847: Syntax Holiday Gift Guide

Scott and Wes are back with their annual Syntax Holiday Gift Guide! They’ve curated the best gadgets, tools, games, 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! 00:46 Brought to you by Sentry.io. Open Source Pledge Members. 01:59 Syntax holiday gift guide. 02:25 Our absolute favorites. Leatherman Arc. Peak Design Everyday. 1.5 KG of Maldon, Salt Cellars. Anker Cube. Anker MagGo. Theragun, Off-Brand Massage Gun. Subscription to Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT. Syntax Swag. 13:33 Our (Scott’s) top games. Factorio. Cascadia. Azul. SteamDeck. 19:01 Gifts under $30. Braided USB-C Cables Right Angle Thunderbolt. Battery Daddy. MagSafe Popsocket. Hempz Apple Cider + Nutmeg Hand Lotion. Mens Cremo Body Wash. 27:50 Clothing gifts. Uniqlo Stretch Selvedge Denim. Naked and Famous Selvedge Denim. Scott DU/ER Jeans. Wool Toque Anything from Huckberry. 35:02 Desk item gifts. MX3s Master Mouse Target Candles Candle Melter Wax. Laptop Stand Rain Design mStand. Any Foldable Amazon Stand Desk Treadmill. Insta360 Link 2. Small Rig Rotatable Collar Mount. Thermal Printer. Cable Management Straps + Clips Mini Tripod. Super Clamp. Fishskyn. 45:02 Kids gifts. Yoto Player. Toniebox. First Cat in Space. Bathbombs. Kahn Academy Kids App. Codespark. 51:11 Kitchen gifts. Carbon Steel Frying Pan. Viral Egg Cooker. Glass Straws. Danish Whisk. Oxo Salt + Pepper Grinders. Paper Wheels. Whetstone. WÜSTHOF Nakiri Knife. Carbon Knife Co. Can Tumbler Glasses. Squirrel Rice Paddle. OTOTO Splatypus Jar Spatula. 59:02 Eatables. Hot Sauce: Truff Hot Sauce. Secret Aardvark. Cholula Gift Pack. Laoganma Chili Crisp. Merfs. Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce. 01:00:51 Smart home gifts. Smart Dimmers ESP32 + WS2815 LED Strips 01:03:06 Shameless Plugs. Shameless Plugs Scott: Syntax on YouTube 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. Today, we have a sick pick-a-SoD. This is an episode we actually haven't done for a couple of years. I think 2020 was the last year that we did it. And the people have spoken. They want it back. So here we are. This is the Syntax Holiday Gift Guide. And if you like the sick picks of things that we pick every Wednesday, you're gonna love this episode because it's an entire episode of us talking about our sick picks and basically just like things that would make a good gift for developers, things that would make good gifts for people in your life, life who like nice things. I like nice things. I like good things. And I love talking about this stuff,

• 0:44Wes Bos?

  quite honestly. So I'm glad it's back.

• 0:46Scott Tolinski?

  Do you also like open source software, Wes?

• 0:49Wes Bos?

  I love open source software. Tell me about it.

• 0:52Scott Tolinski?

  Do you like to support open source software?

• 0:57Wes Bos?

  I absolutely like to support open source software. How could a company do that, Scott?

• 1:02Scott Tolinski?

  Well, they should check out opensourcepledge.com. It's a way that you can pledge to support the software that you're using. When we joined Sentry, one of the first things they did is they hooked it up so that we were going to be donating to all the projects that we had inside of our package.json. And to me, that was one of the coolest things in the world. And so I love that the open source pledge is here. And you should go to opensourcepledge.com/members, you can see the teams based on how many people work there. So how much dollar per dev they're giving to open source. And honestly, these are the companies that I want to support

• 1:44Scott Tolinski?

  because they're supporting the projects that we all rely on. So if you want to check out and join the open source pledge, head on to opensourcepledge.com and give this thing a raid. And if your company qualifies, join the pledge.

• 1:59Wes Bos?

  All right. So we have broken down our gift guide into our favorites where we're going to list three or four of our absolute favorite things. Games, under $30 gifts, clothing, desk items, kids items, house items, kitchen items, eatables. I was going to call it edibles, but for reasons, I'm not going to call them that. And smart home, finishing it off with. So honestly, I could, I could talk about this for hours, but let's start off with our absolute favorites. These things are not going to be just web development related, but just as somebody with mediocre taste, these are things that I quite enjoy. Quite honestly, Scott's sick picks are very good because I often find myself just buying them myself

• 2:44Wes Bos?

  after he's talked about them.

• 2:47Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I have the same problem, Wes. That is, I guess you could call that a problem.

• 2:51Wes Bos?

  Yes. I'm going to sick pick something. I gotta make sure my phone number is on it. I can't show it. A Leatherman Arc. This is a knife multi-tool all-in-one that my wife got me for Christmas last year after I had wanted a Leatherman for many years, but never could commit on a specific one. And the Leatherman Arc is so fantastic because it has absolutely everything in it. It's got pliers, it has a really nice knife on it. It has a pair of scissors, it has a file. The scissors and the knife are probably the two that I use most often, along with the pliers where you just need to pull something out. And this

• 3:33Wes Bos?

  is, is what we call in the industry a EDC, an everyday carry. And I have this thing on me at all times. And it is so dang handy from cutting kids' chicken nuggets up, opening boxes, everyday things to, oh, man, this thing is bent. I need to fix it, you know? I never have to go and go find a screwdriver or a pair of pliers or whatever. This always in my pocket. And I never thought that I would like it because it's, it's relatively big, but I, it's one of those things where I tap my Pockets and I go, oh, if it's not on me, I, I kinda, kinda panic. So get somebody a multi-tool.

• 4:14Wes Bos?

  This one's called the Leatherman Arc. It's probably the best one you can buy. And it's one of those things, get your name engraved on it because if you lose it, you will cry. But it's one of these things that you'll probably have forever and you can, you can endlessly. Leatherman is a really cool company. It's made in the USA. All of the parts on it are replaceable. They have a really good warranty. So just one of those forever items.

• 4:38Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I'm gonna sick pick. I guess we don't have to say that before every single one.

• 4:44Scott Tolinski?

  One of my favorite things on my desk is the Anker Cube. I have this, the Anker Cube is a three-in-one Anker charger. And it's built like a brick. I could, I could throw this thing through a window. So it's very solid. It'll charge your i devices all at once because to me, I, you know, I have all these devices. I have all the Apple devices, but you know, it's like, I'm on the road sometimes. In this thing, you just chuck it in your bag, but I, I really just keep mine on my desk all the time anyways. And it's my like main charger or whatever. It sits my phone up nicely while I'm working. It is a little bit expensive, but all of the kind of three-in-one chargers are. So if you're hucking out the cash for one of these three-in-one chargers anyways.

• 5:29Scott Tolinski?

  This one I really, really like, and I kinda get it as a gift for everybody that I know has a iPhone and likes these kinds of things.

• 5:37Wes Bos?

  Yeah, the, the thing about these chargers is that if you do cheap out on them, you're either giving up like charge speed or like safety. Because like some of them are, are kind of sketchy, right? Like Anker is a really good company and I trust their stuff. And if someone were to come out with one that was like $29, I would kinda be a little bit suspicious of it. Because it's, it's doing quite a bit that I didn't realize like it's such a good idea to put your phone on it while you're at your desk. Because then you can glance at your phone without having to pick it up. Yeah. I like that.

• 6:13Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it just sits here. And in that same Anker realm, I also have like the Anker Maggo, where we did a little bit of traveling this year. I spoke at some conferences and stuff, and your phone battery dies. I'm always installing the beta software on my phone, so my phone dies especially fast. But Anker makes, and I don't have it on my desk sadly, but a little MagSafe battery pack, that's a good, I think it's like 10 milliwatt hours or whatever. It's a lot. It's big. And it MagSafes onto the back of your iPhone, and then you have battery charge for the whole day, toss it in your bag or whatever. You don't have to worry about finding a charger. I've also found that to be a nice little thing to have around.

• 6:52Wes Bos?

  Yeah, that's, when I go traveling, I get like an eSIM, and the battery, when you have a second eSIM, the battery just, just drops like significantly. And I always find myself, like you go to eat when you're traveling, and then you plug in, and I always have this big cable where I'm trying to charge as fast as possible. But this would be kind of a nice, nice little thing to lay your phone on and charge it up. I'm not a big MagSafe guy, mostly because it gets so hot. But like, we have it in our car, and like, I never use it because it's slow and hot. But I think, like, a proper MagSafe is faster. Is that true?

• 7:29Scott Tolinski?

  I don't know. You know, I don't necessarily worry about speed because it's on my desk, right? So I was just kind of charging it all day, if I need it to. So the speed thing isn't a super big concern because I've never like, I gotta get this thing charged up real quick before I go. But the MagSafe thing, I guess the battery, again, you just kind of leave it attached for a little bit, and you're, you're good to go. I pretty much exclusively charge via MagSafe these days.

• 7:50Wes Bos?

  Wow. My next one is something, if you need to get a bunch of people the same gift, I'm going to tell you, get a bucket of Maldon sea salt flakes, and a bunch of really nice wooden salt cellars. So-

• 8:07Wes Bos?

  These are the gifts where they're not very expensive, but it's like, ooh, that's nice. And I use Maldon salt, all salt on everything. It's these really nice crystals. You can buy smoked version of it as well. And for a couple of years ago, what I did is I bought these nice like whack jars, which is kind of like a mason jar with these clips on it. And then I filled them up with this nice salt and gave them to everybody in my family. However, I'm thinking I probably should have gave them a salt cellar because with that, you just flip the lid open, sprinkle it on your food and close the lid. And I love having a salt cellar at our house. So for, I don't know, probably for $11 per person, you can get a really nice gift. I would love to receive that.

• 8:50Scott Tolinski?

  Hmm. That's fun. I have one here that you can go brand name or you can go generic with it. I initially bought one of these because at the time there wasn't generic versions of this. So I have like an older Theragun. So one of the older ones. And man, I use this thing all the time in my desk, whatever, just on the, my shoulders. I made sure I got one for my dad the moment I got this because

• 9:17Wes Bos?

  It's a massage gun, you should say, what a Theragun is.

• 9:19Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, sorry. It's a massage gun. Really what it does is it just hits you really fast over and over again. And it's like a percussive massager, they call it. And this thing just go bop, bop, bop, bop. You know, it's, it's pretty amazing. And the non-brand name ones are, are by all means, I don't know if they're just as good, but I, I've seen these things, you know, and lots of people have the $40, you know, $30 ones. I've linked one of them in here that I know has been decent. They actually even come with a lot more. They come with like six or seven different attachments for the non-brand names. And the Theragun, when you're paying a hundred and something bucks for it. At the time, I didn't have a choice just because that's all there was available. But I think if I were to get one today, I would get one of these non-brand name ones for, for cheap.

• 10:04Wes Bos?

  I got one for $8 at a garage sale. And the guy's like, it works fine. So I bought it and it didn't work fine. The battery was shot on it. So I, I hacked it and it runs on a DeWalt battery now.

• 10:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yes. I love it. Classic.

• 10:18Wes Bos?

  It's, it's great. I love it. I, I've taught my kids to use it on me. My next one here is a backpack, the Peak Design Everyday Bag. I've had this backpack for, I think, eight years now. And aside from a little bit of peeling on one of the laminated zippers, it's like, looks brand new. And this is a backpack that I take traveling with me absolutely everywhere. Twice a week, I bring it to my daughter's ballet. I throw it in the back of the car. I use it as my luggage whenever I go to the cottage. Like, this thing gets use out of it. And it still looks brand new. And every time people come

• 10:58Wes Bos?

  up with a like, what's the backpack I should get? I'm always like, Peak Design Everyday 30 Liter, which is the bigger version of it. Scott, you have it. Pretty much everyone who's a developer has it. Yeah, Scott has it there.

• 11:10Scott Tolinski?

  Mine's handy. It's like, right, it's always kind of handy. So.

• 11:13Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Well, mine's right here. Hold on.

• 11:15Scott Tolinski?

  It's crazy. I just, we just have these things sitting here. I haven't even been anywhere.

• 11:19Wes Bos?

  Yeah. So like, look at this. I got my, my Mux water bottle in the side here. The sides open up so beautifully. And you can, you can see that I have a syntax skate deck in there, some socks, some stickers. I was just at a conference. And man, I honestly don't know if I'll ever get another backpack. Not because I like, I love it, but I just don't think I'll ever need one. Yeah, like eight years. And it's, it's great.

• 11:47Scott Tolinski?

  I've had mine for five or six.

• 11:48Wes Bos?

  I'll show the people what I mean about the, you see the zipper there is starting to fray.

• 11:54Scott Tolinski?

  It's pretty good for eight years, though. I've never had a backpack last that long. Especially with like, the heavy stuff that we carry in it. And I use mine, I use mine anywhere if I'm traveling or whatever. I've taken it all over the place. The only downside about this backpack is that airport security will not know how to open it. And you will have to show them how to open it every time if they need to. They're like, what do you do with this thing? Yeah.

• 12:17Wes Bos?

  And it has, has a luggage pass through as well, which is key when you are traveling, because you can put it over the handle of your roller luggage.

• 12:25Scott Tolinski?

  Nice.

• 12:25Wes Bos?

  So I highly recommend, that's one of those ones that you get it for somebody and they're going to be like, every time they use it, they're like, damn, that was a good gift.

• 12:32Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Here's a good gift for developers, a subscription to Cursor, ChatGPT, Claude, one of these AI services, if they haven't already. You can buy a year at a time. I personally, I get a lot of value out of this. I get a lot of value out of Cursor. I get a lot of value out of Claude. Personally, I do use these tools somewhat frequently, not just to help me with, you know, writing code, but to help me evaluate decisions and just help around. So I do think these are incredibly powerful and useful tools if people haven't given them a try yet.

• 13:04Wes Bos?

  Well, also, we should like say our own stuff as well. If you have a web developer, I know that web developer partners listen to this podcast to get ideas. And you can get them a hat, get them a syntax t-shirt, get a syntax skate deck. We have syntax koozies, we have syntax basketballs, syntax skateboards, we got it all. So go to sentry.shop and grab some syntax branded merch for the web developer in your life.

• 13:33Scott Tolinski?

  Word. Sick. I have a bunch of games here. I know Wes doesn't play any games, so I can just kind of breeze through some of these games.

• 13:39Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Scott Tolinski?

  I know developers like this game. They recently released an update and there was a crazy amount of people playing it at once. And therefore, I believe the entire internet suffered a major productivity decrease, which is factorial. And this game is so funny because you feel like you're playing a game and then after, I don't know, a little bit, you just kind of look at the game and you're like, wait a second, am I programming right now? I'm doing work.

• 14:09Wes Bos?

  What do you build?

• 14:11Scott Tolinski?

  Man, you build systems. You build systems. That's what you build. This needs that, which needs that, which gets processed by that. And then you build it all through connections, right? You're putting things on conveyor belts to then process this, to process that. And when you take a big view of the out of it, you're kind of like just building these little kind of micro conditional loops that do this and that and then send it over here. And then that, it's a lot of pattern development. You're building a factory essentially of creating things to accomplish goals. So. Factorio is one of those games where it feels like work, but it's not. And I mean, it doesn't feel like work. I should say it feels like it is programming, but it's not work.

• 14:52Scott Tolinski?

  And it actually, man, I think it might even get you to be a little bit better at being a developer somehow. Because you're having to develop these systems and think through what they could be like. We had a board game that was sick picked by one of our guests and this board game is Cascadia. Man, I bought this board game and man, we, uh, we really like to play this. I don't, the kids really enjoy it. Now there's like a more complex version of this game. It was, it was sick picked by Anna Poblets in episode seven, 10. And it's just a game where you're building ecosystems of animals and you gotta put little chips for the different animals. And you have the different ecosystem cards and it is again, a very pattern based game.

• 15:35Scott Tolinski?

  So you're, you're building patterns and how you're building these ecosystems gets you more points. And it's supposed to be for, I don't know, kids seven or eight and up. But my five-year-old daughter like loves this game and she can hang. She, she does really good in it and so does my son. They both like are able to pick it up. And because it's so animals based, the kids really like it to be like, oh, I'm building my eagle colony. I'm building my, my elk or whatever. And it's a lot of fun. Another board game is Azul. This is a board game we play a lot with family. We, we have my sister and brother-in-law, when they come into town, they're always bringing board games. And this is another kind of like pattern-y game. So I think developers will like this type of thing.

• 16:17Scott Tolinski?

  Because you're, you're trying to build out tiles and patterns of tiles and their strategy into it. So anybody who's got visual spatial, you know, they like visual spatial pattern kind of stuff. These, uh, these games will both be right up your alley. And lastly, the last game thing I have on here is the Steam Deck. Now I think the Steam Deck has sold a ton of these things. So a lot of people have heard of the Steam Deck now, by now. And many of the times people who, you know, wanted this thing already have it, but it's the coolest. It's this little, it's a little computer. It runs Linux. You can sideload. You can put Windows on it if you want. But it runs Linux and it actually has like a full-on the Steam OS UI, which is, you know, it's like a video game UI, but.

• 16:59Scott Tolinski?

  I don't know what it is about Steam, but they understand tinkerers. Because what do they do? Built into the OS is a go to desktop mode and it just takes you to a regular old Linux desktop. And

• 17:11Wes Bos?

  Oh, man.

• 17:11Scott Tolinski?

  You can use the touchscreen, you can use your keyboard, you can install packages on here. So you can install all kinds of stuff on here from Linux. And therefore, because of that, it's turned into like a major hacker device where people make all kinds of software for it and extensions on to it and UIs and things like that.

• 17:28Wes Bos?

  I was, I was actually looking at this the other day because my kids came and their cousins got a Switch. And I was like, they're like, we want to switch. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Um, like, how hackable is that? Because what I would love is, yeah, I realize that. Because I was like researching these, like, you can buy these little emulator sticks that you like plug into HDMI for like 29 bucks or whatever. And I was like, that probably is really laggy because of how small it is. But then I was like, what's the like best hardware you can run like N64 games on and emulate all this stuff? And everyone says Steam Deck is, is the move for that.

• 18:06Scott Tolinski?

  I, I have every, every Nintendo 64 game on it. I have all the Super Nintendo games. Yeah, I run all the emulators on it. And I think you can, I think there is even people running emulated Nintendo Switch on here, which I have not gotten into, but I believe you can do it.

• 18:19Wes Bos?

  Yeah, that seems a little legally dubious in that area.

• 18:24Scott Tolinski?

  Well, it's all legally dubious, yeah.

• 18:25Wes Bos?

  Yeah, but like the N64 emulators, I don't feel as bad because it's like, I'm not, you're not selling that anymore, you know?

• 18:32Scott Tolinski?

  Totally, yeah.

• 18:33Wes Bos?

  I don't really know much about video games, so maybe I should be talking.

• 18:36Scott Tolinski?

  Well, yeah, I mean, I do run N64 on mine and I do like that. I could run a Wii on here. I don't know if there's any sort of Wii games I'm dying to have on my Steam Deck.

• 18:46Wes Bos?

  I hacked our Wii, man. It was like going back in time. I was like, like putting custom OS on it and. Oh, that was, that was good.

• 18:55Scott Tolinski?

  I hacked our Wii, man. I hacked it.

• 19:01Wes Bos?

  All right, let's talk about under $30 gifts for the love of your life. A braided USB cable. There's something in me is just trying to replace every cable on my desk with a braided version, uh, because there's, my cables are always an absolute mess, but there's something nice about when they're messy and braided at the same time. And also when they're braided, I can tell what they're for because I remember in my head. Oh yeah, the, the, the yellow and, and green one is for my camera. And it just, I feel like it makes things a little bit easier and like, everybody has a, so many crappy cables. Get somebody a nice, long braided cable with a fast charger. That's, that's a good life.

• 19:45Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, that's a good life. I have on here a, a Thunderbolt cable with a right angle. Which I didn't know I necessarily needed in my life. And I got one and it plugs into the side of my laptop as my, you know, my main laptop, power and everything like that. It's just so nice that it's at a right angle. It's just like a little L-plugging into my computer and going straight out the back. Instead of like, you know, like sticking out like octopus arms out of my, my computer. Yeah, I like this thing.

• 20:13Wes Bos?

  Yeah, right. I was actually looking into that for my camera, HDMI angled. Because the HDMI and the USB C comes out of my camera. Like, and I would love for it to go just straight back or, or straight up, actually, in my case.

• 20:30Scott Tolinski?

  Well, sadly, I, you know, I want mine to go up or down because that's the way the angle one would be.

• 20:35Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it depends on your device.

• 20:37Scott Tolinski?

  Sadly, the only one they made was going straight up rather than going down. And I would prefer to it to go down. So now it's like up and over, which is still better than hanging out. Cause then it gets pulled and, and comes out. Now it doesn't come out at least, but yeah, I do have one of those and I do like it.

• 20:53Wes Bos?

  I was, I was looking, I went down even the, the ribbon cable rabbit hole. So if you go on AliExpress and you search HDMI ribbon cable, you can buy every single angle of HDMI mini and mini micro. And there's like three versions of HDMI. And you can essentially just make your own custom angled cable, which I think I might do to make it nice and low profile. At least if you have like a TV that needs to go against the wall.

• 21:26Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Wes Bos?

  That's probably a good idea. Grab one of these little angles.

• 21:30Scott Tolinski?

  Hmm.

• 21:31Wes Bos?

  The Battery Daddy is something I'm gonna tell you to get if you have a lot of batteries and you need to be able to organize them. The Battery Daddy is a awesome storage case. It comes with a little battery volt meter inside of it. There's space for all of the different types of batteries. If you're, if you don't use like D and C batteries all that much anymore, I would probably look at some of the alternatives. I know there's some nice zipper cases because I found that it could use a little bit more space for button cells and less space for C and D batteries, but we have enough stuff around the house that I, I still use C and D batteries, unfortunately.

• 22:14Scott Tolinski?

  You know what I need Wes?

• 22:15Wes Bos?

  What?

• 22:15Scott Tolinski?

  I need a good rechargeable CR2 battery. These things, they go in my, my smart lock for my door and they burn out so quickly.

• 22:25Wes Bos?

  Oh, CR2, that's a weird one.

• 22:27Scott Tolinski?

  It's annoying because all of the rechargeable ones are apparently terrible. And so it's like, I gotta, somebody's gotta get out there and make a good rechargeable one.

• 22:37Scott Tolinski?

  Cause I'm buying batteries. That's crazy. I'm not buying rechargeable batteries. What am I doing? I, I love rechargeable batteries.

• 22:42Wes Bos?

  It's crazy because CR2s are lithium, you know, usually you can't recharge batteries because there's some other chemistry.

• 22:48Scott Tolinski?

  What's up with that?

• 22:49Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Can you not just try, just try put a whole bunch of power to one of them and see if it explodes.

• 22:54Scott Tolinski?

  They do make, they do make, uh, actually what the heck? There's an Amazon Basics one now. I swear this wasn't here like two weeks ago. An Amazon Basics CR2. Man, I promised this was not here because I would have bought this already. Well, I got a little sick pick for myself this episode.

• 23:14Wes Bos?

  Oh man. Have you tried the rechargeable ones that have the USB port in the battery itself?

• 23:20Scott Tolinski?

  The, the reviews are super spotty on them and then it says like at top of Amazon, frequently returned item. So then I'm like, yeah.

• 23:29Wes Bos?

  Not nearly as good.

• 23:31Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, is that like worth the, you know, the hassle?

• 23:34Wes Bos?

  Yeah, that's, that's true. You know, it's, it's, you don't use batteries that much. And he was, I still use batteries quite a bit, but a lot of stuff is like starting to have internal batteries, which is good, but also bums me out when they die because then people just throw them out instead of like, open them up and replace the battery.

• 23:53Scott Tolinski?

  My kids do not understand the external battery thing. They're just like, why can't you just charge it? Well, not every, you can't just charge everything. They don't always have. Yeah, that's, they're so funny about it.

• 24:03Wes Bos?

  Pros. They know where to go in the office. They know how to open the battery daddy.

• 24:07Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:08Wes Bos?

  They know the double A, triple A.

• 24:10Scott Tolinski?

  I'm gonna sick pick or she, I'm gonna, a holiday pick. I'm gonna reindeer pick a MagSafe pop socket. So I've had a lot of MagSafe stuff. You know what? If you're on Android too, you can get little MagSafe ring adapters for the back of your phone. It's worth it, especially if your phone has wireless charging. And look at the hell, how well this thing snaps.

• 24:35Wes Bos?

  Wow, Scott, that's amazing.

• 24:37Scott Tolinski?

  I was focusing on the, I was focusing on the doing, okay, there we go. Snap. Yeah.

• 24:45Wes Bos?

  Yeah, the proper MagSafe stuff, or not, not necessarily proper, but like if you get good versions of magnet mounts, they're very good. I have one on my rack when I'm working out and just clip the whole phone clips into it. And you can put it anywhere on the rack and it just is magnets are the best, man.

• 25:04Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, magnets. I, you know, I really like about this is that I don't rock a case. So for me, it's like, I'm not dropping this.

• 25:10Wes Bos?

  Risky.

• 25:10Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, not dropping it. Yeah. So.

• 25:13Wes Bos?

  I can't, I, I would like to do that, but I find like when I'm laying in bed on my phone, I find the phone slides out of my hand when I'm not using a case. It's too slippery. It's like a.

• 25:23Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, it's gonna slide out of your hand?

• 25:25Wes Bos?

  No, I don't, I don't do it above me.

• 25:27Scott Tolinski?

  It's gonna slide out of your hand?

• 25:28Wes Bos?

  I need a pop socket for bed, maybe.

• 25:30Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it does not slide out of my hand.

• 25:32Wes Bos?

  Go to sleep. Yeah.

• 25:33Scott Tolinski?

  Yep.

• 25:34Wes Bos?

  Uh, under $30 gift, apple cider and nutmeg hand lotion. Man, this stuff smells amazing. If you want your hands to smell like apple cider.

• 25:46Scott Tolinski?

  I mean.

• 25:46Wes Bos?

  Get a bottle of it. It's from, it's from this company called hempz, H E M P Z, which is a little bit, sounds like recreational drugs, but it is really nice and it smells amazing. And.

• 25:59Scott Tolinski?

  Hemp can be used for a lot of things, Wes.

• 26:01Wes Bos?

  It can be. Yes.

• 26:04Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. It's a highly useful material. Yeah.

• 26:08Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Rope. Uh, I actually had some hemp shoes one time. They were skate shoes and they were made of hemp. They were, I forget, iPath was the brand, I believe. They were like my favorite shoes in the whole world. Uh, I love those shoes. They were really super cool.

• 26:23Wes Bos?

  Man, iPath. I forgot about them.

• 26:25Scott Tolinski?

  I know. I have an iPath hoodie that I still do wear sometimes, but it's like mostly, the paint's mostly off of it. I, I do miss that brand. It looks like maybe they're still around.

• 26:35Wes Bos?

  Hey, all those brands are still around. It's amazing how many people wear split shirts too, but you can buy it at, at Winners now, which is, Winners in Canada is the equivalent to TJ Maxx in the States. Yes, that's what that is.

• 26:49Scott Tolinski?

  And it looks like they still do sell hemp shoes, not the ones that I had, but they still, they do still sell hemp shoes. Well, so shout out to iPath for that decision. Um, I'm gonna pick probably one of the only like, like dude specific things. I was trying to keep it not dude focused. Uh, but man, I got this body wash. It's Cremo Body Wash. I'm, I'm gonna talk about it a little bit more in the, uh, next episode, but yeah, it just smells really good. It smells like, it just got like a very manly kind of dude scent and, uh, they have all these different options. So if you're looking for like a men's body wash and you haven't found anything that you've enjoyed, I, I do really like this one, this Cremo Body Wash. And they have all sorts of different, yeah.

• 27:27Wes Bos?

  That, that's a great gift. It's eight bucks, you know, stocking stuffer. Get, get it for someone in your life. I would love to receive something like that. Hint, hint, Scott, you send me one.

• 27:38Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, you have, it said use the body wash. Okay.

• 27:41Wes Bos?

  That would be really weird. Uh, who's taking your body wash? Scott did.

• 27:50Wes Bos?

  All right, let's talk about clothing. Some things I love in clothing is I've been wearing Selvedge denim for probably 20, 22 years. I like went back in my Facebook at one point and like, looked for the first pair of selvage jeans I ever wore. So if you're unaware, selvage jeans are a type of denim that is extremely tough. It's knit in a certain way. It wears really nicely. Usually it's raw, meaning that it's just dark blue. And then as you sit on someone's white couch, you leave a big white blue stain, but they start to look cool after, after wearing them. And I have worn several brands

• 28:31Wes Bos?

  over the years. My favorite is Naked and Famous. And I've changed my cuts over the year, just as, as styles change, you know. But Naked and Famous jeans, they're from Canada, made of Japanese denim, highly recommend it. They also have another brand where they make the exact same jeans, but they manufacture them overseas. And it's called Unbranded. And they are pretty much the same cuts, same quality. They're just manufactured elsewhere. So you can look into that. And then I also have been wearing, ever since I have kids, I've been wearing the Uniqlo Stretch Selvedge a little bit, which is the, just a little bit of stretch in it. Because you're always kneeling down, doing shoes up and whatnot.

• 29:14Wes Bos?

  It's funny, because I used to blow out the crotch of my jeans very quickly. Not very quickly, but that was the first thing that went. Which maybe too much, for, for jeans people, we talk about blowouts a lot, right? It's when, when the jeans rip or, or something at some spot. And usually, between your legs is where they, it goes first, right? But now, since I've had kids, the knees always blow out on them first, because I'm always bending down, doing shoes up or, or something. So the stretch one from Uniglo are very good and also very affordable. I think it's

• 29:49Wes Bos?

  Like 50 bucks a pair, Canadian for some, like I'm a, I'm a bit of a jean snob and affordable jeans are usually not something that pops up in the salvage world. So this is a good pair.

• 30:00Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Well, I'm gonna, my, my pick is going to be a little bit less crazy than the salvage jeans because it's, I, I, you wear a duer jeans, D U E R jeans. And they do, they do stretch, so they have a bit of stretch in them, but I found that they're a nice, a nice compromise between like price, stretch jean and like, they last a long time. I'm not saying that the Uniqlo salvage ones, because I've worn the Uniqlo stretch ones that aren't the salvage ones and they like, I, I personally like wore out the knees really quickly in them, but I'm also really hard on my, my jeans.

• 30:33Wes Bos?

  Oh yeah. I'm really hard on them too. And the Uniqlo ones are, I usually buy two or three pair at a time. And I get, I get about nine to 12 months out of a pair.

• 30:45Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Wes Bos?

  So pretty good. Every day I wear the same pair of jeans every single day and never put them in the wash.

• 30:50Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Well, I, yeah, man, I have a funny story. The first time I got in raw denim, I went, it was like the, the literal first day I wore them. I went to a University of Michigan football game and anybody knows about University of Michigan, they have the largest stadium in, yeah, I think it's like the largest stadium in the U S. It's massive. And I had to walk up and down like 100 stairs and these, these raw denim jeans.

• 31:17Scott Tolinski?

  Not even that, I like, could, they were so like tight that I could not, it was like an episode of Friends with Ross and the, the tight pants or something, but I like could not get up the steps. I was like having to like, assist my legs by the end. It was hilarious. I was like, I took one step at the beginning of the stadium and I was like, this is gonna be a problem today. So yeah, I survived though.

• 31:38Wes Bos?

  A wool tuk, or as y'all say down south, a beanie.

• 31:43Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Wes Bos?

  I have never had like a proper wool tuch in my life and I was gifted one. And I I've had it for probably five years now and I love it. It's so lightweight, but also warm at the same time. And my wife would probably kill me because she's always talking about, my wife is in fashion. So she always talks about the actual materials that are used in things. And it always drives her crazy being, when people come to her being like, my kid is so hot. It's like, yeah, because your kid's wearing plastic. You stop putting them in plastic shirts from Walmart, you know? It's not good. But I got a wool tuch and man, for, I don't know, you can get one for 30, 40, 50 bucks. And they are super nice.

• 32:26Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. You know what? For me, I go for, because I wear a lot of beanies.

• 32:31Wes Bos?

  Right here.

• 32:32Scott Tolinski?

  I wear a lot of, I'm just checking to see if I have mine anywhere.

• 32:37Scott Tolinski?

  Possibly beanie up, but I don't think I have mine in here. I, I like, I'm a beanie guy myself. It's kind of a b-boy special, but for me, since I dance in them and I get them all nasty and I'm rolling around on the floor with them. I, I go to Target and I buy the cheapest beanies as possible. So I will sick pick or whatever, the like $5 Target beanies that you can get. Because those are, they're not nice, but they're kind of disposable.

• 33:05Wes Bos?

  You're gonna, you're gonna need them.

• 33:06Scott Tolinski?

  You're gonna need them. You'll rip through them. Um, one place that I go to get a lot of clothes is Huckberry. Now it's huckberry.com and there is some expensive stuff on this site. I will say that. But you could find some deals on here too, especially because they're, they'll do like the thing where they only have things like a limited stock. And so you can get some cheaper prices on here. But I get some this kind of stuff on here, like this kind of pullover sweater. That, man, my, my pullover sweater kind of game from the site is, is pretty good because.

• 33:38Wes Bos?

  Your pullover game is strong.

• 33:40Scott Tolinski?

  Pullover game is strong for sure. It is, uh, it's nice stuff. All, all nice qualities, nice brands. And again, you're gonna hit, you're gonna hit moments where you're like, gosh darn, some of this stuff is expensive. But there is deals to be had if you, if you wait for them.

• 33:55Wes Bos?

  They have a wax jacket, which is something I've been thinking about for a long time. So. Do you really? Yeah, that's, that's big in the like salvage denim world is also get a wax jacket. And but there's like, like a Filson wax jacket is like $800. So I don't know if I'll ever buy one, but they've got one for 300 bucks on here.

• 34:15Scott Tolinski?

  Do you know where I got mine was?

• 34:16Wes Bos?

  What?

• 34:17Scott Tolinski?

  We did a, we did a sponsorship from a really incredible clothing company at Armory.

• 34:23Wes Bos?

  Oh, that's where this beanie is from, actually.

• 34:26Scott Tolinski?

  Really?

• 34:27Wes Bos?

  Yeah, in New York. It's like a men's, menswear clothing.

• 34:30Scott Tolinski?

  That, that was some, that's some crazy fancy clothes and

• 34:33Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Scott Tolinski?

  They let us pick out something and I picked out a wax jacket. I gotta say, I love it. Makes me look good.

• 34:39Wes Bos?

  I went and visited them when I was in New York and

• 34:42Scott Tolinski?

  Cool.

• 34:43Wes Bos?

  Fancy. Such a cool. I've, I've never been in such a nice store in my life. It was really kind of cool to see all the menswear things. I probably would never do it, you know, I'm, I'm wearing a $20 t-shirt, but

• 34:57Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, legit menswear, like actually legit menswear for sure.

• 35:01Wes Bos?

  Totally. All right. Let's talk about desk items. These are things for your desk that you may want. One thing I upgraded recently to is the MX Master 3S mouse. I had used the MX Master 2S for probably about eight years and it replaced the battery on it at one point and it started not working one day. So I just went and bought the 3S, which it's a, the S means it's silent. So you don't hear the clicking in the microphone, which is kind of important to me. And it is such a nice mouse. I'm such a big fan of, it's from Logitech. So if, I honestly think it's, people are always like, it's not a good gaming mouse. The Hertz is not fast enough for me. Like, I don't care about gaming.

• 35:46Wes Bos?

  I care about, I'm a web developer who has lots of shortcuts and needs a nice, comfortable mouse to use all day. And I think that the MX 3S is the best mouse for web developers.

• 35:58Scott Tolinski?

  Word. Yeah, I, I'm a trackpad kind of guy, so I can't, I can't meet you on that one. Here's something I can though, candles. Man, you got an office or a desk, your desk might not smell great. Uh, I got these candles. Man, I, I got them from Target. Target has a big old candle selection. I used to work at Target, let me tell you. I was stocking those candles. Uh, but man, I love having a good candle on my desk. So I got these ones from Target. They're these nice little glass ones. I, I linked it, which ones specifically these are.

• 36:27Wes Bos?

  Oh, it's a nice container, too.

• 36:29Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, it's nice. It's, it's great. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a big fan of having a candle on the desk.

• 36:33Wes Bos?

  Man, I, that container, Scott, when you're done, wash the thing out and then put salt in it. It's a nice little salt cellar, I think.

• 36:42Scott Tolinski?

  You need a lid for it, though.

• 36:43Wes Bos?

  Actually, I do have a lid. There is a lid. I'm just looking at the website. Yes.

• 36:49Scott Tolinski?

  Beauty.

• 36:49Wes Bos?

  Salt cellar, when you're done, you have to like boil it or something to get all the wax out, but you can do it.

• 36:54Scott Tolinski?

  It's wax. That should be easy.

• 36:56Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Scott Tolinski?

  Famously wax melts. Yeah.

• 36:58Wes Bos?

  I, I got my wife last year a wax melter, which is, it's kind of like a lamp with a halogen bulb. And it melts a candle. Um, and it makes the house smell really good, but it doesn't, uh, doesn't have a flame on all time, which is, is kind of cool. So I, we use that quite a bit. We go to the body shop by the big round candles that they have. And the candles last way longer than if you were to burn them. So I've been a big fan of that.

• 37:26Scott Tolinski?

  That's it. I've never even heard that.

• 37:28Wes Bos?

  No.

• 37:28Scott Tolinski?

  I don't even know about. Yeah.

• 37:30Wes Bos?

  Candle, what is it called? A candle melter?

• 37:34Scott Tolinski?

  Candle melter?

• 37:35Wes Bos?

  No, not a candle, candle light. It's called a candle warmer lamp. I'll link up the one that I got for my wife. And, uh, yeah, it's basically just a lamp with a halogen bulb in it and the bulb gets really hot and will melt the wax underneath it.

• 37:52Scott Tolinski?

  That is so much, I'm, I'm like primed for the type of guy who's going to burn their house down because I didn't blow out a candle.

• 37:59Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Scott Tolinski?

  That is in my personality. So.

• 38:01Wes Bos?

  Kind of scares me.

• 38:02Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, that is something I should probably invest in.

• 38:06Wes Bos?

  And there's like a timer on it, too. So you can put it on for eight hours and then it, it just kills itself.

• 38:12Scott Tolinski?

  I love that. Cool.

• 38:14Wes Bos?

  Laptop stand. This I think is crucial. If, if you put your laptop on your desk, you're gonna dump a coffee on it, or at least I have in the past. So I always use a laptop stand just to get my laptop up and off of the desk. And it also brings it a little closer to, to eye, eye level. I have one called the Rain M Design stand. It's, I've had it for 10 years now. It's like a solid piece of aluminum, but if I were to buy one now, I probably would buy one of the like foldable ones, because then you can take it with you when you're traveling and you can just like raise your laptop up a little bit. If you're like a external keyboard kind of person when you're, you're out.

• 38:56Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, we're, we're different, man. We're different. You got the mouse, you got the keyboard. I got mine as flat as possible. I'm on the trackpad. Oh yeah, right in front of me. But then I have a monitor right here. So I'm looking into a monitor. That's at my, my level here. So.

• 39:09Wes Bos?

  That's a, that's a way to live. Sure.

• 39:11Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it's a way to live. I have, I have another one here, the, the desk treadmill. The under the desk treadmill, it seems like it would be an inconvenience. It seems like it would be a bad idea. But let me tell you, what it ends up being is you end up walking on a treadmill for an hour and don't even realize it. Just because you kind of have to keep walking. You're, you're, I mean, if you stop walking, you're going to fall off the edge of it. So you gotta keep walking, right? And you, your body just kind of forgets that you're doing it if you're working on a coding problem. And for some reason, I also found that I like, like really zone in on what I'm working on when I'm walking on this thing. So a desk treadmill has been a

• 39:52Scott Tolinski?

  net positive for me, because as long as you actually use it, man, you can get like a good hour of walking time in a day that you might not have if you have like a standing desk. And they've gotten cheaper. They used to be like for a good or not a good one for, you know, the, the, the base level one was like 250. And now you can get that same base level one for 150. And if you, sometimes they like, they'll, they'll upcharge you so that it can go on an incline and stuff. Let me tell you a secret for putting it on an incline. You just stack some two by fours underneath the front of it. Yes, that's exactly, I actually have two by fours in my office so that I can put it on an incline.

• 40:30Wes Bos?

  Oh, that's great.

• 40:31Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Wes Bos?

  Oh, that's cool. Yeah, they've really come down and you can also like find them on Marketplace as well because people like me who think it's a good idea and then

• 40:39Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, it's a hopea buy, yeah.

• 40:40Wes Bos?

  Six months later, you realize, I'm not actually using this thing at all.

• 40:44Scott Tolinski?

  Totally.

• 40:44Wes Bos?

  That's, that's a burned dream. I have a good webcam, so.

• 40:51Wes Bos?

  I got sent this from the folks at Insta360, so full disclosure, but this is a 4K webcam that is actually really good. So I've tried, I've had companies send me like four or five of their like HD webcams and they're never very good. And, and I'm saying this as someone who has a $5,000 camera as a webcam. Obviously, it's not going to be that good, but I am very impressed by this. It is really high quality. It's on a swivel. So what it does, you can, as you, you can move anywhere

• 41:31Wes Bos?

  on, you can move anywhere like in, in here and it will follow you around like on a little gimbal, like 360 around the room. It's unbelievable how, how good the quality is. And then there's like a whole suite where you can like zoom in on yourself or you can, you can set it to just crop your face or crop your body or crop everything. And then the one thing I like it for is you can use it as a desk camera, meaning that it will, you can put on top of your monitor and it will, if you want to do like electronics or you wanted to show your, your fingers on a keyboard or you want to do anything where you show what's on your desk, it will just go into desk mode and, and get your whole desk. It's a super wide lens on it. So

• 42:15Wes Bos?

  check it out. It's called Insta360 Link 2 AI Powered Webcam. Everything has AI in it.

• 42:23Scott Tolinski?

  I love it. Here's a fun one to go along with that. If you have like a Sony or a Canon camera that you're using for anything really, I have this small rig, small rig one, they do really nice little pieces.

• 42:35Wes Bos?

  Everything they do is good, yeah.

• 42:37Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I have this small rig.

• 42:41Scott Tolinski?

  My A73. And for us creators or whatever, you're oftentimes you're moving from landscape to portrait. This thing goes over, it like installs on the camera and then watch this.

• 42:54Wes Bos?

  Ooh.

• 42:54Scott Tolinski?

  So you do your tripod in here and then now that's as simple as that. Now they have a separate one for Canon cameras or Sony cameras. I can confirm that this works with the A73 and the FX3 that we have that we're shooting on. So yeah, it's super nice. And it's small, right? Yeah, it's.

• 43:14Wes Bos?

  That's cool. So I was, I have on here, it was a mini tripod. And this is like a tiny little compact tripod that gets fairly large. And it has a ball mount head, which I use it for when I need to turn my camera into vertical. Every now and then I'll do a video where I want it to go vertical instead of horizontal. And I'll just ball mount, bring it over, but that seems even better.

• 43:40Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I got a little mini tripod too. These things are great. GitHub sent me this last year, so.

• 43:45Wes Bos?

  Oh yeah, I had bought, I bought that one on Amazon. And it was, it was not stout enough to handle the FX3.

• 43:55Scott Tolinski?

  Oh yeah.

• 43:56Wes Bos?

  So I got the newer. I forgot, I'll link it up. It's a newer tripod, which is N E E W E R. They're another one of those companies that has, has pretty good stuff.

• 44:08Scott Tolinski?

  They do all my, my lights.

• 44:09Wes Bos?

  Yeah, yeah, all my lights are newer. A lot of my tripods and whatnot are newer. And I like this one quite a bit because I can like pack it up and bring it with me, throw it in a backpack. But also it just sits on my desk here as well. Thermal printer. So I did a bunch of work on controlling a printer with JavaScript. And quite a few people bought them after I had posted my video on it. And if you want to tinker on the holidays, thermal printer is a really fun, fun thing to do with that.

• 44:38Scott Tolinski?

  I have fish skin. It's my laptop. I don't know if I can see it right now. I put stickers on my computer and that can kind of leave a whole bunch of stuff. I actually have a skin, like a black skin all over my laptop. And then I have the stickers on top of that. That way you could just pull the whole thing off. But it also would keep your laptop safe from scratches and dings and whatever that you get from just taking it around. I like fish skin. I've bought several of theirs.

• 45:03Wes Bos?

  All right, let's move into the kids pics that we have here. If you do not have kids, you can skip ahead a couple of minutes, but a lot of people have to buy stuff for their kids or for some kid in their life. I recently got my kids something called the Yoto Player, which I know you sick picked the Tony box a while ago, kind of same idea. And the way that it works is that it's this little, I found it because I was like, my kid needs to listen to something while they fall asleep because they have trouble sleeping. And I don't want to give them an iPad because then they'll want to play Minecraft or something like that. So I was like, like, what do I buy? Like an MP3 player or something like that?

• 45:44Wes Bos?

  And it turns out there's this thing called the Yoto Player where you take these little NFC like credit cards, you slide it in the top and it just starts playing whatever book is on that card. And you can buy books, but they also sell blank cards that you can load up your own books on. So if you can get them from your library, or if you want to read a book aloud to your child and record it and put it on a card. And then it just stores it. It doesn't store it on a card. You have to upload it via their web system and then it puts a little URL on the card. And I have like a, I feel like I'm burning CDs back in the day. I have a whole collection of these stories now. You just slot it in. You can do podcasts as well. Some really cool kids podcasts and.

• 46:30Wes Bos?

  I was, I was very skeptical for a long time and we got it and it's, it's so cool and the kids absolutely love it.

• 46:37Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, this does look like a newish kind of version of that, that we, I will still shout out the Tony player because our kids go nuts for the Tony player. It's got a fun little design in it, in the, the stories, instead of coming on cards, they come on little figures so that kids really like them and they can trade them and whatever. There is a lot more like Disney, like Disney's on Tony box. So, you know, my daughter will get her Frozen stuff on there. So, uh, the Tony box in general though, they, my, my, since we've gotten these for our kids, like, what, when they were like two years old or something, they have used it every single night. They still do every night. I, I, it's, we've gotten so much mileage out of these things. It's, it's incredible. So, yeah, my kids go nuts for these.

• 47:19Scott Tolinski?

  And again, we had their grandpa read them stories on it and stuff like that too, so they can, uh, get some grandpa story time in while they're.

• 47:25Wes Bos?

  So do they have one where you could like just put your own content on it as well?

• 47:29Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. And I think it might even come with one of those. I'm not quite sure. We, we bought something that came with one of those up from the start.

• 47:35Wes Bos?

  Yoto did. I went, I went deep into NFC.

• 47:39Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Wes Bos?

  Uh, hacking territory. I'm just trying to understand how it all works. Cool.

• 47:45Scott Tolinski?

  I'm also gonna sick pick a book, The First Cat in Space. There's three of these and I think the latest one's coming out in November here, so maybe out by the time. There's a band that I really like, The Matches. Wes, I don't know if you've heard of The Matches?

• 47:57Wes Bos?

  No.

• 47:57Scott Tolinski?

  They were, um, they were like a, uh, like a California punk band from the 2000s. They, they kind of like barely just made it onto mainstream-ish. Like they were signed to Epitaph for like maybe their last album. And then they, they broke up and, um, man, The Matches was like really one of my favorite bands. I saw them in concert like a billion times and the singer. Is a really interesting dude, the type of dude who you just want to follow whatever they do. And he's been writing kids books for a little while. And his latest thing was the first cat in space. And they're kind of like a serial book. And they're just super cute. So, you know, I really liked supporting this guy's work. So, his name's

• 48:39Scott Tolinski?

  Sean Harris. Anytime he comes out with anything, I make sure I scoop it up. But these are great. Kids love them.

• 48:45Wes Bos?

  The merch is great, too.

• 48:47Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it's all it's all got a good vibe. Also, our kids love bath bombs. So there's a big old bath bomb set I have on here. Our kids fight over which ones they get to have every night. They love the bath bombs. So kids bath bombs are, you know, something they might really enjoy. We put them in their stockings and stuff. You could get the Khan Academy Kids app or the Code Spark. We do a subscription for my son for Code Spark. And it is like games where they don't even realize they're learning programming concepts. And again, my son goes nuts for it. So that's one of the the few subscription things we buy for them on the iPad.

• 49:18Wes Bos?

  Stuff for the house. We last, Chris, about a year ago, we got the RoboRock S8 Ultra, which is a mop and vacuum in one. And then about six months ago, we got the RoboRock Q Revo for our cottage. The Q Revo is almost as good, and it's like half the price. Not necessarily just these two. I think they're they're the best out there. But a something that mops and vacuums your house. Very, very nice thing to have. We use ours every single day, usually two or three times a day. And it's amazing how nice it is. You don't stress about the kids making a mess anymore. Because after dinner, the thing goes and vacuums

• 50:02Wes Bos?

  it on up. And like, I feel like I'm living in the future, having a robot mop and vacuum your house for you.

• 50:09Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, they've gotten a lot better. Ours, I mean, ours is even like, four or five years old. And it's like, detects all this stuff. And it seems to work just as good as it did when we first got it. We have also a RoboRock. And yeah, they're nice, for sure. We named ours so we could call it by name. So that's fun.

• 50:26Wes Bos?

  Oh yeah, we have Rocco and I forget the other name. What do you call yours?

• 50:32Scott Tolinski?

  Ours is named Lomax. He is named after Bernie Lomax from the movie Weekend at Bernie's, which is a favorite of ours. Yeah, I also picked this WiMax cube projector. We have this other WiMax that apparently they've stopped selling for some reason. I don't know why. So I don't have the cube one, but I have this little WiMax and it's powered by battery or USB-C. And man, even if you're just tossing up a sheet on the side of the house, because we did that before I got a nicer screen, even if you're just tossing a sheet on the side of the house, man, it really rules to turn on the projector and hang outside and watch some TV or a movie with the kids or something. That's just fun.

• 51:10Wes Bos?

  That's, that's great. Kitchen stuff. Absolutely. Along with my Leatherman, one of my favorite things in the past two years is a carbon steel frying pan. I have been a big cast iron guy for a long time, but cast iron is too heavy. And it's, it's a pain in the, pain in the butt sometimes, right? And I love it, but you kind of just want like that plus a non-stick. So a carbon steel frying pan properly seasoned has been like a game changer in, in my life. I have a 12 inch, which is as big as you can get. I'm almost wondering if I should get a wok or find like an even bigger one because I absolutely love it.

• 51:53Scott Tolinski?

  I wouldn't mind getting a carbon steel wok. We have a cast iron wok that is just like so heavy. It's so massive. I mean, it rules to cook in, but yeah, it is also massive.

• 52:06Wes Bos?

  Next one is a viral egg cooker. So I've said in the past, I do not like uni-taskers, meaning that I don't like stuff in the kitchen that does one thing. But this, my wife got me this for Christmas last year and I was like, mm, this is kind of silly. And it's fricking amazing. So what it is, is this tiny little egg cooker where it's essentially an electric kettle. You put water in it and you, depending on what you're doing, if you're boiling eggs or if you're doing an omelet, you just put eggs in there, put a little bit of water in, push the button. Perfect eggs, absolutely every single time. So if you want like a super healthy breakfast. Grab one of these things. They're dirt cheap and they make perfect eggs absolutely every

• 52:51Wes Bos?

  single time. It's if you're boiling eggs or whatever, not worth it.

• 52:55Scott Tolinski?

  I do soft boiled eggs and I actually really pride myself in how good I am at soft boiling eggs.

• 53:00Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Scott Tolinski?

  Uh, but man, if you could just stick it in this thing and say, go, then.

• 53:04Wes Bos?

  It's so like the, the measuring cup comes with like lines on it and it says like, like soft boiled egg. You fill it up to that line. Perfect. Every single time. That's amazing.

• 53:14Scott Tolinski?

  Man, that's great. Yeah. Sick. I'll, I'll have a glass straws, which you know what? You like straws? You don't want to have the billion plastic straws around the house? I like straws. So we have glass straws. They're way nice. They don't break. The kids really like them. You clean them, you just toss them in the dishwasher. They come with a little brush if you need to clean out the inside for whatever reason. But, uh, yeah, glass straws have been pretty nice.

• 53:37Wes Bos?

  I, I'll, I'll go alongside that is stainless steel straws and stainless steel, what do you, what do you call them? Asian spoons? What do you, what do you call those spoons that you eat like faux with?

• 53:50Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, like the big, the dipper spoons?

• 53:53Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Chinese Asian stainless steel spoon. Yeah. Getting a stainless version of that. So it just matches the rest of your cutlery and.

• 54:01Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:02Wes Bos?

  They're like, that's a better spoon than what we have. I always give my kids those when we're having soup or anything. Cause like, that's a better design of a spoon versus the crappy one we have.

• 54:13Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, for real. I hear ya.

• 54:17Wes Bos?

  Danish whisk. Very cool. If you have someone who makes pancakes or bread or something like that, somebody gifted me a Danish whisk a couple of years ago and I'm surprised at how much I like it. It looks kind of silly, but the Danes know what they're doing. Oxo salt and pepper grinders. Again, I did the research for way too long on what the best salt and pepper grinder is. And I found it. It's the Oxo one. It's not a beautiful set of pepper grinders, but it is the best. Every day I use it. I'm like, mm, this is nice. A Wusthof Nakiri knife. My wife gave me this probably four years ago and it's the perfect amount of you want a nice knife, but you don't want to be a knife guy, you know?

• 54:59Scott Tolinski?

  I don't want to be a knife guy.

• 55:00Wes Bos?

  You don't want to be those, those people that have to like, don't, don't leave the knife in the sink or don't put the knife in the dishwasher. I don't care that much. I just want a really nice, sharp knife that is, is really enjoyable to use. And I got the seven inch Nakiri knife and it's like the ultimate slice and dice chopping, pretty much all around good kitchen knife. Big fan of that.

• 55:24Scott Tolinski?

  I really want at least just one good knife. We have the same knives that we got when we were married and they were not great then in there, you know, especially not great after we put them through the dishwasher a hundred times. So, yeah, we didn't know.

• 55:38Wes Bos?

  I put mine through the dishwasher probably like every day for four years, probably thousands of times. And it's, it's amazing. But you know why people think that knives don't get good is because they don't sharpen them. My next pick.

• 55:48Scott Tolinski?

  There, there's actual reasons why you don't want to put a knife in the dishwasher.

• 55:52Wes Bos?

  I don't got time for that.

• 55:55Wes Bos?

  I agree.

• 55:57Scott Tolinski?

  I really want to get a fancy knife from this place, Carbon Knife Co. in, in Denver. I, I follow this place on Instagram and they have all these fancy Japanese knives. And I just think one day I'm gonna get one of these nice knives. One day.

• 56:10Wes Bos?

  One day. Alongside that, if you do like having sharp knives, get these, this is a pretty big buy-in, but you get paper wheels for a bench grinder. So you, you go get a bench grinder or whatever, and you put these wheels on, on top and they're, they're made of paper and you put a little bit of sharpening rouge on it and you can get the like most killer sharp edge on your knives. Using this, these paper wheels, it's unbelievable how good it is. It's, you have to have like a workshop where you can set up a. A whole bench grinder, but it's worth it.

• 56:43Scott Tolinski?

  If you're not like that, you could get a just a normal whetstone.

• 56:46Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Scott Tolinski?

  I had a whetstone here. I use my whetstone. And in fact, you inspired me to sharpen my knives more. So man, I sharpen my knives and I just did it the other day. And I gotta say, it makes such an impact whenever you do it. For sure.

• 56:58Wes Bos?

  Yeah. And like, bring the whetstone to family and friends.

• 57:03Scott Tolinski?

  Sharpen their knives.

• 57:04Wes Bos?

  That's something. So we rent out our cottage a couple of times a year and I pride myself on having good knives. Cause I've rented so many cottages over the years and they always have crappy knives in there. And it's like, I'm on vacation. If you enjoy cooking, don't you want nice things when you're on vacation?

• 57:20Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it's a thing you might notice. Yeah.

• 57:22Wes Bos?

  Yes.

• 57:23Scott Tolinski?

  For sure. I get that. I'm also gonna, I'm gonna have two things here. I've, I've sick picked these multiple times, which is the can tumbler glasses.

• 57:30Wes Bos?

  This is so good.

• 57:31Scott Tolinski?

  Look like a can. They're nice and thick. I use these things for everything. This is like the only drinking glass I use for anything. It's the perfect size, size of a can. It's like, here's a, here's a La Croix can. Here it is. Same shape, just about the same size. So I really like these and they're fairly cheap. I also like this. This is so funny. I was just using this the other day and I was thinking, my mom got this for us. And I was thinking, this is the nicest thing that you wouldn't expect. It's a squirrel shaped rice paddle. And the reason why this is, is cool is not because it's a squirrel shaped, but because it is this shape. When you put it on its little feet, the paddle never touches the counter. So you could scoop and set it down on its little feet. And then the paddle, which is its tail, just kind of hangs in the air.

• 58:15Scott Tolinski?

  And I love this thing. It's, it's super cute. Our kids love it, but most importantly, it's super practical.

• 58:20Wes Bos?

  Man, so I'm gonna get that because I'm a big fan of the splatopus, which is a jar scraper slash.

• 58:29Scott Tolinski?

  We have that as well. Yes.

• 58:30Wes Bos?

  Man, my sister gave me a splatopus maybe three years ago. It's, it's kind of like a. Um, I don't know. What would you, would you call it? Uh, like a spatula? Oh, it's spatula. That's shaped like a platypus bill. And if you're putting butter on something, making a peanut butter and jam, or you need to scrape a jar out nice and cleanly.

• 58:50Scott Tolinski?

  Splatypus.

• 58:51Wes Bos?

  Major. I didn't realize there was a, is this by the same company?

• 58:55Scott Tolinski?

  I have no idea.

• 58:57Wes Bos?

  No, it's not. Rice cooking. I'm gonna get this. This is great.

• 59:02Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, love it.

• 59:03Wes Bos?

  Uh, eatables. Um, here are my top five, four hot sauces. I don't know if they're my top ones, but these are great gifts where it's not like you're giving somebody franks, you know? Truff hot sauce, truffle flavored, very good. Secret aardvark is kind of a thick, almost like, um, almost like a salsa one. And there, all of these have like, have packs where like, if you have somebody in your life that likes hot sauce, get them a pack of several. That's the best gift ever. Uh, but get them like nice ones. I've, I've had people get me like a TJ Maxx hot sauce pack and it's like, eh, these are not very good. Cholula gift pack is really good.

• 59:44Wes Bos?

  Big fan of Cholula, uh, which is a pretty accessible hot sauce, but they have like six different flavors and you can have a little taster.

• 59:52Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I like these Murph's ones from, uh, Denver. They're kind of local to us. So we, we see Murph's around and about, uh, in Denver, but the jalapeno lime hot sauce is like one of my favorite things. It's very nice and refreshing.

• 1:00:05Wes Bos?

  Oh, yeah. Love that. And then, uh, Bakken's, uh, this is something you turned me on to. We didn't have it in Canada for the longest times. I had to get it when I was in the States, but it's like this, what, Japanese barbecue sauce? It's almost like a, like a flavored soy sauce.

• 1:00:21Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, it's like a thin teriyaki kinda. Man, I, we make salmon and broccoli and rice. I just pour it all over there. Man, it is my favorite. I wear my Bakken shirt all the time. In fact, I was at a, I was at a, a breaking battle and I was wearing my Bakken's shirt and somebody looked at me and they go, dude.

• 1:00:39Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Scott Tolinski?

  Like, whoa, I love Bakken's.

• 1:00:42Wes Bos?

  That's, that's the buy for someone in your life who's a condiment enthusiast. They probably already have Bakken's, but they don't have the tea, I bet. All right, let's wrap it up here with smart home. Probably the best gift you can give somebody, I think, is a smart dimmer. I'm a big fan of the Leviton ones. Lutron makes some really good ones. Do not buy Wise ones. I don't even know if they make it dimmer, but the Wise switches, I love Wise products, but their switches have terrible Wi-Fi chips in them and they're always disconnected. So the Leviton ones are fantastic and they go really low as well, which is kind of important when you have LED lights. You want to get

• 1:01:22Wes Bos?

  them as low as you can. And then if you have a hacker in your life, buy him an ESP32, which is a Wi-Fi little, little board. They're like five bucks a piece. And then a bunch of WS2815 LED strips. That's a very fun thing to hack on. I've done that many times where you build custom lighting with LED strips.

• 1:01:46Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, you gotta kind of know that the person is into that though.

• 1:01:49Wes Bos?

  Yes. If you, yeah, you gotta make sure they're hackers, but also people listening to this are probably thinking, hmm, what should I ask for? And if you need like a Oh, totally. like a $25 gift to ask somebody for, that's the move right there.

• 1:02:01Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I do the Lutron Caseta, I think the Diva dimmers, which like they're expensive. So you do like one or two every now and then. And eventually, you know, you hope the whole house will get done. But yeah, I'm doing kind of one at a time here and there. And yeah, I really like the dimmers.

• 1:02:18Wes Bos?

  The Miros ones are good as well. I have a bunch of Miros stuff and they are going pretty heavily into like the Matter smart home protocol.

• 1:02:27Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, really? Yeah.

• 1:02:27Wes Bos?

  So I haven't switched anything over to Matter yet, but I know eventually everything will be Matter, I hope. So I'm always trying to think, okay, is this future compatible? Because the last thing I want is an incompatible light switch. What a nightmare that is.

• 1:02:43Scott Tolinski?

  Word. Yeah, that's the best part about the Diva ones is that they work like normal ass light switches. If you're, they're not smart, you like would never know. Yeah, I know.

• 1:02:53Wes Bos?

  Alright.

• 1:02:53Scott Tolinski?

  Okay.

• 1:02:54Wes Bos?

  Cool.

• 1:02:54Scott Tolinski?

  Well, that's jam-packed.

• 1:02:56Wes Bos?

  Yes.

• 1:02:57Scott Tolinski?

  So hopefully your stockings are as packed as this episode was. I don't, we're not gonna do sick picks today because this whole episode was sick picks.

• 1:03:04Wes Bos?

  The whole sick pick-a-isode, yeah.

• 1:03:06Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Shamelessly plug, head out on YouTube. We're on YouTube, folks. YouTube.com forward slash at Syntax FM. We release all kinds of stuff from deep dives to full-on tutorials to video episodes of this podcast. If you wanted to just see Wes and I shoving stuff into the camera like we did in this episode, you've got it on the Syntax YouTube channel. So check us out.

• 1:03:26Wes Bos?

  Sweet. Alright, thanks for tuning in. Happy holidays. Peace.

• 1:03:29Scott Tolinski?

  Move.