Episode: 1316
Title: HPR1316: What is my bag
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1316/hpr1316.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:28:13

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Thank you very much.
Here is morning, good afternoon.
This is Mr. Guy.
It's once again coming to you from Kansas City, Missouri.
And I wanted to talk with you on a slight variation of what it is that other people are talking
about.
I've done this a few times before.
And so instead of what's in my bag, although it will be a little bit of that, this episode is what is my bag.
I have a slightly different daily carry than a lot of people have for their bags to carry around their tech.
And I come up with a new solution here and wanted to share it with everybody because I think it will appeal to you.
This is a way for you to have your own bag for a daily carry instead of being definitive upon the manufacturer of the bag as to how the bag is laid out and what kind of things you have in terms of, you know, the pouches and places with things, things like that.
This is all based upon Molly, M-O-L-L-E, which according to Wikipedia stands for modular lightweight load bearing equipment.
You know, one of those acronyms that you go, okay, I guess they made it pronounceable though, good thing.
So Molly, it's something you may have seen on some backpacks, especially military backpacks.
It's a kind of web grid, a series of straps, if you will, that are usually elastic to a very succinct or at least a nice sturdy canvas that has a little bit of broom in the straps.
And this series of straps that they'll put on the outside of backpacks or bags allows you to then add to that backpack or bag specific kinds of pouches or other kinds of carrying on to that basic grid work, if you will, and customize it.
And there is a, as I say, various and sundry types of backpacks, especially, you do see some messenger bags and other things like that that are in this form also.
And I will also include a machine, let's say, the entry for a web site that you go to called county comm COUNTYYCOMM.com.
And they have a lot of very reasonably priced bags and some of those bags, not all of them, but many of those bags do have some Molly Webbing on the outside of the bag that will allow you to add things.
And they also have some pouches, some smaller size pouches, and things like that that you can use in conjunction with their bags.
And military, as I say, use this for a lot. In fact, you will hear, I'm talking about, or if you read, they'll talk about their webbing or their web setup, things like that.
You can get thefts with Molly Webbing along with them, and then you can just attach to that various and sundry types of things that you wish to carry along with you.
They can be it, they're all like air, and it's kind of configurable. As a side note to this, I don't know if you're aware of this, but it's not exactly like Velcro, although some of these things do have Velcro where you can put patches on.
It's lagged through your country or other types of patches that kind of, you know, crystallize it for what it is that you want to make as a statement.
But it's not actually like Velcro. It's actually a series of straps, as I say. And so you have a Molly Webbing strap, and then you have other straps that are on the pouch that you want to connect to the Molly Webbing.
You actually thread those down through a whole series of those loops, and then usually there is a heavy sheet button at the bottom that you use to attach that and have it be there.
There's a lot of give with this though, so you those things will not catch on things and and cause you to be restrained, you know, the button will come loose and things like that.
And that's important for a lot of rescue people. They don't want things that are on their equipment to be hanging up and literally hanging them somewhere where they actually would not want that to happen.
So that's how Molly Webbing actually works. You've got these little straps that goes through the webbing that is on whatever it is you're connecting to, be it a vest, get your backpack or be it your bag.
As I say, county comms have some that have some Molly Webbing. I was interested in this in the fact that I had a county comm bag with some extra pouches that I have been using to carry around my pad of the day, whatever kind of get a pad from whatever manufacturer I wanted to carry for that day and other accessories.
And it was giving a bit small for the amount of things that I wanted, but carry. And I really am not much of a backpack to strap person. I'm really more of a strap across one shoulder if we get right kind of at an angle, a fling kind of a relationship.
If you're a photographer, you've seen some of these fling kinds of bags show them low pro and other places where kind of flings over one shoulder and the idea is you can slide it around, get to the things that then slide it around to your back.
And that's usually the way I like to carry my messenger bag. So I've owned various messenger bags through the years.
And I tend towards the ones where it is a bag with a room inside. And then I just, you know, have my various and Sunday accessories just sitting at the bottom of the bag or I organize them in little bags, but then all those bags kind of sit at the bottom of the bag.
I tried some things with internal pockets and things like that, but I was never really happy with all of those kinds of things.
So I went out in search of something that had Molly strapping that I could customize to my own needs and wants and had a sufficient size for what it was I wanted to carry.
The key to this is you don't want something that's too big as a bag itself if you're going to be putting lots of interesting couches on it.
So there's a kind of, you know, the centralized bag needs to not be too big in terms of its capacity.
And I ran across another site, which will be in the show notes, 511 tactical. That's 511 tactical. It has lots of Molly kinds of things.
And so there were lots of pouches there and bags of things like that, but none of those really, really spoke to me in terms of my underlying bag.
I saw pouches that I wanted to buy, and in fact, I have purchases for my customization.
But then I ran across Molly panel, Molly panel dot com once again, that's in the show notes.
And this was exactly what I wanted. It's just about the size in terms of the depths of the bag, if you will.
If you think of heights and depth being the thickness of the bag, it's just enough capacity in the bag to carry around a laptop.
And I'm not talking about an ultra book. I'm talking about a real man's laptop, you know, one that has a polycarbonate disk drive and things like that.
I don't carry around a 17 inch, but I think you would just be able to carry your 17 inch gamer super powerful laptop if that is your thing that you carry on every day.
And, you know, you're probably going to see your orthopedic surgeon eventually carrying that around every day, but you could probably just barely fit that into this bag.
It does have plenty of capacity, though, for the typical things that I wanted to do, which was something like a comb, but they're ultra book size.
If I'm going to carry a laptop, 13 or smaller, it would easily fit, though, my 15 inch work laptop.
And usually I'm carrying around, as I say, pad or maybe a couple of pad. And so it had plenty of capacity for that.
And it's only about that one, one and a half inch thick. And it's fairly padded. So even if you're just carrying around that in the bag itself with no extra pouches, but then what would be the point of that, it probably would protect your, you know, your precious laptop very, very well.
But the real key here is that it's all covered with Molly. Now, right now, theoretically, they come in black 10 and foliage green, kind of military green, not quite all of a drab, but, you know, kind of along that line.
Right now, the black ones were sold out. I actually went for the foliage green.
And also it comes with some very interesting clips, which I'll probably talk about on a different show and tell you some of the advantages of those.
But it comes with actually some special carabiners that are designed to work, especially well with Molly style equipment and things like that.
And so for the price, you get a set of six of those carabiners plus the Molly panel itself. And then I bought several five 11 kind of pouches, a couple of different six by 10 pouches.
One was oriented with a zipper so that it would be more of a horizontal across the bag. One, it was a six by 10 that was a more vertical in those zippers were kind of on the end of that pouch.
And the corresponding little straps to mount were included with those to mount those in that way.
Depending on how your Molly runs, of course, you could run the things transverse or, you know, horizontal or vertical. And there's a lot of flexibility here.
I, in fact, have one of those on what is my back of the Molly panel when I'm carrying it swing style. That's the one that has kind of the in zipper and then the one that has the more oriented towards it being horizontal is mounted at the top of the Molly panel.
And that zipper is right next to the master zipper for the Molly panel. Something to mention about the Molly panel. It has a really, really excellent quality zipper, which is a no snag zipper. It's a very large zipper and it is extremely easy to open and close.
And I've never quite had anything with a zipper that was this good on a piece of equipment.
And so that one's actually easier to open than the smaller size zippers that are on the individual little pouches that I bought.
I went with touches that were all black and I plan on using these touches on sometimes that other little black bag that I have that has Molly on it or even other bags for different types of purposes.
Then I've got a couple of six by six touches. I only have one of those mounted at least right now on there. That's just below the front of the bag just below the the six by ten ten inch being the tire width of the Molly bag.
And then just below that I have this other little six by six pouch.
I tend to have had in the six by ten pouch in the front a seven inch tablets that I've been carrying around either an Android or my new windows eight, the little Acer W3 that I talked about on nightwise.com.
You know, something that's in that seven to eight inch category to slightly into that.
I've had a little bit of paracord, maybe some other miscellaneous stuff in that front pouch.
The back pouch, the more vertical pouch that six by ten has a USB keyboard, small Microsoft USB keyboard that I have.
I got on a kind of a fire sale at Office Depot here. I think that store may be going out of business because they had a whole lot of stuff on clearance.
And so that particular store, not Office Depot in general, but that particular store may be actually closing down or that may be selling stuff off because they're going to move to some new location.
I don't know. Anyway, got a good buy on that. It's a very compact keyboard. And I can of course, you know, think that up with whatever device I happen to be carrying.
So I have a Bluetooth keyboard. And in those cases, you know, I find that the pad and the USB keyboard is more than adequate for the kind of daily stuff that I need to have, whatever kind of tablet it is. So I happen to be carrying.
And I also then have, you know, some USB, you know, wall ward adapters and a few cables, you know, micro USB and many USB to charge up various equipment that I have.
I have a USB power bank with a couple of USB outlets that I'm tended to buy USB power banks now with a little lithium ion rechargeable with two outputs.
And one of those has the two or two point one amps, the extra oomps that I need to charge the tablet size and devices that I have. And then the other standard one half output can then do, you know, my phone or other kinds of devices.
And so those that all fits nicely some accessory cords, a USB wall ward or two and that Bluetooth keyboard all fit nicely at my back and are all in that little pad and case.
I even have a small county comm Molly, you know, style little pouch that I have that's perfect for a little cannon camera that I like to carry around.
It's a small camera, but it does have raw capabilities might have a discussion in the future on Hackers Public Radio about why you want to shoot raw with digital photography.
So this is one of the smallest cameras that I love that has the abilities and not only should you take but also raw images and I have that mounted kind of down in the lower quarter next to the six by six.
The little six by six has some more accessories that I have just a little bit of stuff that I just, you know, it's just an extra place to give us some stuff in.
And this has been a wonderful bag because I get to configure it and I can change it over time right I can put all six by six and have individual pouches.
I can remove a pouch from this and put it on two different bags or even take the pouch off of the Molly and use it on my belt because the straps that fit through the webbing for the Molly on the bag.
Those straps just as easily can be used as belt straps so I can take that to my six pouch and connect it to my belt and use that to carry around a seven inch tablet as I was walking around during the day, maybe have a USB charger for it and a cable to charge it up if I walk into the coffee shop and need a little extra juice.
So I have built my own bag and it isn't just one bag, it's whatever kind of bag I want or need it to be can be very, very, very flinder with just my laptop and a few other things and if you're carrying something smaller than that 17 inch laptop, you could throw your power supply and you know a few extra accessories right in the bag with the laptop or you can accessorize it in whatever way you wish.
With larger size pouches or smaller size pouches and really build a custom bag that you can sling over your shoulder and have whatever it is that you want to carry on a daily basis.
Of course, I have a few extra things on it that I've done to personalize it just to have it look the way that I want.
So I've got some paracord things that I've done. This one does not come with handles, it only comes in place for the straps, but that's where the carabiners come into play and it's got places to put the carabiners on all four sides of the bag.
It only comes with six by default along with the Molly panel that you can buy extra carabiners with that and the world of the Molly system really the world is your oyster.
There's a lot of people, different types of bags that you can and pouches and things like that that you can use.
So you really get into a modular system for your life in terms of bags that you can use.
It's an interesting thing I know and I haven't purchased one of those yet, but if you want to carry around a bottle of water there's a Molly deck.
You can use to carry your bottle of water.
There's some interesting little hanging things that I got a set of three of those.
Essentially they're like a d-ring at the bottom and a cross piece at the top with a little bit of canvas in between.
So what you do is you hang these little things. I'll try to find a picture of this or an entry for this and include that in the show notes.
You hang these in a little spot on your Molly webbing where there is one of these little pieces of canvas that are at the cross point.
And you hang this through that piece of Molly webbing and the little keyboard at the top holds it from falling through and then the d-ring at the bottom gives you a place to attach a carabiner and hang something from that point.
So you can really customize these to a high degree and there's lots and lots of accessories out there that are available for this customization.
So I built my own bag based on the Molly panel and the plastic carabiner are things that I have put on various spots so that I can configure this to have a side carry for the shoulder strap, a top carry for the shoulder strap, or if I have described it, I have it on opposite quarters of the bag so that I can do a fling kind of carry for the bag.
It does not have handles, however, as I mentioned, and so I have made my own handles and connected them to the carabiner doing a basic braid that you would use with paracord.
If there's anything interested in paracord and not tying and things like that, I started doing that and I may do a show on it anyway, but if there's any interest on that, I can certainly talk about that in the future.
But with that, I am at my destination. I was planning on getting to.
I might talk about the accessories in the bag in the future here, but for now, I think that should device.
Go out there, look at the show notes a little bit, a couple of the sites that I have on the suggested list, and check out Molly as a flexible and modular system that you can use to create your own bags
for your daily carry.
With that, this is Mr. Gadget signing off, and once again, I would like to remind you to go out there and do something to make something do something by now.
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