Episode: 1803
Title: HPR1803: What's In My Bag?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1803/hpr1803.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:26:57

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This in HPR episode 1803 entitled What's In My Bag?
And in part of the series, What's In My Toolkit?
It is hosted by Matamilorgi 33K Dad and in about 13 minutes long.
The summary is the geek that describes his daily career and bag.
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Hello, hacker public radio.
This is the geek dad.
My name is Matt and I am the stay-at-home geek dad in Northern California.
Coming to you from beautiful Southern California where I'm on vacation with my family, I had
a little bit of time to myself so I thought I would record an episode for HPR.
I am going to go with a What's In My Bag episode.
I am basing this episode on a blog post.
I did last fall for Nightwise over at Nightwise.com and he did a whole week of guest bloggers
doing What's In My Bag.
So I'm going to sort of go through that blog post and I will of course include a link
to it in the show notes.
I also will reference a photograph that accompanied the article on Nightwise.com and I will link
that in the show notes as well.
So let's get started with What's In My Bag.
First off the bag itself is a messenger style bag with a zippered main compartment, a
zippered exterior compartment on each end and four large pockets surrounding the main
pocket inside the bag.
As I am the geek dad, this bag is in fact a repurposed diaper bag.
We got several diaper bags with our two kids and this particular one was never used.
I found it in a closet and decided to use it as my tech bag.
As an added bonus one of the end pockets is designed to transport a bottle for feeding
a baby so it's insulated.
Now usually you'll find either a bottle of water or a bottle of diet mountain dew in this
pocket when I'm carrying it around.
Moving on to gear, you will come to find that I am very much a mobile type of guy.
Front and center is my mobile phone which is an LG G3 on the Sprint network.
We recently last fall has switched from Verizon to Sprint.
I left my Galaxy S3 behind and moved on to the LG G3.
I love the phone, the only downside really is battery life.
To combat this, I turn the brightness away down and I have associated my calendar and
contacts with my own cloud server running on digital ocean.
Using CalDab and CardDab I have all the functionality I need and for some reason the fewer
Google services I use the longer my battery lasts.
Along with my phone or a pair of earbuds which I use to listen to music and podcasts
while driving or on the treadmill.
I also have a nice set of over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones.
The type that go have the bar that goes around the back of your head as opposed to over-the-top
of your head which is nice and I like those a lot.
I also keep my micro fiber cleaning cloth for all my devices and I also use it to keep
my sunglasses clean.
Living in California I have a lot of sun, we have a lot of sun and my eyes get strained
very easily so I keep my sunglasses clean and with me all the time.
Also in my bag is my Kindle.
It's an E-Inc Kindle, I'm an avid reader and I love my e-books.
With the Kindle I have a micro USB cable along with a 110-volt wall charger and a 12-volt
car charger and both of these can be used to charge either my phone or my Kindle.
I also carry a small tripod and mount that holds my cell phone.
I can also unscrew the mount and screw the tripod into my Zoom H4N which is a mobile
recorder and it's what I'm using right now to record this podcast so I can keep that
with me as well and the tripod works great for that.
I keep the mount for my cell phone so if I want to watch a video or use Skype or Google
Hangouts for a video call I can do that without having to continually hold my phone.
I also carry a notebook and a mechanical pencil for those rare occasions that I want to
jot down an analog note.
I tend to use Evernote on my phone for capturing most things.
I also have a collection of cables that I keep with me including a USB cable, an eighth
inch stereo patch cable and a full size HDMI cable.
I use those along with the main piece of tech in my bag which is my Acer C720 Chromebook.
I have it in a case logic sleeve style case.
You'll also see if you check out the picture that I'm including with this podcast in the
show notes.
Sitting on the Chromebook is a stack of business cards.
I have some for my website and my podcast which you can find at geekdad.thestrangeland.net.
I've recently posted episode 5 of the Geek Dad Show and I would love to have you guys
check it out.
I love my Chromebook.
I do just about everything I do on the web so I live in a browser and it makes the
Chromebook a great machine for me even with the stock Chrome OS.
Now I have done some experimentation.
I've loaded elementary Freya on it and I've loaded Zabuntu on it and I even got it
running off of a live DVD.
Well yeah, it was on a USB stick but it was a live DVD of Antigose which is an arch-based
Linux distribution.
I currently keep just Chrome OS running on it in developer mode and I use developer
mode so that I can use the shell and use the SSH tools to access my home network when
I'm on the road.
I do a lot of writing in VIM so I have VIM on my server and I can just SSH into it and
pull up VIM and I have my VIM environment just the way I like it.
Just as if I'm sitting in front of my machine at home.
So anyway, my friend and co-guest blogger on this particular in my bag week as well
as a common contributor to Nightwise.com is Daniel Messer, the cyber punk librarian and
he says his favorite operating system is Firefox.
He runs Firefox on Mac, Linux and Windows and he keeps all his data synced and sliding
between the systems.
I feel the same way about Chrome.
I run it on my Linux machines of course and on my Chromebook and so that works out
really well for me.
Now I do have a couple of minor exceptions as to doing everything that I do on my Chromebook.
These exceptions are Skype and audio recording and editing.
So right now as I said I'm recording into my Zoom H4N and I will load this recording
file onto my Linux laptop and pull it up an audacity and clean it up and make sure that
it is ready to go.
I'm excited now that Skype for Web is in beta and I may be able to use that on my Chromebook
coming up soon.
Rounding out what's left in my bag I have a stack of USB drives and also a 300GB Western
digital USB hard drive.
I have lots of USB sticks with me all the time.
I have one that just runs Tails Linux so I can boot into an anonymous Linux if I'm out
and about and I don't have access to my machine.
Another one I have set up with multi boot so I can carry clonezilla and system rescue
CD and super grab disk and a couple of Linux distribution ISOs whatever it is I'm interested
in at the time I usually keep a straight up Ubuntu the latest LTS so if I need to demo Linux
for a friend I always have that with me.
I subscribe to the theory of redundancy which states if it doesn't exist in three places
it doesn't exist so to that end I always have plenty of USB storage with me.
So I will let you know that I sometimes carry my main Linux laptop which is a Lenovo
V570 it's an i5 it's got four gigs of RAM and it's my workhorse it's currently running
Ubuntu 1404 with the Unity desktop but I also have open box and i3 installed just to
noodle around with I do enjoy doing some noodleing when I'm not writing or working on the websites
or you know we're working on a podcast so I sometimes carry a waterproof digital point
and shoot camera I am a geek dad after all so I'm out and about with my kids and sometimes
that means we're at the pool or the splash pad or running through the sprinklers at the
park and so it's nice to have a waterproof camera so that I don't have to worry about
getting out my phone and using that every time I want to take a picture so I don't usually
carry the charger for my Chromebook with me all the time I get days of battery life particularly
when I'm using Chrome OS so I haven't needed for most times the one I'm out for the day or even
if I'm out for a couple of days not needing the charging rig if I'm on vacation like I am
right now I will throw it in the bag it fits easily enough so anyway that's um that's pretty
much it for wasn't my bag these are the things that I carry pretty much all the time I have started
to carry the H4N with me on a more regular basis so that as I have time if I want to sit down
and record something I have that available to do that so I am going to sign off now thanks for
listening to Hacker Public Radio and please record an episode I want to say a particular thanks
to John Culp who has been keeping us in shows fairly single-handedly for the last couple of weeks
John I really appreciate your insights and your content and I would encourage anyone else that's
out there that wants to record a show please record a show for Hacker Public Radio thanks and have
a great day bye
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