958: 2025 Holiday Gift Guide

The Syntax team brings us their annual Holiday Gift Guide! They’ve curated the best gadgets, tools, food, and even kitchen essentials for the dev in your life — plus a few treats anyone would love to unwrap. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax 00:54 Our Favorite Things 01:03 Wes - Bambu Lab 3d Printers 01:50 Wes - Leatherman Arc Multi-tool 03:07 Kaitlin - Ruffwear Roamer Bungee Dog Leash 04:49 Niki - Magic Mirror Home Screen 06:42 Randy - Everything Presence Light 08:22 Randy - Henson Safety Razor 10:24 CJ - Viltrox 28mm Pancake Lens 11:17 Scott - 3D Printers 11:37 Scott - Anker 4-Port Charger 12:45 Randy - DJI Mic Mini 13:37 Randy - Velcro Cable Ties 14:22 Kaitlin - Prequel Skin Care 16:18 Kaitlin - Coros Pace 3 Running Watch 17:30 Niki - Steam Machine 18:02 Niki - VR Headset 18:18 Under $30 18:25 Wes - ESP32 18:45 Wes - WS2811 LED Strips 19:44 CJ - Precision Screw Driver Set 20:42 Scott - Magsafe Popsocket 21:23 Wes - Digital Calipers 22:45 CJ - Microfiber Device Cloth 23:33 Scott - Candle Warmer 25:30 Wes - Matte Screen Protectors 25:38 Desk Items 25:46 Wes - MX Master 4 Logitech Mouse 26:40 Scott - Elgato Stream Deck 29:12 CJ - Magsafe Phone Stand 30:13 Office Items 30:21 Wes - Heated Vest 31:33 CJ - USB Hand Warmers 32:23 Tech / Storage 32:32 Scott - MoCa Ethernet Adapter 33:41 CJ - 4TB Drive and 1TB SD Card 35:06 Wes - BenQ Programming Monitors 37:28 Food 37:37 Scott - Biena Edamame 38:08 Wes - Heartbeat Hot Sauce 39:11 Wes - Seoul Sisters Kimchi Mix 39:32 CJ - Clif Protein Bars 39:55 CJ - Z Energy Strips 40:51 Kitchen Gadgets 41:00 Wes - Carbon Steel Frying Pan 42:35 CJ - Air Fryer 44:45 Scott - Zojirushi Water Boiler 45:43 Scott - Teak Cutting Board 47:36 Clothes 48:26 Wes - Hooke / Naked and Famous 49:24 Scott - Octobre Clothing 50:31 Scott - Sezane Clothing 52:11 CJ - Blank Mineral Wash Shirts 53:10 Kids 53:17 Wes - Yoto Player 54:47 Scott - Tonie Box 56:06 CJ - Large Hedgehog Plush 56:43 CJ - Tortilla Blanket 57:04 Smarthome 57:08 Scott - Lutron Caseta 57:38 Wes - Meross and Refoss 01:00:41 Scott - Apollo Automation 01:01:29 CJ - Kauf Smart Home 01:02:52 CJ - Plant LED Bulb 01:04:03 Scott - Roland Electronic Drum Set 01:04:58 Thanks! Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wes Bos?

  Welcome to Syntax. Happy holidays. We've got the GIF guide episode for you today. This is something we do almost every year. One year we didn't do it and everyone got really mad, but we're going to be detailing all of our favorite things in everything from like tech stuff that we love, kitchen stuff that we love, knives and hot sauces and the most random stuff because we always hear and I often get emails from like the wives of developers being like, "Do you know what I can get my husband for Christmas?" Because they don't necessarily know. So this is the episode where people who may not be developers are tuning in, or if you are looking for what to ask for for Christmas, there's some good stuff in this

• 0:43Wes Bos?

  episode. So we're going to get on into it. The entire team, the whole Syntax team is here today, and they are going to give you their pick as well because they have much better taste than Scott and I. All right, let's kick it off. By the way, the prices of these things, we have a whole category of under 30. Some of this stuff is dirt cheap. Some of this stuff is really expensive. My absolute favorite, I'm cheating, I'm going to pick two things. First of all, a 3D printer. I got a Bamboo X1C. They've released like six of them since I got mine, so you can look into what the latest and greatest is. But I got one and I've been absolutely loving it. It's so fun to be creative. It solves so many problems. All of the comments, we did an episode on the 3D printer and all of

• 1:26Wes Bos?

  the comments were, "Oh, come back in six months as things are going to be collecting dust." I just checked. I've had the thing for 10 months and it's been printing for 67 days, which means that's 20%, 20% of all the hours I've owned it, it's been running. So I just, I'm cra- and I bought a second one, so I probably even more than that.

• 1:48Wes Bos?

  So I absolutely love it. It's just like such a good tool. And then my second favorite pick is, I picked this last year as well, Leatherman Arc. This is a multi-tool that I feel like one of these...

• 2:01Wes Bos?

  Um, beauty influencers where I have to hold my hand up to focus it. So this is a Leatherman multi-tool that has uh, obviously pliers in it. It's got cutters in it. It's got scissors in it. Scissors is probably my second most used one because the kids are always asking me to cut stuff. It's obviously got a knife in it. Um, I know you Brits are weird about carrying knives, but I have this thing in my pocket every single day and I use it probably four or five times a day just for, for absolutely everything. The arc specifically is one-handed operation. So if you're holding something, you can grab it and work at it. And it was, it was like 300 bucks, very expensive, but man, I can't think of a better gift that I've ever gotten. I've had it for two years now and it's just my favorite thing.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  It's a good brand. I would say like my dad had one when I was growing up and he had it throughout my entire childhood, so it'll last forever.

• 2:52Wes Bos?

  Leatherman is like, yeah, heirloom. If you don't lose it, I've lost it a couple of times and I've been stressing. Yeah, you can get, you can get cheaper ones as well, but I was like, I'm just gonna get the one. So next up, marketing manager for Syntax, Caitlin Bloom.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:06Wes Bos?

  What did you bring for us today?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Alright guys, okay, bear with me. My dog might get really excited as I'm holding this because I have a leash. Um, we are as a podcast, we're a dog podcast, okay?

• 3:19Wes Bos?

  Canadian dog podcast.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  We are a dog podcast. Sorry if you like cats, but this is a leash. It's called the Roamer Bungee Dog Leash from RoughWare. If you guys have anything from RoughWare, it's just like insane. It also feels like, are you laughing at me Wes?

• 3:33Wes Bos?

  Yeah, RoughWare is such a good name, sorry.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  It's a great name.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  It is, it really is. And look at it. I feel like a leash is something you're just like blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm using it just to walk my dog, but I actually get like really excited every time I use this. So it like stretches to be um, like 11 feet.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  So you get like some distance, but there's also like a handle here. So if your dog is like going after a deer like Doug does, my dog here in the neighborhood, you can grab him. But then also guys, like you wrap it around your waist and it clips with, and then you also can adjust it.

• 4:06Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it's pretty sick.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  You can like, you're at the brewery, put it around the, the table. So your dog's right there, like,

• 4:13Wes Bos?

  Oh man.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Look at the clip.

• 4:16Wes Bos?

  Oh, that's a good hardware.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  It's amazing. I love it. Doug loves it. Don't you, Baba?

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Reasonable price, too. It's like forty-five dollars Canadian.

• 4:26Wes Bos?

  Yeah, that's reasonable.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Thirty bucks American?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Anything you get from off-wear is just like, it's a life improvement. It's really great to be hands-free, too. Because you're like, I mean, you guys got kids and like, oh, there's wives' hands. Just holding your girl's hand. You know what I mean? Like, strap it around your waist and you're good to go.

• 4:44Wes Bos?

  That is awesome. Whoa, good pick.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Good pick.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Nikki, what do you have for us?

• 4:49Speaker 04

  My pick is a home screen, actually. We just got one like a month-ish ago. And I really, really love it. I can't show it because it's in the hallway. But basically, you can DIY it, but you can just buy one, like out of the box if you want to. But you can, so what you can do is you just buy a display. You buy an infrared, like, touch frame for it, basically, a Raspberry Pi. And you can, like, you can just, like, code it, like, you can set it up yourself or however you want to.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  We use a thing for, like, it's called Magic Mirror. It's very, very nice.

• 5:36Wes Bos?

  Oh, man, I've been wanting to do this.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's super nice. You can, you can literally see the tram schedule on it, like.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Oh, sick.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and all sorts of stuff. So like, the news going on it, like, the weather. We have a smart, like, electricity meter, basically. And it can show it, like, when electricity is cheap or when it's really expensive. So we can, like, start washing or whatever when it's cheap. So it's super nice.

• 6:06Wes Bos?

  Man, I've been wanting to do this for so long.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:09Wes Bos?

  I even started writing it because we get these emails from our kids' teachers. And I want to build some sort of, like, ingest server that takes the emails and, like, parses them into dates and puts them on the calendar and adds reminders. Man, this is a bad episode for me. I'm gonna end up with eight more projects and products after this.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and we still didn't put on the calendar yet, but that's, I think, next up. Because, yeah, it's super awesome. Yeah, next one, Randy.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Uh, I got three in front of me. No, I got four. So let me set the scene for you. Okay. You're a parent and you sit down on the couch after a long day. Your little kid goes downstairs, you just get comfortable. And then they say, Dad, I can't reach the light switch. It's the most frustrating thing. So you get up, you go downstairs, you turn on the lights. Two seconds later, they're upstairs playing upstairs and you're like, did you turn off the lights? They didn't. So I got a, was it an everything presence light? Which is a millimeter wave light sensor essentially. And I have it hooked up with Home Assistant, so my lights downstairs are all like the Philips Hue lights. So I have it when the kids go down there, it sees them, it turns on. After like 15 minutes of no activity detected, it turns off.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  It sounds incredibly simple. This has been around for bajillion years, but it is a massive quality of life improvement just to have this in the basement. So yeah, huge fan.

• 7:30Wes Bos?

  Oh, man, I need this.

• 7:32Scott Tolinski?

  This is millimeter wave? Nice.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:35Wes Bos?

  That's better than like a P I R sensor, which is like they trip too often sometimes, right?

• 7:41Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. So the difference between millimeter wave, Wes, is that you can like dial in the specific location at which something might trigger it. Where like just general is gonna say, did it detect motion of some kind?

• 7:54Wes Bos?

  Did it detect something or not? Oh, yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So you could put like zones and stuff and also like light values. So it'll detect if the sun is going down, stuff like that. But I just have it on, sees motion, turn on. Doesn't see motion, turn off. And it's, it is very nice.

• 8:06Wes Bos?

  That's beauty. We have a couple of those in our mudroom and our closet where you walk in and the light just turns on and then it turns off after a minute or so. And it's like every, not every room, but many rooms where you like the storage rooms, basements, things like that need those.

• 8:22Scott Tolinski?

  Randy, what else you got?

• 8:23Speaker 03

  This one is a gift for the gentleman out there. Well, I guess ladies can use this, but it's a a safety razor. Let me get this out here. I get like really bad razor burn. And so as a result, I've always just let the scruff grow. Like just always had scruff for the past like 15 years. And I was like, I wonder if one of these safety razors would do a better job. And happy to say for the past month, I've had a squeaky clean baby face and it's a, it's a different me.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  You're looking younger. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:55Scott Tolinski?

  Who makes that razor?

• 8:57Speaker 03

  This one's called Henson. It's Henson Shaving. I think they're a Canadian company. But yeah, it's better, like, it's not cheap. Like, it's about a hundred bucks for the razor. But then the blades are only like, you get a box of like a thousand blades for, I don't know, twenty bucks or something, so.

• 9:12Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it's cheap.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  They last you forever.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I use one of these too, and it like reduces on plastic waste because the

• 9:18Scott Tolinski?

  No plastic.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Replaceable razors are just the razors. It's not the whole plastic thing, so.

• 9:23Wes Bos?

  And do you have a little slot in your wall that you do them? Because that's what they used to do in old houses. Yeah, there used to be a thing in the back of your medicine cabinet where you just push it into the wall and then people would reno and you'd find this like, like, like, safety hazard.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  Little treasure trove of razor blades.

• 9:37Scott Tolinski?

  I have one of these by Leaf Shave, and they have several different ones of like multi-blade or whatever, but yeah, they use the little half-blades. And they're so cheap. I mean, they're, I've bought like one box of the half-blades when I first got this razor and I've never had to buy another box because you just get a ton of, and they're, and they're so, The thing I like the most about this type of shaving is that you put like no pressure whatsoever on the blade. You just have to like hold it against it and lightly drag. And if you do put any pressure, it's gonna take off a significant chunk of skin. So you gotta be careful.

• 10:15Wes Bos?

  I haven't used a razor in like probably fifteen years because like my face just catches on fire. So I'll have to try it.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  All right, let's pass the potato. CJ, hit us up.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  My favorite thing this year, because I've been taking a lot of photos, is this Viltrox pancake lens. So it's a twenty-eight millimeter lens, f four point five, and it has autofocus, but it's the tiniest thing ever. So just as a comparison, like, Here is a eleven millimeter wide-angle lens. Usually they're, they're pretty, pretty big, pretty honkin'. This is like a fifty millimeter lens. So this is great because it turns a pretty powerful camera into just like a point-and-shoot. So like if you're going on vacation, or you just want to have a single-purpose device that maybe you don't want to Use your phone for everything, this is great. And it fits in my, my little side bag.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And it was only like a hundred bucks. And when it goes on sale on Black Friday and Prime Day for like eighty bucks, and they have the connectors for Fujifilm, Nikon, This is on a Sony, but it's great. I've been taking really cool pictures with it.

• 11:16Scott Tolinski?

  Looks great.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna choose Scott.

• 11:18Scott Tolinski?

  I'll definitely like also mirror Wes's 3D printer thing. My Bamboo Labs got the most use out of anything I I I bought this year. Not only that, but like my my kids use it themselves and stuff and they even my son like even got into made a Fusion 360 box with it and stuff. So it it's a really cool science tool as well. I'm going to say my favorite thing this year is this Anker four port charger. It has three USB Cs and one USB A. It flaps out, whatever. It's got even like a a screen on it that shows you like the draw of everything.

• 11:51Wes Bos?

  That's so key, the draw.

• 11:52Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. The draw. It's really great. Um, what's awesome about this, though, specifically is that the top two USB Cs are strong enough. They're at 140 watts to be able to charge your MacBook Pro at the MacBook Pro charger. So you could have two 140 watts and then one phone charger and then a USB A in it like draw. Like, so when I'm traveling now, this is the only thing I bring and then, you know, like four USB or three USB C cables. And I never have to bring more than one charger. I never have to bring more than one international adapter. And it's just this one, one box and it charges my computer, phone, all this stuff. So.

• 12:32Scott Tolinski?

  Big, big fan of this device and I think normally it's like 100 bucks, but on sale 80 bucks, 70 bucks on Amazon. So.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Love it. I'm all about reducing the amount of stuff in my bag when I travel. So that's great.

• 12:43Scott Tolinski?

  Same. Yeah. Randy, what else you got?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Okay. Now, being the mic guy, I have to suggest a microphone. So this was bound to happen. People often ask like, what's the best little mic to connect to your camera? And I usually suggest this one now. Because it has Bluetooth mode, so you can actually just connect directly to your phone. But it also has like a a receiver that you can connect to a camera. So this version comes with a traveling case and it also comes with two microphones. And it's like 120 dollars on Amazon or something. You can get it without the charging case. Just like one of them for like 40 or 50 dollars. So it's pretty, pretty great value. You can sync them up to your phone directly. So you don't have to use like a recording software. Yeah, it's just super easy. Get better quality recordings for your phone. And then if you're doing like content production, anything like that or like TikToks, whatever.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  They're just gonna sound a whole lot better. So DJI Mic Mini.

• 13:34Scott Tolinski?

  Nice.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Do you want my last one too?

• 13:36Scott Tolinski?

  Want your last one?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Okay, this is my cheapest one. This is a little $10 tip. This is, go to like your hardware store and get these Velcro cable ties.

• 13:45Scott Tolinski?

  Yes.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Don't go to a music store because music stores are gonna charge you like $30 or $40 for this little like roll of, I don't know, probably $500 on this roll.

• 13:53Scott Tolinski?

  I got a ton of these.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  This is like 10 bucks at the hardware store. Cable goes through. Um, I have like a bajillion of these around my house and they're just so handy. Like everything behind my desk is tied off nicely. They're super easy to change. If you just need to, you just rip it. Um, yeah.

• 14:06Wes Bos?

  And it wraps around the cord as well. That little hole is for cinching it up so that when you undo the cord, it stays on the cord.

• 14:13Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Wes Bos?

  The only thing I don't like about them is they get stuck on my socks.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:18Wes Bos?

  I hate that.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, when they get stuck to something, you don't want it. It really sucks. Super annoying.

• 14:23Scott Tolinski?

  Caitlin?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Guys, I know you were saying that like the wives come to you asking for gifts through the like the guy developers, but this one for, this one's for everyone. This is a skincare product line. But listen, it's for everyone and look how big they are. Can you see how big these are?

• 14:39Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, they're big. Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  This is like a skincare line that's made by a dermatologist. So it's like really simple, no frills. This whole thing is like $20. I mean $18.

• 14:49Scott Tolinski?

  What is it? Explain it for the audio listeners here.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like, I mean, how many ounces is this?

• 14:54Scott Tolinski?

  No, what's the brand? What's the?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Oh, it's called Prequel.

• 14:57Wes Bos?

  What's that for?

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, explain to somebody who doesn't do skincare.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Sorry, okay.

• 15:01Wes Bos?

  What is skincare? Caitlin?

• 15:03Scott Tolinski?

  I think that's a question a lot of men ask.

• 15:04Wes Bos?

  I let the shampoo drain over my face.

• 15:07Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  This is why I actually thought this would be really good for the guys because yeah, this is for your face, but this also can be for your body or your hair if you want, I guess, but it is a face wash. Um, and it's just like super gentle but hydrating. It is called Prequel and this is the cleanser. Now I really feel like a beauty cleanser.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  This is like fourteen ounces, so it's huge and only eighteen dollars. And it has a pump on it, which I think is like super important, especially for like lazy guys who are using shampoo to wash their face. Um, this is a lotion that you can use. It's the same size. It's also got a pump. They have like every product you could possibly need, but it's like so affordable, super accessible. But guys, I get this for your wives. If they don't have this, like it's super like universally loved. But also buy it for yourself or wives buy for the guys. Cause like, I mean, I'm seeing wives and husbands and stuff, but you guys, everyone can use this.

• 15:59Scott Tolinski?

  No one get mad. Anyone who likes to clean their face can use this.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Thank you. But it's just so good. Like I bought like six of these. Gabe likes it. Like, you know, if you can get like your boyfriend to use it, you know, it's good. So that's my call out. Frequent skincare. It's just, it's so cheap. It's amazing. It's all good. And then I have one more. This is the Coros Pace Three Running Watch. I know you'll probably have Apple Watches. But this like, this watch is the best thing I bought all year. It was like, I, I think the thing about like being a marketer, it's really easy for me to see when like, a product isn't necessarily good. They just spent a lot of money on marketing, which I like, I find a lot in, especially like wearable devices.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Um, and so the Coros is just like, it's, I think it's, I think it's made in China, but it's very high quality. Um, like seventeen day battery life. It's simple. It's like just so simple. It does everything you need, but nothing that you really don't. Um, just the best, like especially for running or activities, like the best interface you could possibly want. You can like, change it. You could see only the, the data that you're wanting to see. Just, I had Garmin for a long time and found it frustrating and they just, I felt like they didn't actually know runners. Um, this, if you run, if you hike, if you bike, whatever, just it's so amazing. And it's just so small and lightweight. So.

• 17:24Scott Tolinski?

  Kailin's a serious runner, so she knows.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, those are my picks.

• 17:28Scott Tolinski?

  Hell yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Uh, Nikki, do you have any other ones?

• 17:32Speaker 04

  First, I wanted to say the, the Steam machine, which is gonna be like the console for Steam. But it's gonna come out in January or something like this, like early next year. So I just wanted to like say just Steam Deck very simply because it's, it's really amazing. You can bring it wherever. And yeah, your whole Steam library is with you. So it's awesome. If you don't have it already, get one.

• 17:58Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I'm a big fan.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  The steam machine looks incredible, though.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, right?

• 18:03Scott Tolinski?

  I will be also.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  And they are gonna have like a VR headset as well, so.

• 18:07Scott Tolinski?

  And I'll be getting that, too.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Do you really want?

• 18:11Wes Bos?

  Alright, I got a whole bunch more, but thank you Syntax team. The rest are just gonna be from CJ Scott and myself.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us, guys.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Happy holidays.

• 18:18Scott Tolinski?

  Happy holidays.

• 18:19Wes Bos?

  Alright, next category we have here is under 30 bucks. I'm going to say if you have a tinkerer in your life, get them a what's called an ESP32. This is just like a $5 microcontroller. Controller, you can get them. Look how tiny this one is. It's like the size of my thumb and it has a screen on it. This one is, it has Ethernet on it. The most common one is just Wi-Fi, but it has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi. And if you get that along with WS20811 LED strips, you can hook them up and you can make the LEDs all different colors and like, I'm telling you, gateway drug. ESP32 plus LED strip, gateway drug to learning microcontroller programming.

• 19:04Wes Bos?

  You don't even need to, you don't even know to know how to program because you just load the stuff on. But just if you want to tinker with electronics, maybe learn a little bit of C++, get the LLMs to do it for you, highly recommend.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  People always recommend like Arduino or Raspberry Pi. These things are so cheap. You can get three for like 20 bucks.

• 19:22Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And you can do very similar stuff.

• 19:25Wes Bos?

  On like AliExpress, they're like, like $3 in order. I have like a bucket of fried ones because I've accidentally hooked them up wrong. So just buy a whole bunch, buy a strip of 5V or 12V LED strips. Probably 5V is fine to start with because then you can power them right off the board. It's just such a fun thing.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my first under 30 pick is a precision screwdriver set. There are all kinds of varying quality. Like I think like iFixit has like a really nice one. This one, right now on sale is like 22 bucks, but. It's great. It's like you always, like if I'm taking apart electronics, um, there's always like a random like hex or like sometimes there's a square. Um, I specifically got this because I was taking apart a Sega game cartridge. And there's like a, like a proprietary four square thing, but this had the tool that I needed. Um, it's also got these cool little, uh, plastic, uh, things for pry open. Yeah, you pry open devices. Uh, so yeah, this is 20 bucks. It's infinitely useful. I love it.

• 20:29Wes Bos?

  If, if you're like me, you can just buy one of those every single year because you lose the important Torx bits. And then you just buy another one. I, I have like a drawer. The right behind me, this little thing right here, this is full of little like abandoned screwdrivers.

• 20:44Scott Tolinski?

  I'm gonna sick pick a MagSafe Pop Socket. They're cheap. And the little MagSafe ones are really great because you don't have to have sticker on the back. And even if you have like, uh, any phone that you have with, um, uh, wireless charging or anything like that, you can usually get a metal ring. And even if it doesn't have MagSafe, you can get a metal ring on it for that. But, uh, I found it to be great.

• 21:11Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I use this thing all the time and I've only dropped my phone like once or twice. So, uh, big, big fan. And you can do it as a kickstand so that it, you can watch movies on it like that if you want. And, uh, yeah, this thing is great because again, non-permanent, whatever.

• 21:25Wes Bos?

  I'm gonna tell you to get a pair of digital calipers. I have these on my desk at all times, um, for 3D printing. If you need to order like a screw or something, you don't know how big it is. Uh, if you need to measure the clearance of something, having digital calipers is the key because almost everything is done in metric. Um, so yes, Scott and CJ both have their pair within reach because if you're trying to use a tape measure and converting from inches and I don't know what the hell a fraction is in, in America. Everything's done in metric these days. And if you just can properly size it exactly with your digital calipers, it's so key. Um, and they're, they're dirt cheap. I have a pair of just cheapy Amazon ones.

• 22:10Wes Bos?

  And they are extremely precise. You can get like a really high-end Japanese ones, but like, I'm not like machining or lathing stuff here. I'm just measuring millimeters down to the like 10th of a millimeter.

• 22:24Scott Tolinski?

  It's super handy.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  It's great to like, find the size of bolts that you're trying to replace.

• 22:28Wes Bos?

  Yes.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So, yeah, they're great.

• 22:30Wes Bos?

  But the bolt one is so key. I also have like a little, you know, at Home Depot, they have those little testers?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:36Wes Bos?

  I got one of those last year for Christmas. So you just like, put the bolt in, or if you have a nut, it goes over, over the bolt. And that has been super helpful as well, just for trying to match it up.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Right. Next one I have is this camera lens protective wrap. It's, it's just this, but it's like adhesive to itself. So it's really great if you have like, large electronics that you want to throw in your bag.

• 22:58Wes Bos?

  Ooh.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  You can just like, you wrap them up in this, and it like, sticks to itself.

• 23:02Wes Bos?

  Is it like, is it silicone?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's, no, it's like fabric, but it's Velcro. Like, this, this is like a Velcro esque. Yeah. And so it's-

• 23:10Wes Bos?

  It's microfiber.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  It doesn't make sense with this tiny lens, but if you, like, if you're trying to throw a camera with like, a big lens in there, this is perfect for that, like, prevent it from getting scratched. Pretty affordable. Get you one of these.

• 23:22Wes Bos?

  That's ideal, because I never carry, like, the, I have like, a lens case, and I always just throw the lens in my backpack, because I'm just like, I'm not-

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Same.

• 23:31Wes Bos?

  Putting this massive case in my, in my luggage. So that's, that's the move.

• 23:35Scott Tolinski?

  I'm gonna sick pick a candle warmer for your office. I'm gonna sick pick, I'm gonna holiday sick pick a candle warmer for my office.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  $130 sick pick.

• 23:43Scott Tolinski?

  We used to call this episode the sick pick-isode, Wes.

• 23:45Wes Bos?

  Yeah, you're right. Okay.

• 23:46Scott Tolinski?

  What happened to you?

• 23:48Wes Bos?

  Sick pick-isode.

• 23:49Scott Tolinski?

  You get, you get hired by a century, and all of a sudden, you're selling out, you're not calling things a sick pick-episode anymore. Candle warmer, I got one right there, you can kind of see it cruising. Uh, man, candle warmers are dope, because candles are great to have in your little office or your space, just giving some nice scents. Probably your areas don't smell as good as you think they do. They probably, they're smell bad or neutral. So, you get a little candle warmer, you put a candle on it, get a, any candle from Target, wherever, and you never have to worry about it, uh, burning your house down. But also, just about all of them have timers on them, so you could say, run for an hour and then shut off, um, then your office smelling great the rest of the day. This one is 15-

• 24:34Scott Tolinski?

  bucks and it's just a lamp, put a candle underneath it, it's great.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Can you explain this to me? So like, is it heating from the bottom or is the lamp heating it? How is it?

• 24:42Wes Bos?

  It's got like a halogen, it's got a halogen bulb in it and it's hot enough that it melts the wax in it. We have one as well. It's awesome. You put it on a timer and then just it smells great and then it turns off at night.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  That's sick. So you don't have, you can use it for candles that you typically would light the flame for?

• 24:57Wes Bos?

  Yeah, yeah. And the candles last way longer. The only thing we don't like is that like after like a month, all the scent is gone, but a lot of the wax is still around, um, which is maybe also good. You're not putting that stuff in the air.

• 25:10Scott Tolinski?

  Right, yeah, right. Yeah, there's, right, you're just releasing the scent slowly. They're, they're very lovely. We have two of them. They're cheap.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 25:18Wes Bos?

  Yeah. It's great. And you can like, you can also like, put like a pizza pocket underneath it as well. And like, it's like a, like a Chinese food buffet. So.

• 25:26Scott Tolinski?

  Heat lamp.

• 25:27Wes Bos?

  It's a heat lamp, yeah.

• 25:28Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Wes Bos?

  Uh, matte screen protector.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 25:34Wes Bos?

  Sick. I didn't know these existed. I got one for my phone. They look really cool. That's all I have to say about that. Let's move on to the next section, which is desk items. I'm going to pick something that I don't even own, but I'm asking for it for Christmas and that's the MX Master 4. Um, I have been, the MX Master is the best mouse in the world. All the gamers can, oh, I just hit the play button on my mouse. There's so many buttons on this thing. You can, um, you can set it up. I have the gesture where I push a button and mouse up and that, that turns the volume up. Um, it just feels really good in your hand. All the gamers can be quiet because they're going to be like, it doesn't have

• 26:15Wes Bos?

  refresh rate that's higher than 60 here. No one cares that, no one cares that's not gaming. Um, I could click on my buttons and, and like, like click on the line of code that I want just fine.

• 26:31Scott Tolinski?

  You're just saying that to rile up the keyboard people.

• 26:34Wes Bos?

  Oh, yeah. You don't need that. MX Master 4, I'm asking for that because it's my favorite mouse ever and I'm getting the next one.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 26:41Scott Tolinski?

  On my desk, I have, I even printed a little stand for it, but I have a Stream Deck. This is a very common thing that a lot of people have. It's basically like a macro pad with screens. The thing I really like about the Stream Deck is that you can really just customize it for any app to your heart's content, to do whatever the heck you wanted to do. And you can put little GIFs as the buttons and things like that. And I love that. I love having my little GIFs looking like I'm a streamer or something. But I use it for anything. I use it for like auto pasting text into apps that I typically need to have ready to go.

• 27:19Scott Tolinski?

  I use it to trigger all kinds of things. I used it to trigger my spooky Monster Mash song that I did for Halloween. It's just endlessly useful. So, love this thing.

• 27:31Wes Bos?

  And writing apps for the Stream Deck is so easy. It's Node.

• 27:36Scott Tolinski?

  Super easy.

• 27:36Wes Bos?

  It's like a Node SDK and you can just build whatever you want. Or, you know, I've written a couple that check if I'm recording on ScreenFlow and it throws up a little recording symbol. I have my lights hooked up to it. It is a little bit of an investment to actually care about it. And I find that that's what a lot of people have them collecting dust, but it's so fun. Especially when you learn you can just write Node apps for it.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  I've been streaming for years and I don't have one, but I kind of might bite the bullet this year. There's also a bunch of like cheap Chinese ones that are like half the price. I'm curious if you can customize them in the same way because I know there's even like a React SDK for building little React widgets that run on them.

• 28:14Wes Bos?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I might get it this year.

• 28:17Wes Bos?

  Cheap Chinese version of something is usually the route I go, so, man.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's the thing. You can get like an 8x8 grid instead of, like, they're pretty massive for like the same price.

• 28:28Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I was gifted the Logitech one, as well as this Logitech Jog Wheel. I had the Stream Deck for a long time before. And the Logitech one is good because it's a 9x9. I did find the software to be Be not as mature as the stream deck. But this thing, well, yeah, nine, okay. Uh, and then this thing is a big old knob and, uh, you know, the Brits, they have issues with knives. But they also have issues with big old knobs, I think.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:53Wes Bos?

  And this thing. They are big old knobs.

• 28:55Scott Tolinski?

  Oh. It could do all kinds of stuff. You can customize this big old knob to do whatever you want. So you can play with it and, and have it, uh, you know.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:04Scott Tolinski?

  Do all kinds of stuff.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  To us, it's not that funny, but to other people that are listening right now, like talking about playing with your knob is, uh, is very funny to them.

• 29:11Scott Tolinski?

  Very funny, yes.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Moving right along, my pick for desk items is, uh, this MagSafe stand. So I use Android, but I have a case that has MagSafe on it like it does for, um, for iPhone, but this allows me, it's, it's like very fixed and allows me to just set my phone on my desk and I can like see the screen. Um, similar to the pop socket that Scott recommended, but it's nice and adjustable.

• 29:35Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And.

• 29:36Scott Tolinski?

  Vertical with it, horizontal.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little bit higher. Um, so this is fun.

• 29:39Wes Bos?

  Satisfying click. Do that again.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Do it to the mic. Oh, shit.

• 29:44Wes Bos?

  Ah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Okay, here we go.

• 29:51Wes Bos?

  This thing sucks.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  It's like, okay.

• 29:54Wes Bos?

  There.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I'm gonna blame it on this case, the, the MagSafe on the case.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  One last thing, it has this elastic on it, so you can use it kind of like a pop socket to hold on to your phone. And then it converts into like a stand, so it's pretty slick.

• 30:09Scott Tolinski?

  That elastic is a little bit more secure than just like pinching it with your fingers.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:14Wes Bos?

  Next section is office items. And this is the most hilarious office item ever, but I have a heated vest that I often will wear on the very cold days because it keeps your core hot. But like, I can still move around and like, like type and it's, it doesn't feel, uh, like for me being cold sucks when you're working, right? I have a heated floor in my office, heated core now, but also this thing is like, I was installing Christmas lights the other day and I just turned this on. There's a little USB in the pocket and you just connect it to a power bank and it will heat for, I don't know, I have. This is the power bank that I have, so I think it's like 3 18 650 cells.

• 30:58Wes Bos?

  And it lasts for, I don't know, probably about 5 hours or so. And it is so nice to have a heated vest. I thought it was so cheesy. My sister got it for me and I love it.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  That's great. I think it's the future. Like, I feel like Star Trek promised this idea of like, personal air conditioners, personal heating devices. So like,

• 31:15Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  The fact that you don't have to pay a heating bill, but you're just walking around comfortable is great.

• 31:19Wes Bos?

  Yeah, just heat, heat yourself instead. Like, isn't that the whole, um, those beds that are internet connected?

• 31:26Scott Tolinski?

  Heat locally.

• 31:28Wes Bos?

  You just heat the bed, not the room. That doesn't make sense. Or that does make sense. There we go, I turned it on. I'm gonna, I'm gonna warm up for the next couple picks.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Similar for an office pick. This pick actually comes from my wife. She highly recommends these. They're USB hand warmers. So, instead of warming your core, warm your hands. Um, I, I don't have them, but if you click on the link, they're like these little, they look like pieces of toast. And you can put your hands into them, and it keeps your fingers warm while you're typing on a keyboard. Uh, so my wife's fingers get really cold, so another isolated, like targeted, heating device that heats your fingers while you're typing.

• 32:01Wes Bos?

  Somebody sent me these once and I never figured out who it was. I went to my P O box one day and there was some hand warmers in there. And I think it was one of those like, they just ship it out and then they get the review scams. Because like, not a single person was like, what, like, why, why did you send me, you, like, toast hand warmers? So, that's good.

• 32:25Scott Tolinski?

  I don't have any office picks because I kind of moved them all to my under 30 category, uh, because I had them all in here. So we can move on to the, the next one, which is tech. Uh, my tech pick for the year is my Mocha adapter setup. So Mocha allows you to do, um, ethernet over coax. These particular ones, you can get up to like 2.5 gigabit and... You just put it in one coax and then if you have your house wired for coax, like my 1990 house is wired everywhere for TVs, but nothing else. You just coax Mocha to Ethernet and then coax Mocha to Ethernet.

• 33:06Scott Tolinski?

  And then we have like a wifi with a wired backhaul now instead of like a normal wireless mesh. It's like a wired backhaul. Or you can use it to run Ethernet to like I have a whatever with the hub. What is this called? Switch.

• 33:25Wes Bos?

  Unbelievable to me that they figured out how to do that because so many homes, like North America loves coax, you know? Every home has coax to every room.

• 33:34Scott Tolinski?

  There's TV, yeah, there's a TV, cable TV hookup in every room in the house. They gotta have that, yeah.

• 33:42Wes Bos?

  That's amazing.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  So my tech pick is storage. I've got two, two storage picks. One of them is a four terabyte SSD. I have it right here. It's tiny. Again, we're living in the future, people.

• 33:53Scott Tolinski?

  I got one of these too.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, four terabytes in my hand. So I use this for all my backups. It's great. And then similarly, a one terabyte SD card. Like if you would have shown this to me, like when I was in grade school, I would not believe how much data I'm holding, potential data I'm holding in my hands right now. So these little SD cards are great for, for cameras, but also if you need some extra storage on your laptop, leave them plugged into the SD port and then you've got a full extra terabyte just sitting right there to drop stuff onto. So my pick is storage.

• 34:24Scott Tolinski?

  That crucial one is, is really reasonable too. I, I actually really love that device. And in fact, I got it, oh man, I wish I had this on my desk. I got a 90 degree or a 180 essentially degree angle adapter. That, so you can plug it into your back of your phone and then just have it like resting on the back of your phone here. And that is really nice if you ever need to bring storage onto your phone, especially with these phones can shoot ProRes if they're connected to an external drive. So that like ends up becoming a nice little kit. But that thing is so nice and small, four terabytes, it's unreal.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Surprisingly affordable. I think like right now it's like under 300 bucks, so. Get you one of these.

• 35:06Scott Tolinski?

  Four terabytes, that's crazy, yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  It's huge.

• 35:09Wes Bos?

  I'm going to pick the BenQ programming monitors. You've probably have seen them, they sent them to me, they sent them to absolutely everyone who has a YouTube channel out there.

• 35:19Scott Tolinski?

  They didn't send it to me.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  I didn't get one.

• 35:20Wes Bos?

  Please, BenQ, can you please send Scott and CJ one of your monitors? So I have the

• 35:26Scott Tolinski?

  I'll tweet about it, yeah.

• 35:28Wes Bos?

  The 28 inch, which is a 4:3 monitor. It's unreal, because it's like, a 32 inch was, is too wide to put in front of myself, because I'm trying to have my camera right here. But then like a 28 inch was not enough vertical space for my recording. And this solved all of my problems, because it's a 4:3 resolution. The colors on it are fantastic. I have a really expensive Dell monitor, and a kind of a cheaper LG one. And the colors on the BenQ ones are, I would say even better than the Dell ones. So that one is fantastic. And then I also have the 32 inch RD32 UA.

• 36:10Wes Bos?

  They have a whole bunch of features, like they have like backlight on it, there's obviously, there's like a hub, USB-C hub built into it, really nice monitor arms built into it. And then there's all these like features around like, light and dark mode and dimming and whatnot. I don't, I don't use any of those features, I simply just think that it is a fantastic monitor for anyone who is staring at code all day.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Man.

• 36:31Wes Bos?

  Because it's so crispy, just beautiful monitors, like almost no bezel on it at all. A little bit of a chin, but like around the top, left and right are almost no bezel.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  I'm looking at the price, it's very expensive. Would you have, would you have paid for it if they didn't send it to you, now that you've used it, you think?

• 36:48Wes Bos?

  Yes, yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 36:49Wes Bos?

  I, well, I'll tell you this, before they sent it to me, I had it in my cart on Amazon.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:56Wes Bos?

  Because the, there's several monitors out there that are, the, the 32 inch one is not 4:3, but the 28 inch one is 4:3. And a lot of people like that for programming, because you get the height, and you get the width. Whereas like some of these ultra wides, or some of these ones are just too wide and not tall enough. And then, vertical, it doesn't really work, so. Big fan of that. Yeah, I would say splurge on if you're looking at these things all day.

• 37:30Scott Tolinski?

  Let's move into food stuff. This is for food specifically, not food gadgets. I'll have one here, and I don't know, I don't know if you'll be able to find this. We have this at our Costco. And they are edamame beans. They're dried, but it has 13 grams of protein. They're cooked in avocado oil. We love just shoving as much protein in us as possible. But man, these things are good. They're just salted little edamames. And you can just chomp on them all day and they're lovely. So shout out to B I E N A edamames.

• 38:10Wes Bos?

  I'm gonna, sick pick. Yeah, I'm saying it now too. Sick pick. I do hot sauces every year. That's like, as one of my picks. And this year I'm gonna do some of my favorite, which is fermented heartbeat hot sauce. This is from a Canadian brand called Heartbeat Hot Sauce. And they were on, what's the spicy Eaten Wings YouTube window? They were on Hot Ones. So a lot of people already know about this, but the bottle is really nice. The pineapple habanero is probably my favorite. The red habanero is also really good. They also have a dill pickle one, which I don't even have anymore because I ate it all. But love it. I also like the bottle size is really nice because I have like a sauce addiction.

• 38:55Wes Bos?

  And our fridge is just a minefield of like, where the hell do you put this bottle? This is the right size, you know? It's not massive. You can try like a weird one and you're not getting over it. What? It's 177 milliliters. So I don't know how many like American, what do you, Ozes you guys use over there? So check that one out. And then also, I'm a big fan of the Seoul Sisters kimchi mix. And this is just a, like a shake on kimchi, kind of spicy. And you can throw it on chicken, throw it on popcorn, whatever. Just shake it on. And it tastes fantastic. So I'm a big Korean food guy, so I like that one.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  So my food pick is protein bars from Cliff Bar. So I eat a vegan diet. I'm always trying to find places to get my protein sources. And these bars are great. They're Oreo flavored. They have like a chocolate flavor and chocolate mint flavor. But usually you can find these at Costco. 20 grams of plant protein in every single bar. A lot of days, I'll just have one of these for breakfast. They're great.

• 39:56Wes Bos?

  Right, it's pretty good.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also, I'm choosing some energy strips. It's not food, but like, these are two things that I start almost every morning with. Is a protein bar and an energy strip. So, these energy strips have 40mg of caffeine, 30mg of L-theanine, and some B vitamins. But, you can actually, they're super portable. Like, they come in this little tin, but then they also have, they come in these little pouches, each individual strip. These are great to travel with, like, if you have jet lag.

• 40:22Wes Bos?

  This is like acid tabs.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I'll show you, it's kind of, do you remember those Listerine strips that people used to always use?

• 40:29Wes Bos?

  Yeah, oh, yeah, we used to put so many. We used to dare each other.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very similar, but it's just like red instead. But, yeah.

• 40:37Wes Bos?

  And that has 40mg of caffeine in it?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like half a cup of coffee. It's very light. And use at your own risk. Don't just like pound 100 of these.

• 40:46Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, caffeine can kill you.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yes. But, one of these in the morning is just enough, because I don't like drinking coffee or tea in the morning, so.

• 40:54Wes Bos?

  Alright, kitchen gadgets. I'm sure Scott and I, and probably CJ, could go all day on an entire episode of kitchen stuff. But, I'm just gonna pick one of my favorite things. I also did this last year, and that is a carbon steel frying pan. This one is from Merton and Stork. But, basically, a carbon steel, I was a cast iron guy forever. And, the thing about it is like, my family hates cooking with cast iron, because they're scared, they're gonna mess it up. It's too heavy, you know? So, I got a carbon steel one, and this thing is fantastic. I clean it, you don't have to do like, you don't have to go crazy over it. You know, you watch these YouTube videos, where people are like, "Oh, don't let a drop of water touch it.

• 41:37Wes Bos?

  Don't cook tomatoes in it." There's all these like rules. Screw all those rules. I clean this thing with soap and water, like, three times a day. And I just season it. Like, I don't know, maybe two or three times a year, I season it. And it's like beautifully non-stick. And it's just my favorite thing to cook with. And I'm, I slowly want to just switch out everything in our house to, to carbon steel.

• 42:01Scott Tolinski?

  I use stainless steel for all my pans. I know that's not the same thing as a frying pan, just a single one. But I, I, I, there's something really great about moving into these types of materials that you can just not have to, like, you gotta baby them a little bit and how you use them. But like throwing in the dishwasher, using forks with it, or metal utensils and all kinds of stuff. You don't have to worry about it.

• 42:22Wes Bos?

  Yeah, you don't have to fuss around it. And like, I just, I'm at the point in my life where I just don't want to think about buying a new frying pan. Like ever again, maybe in like 10 years, I'll think about it. But I just want to have something that is nice, that's good. And it's, yeah, it's not going to kill you.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  So I'm going to pick an air fryer. And I'm not picking any specific air fryer, but I am an air fryer convert. Um, so I will, I'll caveat this with the term air fryer is marketing. It's a scam.

• 42:51Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Don't, don't buy into it.

• 42:52Wes Bos?

  Who cares? No, those people are the worst. Your oven isn't air fryer. Shut up. Air fryers are the best.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:59Scott Tolinski?

  It's a convection oven.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  That's what I'm getting at. Convection oven, convection ovens are amazing. And I have a cheap one. So my wife's, uh, mother, my mother-in-law, I guess also known as, gave us one that she wasn't using. So cheap, like, it was like one from Walmart, but we use it every single day. Like we're, and it keeps your stuff crispy. It's not frying it. It's literally just a heating element that blows air, but it heats your stuff up really quick. You don't have, and, and like usually the microwave, it's like soggy. I'm a convert. Everything, everything I heat up in the air fryer.

• 43:27Wes Bos?

  Crispy pork belly in the air fryer is like, it's the best I've ever made. It's unreal.

• 43:33Scott Tolinski?

  If you have an oven that does convection well, I will say, we have like a, um, a mesh wire thing that lifts your stuff off of another pan. So that air can get underneath it. And that will give you more of the air fryer. It's still not air fryer, but it gives you a closer, uh,

• 43:49Wes Bos?

  It'll give you that, it's just not as fast. And like, like I'm done work at five o'clock and our kids have to eat by like 5:27. And it's just like, Air fryer for some of these things is just so nice and fast.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Also, shout out to Technology Connections. It's a YouTube channel. I don't know if you guys have seen him. But he does deep dives on like dishwashers and microwaves, but he did a whole episode on air fryers, how they work. Talking about like the scam and marketing, but yeah, air fryers are great. Also check out Technology Connections.

• 44:18Wes Bos?

  Yeah, he's good. He just, he just rolled out another like hour-long video about dishwasher detergent. And I was like, I like sat down, I got a beer, I was like. Same.

• 44:27Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah. I did, I switched to powder after that episode.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 44:32Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Wes Bos?

  Oh, yeah. I've been a long time powder, powder connoisseur because, because of those reasons, but I, the shaking a little bit on top. That's the move.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pre-wash.

• 44:44Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Scott Tolinski?

  Pre-wash. We've all been misled. I'm going to sick pick a Zoji Rushi water cooker. This one holds five liters of water and it keeps it at a lovely 195 or several different temperatures depending on 205, 195 ones, whatever. And it vacuum seals it. So that way it's not using a crazy amount of electricity all the time. You can click reboil and it will reboil. And then you what? You have anywhere, this particular one, anywhere from 5.3 quarts to 4.2 quarts, which is again like five liters or four liters or whatever, on hand at any given point, you push a button, oatmeal, tea, whatever.

• 45:25Scott Tolinski?

  You got hot water 24/7 and they last a lifetime. They last forever. It's really just well-made stuff. So shout out to Zoji Rushi. And they have a cute little elephant logo.

• 45:37Wes Bos?

  We have the, the rice maker from Zoji Rushi, which ours, ours busted. I'm like, I'm getting the good one and like, do not regret that at all.

• 45:45Scott Tolinski?

  I'm also going to sick pick a giant teak cutting board. In fact, we initially got this one from Costco. And when it arrived, Wes, I kid you not, it was like this big. I mean, it wouldn't fit on any counter. I don't know who's buying this thing. And we had to, we had to take it back to Costco, but we were just like, oh, this is the perfect cutting board if it was just a little bit smaller. So we ended up getting a big, still a. Large one, it is heavy as hell, it's thick, you oil it and stuff, but I'm done with plastic anything, or anything like, uh, cutting board, like, it's gotta be wood, it's gotta be metal, whatever. Um, so this type of cutting board to me was really nice, and this thing is great, fantastic.

• 46:26Wes Bos?

  Man, I, we have, we have a really nice wood one, but I never use it because it's so heavy. I just use the plastic one, and I literally took my saw to our plastic one, so that it would, I cut like an inch off of it, so that I would fit in the dishwasher. I was like, I am, I got no time for hand washing this stuff.

• 46:41Scott Tolinski?

  And you also got like, a metric ton of microplastics in your vault.

• 46:45Wes Bos?

  I know, I know.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do the same thing, yeah.

• 46:49Wes Bos?

  I, I use a cast iron pan, or the, it's okay.

• 46:55Wes Bos?

  Hold on, CJ, what do you, do you use a wooden cutting board, cutting board?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  All plastic. Uh, we have some wooden ones, but we really only bring them out for like, parties or special occasions, but they're so hard to keep clean. So, yeah, plastic, they clean so easy. We also have like, these really flexible ones, um, that, they're like, super thin. We have like, five of them, because sometimes like, you don't want to wash the, uh, the cutting board, so, yeah, plastic.

• 47:19Scott Tolinski?

  You guys are out of your mind.

• 47:23Wes Bos?

  Yeah, we are. It's not good for you, I don't think.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  No, definitely not.

• 47:25Wes Bos?

  Because you look at it, and like, also the plastic ones like, get gnarly as well, the food stuff gets caught in it.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:32Scott Tolinski?

  And bacteria, yada, yada, yada, yada.

• 47:34Wes Bos?

  Ah, I'm fine. Look at me, I'm picture of health.

• 47:39Scott Tolinski?

  Next one, clothes. Obviously, every single thing on the Syntax Store at century.shop, and we got a lot of good stuff, t-shirts, hoodies.

• 47:49Wes Bos?

  We just got new, uh, tuques, which is a, a beanie for all y'all.

• 47:53Scott Tolinski?

  Not tuque.

• 47:53Wes Bos?

  Yeah. It's a tuque.

• 47:55Scott Tolinski?

  We got a basketball, which is like, the best thing ever, you can see it back there, uh, with hand-done graffiti from a friend of mine, who's a, a famous b-boy. We got mini skateboards, we got keycaps, we got pins, we got all kinds of stuff on here.

• 48:10Wes Bos?

  Big ass skateboards.

• 48:12Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:14Wes Bos?

  So get yourself some syntax merch.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually really good stocking stuffers too, because like the mini skateboards, fingerboards, put them in your stocking, the pins, keycaps. So these are definitely something that devs universally would like.

• 48:29Wes Bos?

  Uh, two clothing brands I like, not specific items, but one Canadian, or these are both Canadian brands. One's called Hook or Hooky and it's at H O O K E dot com. They're sort of like a outdoor, heavy flannel brand. And I've got a couple, a couple items from them and I absolutely love them. I'm always looking for like, what's the heavy flannel that you can get that doesn't look like crap after like you wash it three or four times? And this is a fantastic company. And then also along the same lines, Naked and Famous is a Canadian company that uses Japanese denim or makes that Japanese denim, salvaged denim.

• 49:11Wes Bos?

  And they have some of the best jeans I've ever worn. I've been wearing them for probably like, probably 18 years or something like that. If I look back, I have pictures of all the fades over the years of that I've done. They also have really nice denim jackets as well, if you look into that.

• 49:27Scott Tolinski?

  I'll also pick a couple of clothing brands, one of which is October, which is like, people are, ask me a lot about my clothes sometimes. This is nice clothes so that you, it's not like stuff you buy once and buy next year. It's like stuff you buy and keep forever. Like this jacket I wear all the time is from October. I love this stuff.

• 49:46Wes Bos?

  This is like Cezanne's men's brand, right? My wife loves Cezanne.

• 49:50Scott Tolinski?

  This is Cezanne's men's brand and it's pretty much all I wear. These jeans are Cezanne. Like I'm like pretty much, or it's October. I'm pretty much head to toe in this stuff. But the, the nice thing about these clothes is, well, I mean, they're not, it's not nice that they're expensive, but they are nice clothes. And like, so for me, I'm much more of a buy less things and buy them nice and then just keep them forever. So for me, this definitely fits that bill of that. But they're also just really good looking, kind of like classic styles, stuff that's not going to be out. Next season and gone or something like that. And then like Wes mentioned, the women's brand. So if you're looking for your, your wife, your partner, women in your life, Cezanne.

• 50:35Scott Tolinski?

  Every single thing in this store I could buy for my wife and she would love. In fact, I pretty much have bought a lot of things from this store. Very expensive, but stuff that will last a very long time and is just nicely made, high quality. I actually made CJ walk by this store in New York because we're like, oh, we should just stop by Cezanne while we're here and see if they, and there was a line out the door. It couldn't even get in.

• 51:03Wes Bos?

  I've stood in that line in New York, way too many times. There is a, for all the fellas, there's a taco place across the street, which you can go hang out at while they shop. But my wife has Cezanne dresses that were like, I don't know, probably 2017, 2016, and they're still look brand new. Like Scott's wearing, you probably have seen Scott wear some of these things. Year after year and they're still look like brand new.

• 51:27Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Expensive, nice clothes for sure.

• 51:30Wes Bos?

  Rage against the shitty quality.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 51:34Wes Bos?

  Like clothing, man.

• 51:35Scott Tolinski?

  Disposable, yeah.

• 51:37Wes Bos?

  It's a problem. Like I was at a thrift store the other day and I was just like looking at it. I was like, like we're in trouble with all this like, what's the?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Fast fashion, I think is one.

• 51:46Wes Bos?

  Chinese website that like ships you shirts for like $4. Sheen, yeah. Man, we're in trouble. Stop buying that crap. That's, that's bad.

• 51:55Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I would rather save up and get something.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 51:58Scott Tolinski?

  And like keep it forever, you know?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  There used to be this, this sentiment in the world of like, buy something and keep it for life, like furniture, like that would be like heirloom furniture, like clothes that like lasts for 50 years. But now we, we buy stuff and it lasts like a year, two years and then we're replacing it. So I'm all for it. Sustainability for sure.

• 52:13Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 52:14Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  And I'm also just going to pick some cheap shirts though. So in the exact opposite direction.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  But, these things are great. So I'm wearing one right now. It's a, it's just a blank vintage wash shirt. And actually, you can't see it that well, but I actually embroidered, embroidered syntax in black on my shirt.

• 52:30Wes Bos?

  Ooh, oh, that's good.

• 52:32Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, CJ made some bootleg syntax gear.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Bootleg merch. But these are great. They're nice and comfortable. They're like, less than $10 apiece. I've been wearing them for several months.

• 52:43Wes Bos?

  I have this one as well. And in fact, I think that this purple one is what we embroidered the syntax big terp, big perp on. It might not be exactly it, because I bought like, six or seven blanks before we went ahead with the syntax big perp tee, just to test them all out. And that one is, they're pretty heavy, right?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:05Wes Bos?

  Yeah, and they, they last forever. Like, I've washed mine probably, like, 30 times, and it still looks like brand new. Uh, let's talk about some kids' stuff, something that you might want to go ahead and buy your kids. I bought my daughter a Yoto player, I don't know, maybe about a year ago. And basically, this is a little, you get these cards, which have an NFC tag in them, and then you just slap them in the player, and it connects to wifi, and will automatically go and play it. All the, the battery's dead on it. I, uh, oh no, there it is. I just turned it on. And this thing is awesome. My daughter, every single night, I, I listen to podcasts every night when I fall asleep.

• 53:47Wes Bos?

  It's just like, the way I am, and my daughter is the same way. So we go and get a podcast called Who Smarted?

• 53:53Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, Who Smarted. Dope.

• 53:55Wes Bos?

  And we put them on, you can, basically, you can buy cards that have stories on them, but you can also buy what's called MYL, make your own cards. And then, there's like a hack to, you put it on and make your own card, and then you, you flash it to just like a $1 card you can buy on Amazon. And then, we just have a whole library of stuff. They have a whole web interface. You can just upload MP3s. So what I did is, I just wrote a script that downloaded all 900 episodes of Who Smarted? And then every night, slaps it in, listens to one while she falls asleep. And then, she's like, this like, it's like, weird and interesting facts. On Who Smarted and now she's just like this walking library of like weird facts.

• 54:40Scott Tolinski?

  Oh dude.

• 54:41Wes Bos?

  Anytime you see something like, did you know that bees will actually walk on their hands? Or like, these are like random things. You're like, how do you know all this?

• 54:50Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, in the same realm, we got the Tonie Box, which is like you have NFC kind of like little figurines. And we got our kids so many of these nonfiction ones and they're constantly just learning so much from these things. So same thing, both of our kids fall asleep listening to this every single night, every night, listening to things about National Geographic or astronauts or whatever. And you would not believe the amount of things they pick up from this. So it's, both of them absolutely love their, their Tonie Box.

• 55:25Wes Bos?

  Did you see that Tony is also now rolling out like cards as well?

• 55:29Scott Tolinski?

  No.

• 55:30Wes Bos?

  You can put them on top of the thing. It's, it seems pretty cool because like, that's why I went with the Yodoh. It's like, I didn't want like a whole bunch of these like figurines or, and I want, if I'm being honest, I wanted to hack it.

• 55:43Wes Bos?

  And now Tony has a card, so that's a super good option. Plus like, if you go to like Target in the States, they have like 20,000 Tonie Box like figurines on the wall. It's unreal how many they have.

• 55:55Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, all kinds of stuff. And you can hack these too. I haven't done that though. There are plenty of repos out there for being able to have it like a endpoint that it pulls from. So you could again load up the Who Smarted and stuff. Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  I don't have any kids, but I do have a giant dog. And so my pick is an extra large hedgehog plush. Sorry, sorry to put it in the kids category, but uh, this is.

• 56:19Scott Tolinski?

  It is your kid.

• 56:20Wes Bos?

  It's your fur baby, right?

• 56:22Speaker 01

  It's my fur baby, yes. Uh, but he absolutely loves these hedgehogs. So they're, they're about this big. Uh, certain dog breeds like have trouble breathing, but like he will sleep with it in his mouth. So he can like breathe through his mouth.

• 56:33Scott Tolinski?

  Does that too? Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  So if your dog likes big plushies, this is one that like literally every time after he's done eating, he'll pick this thing up, jump on the couch. Uh, he absolutely loves it. And then, I think this is for everyone, but maybe for kids too. We have this tortilla blanket. I don't know if you've seen these.

• 56:53Wes Bos?

  This is a huge blanket that looks like you wrapped yourself in a tortilla.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. You're just a little burrito on the couch. They have, they have other fun ones too. There's like a pizza and a waffle. But my, my wife enjoys this, but I'm sure your kids might enjoy these, these tortilla blankets too.

• 57:07Scott Tolinski?

  All right, let's get into smart home stuff, or just home stuff in general. I'm going to say anything from Lutron Caseta. We have the light switches from Lutron and man, they're great. They wire normally. They're easy to set up. They work like normal ass light switches. And you can put dimmers on them. You can set automations. They work well with Home Assistant. I have these. I've been like slowly replacing every single switch in our house with the Lutron and a big, big fan of the entire system.

• 57:41Wes Bos?

  I'm going to pick some Miros stuff. So I've been, I've been buying a bunch of their stuff recently and I've been really enjoying it. So. It's a kind of interesting. They have Miros and then they have another brand that's like, like a Refos. Which I think is like a, like a cheaper version of it. So I got the smart water sensor. So you get like a hub that you plug in that connects to wifi. And then we have two sensors because we had our water heater leak and luckily I caught it in time, but I was just thinking like, man. If I did not catch that, because I hardly ever go where our water heater is, you know, it could have been leaking for like a week before I got it.

• 58:21Wes Bos?

  So we got the smart water leak sensor. You basically just put it on the ground and we put one underneath our dishwasher and we put one underneath our water heater. And then if it starts leaking, the two contacts just bridge from like being electrically connected and then it sends. A signal over and starts beeping and going crazy. So that one, and then I also switched over to, to Miros garage door openers. They're both. They work really well with, they work really well with Google Home. They, they also work with HomeKit. And they also work, the reason why I like this stuff is it works really well with um home assistant, you know, you can hook it up to all of your own stuff.

• 59:03Wes Bos?

  Which like, I've been a big fan of Wise in the past, but their stuff is getting less and less friendly um towards just like third-party systems. So I've been trying to move a lot of my stuff away and I had the Wise garage door opener, which used a camera to detect if it was open or closed, but it just, it was too flaky. And uh, the, the Murros ones are just a, simply a wire with a, um, like a magnet sensor, just to detect if they're closed.

• 59:31Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, we, we have a, like MyQ or something for the garage door and it works really well, so.

• 59:36Wes Bos?

  Do you have to pay for that, though?

• 59:37Scott Tolinski?

  No, no, I'm not paying.

• 59:38Wes Bos?

  No, okay. Cause like, yeah, I don't want to have to pay for that.

• 59:43Scott Tolinski?

  No.

• 59:43Wes Bos?

  Uh, there's one thing that they don't have out yet, but it will eventually, and it's a, uh, energy monitor, oh, they do have it out now, a smart energy monitor, and it's basically like sixteen little amp clamps. And you put it on your, your electrical panel and you wrap every single circuit in your house with these little amp clamps. And then it will detect how much energy is being used on, on all of them and you can like, see if there's like a spike or something like that. So I would love that.

• 1:00:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yes. This stuff looks great, Wes, and they have a smoke alarm that looks really nice, too, and it like aesthetically looks nice.

• 1:00:23Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Scott Tolinski?

  Wow, I didn't know about this company.

• 1:00:26Wes Bos?

  I have a couple of their dimmers as well, we put their dimmers, they have a three-way dimmer, which is, is kind of a tricky thing to do. We have some Leviton three-way dimmers as well, because you want to have two switches, but you also want both of them to be dimmers, so you don't have to walk to the other one. And uh, been a big fan of those.

• 1:00:45Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, well, this is cool. I'm in the same realm. I'm gonna say, sorry CJ for jumping in here. But this is very similar. Apollo Automation is a small-time little device company and they make millimeter-wave multi-sensors for cheap. They make like one of the best-in-class air-quality sensors because this doesn't just do carbon, it does like particulate and all kinds of stuff. So it could detect for mold and all kinds of things. So for the price, this is what I found to be the single best air-quality sensor. But with the caveat is that you probably need Home Assistant or something like that to use it, and that's why it gets to be a little bit cheaper, since they don't have their own platform or app or something.

• 1:01:29Wes Bos?

  Oh, privacy, yeah.

• 1:01:31Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, a lot of cool stuff.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Along those same lines, like I like anything that doesn't tie you in and like make you install like a random Chinese app. And so my pick is anything from Kauf or Kauf, K-A-U-F, because you buy them and they have Tasmata firmware on them. So Tasmata is like the open-source ESP home firmware. And they just ship from the factory with them, so you don't have to worry about like trying to flash the devices. And they'll just connect, you can connect to the device directly over Wi-Fi, or if you have Home Assistant, you can integrate it there. So I have bulbs and a couple of smart switches for them. And these were great because didn't have to customize them. But there are some devices, you have to do a lot

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  of research if you look on Amazon, that like, it says you need a Chinese app, but if you can figure out how to flash Tasmata onto it, you can start to just hook it up to your own things instead. So yeah, I'm a big fan of anything that doesn't lock you in and kind of lets you stay in control.

• 1:02:30Wes Bos?

  Oh yeah. Most of the stuff that you like buy on Amazon or Costco and you see these like random ass companies, you're like, what is this? Like, home love whatever. Almost all of those can just be added to the Tuya. Tuya is the manufacturer of most of these things. And they, most of them can just be added to the Tuya app, or you can flash it, or just use it with the Tasmata local stuff.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  And then one more pick that is a little less smart, which are these LED grow light bulbs. So they're not, they're not Wi-Fi. I wanted to get something as dumb as possible that was like reliable to put on my plants and not have to worry about it. So these bulbs just have RFID. A few different settings, you can set them to turn on for eight hours, turn off for eight hours, but they just screw into any light socket. So we found a couple of really nice lamps and put them on our plants because a lot of our plants were dying. We had some other lights we were trying to use, but these bulbs are great because it's not like a full device where the wire might break off or like the USB breaks, it just plugs right into your existing sockets.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  They do have some that are Wi-Fi as well, but again, look out for like the ones that need a Chinese app. But these are great. Set it, forget it.

• 1:03:45Wes Bos?

  It's better, just get the dumb bulb and then put a smart plug on it if you want to turn them on and off.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Like that.

• 1:03:51Wes Bos?

  That's cool. I thought you were gonna be like, I thought this was like a grow op thing.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:03:56Scott Tolinski?

  We don't know that it's not, Wes.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:03:58Wes Bos?

  That's true, actually. His plants, yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've got a coffee.

• 1:04:01Wes Bos?

  I wouldn't put it past him.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Coffee plant and a lemon tree, so that's my grow op.

• 1:04:06Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, I have one last thing, and it's not smart home related, but we got an electronic drum kit for our kids for Christmas last year. Roland makes really good ones, and as far as having a device that doesn't, like it's a drum set, but you can put headphones on. I've played the drums my whole life, so teaching the kids has been really great, and it's been nice to have this thing around as a drum set. I grew up with a drum set, so I'm sure my parents had to endure a lot of noise, and just knowing that these electronic drum kits have gotten so good now, and they feel so nice to use that like, it's just a really nice thing to have around if you're interested in getting your kids into music, so. Big fan.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  And like, there's an entry level kit that's like 700, but it's the kind of thing that it's good. It's like professional quality. Roland's a good company.

• 1:04:55Scott Tolinski?

  It's great, yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  So yeah, you don't have to worry about it like going to waste or breaking, so.

• 1:05:00Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, yeah, high quality stuff. I love it. Sick! Wow, that was a lot of sick picks. That was a whole sick pick-a-isode.

• 1:05:05Wes Bos?

  Sick pick-a-isode!

• 1:05:06Scott Tolinski?

  Endless amount of sick picks in this one. Guys, do you have anything else to say before we get out of here? Any sick picks?

• 1:05:12Wes Bos?

  Happy holidays, enjoy your family, buy them some nice things.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 1:05:17Scott Tolinski?

  Peace.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Peace.