clamp, relocate lighting to the new space, and balance various bits of equipment very precariously while I operated by the light of the computer screen.
   One lamp secure. Another lamp out of action and unusable for the moment. A third lamp, destined to face the other way and illuminate somewhere else, was well out of the picture. On or off, that one didn’t matter for this particular chess move.
   The serious business of adding USB cables to a new hub was a thousand years away. When the time came for that, stretched across two days, I felt like a telephone operator from the 1930s: plugging electrical tendrils of spaghetti into the switchboard and hoping for a result that didn’t disappoint anyone.
   Luckily, I was the only party involved. At worst, I’d disappoint three people – me, myself, and I. The extension sockets said let there be light, and lo! There was some light. Progress vaguely progressed. I have more USB ports than USB cables, but it was a close-run battle.
   Now I sit here in the calm after the storm and I stare at the hubs. One is two shelf levels above the other. I have the vaguest notion of what these USB ports attach to.
   How confusing is this? Let me count the ways. Fourteen cables. With room for more. At least one wire is unplugged and dangling to the side. I suspect another two are plugged in but don’t connect to anything at the other end…
   On the far side of the Great Wall of Books, over in the rolling countryside of Carpetlandia, there are many devices that make use of the upper hub. Apart from two devices that are too short to reach the upper hub, that is.
   They barely connect to the lower hub from way over yonder, but connect they do. I have another five USB cables plugged directly into the computer. Two of those are for hubs, obviously.
   It’s been over a week since the last bit of tinkering. I may have to switch everything off, unplug the lot, and plug the lot back in – just, in less of a tangle, that’s all. For a long time, under the old regime, I had at least one USB plugged into absolutely nothing at the far side of the room.
   In my attempt to rewire everything, I suspect that is now the case again. Except, this time around, maybe the USB doesn’t connect to something on this side of the room instead of that side of the room. My printer is too far away to cable up, living in another room entirely. Luckily, it’s operated by the ancient magician Wifi, a quirky friend of Gandalf.
   I’ve taken some of the strain off using more USB cables by making use of those cables for recharging via a plug attachment instead of a hub. My bonus socket extension freed up a wall socket on this side of the wall right next to me. So there’s that, too.
   Should I ever need to add some new mythical device, I believe I am just about capable of navigating the spaghetti network of (mostly) black cables down there in the depths of the depths of the depths of the depths. Of Mordor.
   And having explained all that, I paused typing and walked around the Great Wall of Books to discover a scanner cable lying loose on the floor, not connected to an old scanner that is no longer with us. I’ve been checking arrangements down that end of the room, but for other reasons…
   On the summery side of the Great Wall of Books sits the table. This I use for gaming purposes. Boardgames, roleplaying games, and associated videos about those hobbies. The main boardgame camera is for overhead views of game boards. I film videos or stream images to players in different countries.
   That main camera sits on two camera sliders, joined by a cross-mount. Think of the arrangement as a giant black crucifix in a vampire movie. The camera slides back and forth along one bar of the cross and up and down along the other bar. Sometimes simultaneously.
   The arrangement sits on two tripods, and the whole thing can tilt back on those tripod plates. Other cameras occasionally come into play on the table. I have a low-lying tripod mount for close-in work down at table level. There’s a gadget called a Zen-Mount for flexible positioning of a third camera high up, low down, you name it. One twist of the control and the entire mount loosens up for repositioning. Another twist freezes the mount in place. It is terrific for creating many different camera set-ups over the shortest time.
   And, sadly, it is showing signs of wear and tear. This was a KICKSTARTER, and the gadget never went into commercial production. I should have bought a spare at the time. Can’t get them anywhere, now.
   This was another project that popped up right in front of me as I tried to solve a camera problem. It solved my camera problem. And the invention certainly served its time in the trenches of video production.
   Now, though, it was time to go looking for a less over-engineered replacement. My solution was a camera mount with (checks notes) four controls for assorted adjustments instead of one. Slower. A little more fiddly. Offers a slightly greater range of movement. Sadly, the main table clamp obstructs the giant crucifix. No good.
   I knew that, going into the purchase. Measure everything. Plan accordionly. The worst solution is to constantly add the new clamp to the table then remove said clamp from the table. No good to me. On a wooden table, I could manage. But this table is plastic, and can’t stand up to the repeated pressure deformations.
   The best solution was to reconfigure the tripods holding the big black crucifix steady. Adjust the rail up the way, and let the cross-mount slide gracefully over the new piece of equipment. Problem. The tripod heads are both cranked up as high as they can go.
   What could I do? Adjust the lower section of all the tripod legs. Out came the measure, to ensure they all went to the same level. I knew I barely had the floorspace to accommodate the slightly larger footprint. Lots of measuring. A spot of adjusting. And I was done.
   The old gadget is gone. Not thrown out. I could still use it for isolated shots if it holds together long enough. Might add it to the workshop table for filming painted miniatures. Anyway, in its exact place, the new mount is secure.
   All this faffing about just to stand still, to have the same camera setups, led to the discovery of the loose cable on the floor under that table. I knew, in writing this blog post, that I’d find a wire that went nowhere. And I was right…
   But…
   I discovered that in passing. No, I still haven’t checked the wiring officially. So I might find more unused cables, yet. Y’know. Behind the Ark of the Covenant.