hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2650.txt

Episode: 2650
Title: HPR2650: My Pocket Knife
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2650/hpr2650.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:01:17

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This is HPR Episode 2650 entitled My Pocket Life and is part of the series What's In My
Toolkit.
It is hosted by Shane Shenan and is about 8 minutes long, and Karina Cleanflag.
The summary is Shane talks about his pocket life for a few minutes.
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Hello hacker public radio listeners.
Today we're going to find out how good the quality is of the microphone of this Galaxy
A5 phone, it's the 2017 version of the phone.
And I would usually record this with my blue snowball microphone at home.
But I was looking at the hacker public radio website today and they said there's a desperate
need for shows.
So here's the first of hopefully three shows.
I just saw Ken Fallon's ears perk up.
He's going to hold me responsible I hope for recording not only this episode but two more.
So this one is going to be about a pocket knife I have.
And then there'll be a show of boats and Excel function.
And then a third show boat making crepes with a very simple recipe.
So there you go.
I'm sitting under a tree, both side my workplace in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
And if you listen closely you can hear the falls from here.
No I'm just kidding we're really too far away for that.
I can't hear the falls from here.
I am near a road that leads to the two Niagara Falls but nowhere near enough to actually hear
the falls.
Although sometimes we can see the cloud of vapor above the falls so we know where it is.
But I'm downtown and there's buildings in the way and lots of traffic as you've heard.
So today I'm going to talk about my open-el pocket knife.
It's a very simple cheap pocket knife made by a French company.
I think it's got a history.
I think the company's been around for over a hundred years.
And this kind of pocket knife was originally used by farm laborers and vineyard workers.
And it's a simple jack knife where the blade fits into the handle and then opens over
the handle.
And in recent decades I think maybe in the 50, 60s or 70s I forget.
They added a feature to this kind of knife where they put a ring that locks the blade open
or locks its shut.
So I have the open-el number six and that's got a seven centimeter blade.
Let me just look at my notes here and I'll convert it into non-metric for you.
There we go.
The blade is seven centimeters long and that's 2.75 inches and I've got the one with the
walnut handle.
I chose the walnut handle because these knives normally have handles made of a light yellow
wood.
I forget what kind.
But I like the darker looking wood.
So you'll see in the photograph if I can figure out how to follow the instructions on
the HBR website to upload photographs.
You will see that it's got a nice dark handle, not as dark as oak.
But it's a lot better to my eye than the look of these kinds of knives with the pale yellow
handles.
These things are kind of collectible.
You can get handles made with olive wood and you can get handles made with oak.
And these are relatively cheap.
I think I got this one for about $20 Canadian on Amazon.ca and they go up to about I see
the prices fluctuate to about $25 Canadian depending on what kind of blade you get.
I've got the stainless steel blade but you can also get the blade that has carbon in it
and some people like those blades better.
I like the stainless steel because you don't have to take very much care of it.
You can just wipe it off.
I think there's something with carbon blades where you have to pay attention to make sure
the blade doesn't rust and you have to spend time getting a patina on it from your own
hand oils.
I read an article about that once but I don't know much about that.
I got the number 6 knife.
The most popular version of this knife is the number 8 and that's got a much longer
blade, more of a utilitarian knife.
But the reason I got the number 6 with the 7cm, 2.75 inch blade is because I'm not quite
sure of what the knife rules are here in Canada, what the laws are.
And this blade is, this pocket knife is very small.
When I hold it in my fist, it's almost entirely hidden when it's closed.
That brings me to another reason why I like this kind of knife by Openel.
These blades are not tactical.
Have you heard that phrase before?
If you look in the knife blogs and on the everyday carry blogs, they talk about things
being not only tactical, but tactical.
People buying things just because they look like they're military grade.
This one does not look military grade or aggressive at all.
It looks like something that a farm worker might use or even make themselves.
And I like that because I work in education.
I like having a pocket knife so that I can open envelopes and break down cardboard if
I'm asked to do jobs like that.
And I like it that it doesn't look very aggressive at all.
Now I carry this on me most of the time when I'm at work or at home.
And I use it a lot of times for simple tasks like cutting open milk bags.
Yep, I'm Canadian so our milk is in bags not in jugs or in bottles.
So cutting off the tip of the bag so you can pour the milk, slicing cucumbers for my
children everyday tasks like that.
It's silly but I like having it on me.
So even if I'm in the kitchen I already just slice open a cucumber.
I don't have to walk the two feet over to the cutlery drawer and get a knife.
I can just reach into my pocket.
And this one is pretty comfortable to carry.
It fits in the change pocket of some of my jeans.
And in some of my jeans it fits completely into the pocket depending on the fit of the
jean.
With some jeans, if you put it in the main pocket it kind of falls sideways and feels
a bit uncomfortable.
But for those jeans it usually fits pretty well into the change pocket.
I think that's all I have to say about the open-el knife.
Oh you don't want to should do.
For this podcast that is not a visual medium, I'm going to actually take my sandwich here
that I brought for my lunch and we cut it in half with my knife.
Please bear with me.
Okay, there we go, I have a nice ham and cheese sandwich cut in half by my knife.
Let's see if I can get a photograph of it.
Maybe better than the photograph I took earlier and I'll see if I can upload that.
You can see what this knife looks like and what the cut looks like.
Thank you for listening.
Bye-bye.