Episode: 3842
Title: HPR3842: What’s in my bag series
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3842/hpr3842.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:25:48

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3842 for Tuesday the 25th of April 2023.
Today's show is entitled What's in My Bag Series.
It is part of the series What's in My Toolkit.
It is hosted by Mr. X and is about 32 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is in this episode I go through the contents of the bag I take to work.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience.
My name is Mr. X and welcome to this podcast.
As usual, I'd like to start by thanking the people at HPR for making this service available
to us all.
HPR as a community-led podcast provided by the community, for the community.
That means you can contribute to the HPR team.
I've gone to a great deal of effort to slimline the process and make it relatively easy
to contribute to a podcast.
So if you've got any ideas or any burning things you want to produce, you can just pick
up your tablet, your phone, a PC if you've got one and record a show and send it in.
It's really easy.
If you're stuck for ideas, you can do like me as I did this time because I couldn't think
of something on short notice and look in the section of the website called Giving
Shows or something.
And then there's a whole series of topics, ideas of requested topics.
That's it, requested topics, isn't it?
And I came across one I haven't actually done before and it's part of a series.
There's a whole slew of them that's been done in the past by various people.
And it's what's in my bag.
So I'm going to cover today.
So this is actually, just to let you know, it's a 24th of December, day before Christmas
and I just had a wee bit of spare time so that's what I thought I'd just pull this one
together.
So I have my bag here in front of me, trying not to think of it into the holdings because
I've been off for the last week and it's been marvellous.
So anyway, I'm with the show.
So I have a Rucksack which I take to work, it's a Wenger WNG ER, quite a big hefty thing.
I'm not very good at collecting things, is that the way to explain it?
Yeah, I'm not one of these people who are ultra tidy and only have the essentials
for what's required, I just collect things.
And I think, well, you know, it might be handy some time, and I'm not talking of it.
I like having lots of compartments in my bag.
So I'm actually, I don't know what I may include some pictures, I'll see how this goes.
So I'll start at the front of the bag and work towards the back.
So the first we zip pocket at the front, which, yeah, that's open.
And in here, I have what's this, I'll only remember what half the stuff is, you hear that.
So that is mixed pollen 13C, I've mentioned this before, suffer from hay fever.
This shouldn't work, should make no difference because it's diluted as it's a low level.
I didn't actually realise that when I got these mixed pollen things, that's the name for
this.
That's the sort of thing where it's, anyway, the point is, it basically cured my, my
hay fever, which I guess must have been in all of my mind.
For all those years, I had hay fever until I took this, and I think I was actually quite
skeptical when I got it, and it's just cured it, I've tied all sorts of things, I've
tried to whack stuff, stuck on your nose, high-tech stuff, it uses charged particles or
something like that, and they all work to some minimal degree, but I've even tried
such as eating all of that stuff as well, but this has virtually cured my hay fever.
So if you're really suffer from hay fever, you could always give it a go.
Anyway, another nonsense about that, what else have I got in here?
I've had phones for my phone, which I sometimes listen to at lunch times, nothing particularly
special there, what else have I got?
What's this?
Oh, yes, hand warmers.
I think my brother gave me these WED, ZED, WEDs, hand warmers, you know, you break the
seal, and when the air gets them, they start heating up, and it lasts for, how many hours
are there?
20 degrees for, I don't know, hours, six hours, it's actually too much, really, I mean,
when am I going to need, I think this is for people who are up mountain sides, you know,
in the middle of nowhere, and I'm guessing in these situations where you're almost
struggling with frostbite and all that, these will be a lifesavers, but in my bag, going
to work, I suppose I could get stuck in a snowdrift or something in the car, anyway,
put these away, that's the first compartment.
The next compartment has got a zip as well, and it's further split, so I've got my company
pass, I've got a wee pouchy thing, we've got leather pouch thing, which you can put coins
in, I used to keep coins in that, it's a protective pocket, so you don't pull your
pockets, it's completely empty, I never carry any change now, I tend to use my phone for
paying for things, and in fact, my pockets are more likely to be damaged by carrying my
phone, I always vowed I would never get a smartphone because they're so big and bulky
and that many people say, well, how can you survive with that smartphone very easily?
Benner, I've got my smartphone, I do quite like it, I must admit, so yeah, there we go,
so I've got a set of clips, which are attached to, it's actually a bookmark, these clips, you
can get a ton of them, I've actually got a tin here, called Essentials, all your stationary
needs, they're like, is it Bulldog clips, what do you call them? I'm not sure, but Foldback
clips are called from 19, 19 millimeters, assorted, so I got a ton of these, oh, years ago,
and it's so handy, because basically you can get a collection of paperwork, because I can
have this much paperwork, and if you staple it, and then you go, heck, I want that sheet
that's thurped from the front, I want it at the front, because I'm looking at that just
now, or I need to take that sheet out, or if it's too much on it, you can just split the
staple, whether she just clip it on, and you can split the pack, split the pair of paperwork
up, put it back together again, reuse it over and over and over again, I just think these
things are fantastic, and I wish I'd found them much, much earlier in my career. Bulldog
clips, I don't know, anyway, I've got a new Lanark Village store, rubber, I think I got
that from the eraser, just in case, for Americans, for American listeners, not to be confused
to something else, the new Lanark Village store, yeah, I think it was a lifeboat association
where we're on holiday, and you could buy a eraser, and it would, some of the procedures
would go to the lifeboat association. So the lifeboat association, it's run by volunteers
in the UK, I don't know very much about it, and by volunteers, it's purely paid for by
donations and whatnot, and basically if mariners get in trouble and see then these volunteers
that are stationed around the UK will dash into action and save lives, yeah, it's just amazing,
amazing, something that should be paid for, I would argue from government, but yeah, it's
amazing they can do what they can do, a clip, plastic clip you put on bags to seal them, which
I've got a few of these actually, too, I guess that's for when I take things to work,
maybe it's in food or whatever, and I can just seal it, a rubber band, you know what that's
there, oh no, torture collect things, do not eat, throw away, desiccant, silica gel, do not eat,
yes, this is probably the pouch that came with the bag when I, when it was purchased,
who knows how many years ago, totally never throw things out, what else, what else, what's this,
piece of paper, oh and I've got a single squishy ear defender thing, so you rotate it in your
fingers to the dam to get reduced and stick it in your ear hole basically, and it's did the noise,
to protect your hearing, if there's machinery or operating nearby or whatever, I occasionally have
to do that, so occasionally use that, I've got one, oh no, I've got two, there you go, I mean they're
readily available, the company provides them, so yeah, I'll just put that all up back, there's also
various pouches and stuff and one not in this front compartment, so in the pouches I've got
0.7HB pencil lead from Stine, Stine STIN, I get feeling that's not as good as some of the
lids I've had in the past that were more flexible and they can put various additives and pencil
lead to improve the quality, it's okay, that's one, but I think I've had maybe better ones,
I'm not sure if that's the best I've had or not, I've got a bit of pain, the ones that
teachers always have, because it's got a red, you can select various inks, so red, blue, green,
black, red, blue, green, black, yeah, full colours, I also have my favourite writing implement,
which is a Pentel P207 propelling pencil, I absolutely love this propelling pencil, it's
it's third day, it's got a really fine metal nib in it, so you can run it against a pencil,
it's obviously meant for a draftsman or whatever, it's a lot of thought been put into it basically,
it's got a bit of a bottom to grip and flats all around, it doesn't roll all over the place,
it's got a clip to clip in your pocket and I've talked me take off and there's a rubber,
so it's just very, it's a stereotypical engineer's pencil, and they're not that expensive,
I was speaking to a colleague about this pencil and he showed me one that he had, he was given,
and he was a draftsman and when he joined the company and to let you know he's just recently
retired, when he joined the company he was you know once you become a fully fledged draftsman you
got one of these propelling pencils and he's a big fan of them as well and his one looks identical
to this one, absolutely identical and this one's much much much newer, I've had it a few years now
but certainly we're not given it when I joined the company because I'm not a draftsman but
it was through his recommendations, so yeah if you're looking for a good bippling pencil,
I actually think this almost sell these at a lost time to feel such a good quality and by
the way I've got no affiliations to paint till, I think it's paint till, I'll put a picture and
so you can see the thing on a link or whatever, so yes, what else have I got? I've got
edding 780 paint marker pen, I'm not sure why I've got that, is it black?
yeah it's black, so it's for marking things, I've also got a white one, it's actually got,
because it's paint is a ball inside it and when you shake it it's one of these sort of things but
it is a pen, I got given it as a birthday present, it's something I was vaguely interested in,
it was a Southord C8, I could do a better glasses, you know what, I'm going to excuse me folks
for all the noises here, I'm going to go and swap my glasses here, so I can see more accurately
what's going on, oh that's it, sorry for all the noises, that's better,
right, Southord C801, I'm buying the way just to confirm that that pencil was a
a pen tail P207, yeah, not all my other glasses, yeah during the pandemic my
I've got a new prescription out of glasses and I don't always wear them so because they're
more for really close-up work and with my other pair do for everything sort of thing, anyway that's
all right, so yeah I've got a Southord C801, it's a look-picking set, it's a basic thing, it's
more for fun really, I don't see it as they go picking the locks or anything like that, but
and I've been able to pick the odd lock, you know, it's, it's, and it's been, it has
been handy at times that work for people, I couldn't find a key to something that they wanted to
access to, which not to do anything, the pharish understand, you know, they wanted to
access to it, but the, in fact the most recent I think was a combination lock and generally these,
it was a combination lock that had a padlock to a piece of equipment to a bench and the
person had retired, they needed to remove the piece of equipment, of course generally speaking
these combination locks are absolutely rubbish and are quite easy to pick, so not within the tools
either, you just, there's a technique to it, I didn't take my long at all to find the combination
and remove the item, okay I'm back, I had to pause that to call for my tea, yeah so where was I,
so that was the, the first compartment completed, oh no it's not actually in that first zip
compartment, there's an excellent other zip as well, in there, it's full of compartments, just say
this bag, and I've got, yeah, so I've got my parking pass, I note something about Python 2.7,
url lib.request, print Python 3.4, I think that was something to do with the, trying to get my
Pyface command and display unit to scrape the number of episodes in the queue from the HPR site
and display it on our display, so yeah that's somewhat of my previous episodes, some stickers,
covered red spots, I don't know why I've got those, actually those are handy for putting on them,
we've got these kind of flip switches, again I've never got how many pictures I'm going to take
it, stuff but I've got, we've got funny flip lights which is, and sometimes there's like two
together, you don't know which one operates which light, so I can put a red spot on it so you can
tell A, there was been left on or not, because you could be an external light, yeah if I did that
for an external light, so I know if I've left, if somebody's left the light on sort of things,
so it's, it's quite handy, I wound out side lights, yeah there's bits of paperwork here,
so that's that, I'll just put that back in there and close that in our zip,
and our zip, and close the first compartment, and there's a second compartment which I guess it's
for people who just want to log out, I don't know if you've got a tablet in here or it's been a bit
open for that, or maybe a broly or something, fat and fat, I have got a, a broly, would you leave
a morgue, a morgue and fold up broly, so save me when I have to go out to outside and
getting soaked and whatnot, so that's a kind of handy thing to keep with you, and I also have a pair of
I got these at, it was a, an air show at, oh where was it, it's near where the market is,
it's a market, where is it now, it was near show and they were doing X, X army, X military equipment
and it's fold up, ear defenders, military, green ear defenders, and they're just handy because
fold them to a very small size, and I think I've got a bit of fun, I was quite cheap,
and they're probably, they're not really how, how good they really are, they're quite old,
but actually fat, sometimes I'm trying to concentrate in the office, I, I'm quite
easily distracted with noises, so I find that quite handy, that I'm back in office more often
these days, so that's that, then behind that sort of space, there's another zip
area, and this is where I've got a whole load of old keek, a Scottish word, keek, keek, keek, keek,
anyway, it's um, what's in here, it's really, I should ditch this, all this, it's
absolute stuff I kind of broke my back forward from here to, to work, and I really shouldn't,
because it's just, it's just pointless, what have I all got, go,
just see, okay, I've, uh, oh, um, I thought I should put that, hey, um, unite works,
it's a, it's a union magazine thing that, from 2019, oh dear, I should really definitely, um,
chap that away, um, oh, this was an article, I've got a photo copy of an article,
from a new scientist in 2006, how pertinent, the bird flu threat, how to protect yourself and your
family, be prepared in advance, consider, consider strains, become indispensable, stock up,
emergency supplies, get rich, quick, if a flu pandemic starts, wash your hands often,
and these are just the headlines, uh, avoid, avoid people if you can,
oh, it's good, obviously isn't it, um, don't fly, don't flee the city, the high risk strategy,
and so on, yeah, as I've caught the pages to that, uh, I remember it, it caught my attention,
but there's more to it as a second page, uh, it caught my attention when I read the article,
I thought I'm going to keep that, could be handy, should a pendant pandemic happen,
well, there was, actually, they were saying back in 2006, you know, it's not, if it's when
this will definitely happen, and of course they were proven right, um, so yeah, as that, what else
have I got, uh, views, it's a paperwork, uh, I really should clear this stuff out,
oh, um, yeah, okay, uh, how, how, um, appropriate,
coronavirus, COVID-19 designated worker, uh, blah, blah, blah, that was a, that was allowing me to,
sort of, um, um, getting you working over, if you're not doing the COVID outbreak sort of thing,
not that I really did, when I went, when I went from home, um, um,
uh, uh, more COVID stuff, uh, oh my god, it's a bit like, it's a bit like, it's,
it's a document in the future, yeah, what else have I got, this is going to be a very useful
much interest here. Oh, I, um, I've got a sketch of a timber post I was thinking about getting in
the electric car, and, uh, in trying to get in the company, so the, the garage, the garage, um,
said okay, we use it this company to put in the charging point, and we contacted them, and
I wanted the charge point in the middle of my driveway, not at the end, because it would have to cross
over, uh, the, the footpath, and on top of that, it would mean having to rearrange cars and stuff
and make things awkward. And when I suggested the company, they said oh well, you need to build your own,
your own, um, post to attach the charging point, even though I had, um, a fence, a secure solid fence
that wasn't suitable, uh, to meet the regulations, and, uh, I had to get higher tractor and
take a change from a front garden and all that stuff, and I thought oh, you know what, it's just
too complicated. If you're not going to arrange it all for me, I'm not interested, it's just
gave up. So that's what happened there. What else have I got? Uh, I've got a document called
disc tidy. It's got various command line things talking about here. I can't even remember this.
I'm not sure how I use, how interesting this, but it's going to be to people and people
last thing. I'm off to cut this bit out. What else? What's this?
Oh, these are all documents, but, um, it's a, I must take, I must have printed it from somewhere.
Oh, I, it's from UN, uh, population division, I must have been interested at the time,
population and consumption, global population, 1804 was 1 million, and 1950 it was 2.5 billion,
and 2015 it was 7.3 billion, and they were estimating that by 2050 the global population would be 9.8
billion, birth rates 1.44 in Germany 1.8 in the UK 7.6 Nigeria, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
and, and, and, and, yeah, global emissions, riches 10, and you know, global emissions. So the
richest 10%, which would include the UK, I would imagine, produced 50% of all emissions,
purist 50% only produce 10% of emissions, that's quite staggering isn't it? Natural resources
richest 17% consumes 80% of resources and by 2025 there were 1.8 billion people living
in areas of absolute water scarcity. Are these figures about today? I would imagine
have all got worse. Forty-eight football fields of forest is lost every minute. Wow,
yeah, she's really just things I was looking at thinking about at the time. I don't
have much time to think at least at things anymore. Oh, here's a crack, here's a crack in
illustration in the UK. So they said that there was 3,250, there's a number of staff working
in DWP investigating benefit fraud of 1.25 billion. So DWP, that's the unemployed people
and basically fiddling the government out of benefits and what not. So that was the government
at the time, when was this? I don't know, what year it was. Futures back anyway. The government
at the time had 3,250 staff to claw back 1.2 billion. And that sounds a lot, doesn't it?
But they had 300 members of staff at HMRC, HMRC staff investigating tax evasion of 78 billion
plus. So they have 300 staff where they could claw back 70 billion, but they have 3,250 where
they could own a claw back 1.2. I'm sure things have got even worse than saying. Seeing
them all, madness of the madness relevant. Oh, yeah, there's too many of these. I used to
be interested in all this kind of stuff, but I don't really have the time anymore. I'm not
going to bore you with all this stuff. Peacoyle, things are used to be used to be interesting
when I had more time in my hands. I've got a piece, a red board layout for my, I think that was for my,
my Raspberry Pi. I don't own board I use to, on my upstairs Pi. Yeah, what else have I got?
I think it's going to be too boring to go through all this. I think it's just various bits of
paperwork I've got. I've kept over the years, I should really ditch. So in fact, a good new year's
resolution wouldn't ditch a ditch a lot of this, but I'll do that maybe after first this podcast.
I'll just stick that back in here just now temporarily. I'm sure I'll get rid of it.
God, how did I get into all that? Yeah, I'll be falling asleep when you,
listen to this. Right, next compartment, last compartment, which is the main area,
and I mainly carry like a carry a bottled water and sandwiches and whatnot things to get me through
the day. Sometimes they've got a can tube, I don't know, I don't very often go to that. A roll of
masking tape, Neutrogena hand cream, that's very handy because the office can get very dry and I'm
asking it quite crack and whatnot with a dry low humidity sort of thing. So yeah, I would recommend
this, if you suffer from dry hands, Neutrogena, Norwegian Formula hand cream.
And then in this last bit of the bag, there are two further pieces with a velcro strap
over the top. And the back piece is actually got a padded bit, which I think is for fitting
that a laptop in. But anyway, the one before that, I've got a stapler in here, that's always
handy, although not as handy as it used to be because I use these clip things, a magnifying glass
because my set isn't what it used to be. A pencil case with what's it got in it? Not very much,
really. Very little in it. I should probably chop that really. Anything else?
Oh my goodness. Caramel, Wackel, chocolate bar, chocolate biscuit, which was all probably for my,
was going to have after my meal, my lunch, and forgot it was there. How appropriate. So
yeah, here we go, put the magnifying glass back. Yeah, so I think that's about it. There's actually two
side pockets, but there's elastic and thick and whole things, but there's nothing in those.
So let's close that up. So I think that's really about it. But yeah, I mean, anybody can do one of these,
excuse me, I've got my headphones here. Anybody who can do one of these shows,
will carry stuff about with us. It could be what, you know, stuff you carry on a pocket or
your car or anything, you know, it's a good starter, some show and what they keep my bag or my
toolkit or how to get into all the sort of stuff. That's the other one you can do. We're always
looking for shows and if everyone gave a show, we'd have more than we'd know what to do with.
But I think that's about it, and just need to be getting prepared for Christmas tomorrow. So
yeah, I'll say I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I'm conscious
I still go. I don't know when I'll actually post this, I'll probably in the near some time, so
I'll never mind, but there you go. Okay, I'll have for today, I think.
Finally, if you want to contact me, I can be contacted at MrX at hpr at googlemail.com.
That's MRX, ATHPR, the at symbol googlemail.com. So until next time, thank you and goodbye.
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