hpr_transcripts/hpr1297.txt

Episode: 1297
Title: HPR1297: Mobile Hackspace (what's in my bag)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1297/hpr1297.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:09:50

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Hello, this is NY Bill, and I thought today I do one of these, uh, what's in your bag
episodes?
Now I thought to do one of these a long time ago, but I thought it would just be boring
because my computer bag is probably just like all of your computer bags, and we all have
the same stuff in it.
So I never did get around to it, but today on the community news, they were reviewing
someone doing a what's in your bag, and it dawned on me that I have two bags.
So the first bag is probably most of the stuff you guys carry around, but the second bag
is one that I take to 2600 meetings.
So that's more of, uh, it's like my mobile hack space, so that one might be more interesting
to go through.
So I'll just, I'll go through my backpack here, uh, this is the one I take everywhere.
If anybody's ever seen me at a conference or at the log or walking around, I always have
this green backpack.
So it's just my, uh, CrunchBang EE, that's been, that goes everywhere with me.
Then another thing that I like to carry around, well, this is a recent addition, but now
I take it everywhere.
This is very handy.
It's a USB to SATA and IDE, and, uh, what's the other, I can't think of the other, uh,
connection there, but, uh, to use hard drives with USB, this is, uh, off at least,
going to the show notes, uh, my mouse, my USB mouse wireless, and the next one is, oh,
this is a good one, uh, where did I get this out of fruit maybe?
This is a USB cord that is a mail USB on one end, and then on the other end, it's all
three USBs you might run into.
So it saves you carrying a bunch of cords around.
It's on the other end is the regular USB, micro USB, and then that, uh, I don't even know
what you call it, that square, big square looking USB that you run into on printers a lot.
So I carry that around, uh, I have an HDMI cord, cat5 cable, oh, my big envelope of stickers,
I'm always giving stickers away, like, things that I get at conferences or here and there,
if anybody ever sees me and wants a sticker, I probably have some cool ones you'd like.
Oh, the postcard club, this, this is interesting.
Uh, years ago, Jezra doing things that Jezra does is he made four stickers, like a two inch sticker,
of his head shot with his sideburns, and then cut them out, and he's crazy little stickers.
And he challenged people, I think, must have been identical at that time, uh, whoever can find my address,
send me a postcard, and I'll mail you one of these stickers.
So a bunch of us were, you know, going here and there and checking out who is, or it just,
I think somebody sent a postcard to the bar he frequents.
So anyways, I, I did end up getting a postcard to him, and he sent me one of the stickers.
It's still up on my court board, staring down at me all the time with his mutton chops.
But it's, since turned into like a postcard club where there's like 20 or 30 of us now, and it's just,
it's fun and it's old school to get a postcard, something so old school from somebody you know online.
So it's, it's just become interesting.
So it's just a bag I have that's, uh, has envelopes in it for sending stickers and has some, uh, postcards that I've grabbed here and there,
and probably about $30 in stamps, because airmail stamps are a buck 10 now.
And like when I do the postcard club, and I send out 15 or 18 postcards,
it ends up costing me 18 bucks a pop, but it's just, it's so much fun. It's fun to do.
So I always have that in my bag in case I'm somewhere weird and I see some postcards.
Uh, last thing in the big pocket is a USB DVD burner, because, you know,
netbooks and most of these small laptops these days, they don't have them.
And that's handy to have at the, uh, log or wherever.
And I keep six or eight CDs.
Things like system rescue CD, super grubbed is different, uh, Jeep-hearted live, I think I have in there.
Or any, uh, those tools are good if somebody needs to work on a computer if we're at the log.
And any CDs I might have burned over the month, I'll save two and give out to, you know,
if there's new people at the log and they're, they're getting interested in Linux.
I'll say, you know, here's mint 15 or, you know, give them one of the ice ice as I burn.
Just so I'm not burning coasters and throwing them in the garbage.
The small bag or the small pocket is a sucret 10 with all my SD cards and USB thumb drives and things like that.
Pat a paper pen. Oh, and the, uh, the zoom.
I don't know. I should have used this when I did this. I'm still using my e.
But, uh, the zoom H1 pocket recorder, little recorder that, oh boy.
It's, I don't know, something like 32 hours of audio on one micro SD.
I ordered this for Northeast Linux Fest.
And the timing was such that I was in Boston about 3 p.m.
And this was delivered to my home in the Albany area of New York.
At like 4.30 or something like that. So I just missed the delivery.
I wasn't able to use it that, that weekend. But now I have it.
And I keep it in my bag just in case I'm at the log or 2600 or who knows anywhere conference.
Maybe I can just, uh, take it out and get a quick interview with friends or, well, whoever, strangers.
And then just basics that little pocket has a little note pad and pen and pencil and things like that.
So that's just a basic computer bag that I take everywhere.
But the next bag might be a little more interesting.
It's, uh, the bag I take to 2600, which is full of tools and gadgets and gizmos and things like that.
So let me grab that and, uh, go through some of the stuff in there.
So you guys won't realize through the magic of editing.
But I just went to grab the blue bag and I realized it's in my vehicle at work.
So there was a little bit of a gap there while I finished work because I recorded the first part at the end of lunch and, uh,
had the way to go back to work to get my vehicle and come home.
So here we are with the, uh, this is my 2600 bag or where I keep all my tools.
At the log, we get up to all kinds of things, Linux, but, uh, at 2600, sometimes we tend to get.
Up to more hardware hacking and fooling around with things like that.
So.
For instance, this last 2600 that went by, I, uh, I just took a hard drive apart just, just for fun.
That was a dumpster dive.
Oh my goodness.
I'll say this too.
It was a dumpster dive computer.
At an apartment I used to live at years ago, somebody threw out a computer.
A complete computer.
So I brought it into my apartment and I plugged it in.
I turned it on and it was all messed up.
It didn't run.
So I just grabbed the hard drive and I grabbed the memory out of it because those, those can always come in handy.
Almost every computer, I have like every stick of memory I've ever had because you never know when you're going to have an old computer that only takes this one kind.
And I save hard drives because, yeah, they can always be useful.
So anyways, on the way to 2600 last time, I remembered this old hard drive I have on a show.
If this new USB to SATA IDE, this, it'll be in the show notes.
I don't know what to call this thing, but this adapter.
I said, well, why don't I see if this thing still works and the gray hat me wants to poke around a bit and see what's on it.
And, uh, oh my goodness.
You would love to leave people.
If you're throwing out of computers, zero out your hard drive.
If you can't zero it out, take it out and put it on a shelf or drill a hole through it or hit it with hammers or whatnot.
This guy had family pictures, all his music, his school information, his thesis.
These are requests to stay in the country.
I mean, if I was a bad guy, I could have dug a little farther and I'm sure I mean, there was social security numbers there.
And so, okay, little bit of gray hat poking around, but I didn't do anything malicious.
And to make sure no one else would get this poor guy's information, I thought why don't we just take the hard drive apart for fun.
So, I spent, I spent the evening ripping this thing apart and we just, you know, seeing how it all runs and turning it on while, you know, while it was apart and, you know, watching the armatures, clack around and stuff.
And finally got it all apart right down to that.
You know, Denium or I don't know how to say that magnet's name, but it's curiously strong magnets.
They're interesting to get out if you can get one.
Use, I keep one on a work truck and if I drop something down inside a wall, this happened once with a spade bit.
I drilled through a header of a stud and then the bit fell out of the drill and straight down into the bottom of the stud.
So, I got this magnet tied on a string, send it down into the wall and you can, it's quite strong.
They're neat and they're handy.
So, if you have an old hard drive to take apart, that's part of the fun, getting that crazy magnet.
So, in the end, just to wrap up that hard drive thing, nobody's going to get any information off that.
The platters are bent, it's all scratched up, it's in a garbage can.
So, my portable hacking bag here, let me go through this.
Right at the top is my RPI, which I just got a, finally got a case for, so now I don't worry about static, I don't think.
Hello, that is resistors, all kinds of quarter watt resistors and then they're all organized by what number they start with, one brown, two red, three orange, etc.
Then a whole bunch of miscellaneous, electrolytic and ceramic capacitors, picot capacitors.
Then it's all lined with tools around the outside, a set of strippers, a set of micro needle nose.
I'll put the link to where I get some of this stuff.
It's like out of fruit, spark fun, allied electronics, they all have a lot of this neat stuff.
Micro screwdrivers, torques, micro torques screwdrivers, which is the only way to get into that hard drive because they use crazy little star torques.
This next up is my breadboard and a whole box of jumpers just for mocking up projects quick before you start getting into etching or soldering things solid.
Hello, that is the badge from hope that I still, it's actually a micro controller.
I think I've talked about this in past episodes, but I still take it out and mess around with it sometimes.
This box here has perf boards in it for the ones with all the holes right through and you can just solder stuff up.
USB mail headers, USB micro mail headers, all the little things you need for making connections to projects.
Next, let's see, here's a bunch of diodes.
Electronics goodies, basically, this box.
Spools of hook up wire.
USB cable that's been hacked off on the end so you can use the five volts coming out of the computer.
I see sockets, empty sockets, so you don't have to solder right to an IC chip and risk burning it out.
You can solder these sockets on, slam a chip in it.
A couple of kits that I never got around to soldering, maybe one of these days.
This one's a teensy board, it doesn't have the legs on it yet, but I have the teensy board and the legs.
This one is a logic level kit for changing logic levels.
This one is all the parts to make something I made in the past.
A lot of times when I make an electronics project, I buy enough to do two of the project
because I might ruin a piece and it's pretty cost prohibitive to order one more transistor
because you burned it up from someone and buy an 85 cent transistor and pay five bucks to ship it.
I buy enough to do two of the project and if I end up getting the project together without ruining any of the parts,
I have enough to do the project over again or I can give it to someone else that's interested and they can do it.
This bag here is all the parts needed to go from parallel port to a Commodore 641541 drive.
I think one of them uses plus five volts and one of them wants negative five volts.
You have to change the voltage as it goes from the 1541 to the computer, but you can make a cable and this little adapter
and run a Commodore 64 emulator and actually use the old 1541 hard drives, which is kind of fun.
Another bag of miscellaneous perf boards and a whole bunch of miscellaneous IC chips.
555 timer I see and a couple of heat sinks.
This bag is full of random LEDs because you can always use LEDs on projects just to see if for indicators or just to see if you do have voltage there.
This is a whole bag of one and four thousand one diodes.
Most lots of projects use these. I have probably 20 in this bag.
Sometimes I just stack up on these little things that end up being in all kinds of projects and they'll always be handy.
Next in this zipper here is all the soldering stuff.
It's a soldering pen with three different tips. For a surface mount you need a really tiny tip.
So that one's in there now and then I have a bevel tip which is good for desodering and then just a normal tip that came with the pen.
That's good for if you're up into like quarter watt stuff for perf boards.
A soldering stand solder tip cleaner that little that little case with like a burlopad inside it to clean the solder off tips.
A solder sucker these things are neat just like a vacuum thing you get your solder liquid and then just press the button and it sucks the solder off the board for desodering things.
One of those vices that you've probably all seen the vice with the two alligator clips and a magnifying glass on it that's good.
Just for holding pieces together and then get your soldering going.
Third hand I think they might call it a third hand.
A pair of oh this one says spark plug spark fund right on it so I got these little tiny set of tweezers for doing surface mount soldering.
There's no way you can hold these components with your fingers so a nice little set of what are they called electrostatically.
They're safe for you want to discharge static through the meter.
And then a loop for soldering surface mount this is a basically just like a little fold out magnifying glass that you can set over what you're soldering and it's just another way to get both hands free to.
You know you might be holding the component with tweezers with one hand and you got the pen and the other.
Flux and a few different types of solder in that.
Now we're back up to some more tools.
Big fat needle nose.
Multimeter everybody needs a little multimeter I got this thing for I think like 22 bucks at a hardware store and it's worth it.
There are clips tons of alligator clips you can never have too many of those all different colors electric tape everybody has electric.
These are little clips that can go over integrated circuits and clip on and then there's pin outs coming up the top.
So you can use jumpers to go on the pin outs or you can just test your logic levels on the pin outs it's safer than.
Getting your meter tip down where you got voltage and you might cross across to two tips of an IC and fry the IC.
So this is a way it's just a test.
I don't know what to call it.
It looks like kind of like a one of those black.
Big paper clips.
Lock pick tools and a bunch of locks.
This seems to be a common hobby with 2600 people and.
Last time I was at hope they had lock picksets for 20 bucks and I figured you know why not could be fun.
So I got three locks there that you know sometimes when there's new people at the 2600 meeting I'll.
Ask me if they want to try picking some locks I got an easy one here a medium one and.
This third one is you might get lucky because this one has the pin in it where.
You have to push it up halfway.
All the other pins go up full full to the shear line.
This one goes up and hits like a hard to explain but a canonical tone shape part of the pin and if you go too far.
The lock will start to turn and then just get stuck on that that that one weird shear pin so that's a tough one to pick.
Down to the bottom of this big center part of the bag.
A micro.
Micro SD to USB I just I was padding up and order once and these were like a dollar.
This is like the little tiny chips in your phone.
So I got like six of these and handed them out to people.
Some little project cases to put projects in after you build them.
Pens pencils markers around that bag and then a logic probe which I just made myself I took a big pen.
You take a three three three resistor and an LED so I had the resistor poking out through it took the ink out of and the barrel out of the big pen.
Then had the resistor going down through the tip of the big pen so that's going to be one end of your probe.
Then the resistor soldered on to an LED drilled a little hole in the big pen and pushed the LED out there so you can see if it lights up.
Then the other end of the LED out to an alligator clip and you can hook on to ground or a voltage and you can go around and probe for logic.
Then on the outer this outer pocket here is a resistor wheel which you roll the wheel around to the colors that's on the resistor and it tells you the value of it.
Two books two small books like pocket guides on op amp circuits and basic formulaic circuits for making like little power supplies and little things you might run into.
And then this was a neat one I'm trying to think this might be from Adafruit. It's a little notebook full of surface mount resistors and capacitors all the different values.
These things come on a big real kind of like a big old real to real.
And they on wind into the machine that's building fabricating something and robots come over and pick out the parts right out of these.
Maybe I'll try and get a close up with this for the show notes. They pick out the parts at lightning speed and propagate circuit boards. But anyways, this little notebook is full of like four inch strips.
And they have probably 20 to 25 components on each strip. So every little resistor size and every capacitor size you're going to run into.
Are in this book and then in the back are some empty pages where I filled them up with surface mount LEDs some red you know they left you some room to put things you purchase after so.
This is all the surface mount goodies in here.
And that's basically it for that bag but it's kind of a handy bag because it is like a mobile hack space you know wherever I go I got pretty much anything I need to take things apart or tinker on projects or
try and build some projects.
So if anybody sees me out and about with a green bag I might have some stickers for you or I might lock you down to an interview if somebody sees me around with a big blue shoulder bag.
And you need something taken apart we can do that lightning fast if you need something put together.
Good luck we can try.
But that is what is in my bag plural so.
It's just a quick hpr because I know we're getting low on show so everybody listening to this come on you guys can do 20 minutes or half an hour put up a show so we can get through this summer law.
I got a few other show ideas in mind and some with other people and some have done so hopefully I'll get around to them soon.
Anybody wants to contact me I am oh let me just mention this.
My status net changed again I had data databases problems but I think this is finally it so if you want to subscribe to me on status net I am SN dot gun monkey net dot net.
And if you want to email it's NY bill at gun monkey net dot net.
Okay until next time guys see ya.
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