Episode: 4507
Title: HPR4507: What's in the bag ?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4507/hpr4507.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-11-22 15:11:00

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 45007 for Tuesday 11 November 2025.
Today's show is entitled, What's in the Bag?
It is part of the series What's in My Toolkit.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon, and is about 17 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Ken describes in detail what his daily carry is.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon, and you're listening to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
Today, I want to talk to you about my daily carry, because we're running low on shows,
and this is something that changes regularly, so as a snapshot point in time, what I'm
currently carrying, and my advice as to whether I think it's a good or bad thing or in
between.
First of all, let's talk about the bag.
I had quite a lot of trouble getting a bag, because one that came with the laptop was
just very poor quality flimsy, and because I travel by public transport, it gets moved
around a lot.
It needs to be a sturdy bag, because as you can see, there's going to be a lot of weight
in this.
Then I went to the big box stores like MediaMarkter, other places that sell luggage in laptop
bags, and they were extremely expensive, and only had one pouch, and just working really
a good bag.
I ended up, I traveled to Skippel Airport, which is the main airport in Netherlands every
day.
It's my train station as well, so I went down there expecting to get fleeced, and in
actual fact, I found a very good bag called Enrico Benetti bag for 40 euros, it's 15
inch.
They've also got a 17 inch for not much more money.
It's got three pouches.
The main pouch has got a laptop, a laptop section.
Inside the main pouch, and that's got a velcro cover.
Then there's plenty of space for a weekend carry or your lunch, which I alternate depending
on where I'm going.
Then there's another center pouch for all your cables, and it's got a separate place for
business cards and pens and the like.
Then there's a front pouch for maybe your audiobook, and then on the front part of that
front pouch, there's a zipper for maybe your passport, and something like that.
Bag itself, very good quality, padded, it's got a handle on it for easy carry.
Both sides have got co-polders and clips.
The only thing it doesn't have is a cross-slip for crossing left and right, but other than
that, I think it's a great little bag.
I can't recommend that one highly enough.
The bag itself has got a laptop in it, which is, yeah, I'll say it's a powerful laptop.
It's my daily laptop, it's a Dell Precision 3571.
It's running for door 42 at the minute.
It's got an open box LXQT on it, and it's a 12th generation i7, something rather, with
a Intel and AMD graphics.
It's got 12 32 gigabytes of RAM and a terabyte hard disk, two terabytes of hard disk.
So that's the laptop, it's a beast, and it's not very handy to use on the train as such,
because it's so large, and also it's obviously encrypted.
And obviously it's my work laptop, so I prefer just bringing the twerk, leaving the home.
When I'm going anywhere else, the laptop I use is a tiny laptop by Piquello, PICCOLO,
and it's an 8-inch tiny laptop, essentially what it is, is they've taken a tablet, like
literally not an iPad, but you know what I mean, Android tablets.
And they glued that to a keyboard.
And the keyboard is surprisingly small, but surprisingly good, I must say.
A chemical windows, I install Linux on it, and apparently it's supposed to run Linux
perfectly.
Now some YouTuber says it does.
I haven't been able to get the, there's been a few things, the left mouse button doesn't
work.
The touchscreen is rotated 90 degrees.
The orientation of the screen is low, you know, landscape instead of portrait, sorry,
it's portrait instead of landscape.
Some of those things have been able to fix the onboard audio, I haven't bothered fixing,
and some of them I haven't bothered fixing, because it's got a, it's running Sparky Linux,
LXQT again, it's got a terabyte hard disk, an Intel N100, 3.4GHz, and an Intel older
lake graphics, it's got 16GB of RAM.
But what it is, is small enough to fit into the tiniest of shelves in the train on the
way home.
And it's got USB connectors, it's got HDMI connectors.
So obviously it's encrypted as well, and I have my personal stuff on there if I need
to do banking or I need to look something up, or I need a copy of my, a backup, my home
PC, it's available on that thing.
So that's a nice little laptop, it's 250 quid.
So not a lot, if you can afford it, quite a lot if you can't, but it's a lot more than
the two and a half grand of laptop that's coming up from my work.
So I feel a lot more comfortable about losing this than losing my work laptop.
My personal phone is a Google Pixel 6A, mostly because it is a developer phone, and I have
it running Calix OS, which I need to, it is currently suspended, and there'll be a new
version coming out, so I need to put another version of Android on that.
It's got six gigabytes of RAM and 120 gigabytes of storage, and that's my daily go-to.
It's a good enough phone, I've got them for the rest of the family.
The only thing about it is that mine, the USB charger, is kind of broken.
So I had these USB stands that you could rest your phone in, and that put unnecessary
strain on the USB adapter, and as it turns out on this phone, that's built into the motherboard,
so there's no way of replacing it.
I have been lucky to be able to find four cables that will charge my phone, but a normal
your USB cable will not charge it.
It just happens to be, you have to have the very special cable, and you just have look
that will charge it.
So I have a few of them, so I'm able to keep it charged, and that's how I'm keeping
my phone go.
For work, I've got an iPhone 12, four gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage, none
of which I use for anything, although then communication, working meal, it comes on,
when I'm in work, and it goes off, when I'm not in work, it's got some up for safety
marshal work, so it's got some ups for safety marshal stuff, and that's why I use it.
The headsets that I use for work as well is a Jabra evolved to 65 headsets, which I'm
currently wearing, and you're recording recordings show using this.
This is a, the audio is reasonable, okay, it's uncomfortable to wear all day, and all
might have a pair of Sony headsets, which are a lot nicer to wear for longer term.
These kind of tend to push the pressure on your ears, and they boom, just don't rotate
180 degrees, or only rotate 90 degrees, and you're forced to have it on your right hand
side, which I would prefer to have it on my left hand side, but there you go.
So as I said, I don't use that as my daily driver, if I'm traveling, I use my cheapo fresh
and rebel earbuds, which are like Apple earbuds.
I was using USB connectors and adapters to 3.5 millimeter head sockets, but I just give
up and started using these headphones.
They're cheap and cheerful from action in the Netherlands, which is like a dollar store
type deal, you know, they're not really there, but it's their, it's a deal is to be low
cost, or at least appear low cost, but there these headphones, they had a brand that were
very poor, but these ones are actually good enough for listening to music, and definitely
good enough for podcasts and videos and stuff like that.
So I carry them around, and I have a few sets at home if I need to change them.
So I also carry some other stuff for work.
So I carry a set up box, our company set up box, which has got here to be my connector
and the USB micro connector, and it's got a special adapter that uses the powers, the
thing, and it also runs Ethernet over USB.
I have a remote control with that, and obviously HDMI cable, and then the network cable as
well just to plug the thing in.
Then I have a HDMI USB capture card, which will allow me to plug in the HDMI and take screenshots
of our UIS, we're developing it, but just this will, that works on this box because it's
a test and development box, but that box won't work anywhere outside of our labs, and it's
run development code, so it's no use to anybody outside of that.
I also have a four port, thin USB hub, 3.2 hub from trust, it was a cheap one, and Amazon
basic USB adapter, and I use those two on my small laptop, just if I need to connect
us to physical network.
I have various different USB adapters and chargers, so hey man, one of the main stores
in the store, it's a general purpose store, sells kids' toes, and that sort of thing.
They have a four and one USB cable, with USB-C micro, and a lightning connector, going
to USB-A, and that luckily is one of the most reliable chargers we have, and it also fits
my phone, so I'm able to charge from that.
I also carry around a generic ACT-DC adapter, this one just happens to have PD, which is USB-C,
and quick charge 3.0, which is used for charging other normal USB stuff.
I carry 64GB USB stick, which has got usually some version of Debbie and her favorite door
on it, and a USB adapter set, which has got USB-C, USB-A, and USB micro, mainland, female,
different versions, so links to most of the stuff is in the show notes, so that's pretty
much all the tech stuff, then I have my wallet, which is an aluminium extruded thing, it's
from Secure ID, SEC or ID, and it's only supposed to carry five cards, but I carry six, my
bank card, my Irish passport, credit card, my ham radio license, my driver's license,
and my public transport card.
They wrapped a bag at the very front, carrying my bank authenticator, because I don't do
online banking, I do online banking using the website, and then I have an authenticator
to do the two-factor authentication thing, as if you do it on your phone, the bank requires
you to agree to Google's terms of service, and then Google gets access to your payment
history, which the bank can then use to market to you, but if you don't do it that way,
they're not allowed to run analytics on your personal banking, so that's that, then
I'm going to just general stuff, I've got one of these corpus thank you things from the
company, a dopper water bottle, which is, you know, it is so many meals, it's just a little
water bottle that I refill and use that, and as I'm coming into here, I tend to come
in for it's an hour and a half commute in and an hour and a half commute out, so I tend
to try and do a 10 hour day or longer if possible, and therefore I bring in sandwiches in
my lunchbox, and I also bring in fruit and vegetables in maple boxes, and I bring
my breakfast in a milk bowl, a little cup, plastic cup, so all these adapters and stuff,
I've got to mention, I tend to keep them in deep freeze Ziploc bags that are useful
for untangling stuff, so that if I need my setup box, I can grab that bag and extract
all the setup box cables from that, and if I need the stuff from a little laptop, I can
take that out, and it's in its own deep freeze Ziploc bag, so that's a kind of useful.
I also carry a notebook and pen, which was using to practice more, but I've actually had
to stop doing that, because I don't have the time between one thing and another, but
and I got that notebook in action, in that shop, action.nl, I use a Stabilov PointViz
Find 0.2 pen, which is a nice one. In my bag I also carry some personal items, the
most important being HPR business cards, that if I'm talking to somebody I can just
slip them in HPR business card. I carry some Roy Boss T in case, guess we're somewhere
and we need to have a cup of tea, usually able to get a kettle boiling water from somebody,
and the world doesn't seem as miserable if you've got a warm cup of carry tissues and
some back medication, if I feel that my nerve is going to get trapped again, carry clip
on shades for when the summer comes, and I need them. Parts each model, deodorant, plaster,
Jordan 3-on-one flussers, just two picks, and finally a spork if I need to get lunch.
So I don't carry power supply, because I keep a power supply here and work, and if I need
the power supply for anything else, I'll power it off the little one that I have from
my charger, or from my little laptop, which is a weird connector, but at least I can power
it and then use USB off of that, or if I go somewhere I'll bring a laptop charger at
home, but I normally don't have that, so I normally wouldn't bother. So that's about
it, that's my daily carry as of now, what will be in a few ones time, who knows, you too
can record a show telling us what's your daily carry. Okay, that's it for now, thank you
for listening, and tune in tomorrow for an exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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