hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4183.txt

Episode: 4183
Title: HPR4183: What's in Kevie's holiday bag:
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4183/hpr4183.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:57:14

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4183 for Wednesday, the 14th of August 2024.
Today's show is entitled What's in Kevin's Holiday Bag.
It is hosted by Kevin and is about nine minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Kevin discusses what was in his holiday bag.
Hello, hello, this is Kevin from the Tax Jam podcast.
And following a wee break, I've been away Abroad and Cyprus,
and thoroughly enjoyed it and back to not so sunny Scotland.
It's currently pouring here.
And to be honest, I'm glad I took my time to actually get a chance to see the sun,
because it doesn't look like we're going to get much of a summer here.
However, one thing I was thinking about was,
you often have a look and see what's the sum of the recommended topics for HPR.
And one that I've seen is What's in Your Bag.
Now, if I was to do this on any average day,
what's in my bag really would be the most boring thing.
It's my lunch. That's pretty much it.
Don't carry a lot with me when I go to work,
because everything's pretty much there.
So, I thought, wait a minute.
How about changing this to What's in My Holiday Bag.
So I thought, I'll do this just as I've emptied my bags
so that I don't start to forget things.
So, what is in this geek's holiday bag?
Well, first off, there is my 14 inch Juno laptop.
I got this specifically for taking away
what times in a week, because it fits perfectly inside my backpack.
I don't have a huge backpack, but it does have protective space
for smaller laptops and tablets.
So, I've got that.
I've got my wireless mouse,
because I absolutely hate track pads.
Just the standard Logitech,
I don't even know the coding for it.
The standard Logitech wireless mouse that you seem to can buy
in almost any supermarket I bought in the local computer shop.
They're not expensive. I've got that.
And, of course, they're the plug to the charger to plug it in.
So, oddly enough, I took this with the idea, right?
This will give me something to do on the flight.
I got on the flight and realized that the wheat trays,
tables, whatever you want to call them,
you know those things that fold down?
No, I mean, they're reasonable size.
Oh, my word, the flight that we were on
had this world's smallest tables.
So, I couldn't even get it to balance on.
So, actually, that was a complete waste of time,
because I deliberately made a point to doing no work when I was away.
So, the laptop came, but was actually just a paperweight.
So, yeah, I had the 14-inch Juno laptop,
wireless mouse, and the charger,
which I could easily have left.
I may do a review on this, actually, in the future,
because Juno was a company that not many seem to have heard of over here,
but they do offer laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed.
So, yeah, it is something that probably would be of interest.
Now, continuing on the technology theme,
I did take my retro-flag GPI-2.
So, that's with retro-pie installed.
So, that gave me a bunch of good gaming stuff.
So, I did a review of this.
I don't want it too much.
It's essentially looks like the Game Boy.
So, but with retro-pie being on it,
you can play pretty much whatever you want.
It's powered by a Pi4.
So, it will actually play anything up to PS1.
However, because it's based on a Game Boy,
it doesn't actually have analog sticks.
So, realistically, you're only looking at putting games on it
up to the level of the Mega Drive-slash Genesis
or the Super Nintendo-slash Framikom.
So, that's your kind of level.
Now, I also had a cheaper headphones.
This is the MPOW headphones.
They're noise canceling.
And I got these from Amazon four years ago for a bit 40 quid.
And honestly, these have been actually increased value.
The noise canceling is OK.
Nothing better than OK.
But the quality of it does come through the biggest,
the quality was very good.
But the biggest gripe I've got with them is that
because they're actually designed to be noise canceling,
they've got leather-8 bits around the earpieces,
which do become very hot if you wear them for more than an hour.
I find myself I just struggle to wear them much more than an hour
because my ears start sweating essentially.
And now, because, of course, they are wireless,
I also took 3.5 jack cable
because then you can just use them as normal headphones.
When they're, when they're out of power,
you can use them as normal headphones,
but you don't have any function.
You lose the function for noise canceling.
That is powered by the battery.
Now, because I like to actually probably go over the top
when it comes to making sure I've got everything,
I've got, I also took my J-Lab Epic Air Sports ANC earbuds.
ANC is active noise canceling.
Earbuds are a thing that actually I don't get on with.
Because I just can't get them to fit.
They always seem to fall out of my ears.
So I got these ones.
And because of the sports, they actually curl around the ear.
So I would actually highly recommend these.
They're a bit fairly to get used to.
Maybe it's because I'm not used to them.
You can control them by touching on your left ear or right ear.
And different things will activate.
So you can answer the phone through them.
You can turn the volume up or down.
You can quickly mute them.
There are a few things.
I tend to use them like that.
To me, they're just headphones.
So maybe they're a bit overkill.
But I do like the fact that they wrap around the ear.
And they don't fall out.
It would be a typical geek.
You've got to take charges for everything.
So I had three charging leads.
I only took one plug adaptor.
I wasn't that daftic three.
So three charging leads there.
And for some reason, I'm carrying the one
from my wife's smartwatch.
I don't know why.
And the standard, the other ones.
I've got to push it on my flight.
You're going to need sweets.
I found that out the hard way.
Never go on a flight without sweets.
So there's my packets.
I took two packets of fisherman's friends.
My favorite sweet.
So original, of course, not the flavored.
Pulling out a wee bit more.
I got two magazines while I was at the airport going out.
The magpie magazine.
So looking actually didn't get a chance to read that over the whole list.
That's still an as-new condition.
Probably because I didn't really want to start playing about
and tinkering with the computer while I was away.
The other one I got was Lindy's Pro Football Annual Magazine.
This is an American Football Magazine.
And it essentially gives you a preview for every team.
The only time you ever see Lindy sports in the UK
were certainly in Scotland.
I've definitely seen a part of this one magazine they do.
But apparently they seem to run over a lot.
It's just not readily available here.
Now, the book that I was reading while I was away
was three sheets to the wind by Pete Brown.
Highly recommend a different student beer.
Pete Brown is a good author.
I was laughing out loud several times.
I really enjoyed this book.
And I'm going to continue reading on.
I think this is the second of his books.
The first one was Man walks into a pub.
Which I also recommend as well.
So if you're interested in beer, reading about beer,
it's not a fictional work on beer.
It's just his toy.
He's a beer writer.
It's his thoughts.
Right?
And of course, what goes with any book?
But reading glasses.
My reading glasses are in there.
And because I was actually hiring a car as well,
I also took sunglasses as well.
Because that's really important especially more so
morning driving and late evening driving.
Because the sun seems to go so low.
And when it's actually in the mid,
but he is bright.
Now, I wasn't sure if I was going to finish the Pete Brown book or not.
So I also took my Kindle paper white.
Actually, I didn't need it in the end.
Because I didn't actually finish the Pete Brown book.
But it's one of these things I would have been.
I'm happy that I took it because it doesn't weigh that much.
And it was always a good backup.
Plus, as well, at the time, you might not.
If you don't take out one book, you might not actually enjoy that book.
Or you might not be in the mood for that book.
I have had that before on holiday.
So I think it's always good to have a backup.
And taking loads of books, takes up a lot of weight, takes up a lot of space.
And he read that is definitely a viable alternative.
And of course, I don't really go anywhere to be honest.
Without my tablet, just purely for entertainment.
I tend to watch quite a bit of videos and things on it.
So I was watching that late at night.
Just before I was able to do it, it was all for first thing in the morning.
It also acted as a wee radio for us in the apartment.
Because obviously the most apartments these days don't come with internet radios.
And also that meant that it saved the phones for when we were out and about.
So yeah, essentially that's it.
So the tablet, just in case anybody is interested, is the Lenovo Tab M10.
I've had that for a wee while now.
I'm quite happy with it.
I've seen a reason to change it.
Right, so those were my what's in my bag.
So hopefully I'm going to continue on with my pie series.
I do have another few to do, but don't want to rush these out.
So yeah, you'll hop here for me in the near future at some point I hope.
So until then, it's a goodbye from me and enjoy the rest of the HDR episodes.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
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