Transcript
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Gunnar Hellekson: we hit the big two, five Zero, Dave
David Egts: Yes. What is it semi-millennial? what is the term for the 250th anniversary?
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, it's a quarter millennial. Right. Or a.
David Egts: Per millennium. Yeah, yeah.
David Egts: We need the Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Semi I,…
Gunnar Hellekson: i semi-centennial.
David Egts: There we go. All right. Yeah, we need the stock audio of the cheering and the applause and all that. But yeah, it's been about 10 years worth of these episodes and I did the rough back of the napkin math that if people were to go back to episode one and start and listen, all of them, I think they would have to take about two weeks worth of work off to be able to get them all in. So,
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: That's great. That's great, it's amazing.
David Egts: 250. Yeah,…
Gunnar Hellekson: I'm proud of us for sticking with it for so long.
David Egts: and how things have changed over the years too. between, where we've been and family wise and everything going on. it's been good, it's been a wonderful journey sharing this with you Gunnar. This has been great and also the Dance too. …
Gunnar Hellekson: That's right.
David Egts: people encouraging us to do it and everything very grateful. I know that
David Egts: Episode 251 will be with an interview that Carolyn Ford and I will be doing and she said that, you guys ought to do a show on, the things that you guys like and ideas for stem ideas for Christmas and stuff like that. And it's like we can do that. We take requests and…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: I thought it was a great idea because I know we did it one who I don't know how many episodes ago of our favorite things And I know of it's almost like a clip show of the things that we've enjoyed over the years but bringing them to the surface of the things that we would love to share to tell everybody about that, we endorse and bring joy to our lives and also to get the word out and share it. So yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.
David Egts: yeah, so who doesn't start a favorite thing show off who doesn't with what favorite software as a service like But I know, I turned you on to this paying up for it is a grammarly, right?
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Fully a happily paying customer of grammarly? Yes.
David Egts: Yeah, yeah. And I could imagine there would come a day when it's all sudden Google Docs and all that. we'll get to the point where it'll take over that. But still for anywhere that you're in a browser and you're like a type in, I can't believe how many mistakes it catches of mine like that. It's like, I don't know about you, but it's like, I tend to skip words and verbs and nouns and subjects and objects and stuff like that. And It fortunately catches me because otherwise, I would look so incoherent without it.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, I think I know exactly what kind of mistakes I make because grammarly is keeping track and I tend to drop direct articles for some reason that's…
David Egts: No nice.
Gunnar Hellekson: where that's my weakness. And so grammarly is good at catching. That for me, I'm in for it for, I'm with spell checkers, even grammar checkers, kind of dime, a dozen. Now I'm mostly in it for the sentiment analysis and also the sentiment correction.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: So being able to take something that I wrote and then say Make this five points less passive aggressive. Right, that kind of thing.
David Egts: Yeah, make it angrier,…
David Egts: right? Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Make it angrier,…
Gunnar Hellekson: right? make it more vindictive, right? That kind of thing,…
David Egts: Spiteful.
Gunnar Hellekson: I find. that's what I'm in it,…
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: spiteful, exactly,…
David Egts: Turn up the spite knob.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: No. But very very helpful tool for that and…
David Egts: Nice.
Gunnar Hellekson: I really like the kid. They've done a very good job of making sure that it works wherever there's a text box. Grammarly has figured out a way to kind of insinuate itself into it through,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: the mobile app and everything else. They've done a very nice job with that.
David Egts: And one that you've turned me on to is pocket where I remember you told me years ago. yeah and saving stuff to pocket all the time and all that and for me it's part of my whole how I come up with ideas for articles or things to talk about on the podcast or stuff like that, where it's like because I'm a slow reader by nature and so I'll save stuff to pocket, typically out of Feedly which is my RSS reader of choice and then it goes into pocket and then when On an airplane or driving the car or walking my dog doing text to speech, listening to those articles and using them for, ideas for things for later. But are you still using it?
00:05:00
Gunnar Hellekson: I'm not using pocket because I can't remember exactly what the problem was. I ran into There was some technical reason why I wasn't using it any longer and I can't for the life of me. Remember what that is right now, but this was years ago and I kind of stumbled around. I know what it was. I was struggling, like you and all of us, I've struggled, figuring out how to save it later and my feed reading situation under control. And for a while,…
David Egts: Right.
Gunnar Hellekson: I'd moved off of pocket and I started experimenting with another tool whose name is Capes. Me, doesn't matter because it wasn't very good, which kind of made the save it later and the feed reading the same, we all happened in the same tool and turns out. I'm not very good at this and instead, now, I've fallen back to
Gunnar Hellekson: I used to run my own cron job as we have all done.
David Egts: As we all do, and
Gunnar Hellekson: As we all do. I think it's probably still in my github account where I was called RSS to email and can you guess…
David Egts: Yes. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: what it did. And then I decided that I was too old to be running my own server and found a bunch of very nice folks in Germany I think who have a much more polished situation than I could have ever written myself called Blog Trotter. And so the good People Block Trotter,…
David Egts: Okay.
Gunnar Hellekson: keep track of all my RSS feeds and then send them to me as emails, which is wonderful because it no longer requires a separate app. I can just get the emails and I process them just like all my other emails and it works great. I've been using some version of this for clover. geez, probably since we started the show.
David Egts: Wow.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, and I love it.
David Egts: No. I'm doing less and less email these days ever ever since, coming to Salesforce mulesoft, living the slack lifestyle. It's like I get maybe 10 emails a day. it's Raise I kid you not about 10 emails a day and I have no filters,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Wow.
David Egts: and everything's in slack and it's all searchable and everything but to me it's like I'm the opposite where it's a less email is more for me and I think it's all about. Finding the tool that works for you And all that. So yeah, blog Trotter. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, blood truck. That's what I'm about. so speaking of kind of workflows and…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: optimizing workflows and stuff like that. Where are you on a productivity tools?
David Egts: I know you turn me on to remember the milk and it still hasn't changed much…
Gunnar Hellekson: Mm-hmm
David Egts: since you turned me on to it. And I know you've …
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay.
David Egts: Which was a long time ago but you're in it to do list and you're coming up with contraptions is to do stuff for you. And you remember Dwight Chamberlain, right?
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I do. Yeah. Yeah.
David Egts: Yeah, it's he, and we talk every month and he's like, yeah, I know Gunnar. He's always doing something what to do, and getting a to-do list to do this and that and everything. And just that he likes the beautiful mind set up that you have with Todoist.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's I have elaborate To do with systems and it actually works in hand with another tool that I'm using called drafts. Which I think we've talked about on the show before it's a one could argue,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: it's a text editor but it is a text editor. with the explicit purpose of, Giving a place up to put your text and then doing something else with it. So that could be go,…
David Egts: Yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: I want to write down a quick markdown thing and then print it or I want to do a quick thing and then send it to Todoist or I want to do a quick draft, a quick email, and then send it to my email thing.
Gunnar Hellekson: It sounds like an unnecessary step, but a instrumented drafts situation This is where I go to take notes in meetings. I've got it set up so that as I'm in a meeting,…
00:10:00
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I can be keeping my meeting notes, and when there's a task item that comes up that I want to see later and todoist, I just make a little to do markdown to do, two square brackets to indicate, here's an unchecked box. Okay, that's now a to-do item.
David Egts: 
Gunnar Hellekson: If I do an @ sign in the beginning of the line And then something else, then it turns into a calendar item later. And then, at the end of the meeting, I hit meeting, and it processes all of it stores. My meeting notes in day, one, which is my kind of archive and then takes all the to- do list, takes all the calendar items, put them in the calendar. It's glorious.
David Egts: Yes, yes. And
Gunnar Hellekson: And I found it extremely difficult to. I was like, there must be better ways of doing this. Of course, he thinks every Sunday and he tinkers around with several tools, but I can't seem to shake this workflow. It is so sticky. I find it so useful.
David Egts: yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I've been doing this for quite some time now. Strongly recommended.
David Egts: Yeah, they need to get you at the Todoist, user conference and Do a keynote or a workshop or something.
Gunnar Hellekson: If this all open source, software thing falls through, you can be absolutely certain. I'm gonna be submitting my resume Todoist. The good people over there,…
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I got nothing but good things to say about this, guys. Yep.
David Egts: And isn't day one they didn't get bought by automatic the WordPress people.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, they got Bob I automatic and you'd never know it because they've never integrated the two things drives me insane. I am actually an automatic customer,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I'm hosted the blog on a wordpress.com, mostly just to have a place to put it and You would think of course that you have this journaling app called day, one which is very nice and you would expect that I should be able to do things. I don't know, post to my blog from this journaling app, not so not.
David Egts: Yes. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: So yes, I'd allowed to do this and they bought them quite some time ago. So I don't know what their plan is. I don't know…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: they In fact, know that I'm thinking about it. Why would they have bought them? If they weren't planning on doing something like that? In any case I got a lot of opinions about this day one acquisition. But the reason why I like Day one is because it is a relatively simple way of you get your text in your keep track of was the temperature that day? What kind of location are you posting from etc? It's almost like a personal blog. If you like a private, just for yourself, kind of a blog. But then when you're done at the end of the year, you can go print up a book. Which is kind of well laid out and bound in hardcover. And so, that's what I do. each year. I actually publish all of my I keep kind of journal entries for things that Soren and I did together, and at the end of the year, I published them as a hardback book that I give to him for a Christmas.
David Egts: That's cool. Yeah. No.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, it's nice and that's incredibly hard to do. By the way we give,…
David Egts: Yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: your regular Apple notes app what have you, It's a very difficult to get something rendered as a book, more difficult than you'd want.
David Egts: Yeah, we'll probably a lot more formatting and all that and layout. and…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: and you're right. I would think day one Code-based wise you would think day one and WordPress Could be very similar from a standpoint, in terms of it's a diary, which is basically a blog for one person. And yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, exactly, It's not like we just cracked the technology, this height.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay, we got all kinds of ways to solved in this problem, JSON, and what have you? I can't for the life of me, figure out why it is so difficult to integrate to do things. It seems real weird.
David Egts: And yeah, I'm sure there's a reason. and I'm sure the other thing is that from an intense standpoint WordPress is designed from the ground up for everybody to see it, whereas I'm sure day one is designed from the ground up so one person can see it.
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay.
David Egts: Exactly one person, right. you don't want people to leak,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. That's right.
David Egts: it could be catastrophic, somebody putting something very personal in there that you get leaked out and they don't want to do that. Especially knowing how late it's like that. That would not be good.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, that's Yes, yeah. Although Having said all that. I still don't know why they're not integrated. It doesn't make any sense to me.
David Egts: True. Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: But Drafts Todoist in day one. That's my Holy Trinity right now. Yeah.
David Egts: There you go. Okay okay and then as far as your passwords go, you've been a one password person for longest time, right?
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, for quite some time and as the T-shirt says command-* backslash is my password. They recently went through a refactoring which I really don't care for but I find everything else about the service so easy to use and…
00:15:00
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: kind of so compelling that I don't see any reason not why I should. So yeah, I've been a happy customer one password for some time.
David Egts: Yeah and especially with I left last pass a while ago and it's For good, And I'm glad I did because it seems to be getting worse and worse, but I found bit Warden to be a drop in replacement for me and migrated over and haven't looked back and really enjoy it then and it's open source, all that. But Yeah, and they seem to be from a
David Egts: open source philosophy standpoint and everything in line and all that, so enjoying working with that technology. So yeah,
Gunnar Hellekson: That's great. Do you have to host your own stuff with the warden?
David Egts: No. No.
Gunnar Hellekson: You find a shared drive.
David Egts: I'm sure it could. Nope. Nope.
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay. Yeah.
David Egts: Nope. It phones home to a bit word and…
Gunnar Hellekson: How's work?
David Egts: server and it stores a blob on the bit worden server, very much like Lastpass. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, Okay question. All right.
David Egts: Yeah, and I'm sure I could, run my own bit Warden server somewhere But it seems to be fine. Haven't paid up yet for the Enterprise or premium version. All that haven't found a reason to pay up for it, but I would happily when the need arises so I get a lot of value out of it. Yeah. But,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Nice. All right.
David Egts: and then what about browser extensions? do you have any my I got this, if they took it away from you, your world would be disrupted.
Gunnar Hellekson: No, it's funny. I was trying to get ready for this episode and I went from it, there was a time when I had an all sin all dancing parade of browser extensions and over the years,…
David Egts: Yep.
Gunnar Hellekson: I've been systematically eliminating them and I think The only one left that isn't like there's ones to do list and there's ones for day one. Right? So that's easy.
David Egts: One password. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: One password, exactly. But I think the only one that's Not tied to. Another part of my workflow is you block origin? I think. That's it.
David Egts: Yeah and that's so I know started with those ad block plus was the granddaddy of all the ad blockers and things like that and then it got for whatever reason it's I guess you block origin emerged as the de facto open source ad blocking tool. That's out there. And who knows? It's like I've seen things with the proposed demise of third-party cookies and all that going away that could possibly break ad blockers like you block origin but we'll see how that goes.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah I think there are always going to be websites or web servers that I don't want my browser talking to and so for that reason I think you block work and…
David Egts: Yep.
Gunnar Hellekson: it's always gonna have some utility for me, right?
David Egts: For Yeah, and…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: and you're right, there are the software as a service things that we mentioned before that. It's like we have the plugins for grammarly in pocket and whatnot but I still found that video speed controller is something that I go back to or I use daily multiple times a day for, there's always that video that you would love to watch it at 2x or faster. And so, it's just a nice way to be able to do that without having to rely on having that being built into the Web page. The guarantee that it can let you play it faster than, one X. So I find that to be really cool. I think It's like a Google guy that used to work at Netflix or something like that that wrote it but it's very lightweight.
David Egts: Highly endorse it. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: That's great. That's real great. Place.
David Egts: Yeah, and then electronics. Yeah so it's a router. Who cares? I found that there's a company. It's called Gli Net and I think we talked about before but I have a router from them and it's based on open wrt. So it's like
00:20:00
David Egts: For the most part, like an open source router and it tracked very closely to the open source model or the open wrt it'll trick it out a little bit for things that it has to but only because it has to like it as much as possible. It'll stick to the stock open source open Wrt. So I think that performs great and I think it'll have a long lifetime because I think they spend more on, the router development and leveraging the open source rather, open Wrt out there. Instead of having to, force people to very pleased with the GLI net router that I got inexpensive and very, very fast performing. Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Nice, that's great. That's great.
Gunnar Hellekson: I haven't yet. gotten the Listen, I got enough problems without trying to self-manage my router and so I've deliberately avoided doing because I know as soon as I start doing it I'm gonna get sucked up. and start to start tuning and tweaking and stuff like this. It feels I gotta be careful with what I let myself fiddle with, you know what I mean?
David Egts: No this is the kind of thing that with Openwrt it's like leave. basically, it's like you could have the stock version that they give you for everybody to use or you could flip a switch to turn on no. I want to see all the knobs that open wrt provides and…
Gunnar Hellekson: Right.
David Egts: it's like, yeah, you want to create your own Enterprise Grade VPN and plug in as storage to it and it's like
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: I know I can do it but t and it's okay but it's there whenever I get the itch that I want to but I have no desire to start my own VPN and…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah before.
David Egts: and all that. but,
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah but I mean it starts off with. I want to improve the performance on my router and it ends with now suddenly I'm rotating certificates every two weeks. That's what I'm afraid of right. Yeah.
David Egts: Yeah. yeah. or it's It's like if I go to the Akron Linux user group, talking to the guys here about antennas and it's all these ham guys, and that's a couple hours right there. And It's okay, I'm happy with stock and it runs really fast and I'm real pleased with it. But Yeah,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah.
David Egts: and yeah, the other thing too, is a chromebooks. I've been delightfully surprised with how Much mileage. I've got out at Chromebooks, whether it's just for my own use or for the family using it or, given one to my mom. It's a kind of thing that it's like
David Egts: I've factory reset them in hotel rooms when that was the only device I had with me and it's amazing how well they work and how it's a kind of thing. I don't want to give it to a relative whenever, I'm not going to be near them like I'm traveling or they're far away and all that. it's a kind of thing that I would give it to them so that I know that it's gonna be really hard to mess up compared to …
Gunnar Hellekson: Right.
David Egts: you would think in the past people I'm gonna buy my parents a Mac because that's easy and that, still a Mac can give you enough enough. Flexibility for you to really screw it up. Whereas with a Chromebook, it's like, you screw it up, you can nuke it from orbit and start all over again. It's pretty awesome.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Do they still, Chromebooks kind of famously or Yeah, they got a reputation is being a little flimsy, right? is there a high-end all titanium kind of a Chromebook available.
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
David Egts: Yes.
David Egts: So that's where Google was. They were making their own and all that. But I got one that is like a core i5 and, it's like zippy, And yeah, they were sort of plasticy and all that, but I think it was a Chromebook plus is the thing that they call it now, which is sort of the original Chromebooks were very plasticy that kind of the kids would take to school and if it gets ruined it's fine you just pull another one out of a drawer and all that.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: But I think it's a point now that you could in theory probably use it for enterprise use and have it be enterprise managed
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay.
David Egts: and to me and again, it's like, do I want to get a certain my company and, do I want everybody have Max or everybody have windows and there's so much on there for an attack surface. That could go wrong. So you got to put all this bolt on software to manage it and push updates and things like that? Whereas with the leaner that you could make it like with chrome OS, I would argue that a Chromebook is more Mac than a Mac in terms of the fit and finish in terms of the envisioning of how simplistic and operating system should be. it's really really delightful experience.
00:25:00
Gunnar Hellekson: Nice, That's great. Very cool.
David Egts: Yeah, how about you electronics?
Gunnar Hellekson: The first thing that came to mind is there's a company out there, their name is thermal works and they make a pretty sure.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: I gushed about this on the show. I didn't go back and look, if I didn't, I'll put it that way. Thermo works makes thermometers. and…
David Egts: Okay.
Gunnar Hellekson: I started my thermometer adventure because I had a lot of air conditioning challenges.
Gunnar Hellekson: In Texas are potentially threatening and so I went and…
David Egts: Yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: bought myself a remote infrared, laser temperature situation, and it's like yellow gun.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: And I just point the yellow gun at my air ducts and that tells me how cold the air is coming out, right? So for me considerable distance, I can now take the temperature of anything which is kind of fun to do. Especially if you've got a nine year old, they can run around and…
David Egts: No. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: take everything's temperature. They also make this thing called these, they call thermapens, which are these fit in your pocket but you can open it up like a jackknife and a probe. So you can test the temperature, your food and they even have a version that on the kind of the butt end of this thing. You press a button and it's got that same kind of remote temperature thing. That's meant to work over a short distance and so One of these in your apron pocket and now suddenly you got how hot is this pan? any click and right away. Is this chicken done? Yes, this chicken is done. I use it almost all the time when I cook and I don't know what I did without it. I suppose there's some people who can just into it the correct temperature of food. I'm not one of those people, so it's a nice to have it all in one place.
David Egts: Yep.
Gunnar Hellekson: And obviously very simple to use and a very accurate. So yeah, the Thermap ends. Huge big endorsement. Yeah.
David Egts: Nice. Yeah. So I know a lot of times too. getting away from the computers. Is helpful, Get away from the keyboard getting to the point where it's dangerous for you to be on your computer, to force yourself away from all the technology that's out there and all that. and I know you mentioned that many episodes ago. that you got an bike …
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: that sporting around with that. How's that going? You still using it.
Gunnar Hellekson: It's still a total delight. I thought that this was going to be kind of these covid purchases where you buy the thing with the best intentions that it just sits in the garage for a while. but I think so.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: What's special about this particular Ebike is not that it is an ebike so much as it's got a saddle on the back. That's Soren can ride on. And so now as know,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Dave we go geocaching often and so we've been able to want to go geocaching around in the neighborhood and…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: he just hops on the back of the bike and we scoot around and it's easy to kind of get on and off less cumbersome than a car, certainly get the wind in your hair, And Yeah, It's a total treat, this is a Runner 2 is the one I've got. They've lots of different flavors of this thing and either an extremely heavy bike or an extremely light. Moped is the way to think about it.
David Egts: Yes, yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: And you can get a saddle on the back and you can get a great big basket in the front for all your groceries and whatnot. So, I've started running all my errands on the bike and man It's a treat. Yeah.
David Egts: 
Gunnar Hellekson: It makes me feel good about myself when I use it.
David Egts: Yeah, do you feel like you got any exercise?
Gunnar Hellekson: That's up to me. So sometimes …
David Egts: Okay.
Gunnar Hellekson: I don't feel like getting an exercise and in which case, I really heavily on the battery and the motor there. But other times you can kind of goose it down the amount of assistance that you get and you can force yourself to, work for it. Yeah.
David Egts: Okay, So, that's cool. So it's like, if it's a hundred degrees out, you don't want to be totally sweaty. Let the bike do the work.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's And It's up to you. You get to choose.
David Egts: For me, my bike doesn't have any petals and it's a boy, and I was doing the math on it. the one I have a motorcycle, it's a Yamaha fz09, and it was manufactured in September of 2014. So, it's push him, 10 years old and…
00:30:00
Gunnar Hellekson: Okay.
David Egts: I was riding it, not last weekend, but the weekend before and it's like, I'll tell you what, it just feels like, it's brand new and unzipping around through the hills, and it's like,
David Egts: This is a fast motorcycle. and that the feeling of being one with the machine, I'm telling my wife this. And she's like, Aha, and I'm like, No. It's like, you're cutting these curves and moving and it's not about speeding or anything like that, but just being in that state of flow, where you got to pay attention to what's in front of you and it's like you reach this point of you're just cutting through these curves And you're moving, and it's just a great stress reliever for me to just get the cobwebs out of my head, just such a treat,
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. That's great. I love it.
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Very cool.
David Egts: And I know you talked about this, you're a Tom bin fan,
Gunnar Hellekson: Born On the list of product endorsements to do list is at the top and…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Tom, Ben is right underneath it. Tom Bin is an outfit at a Seattle that makes these in very well built.
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Backpacks. Slingbacks luggage and their design team. Definitely knows what they are doing. They are very attentive to detail. They understand what it means to live on the road. I think, and I've enjoyed their products for over a decade now I think and I wouldn't travel with anything less I just did. I've been doing a series of kind of one week trips or two or…
David Egts: Yep.
Gunnar Hellekson: three day trips and I have thanks to the Tom Ben folks and some judicious packing. I've been able to get away with doing all these trips with one bag. And it's great.
David Egts: Yep.
Gunnar Hellekson: It is a total treat. Just throw the thing up.
David Egts: So it's a container,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: you…
Gunnar Hellekson: It is. Yeah.
David Egts: it holds stuff. So What are the things is it durability? Is it the pockets? Is the zippers? Is it the ergonomics,…
Gunnar Hellekson: Always, yeah.
David Egts: what? Yeah,
Gunnar Hellekson: All of these things. it is ideal in menu, in many dimensions. So, for example, I have this tristar bag, which is a,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: which collapses elegantly, so that I can carry it around maybe a good size briefcase if I needed to. But it also fits maybe two or three days worth of clothes plus gym clothes. it can carry it as a duffel, you can carry it as a backpack. You can just carry it, kind of on the side. you have kinds all manner, of pockets and rings and they have it. One thing that I've started doing is they have a very clever tool called of what they call a Freudian And guardian slip does is it's a?
David Egts: Okay.
Gunnar Hellekson: You can imagine it's like a folder or Let's say it's a 8 by 11. Thing with a bunch of pockets on it. And in it,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: you can fit your tablet, maybe a battery, some tissues pens. Wallet passport. What have you and it's all in one thing that just easily pulls out of your bag. So, what I've started doing is instead of carrying around a second carry-on, I'll just keep this Freudian slip in the bag, and then when I get on the plane, I pull the Freudian slip out, put the bag in the overhead. And now I've just got this Not something bigger than a three-ring binder that I can square my seat or…
David Egts: 
Gunnar Hellekson: If you're lucky enough to be on a plane with a kind of a coat, hanger on the seat back. you can just hang it on the coat hanger.
David Egts: yes. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: And now you've got all your stuff in front of you.
David Egts: Nice.
David Egts: You put your shaver in there and all that. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah,…
Gunnar Hellekson: yeah, That's right. So, Yeah, like I say, the tombin folks, extremely thoughtful, extremely well, built every bag I've bought from them, I still have and use on a regular basis and many of them are. Yeah, like I say maybe even, 15 years old, so yeah,…
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: great stuff. Strongly recommended.
David Egts: Wow.
00:35:00
David Egts: in this and so that sounds like a great gift idea but one of the whole genesis of this was, Carolyn Ford saying Yeah you guys got to talk about stem gifts and things like that that are going on. And one of the granddaddy of the mall that we've talked about for over a decade was the raspberry Pi and there's a raspberry pi, five coming out, which is exciting, hearing about the specs. it sounds like it's getting closer and closer to becoming almost like a daily driver from you could put Linux on it and actually use it as a desktop computer. And so, I'm excited about that. That should be coming now and the performance supposedly fantastic in terms of CPS be going up and the networking is super fast and everything. But
David Egts: and then, the other thing too is that, it's Scratch is, another granddaddy of them all that. Yeah, that's One of the things that learned got into, stem with and technology with, her and I just doing that over a Christmas break and I went and I looked back at her Guinea Pig game that she made
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: 10 years ago, there's still people commenting on it saying, this and in seriously, go and look at it and look at the comments and it's like I love the guinea pig. I have a guinea pig and it's like to hear about your guinea pig dying and all that and in all of the comments that have been on there have been so encouraging and if you think about all the social media toxicity and trolling and people making mean comments and stuff like that, it's seems to be such a safe space for, kids to do stuff and express himself creatively but also have that community of encouragement. So, highly recommend, sitting down with kids and trying that out and, play Lawrence game, put a comment in there for. I'm sure she still looks at it and is tickled by it.
Gunnar Hellekson: that's fantastic. That's great. Alcohol.
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. and you still have a young one. And so what,…
Gunnar Hellekson: I do.
David Egts: what are the stem things that you're getting sworn into?
Gunnar Hellekson: So there's an outfit called Upper Story, that created this, you can call it a game but it's kind of a kit kind of an activity. It's called a tumble touring after Alan Turing, of course, and if you can imagine,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: it's like
Gunnar Hellekson: The basics of it is it's a table that you stand on end and then you stick marbles in the top and then it runs through a series of clacking, gates, as it falls down the table down into a collection,…
David Egts: Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: point at the bottom. And each of these kind of clacking gates is a component to
Gunnar Hellekson: Basically teach logic to kids and when you go through the whole they give you a very approachable comic book that kind of walks you through all the different. Kind of challenges that you can come and say, Okay, take three and set them on one side. Take three and send them on the other side. We've the colors together and now we're counting in binary etc. By the time you complete the whole kind of comic book, understand, kind of the basics of how a computer gets put together, because, of course, the marbles are marvel's the electric current, right? And you go through these logic gates and…
David Egts: Yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: ores and whatnot. super fun. Really enjoyable. For young and old alike. It's a nice way of making these frankly really abstract concepts of computer science quite te. For kids as really fun,…
David Egts: Yes.
Gunnar Hellekson: the same folks have created a relatively new game that came out during the pandemic. I just got it in a box and it's earmarked for Christmas this year so I have not played with it yet but it's called spintronics. and it is on the same, kind of wavelength, but here, we're talking about integrated or talking about circuits and so you in a kind of a steampunk mean, it has springs and Wiz gigs and dials some kind of crazy Victorian steam engine kind of a situation but it teaches you how circuits work Which is a really cool. So, for example, you have a capacitor in this case it's a spring right? And so you wind it up and it stores the energy. So anyway, I'm around looking forward to opening up that box. Just a very thoughtful thinking toy.
David Egts: No, yes, yes, yeah, no, That sounds cool because especially when it comes to electronics it could be so abstract in terms of What's this really doing and what's it? The pastor has a different from a battery and all that.
00:40:00
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah.
David Egts: That's really cool. it's gonna be a lot of fun for you to sit down with Soren and go through it and all that. So,
Gunnar Hellekson: That's And I can't emphasize how satisfying it is to hear the clacking of a machine that you've just built getting back.
David Egts: But yeah. is it battery powered?
Gunnar Hellekson: That's great.
David Egts: Or is it you like a rip cord that you pulled a kick it off? Or How does it?
Gunnar Hellekson: Gravity powered.
David Egts: How does our gravity?
Gunnar Hellekson: It's all gravity.
David Egts: All…
Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah.
David Egts: all right, Wow.
Gunnar Hellekson: I'm excited.
David Egts: That's a lot. So there you go,…
Gunnar Hellekson: That's a lot. I hope you're happy.
David Egts: Carol. Hope you'll like it.
David Egts: Yeah. Yeah.
Gunnar Hellekson: No. That was fun to do a little retrospective. the things that have stayed with us over the course of all these episodes.
David Egts: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. and if people want to get the links to all these fine things to, build their own, Holy Trinity of Todoist, drafts and day one, where should we send them?
Gunnar Hellekson: Is it good to a dgshow.org that's d as in Dave Jews and Gunnar Show.org?
David Egts: Awesome, Gunnar. hey this is great. Here's the 250 and to 250 more
Gunnar Hellekson: here. Thanks Dave. Thanks everyone.
David Egts: Yeah, thanks everybody for listening this. It wouldn't be possible without you all