2025 Holiday Gift Guide

Welcome to Syntax. Happy holidays. We've got the gift guide episode for you today. This is something we do almost every year. One year Wes 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 get 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 Node. So we're gonna 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.

Alright. 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 is dirt cheap. Some of this stuff is really expensive.

My absolute favorite I'm cheating. I'm gonna pick two things. First of all, a three d printer.

I got a bamboo x one c. 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 it's so fun to be creative. It solves so many problems. All of the comments we did an episode on the three d printer, and all of the comments were, oh, come back in six months. This thing's gonna be collecting dust. I just checked. I've had the thing for ten months, and it's been printing for sixty seven days, which means that's 2020% of all the hours I've owned it. It's been running.

So I just I'm and I bought a second Node. So I probably have even more than that. Great fun. It's great. 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 Wes. Leatherman Yarn.

This is a multi tool that I feel like one of these, beauty influencers where I have to hold my hand up to focus it. So this is a Leatherman multi tool that has, 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.

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 Yarn 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. 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. It's a good brand. I would say, like, my dad had one when I was growing up, and Yeah. He had it throughout my entire childhood. So it'll it'll last forever. Leatherman is like, yeah, heirloom. If if you don't lose it, I've lost it a couple times, and I've been stressing. Yeah. You can get you can get cheaper ones as Wes, but Yeah. I was like, I'm just gonna get the one.

So next up, marketing manager for Syntax, Caitlin Bloom.

Yes. What did you bring for us today? Alright, guys. Okay. Bear with me. My dog might get really excited as I'm holding this because I have a leash.

We Yarn, as a podcast, we're a dog podcast. K? Canadian dog podcast. We are a dog podcast. Sorry if you like Scott. But this is a leash. It's called the Roamer bungee dog leash from Ruffwear. If you guys have anything from Ruffwear, it's just, like, insane. It also feels like

are you laughing at me, Wes? Yeah. Ruffwear is such a good name. Sorry.

That is a great name.

It is. It really is. I know. 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, like, 11 feet.

Wow. 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, who you're in the neighborhood with, you can grab him. But then, also, guys, like, you wrap it around your Wes, and it clips with and then you also can adjust it.

So it's a table.

You can, like you're at the brewery, put it around the the table. Yeah. So your Bos right there. Like Oh, man. Look at the clip.

Oh, that's a good Anyway, it does.

It's it's amazing. I love it. Doug loves it. Don't you, Bubba? Reasonable price too. It's, like, $45 Canadian. Deno that's That's reasonable. $30 American. Anything you get from off wire is just, like, it's a life improvement. It's really great to be hands for you too because you're like I mean, you guys got kids and, like, oh, there's the wife's hands. There's just one on your girl's hand. You know what I mean? Like, strap it around Node your waist, and you're good to go. That is awesome. Oh, good pick. Good pick. Nikki, what do you have for us? My

pick, is Node 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 for yourself or however you want to. We use a a thing for, like it's called magic mirror.

It's very, very nice. Oh, man. I've been wanting to do this.

Yeah. It's super nice. You can you can literally see the term schedule on it. Like Oh, sick. Yeah. And, all all sorts of stuff. So, like, the news going on it, like, the 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. Man, I've been wanting to do this for so long. Yeah. I even started writing it because we get these emails from our kids' teachers. And I wanna build some sort of, like, ingest server that takes the emails and, like, parses them into dates and puts them on the calendar and Dude. Adds reminders.

Meg, this is a bad episode for me. I'm gonna end up with eight more projects and products after this. Yeah. You and me, you 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.

I got three in front of me. No. I got four. So let me set the scene for you. Okay.

You're you're a parent, and you 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 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 a everything presents light, which is a millimeter wave, light sensor, essentially.

And I have it hooked up with Node assistant, so my lights downstairs are all like the Phillips Hue lights. Mhmm. So I have it Wes the kids go down there, it sees them, it turns on. After, like, fifteen minutes of no activity detected, it turns off. It sounds incredibly simple. It's 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. Oh, man. I need this.

This is millimeter wave? Nice.

Yeah.

That's better than, like, a a PIR sensor, which JS, like, they they trip too often sometimes. Right? Yeah. So the difference between millimeter wave, Wes, is that you can, like, dial in the specific location at which something might trigger it. We're, like Yeah. Just general is gonna say, did it detect

motion of Node time? Detect something or Scott. Oh, yeah. Yeah. 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 Yeah. Sees motion, turn on, doesn't see motion, turn off. And it's it is very nice. That's beauty. We have a couple of those in our mudroom and our closet Wes you walk in and the light just turns on, and then it turns off after a minute or so. I was like, every not every room, but

many rooms where you like, the storage rooms, basements, things like that Node those. Randy, what else you got? This one is a a a gift for the the gentleman out there. Well, I guess ladies can use this, but it's a, a safety razor.

Let me get this Scott here. So 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, fifteen 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 about a month, I've had a squeaky clean Yeah. Baby face, and it's a it's a different me. I'm not too good, but looking younger. Yeah. Yeah. Who makes that razor? This one's called, Henson. It's Henson Shaving. I think they're Canadian company.

But, yeah, it's it's it's better like, it's it's not cheap. Like, it's about a $100 for the razor, but then the blades are only, like you get a box of, like, a thousand blades for, I don't know, $20 or something. So Yeah. It's cheap. They last you forever. I use one of these too, and it, like, reduces on plastic waste because Yeah. No problem. Replaceable razors warp just the razors that's Node full plastic thing. So at least And do you have a 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 Deno, and you'd find this, like Mhmm. Like like, safety hazard. Little treasure trove of razor blades. I have one of these by LeafShave,

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.

Interesting. Yeah. And if you do put any pressure, it's gonna take off a significant chunk of skin.

So you gotta be careful.

But there I haven't used the razor in, like, probably fifteen years because, like, my face just catches on fire. Yeah. So I'll have to try it. Alright. Let's pass the potato. CJ, hit us up. My favorite thing this year, because I've been taking a lot of photos, is this Viltrox pancake lens.

So it's a 28 millimeter lens, f 4.5, and it has autofocus, but it's the tiniest thing ever. So just as a comparison, like, here is a, 11 millimeter wide angle lens.

Usually, they're they're pretty pretty big, pretty honking.

This is like a a 50 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 wanna have a a a single purpose device that maybe you don't wanna, use your phone for everything, this is great. And it it fits in my my little side bag.

It was only, like, a $100. And when it goes on sale on Black Friday and Prime Day for, like, $80, 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. Looks great. And I'm gonna choose Scott. I'll definitely, like, also mirror Wes three d 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 three sixty box with it and stuff. So 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 c's 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. It's so key, the draw? Yeah. The draw. It's really great. What's awesome about this, though, specifically, is that the top two USB Bos 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 240 watts and then one phone charger and then a USB a and 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 Bos. And it charges my computer, phone, all this stuff. So big, big fan of this device. And I think normally, it's like a $100, but on sale, $80, $70 on Amazon. So Love it. I'm all about reducing the amount of stuff in my bag when I travel. So that's great. Same. Yeah. Randy, what else you got? 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 Node 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, a $120 on Amazon or something. You can get it without the charging case, just like one of them for, like, 40 or $50. 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, any anything like that or, like, TikToks, whatever, they're just gonna sound a whole lot better. So DJI Mic Mini. Nice.

Do you want my last one too? Want your last one. K. This is my cheapest one. This is a a little $10 tip. This is go to, like, your hardware store and get these Velcro cable ties. Yes. 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. It's probably 500 on this roll. I got it. This is, like, $10 at the hardware store. Mhmm. Cable goes through.

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. Yeah. And it those. That 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. Yeah. The the only I don't like about them is they get stuck on my socks. Yes. Is it I hate that.

Wes. When they get stuck to something you don't want, it really sucks.

Super annoying. Caitlin. 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 ESLint.

But listen, it's for everyone. And look how big they are. Can you see how big these are? Yeah. They're big. Yeah. This is like a skincare line that's made by dermatologist. So it's, like, really simple. No frills. This whole thing is, like, $20.

I mean, 9 $18. What JS it? Explain it for the audio listeners here. Oh, it's like I mean, how many ounces is this? Is it No. What's the brand? What's the What's called prequel? What's that for? What do you do when it doesn't need to be skincare? Is it what is skincare? What is skincare, Caitlin? I think that's a question a lot of them. I think that this is the wrong option. The shampoo drain over my face. Yeah. This is 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 Wes, but it is a face wash.

And it's just, like, super gentle but hydrating. It is called prequel, and this is the cleanser.

Now I really feel like a medium cleanser.

Yeah.

This is, like, 14 ounces, so it's huge and only $18.

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.

This is a low temp that you can use. It's the same size. It's also Scott 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 it for the guys because, like, I mean, I'm saying wives and husbands and stuff, but you guys everyone can use this. No one get mad. Anyone who likes to clean their face can use this. Thank you. Oh, this is 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 callout, prequel 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 all probably have Apple watches, but this, like, this watch is the best thing I bought all year. It was like 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 pnpm a lot of money on marketing Mhmm. Which I, like, I find a lot in especially, like, wearable devices.

And so the Khoros is just, like, it's I think it's I think it's made in China, but it's very high Sanity, like, seventeen day battery life.

It's simple.

It's, like, just so simple. It has everything you need, but nothing that you really don't.

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.

This, if you run, if you hike, if you bike, whatever, just it's so amazing. And it's just so so small and lightweight. So Caitlin's a serious runner, so she knows. Yeah. Yeah. Those are my picks.

Hell, yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Nikki, do you have any other ones? First, I wanted to say the the Steam machine, which is gonna be, like, the console for, Steam. Oh, yeah. 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 Vercel. And, yeah, your whole Steam library is with you, so it's awesome.

If you don't have it already, get one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan. The Steam Machine looks incredible, though. Yeah. Right? I will be also. And they are gonna have, like, a VR headset as well. So And I'll be getting that too. Be really fun to have one.

Alright. I got a whole bunch more, but thank you Sanity team. The rest are just gonna be from CJ, Scott, and myself. Thanks for having us, guys. Happy holidays.

Happy holidays.

Alright. Next category we have here is under $30.

I'm going to say if you have a tinkerer in your life, get them a what's called an ESP 32.

This is just like a $5 micro 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.

Mhmm. This one is A screen. It has, Ethernet on it. Most the most common one is just Wi Fi, but has has Bluetooth, Wi Fi. And if you get that along with w s twenty eight eleven, LED strips, you can hook them up and you can you can make the LEDs all different colors. And, like, I'm telling you, gateway drug, ESP 32 plus LED strip, gateway drug to learning microcontroller programming. 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 wanna tinker with electronics, maybe learn a little bit of c plus plus, get the LLMs to do it for you.

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

Yeah. And you can do very similar stuff. Unlike AliExpress, they're, like like, $3

and order I have, like, a a bucket of fried ones because I've accidentally hooked them up wrong. So just buy a whole bunch. Buy a strip of, five volt or 12 volt LED strips. Probably five volt is fine to start with because then you can power them right off the board.

It's just such a fun thing. Yeah. So my first under 30 pick is a precision screwdriver set.

There are all kinds of varying quality. Like, I think, like, I Fix It has, like, a really nice one. This one right now on sale is, like, $22, but I it's it's great. It's like, you always like, if I'm taking apart electronics, there's always, like, a random, like, hex or, like, sometimes there's a square.

I specifically got this because I was taking apart a Sega a Sega game cartridge, and Yeah. There's, like, a, like, a proprietary four square thing, but this had the tool that I needed. It's also got these cool little, plastic, things for prying open yeah. You pry open devices.

So, yeah, this is $20. It's infinitely useful. I love it. If if you're like me, you can just buy one of those every single year because you lose the importance Node the torque's bits. And then just buy another one. I I have a drawer. The right behind me, this little thing right here, this is full of little, like, abandoned screwdrivers.

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, any phone that you have with, 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, I found it to be great.

Yeah. I use this thing all the time, and I've only dropped my phone, like, once or twice. So, 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, yeah, this thing is great because, again, nonpermanent, whatever. I'm gonna tell you to get a pair of digital calipers. I have these on my desk at all times,

for three d printing. If you need to order, like, a screw or something, you don't know how big it JS. If you need to measure the clearance of something, having digital calipers is the key because almost everything is done in metric.

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 that 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.

And they're they're dirt cheap. I have a pair of just cheapy Amazon ones. Yeah. Same. They Yarn extremely precise. You can get, like, a really high end Japanese ones, but, like, I'm not, like, machining or lading stuff here. I'm just measuring millimeters down to the, like, tenth of a millimeter.

It's super handy. Yeah. It's great to, like, find the size of bolts that you're trying to replace. Yes. So yeah. Great. But the bolt one is is so key. I also have, like, a little,

you know, at Home Depot, they have those little testers.

Yeah. 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. Nat has been super helpful as well just for trying to match it up. Alright. 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 wanna throw in your bag. Oh. You can just, like, you wrap them up in this, and it, like, sticks to itself.

JS it, like, is it silicone?

No. It's no. It's, like, fabric, but it's Velcro. Like, the this this is like a Velcro s.

Yeah. And so it is microfiber. It doesn't make sense with this tiny lens, but if you like, if you're throw 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.

Each one of these. That's ideal. Right. 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 Same. Putting this massive case in my in my luggage. So that's that's the move. I'm gonna sick pick a candle warmer for your office. I'm gonna sick pick I'm gonna

stick pick, a candle warmer for my office. Is this sick? We used to call this episode the sick pnpm a sode, Wes. Yeah. You're right. Okay. Happened to you. Yeah. Sick a sode.

You get you get hired by Century, and all of a sudden, you're selling out. You're not calling things a stick pick episode anymore.

Candle warp. I got one right there. You can kinda see it cruising.

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 either smell bad or neutral.

So you get a little candle warp. You put a candle on it. Get a any candle from Target, Vercel. And you never have to worry about it, 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.

Then your office smells great the rest of the day. This one is $15,

and, it's just a lamp. Put a candle underneath it. It's great. Can you explain this to me? So, like, is it heating from the bottom, or is the lamp heating it? How is it like Scott, like, a halogen it's got a halogen bulb in it, and it's hot enough that it it melts the the wax in it. We have one as well. It's awesome. You put it on a timer, then just it smells great, and then it turns off at night. That's sick. So you don't have you can use it for candles that you typically would light the flame for. 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, which is maybe also good. You're not putting that stuff in the air. Right. Yeah. Right. Node. Yeah. There's right. You're just releasing the scent slowly. It they're they're very lovely. We have two of them. They're cheap. Nice. Yeah. That'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 Heat lamp. It's a heat lamp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt, screen protector.

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 four.

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, you can set it up. I have the gesture where I push a button and mouse up, and that that turns the volume up.

It just feels really good in your hand. All the gamers can be quiet because they're gonna be like, it doesn't have refresh rate that's higher than six year. No one cares that no one cares that's not gaming.

I could click on my buttons and and, like, like, click on the line of code that I want just fine.

You're just saying that, overile up the keyboard, people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You You don't need that. MX Master four, I'm asking for that because it's my favorite mouse ever, and I'm getting the next one. Nice. Sick. 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 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 a, 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. I use it, to 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. And writing apps for the Stream Deck is

so easy. It's Node. Super easy. It's it's like a Node SDK, and you could 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 I have my lights hooked up to it.

It is a little bit of an investment to actually care about it. Yeah. And I find that that's what a lot of people have them collecting dust, but it's so fun. Especially Wes you learn you can just write Node apps for it. I've been streaming for years, and I don't have one, but I I kinda might bite the bullet this year. There 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. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I Man. I might get it this year. Cheap Chinese version of something is is usually the route I go. So Yeah. Man.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing. You can get, like, a a eight by eight grid instead of, like they're pretty massive for, like, the same price. Yeah. I was gifted

JS 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 nine by nine. I did find the software to be not as mature as the Stream Deck. But this thing three. Well, yeah. Nine. Okay.

And then this thing is a big old knob. And, you know, the Brits, they have issues recognized, but they also have issues with big old knobs, I think.

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

Yeah. Do all kinds of stuff. To us, it's not that funny, but the other people that are listening right now, like, talking about playing with your knob is, is very funny to them. Very funny. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Moving right along, my pick for desk items is, this MagSafe stand. So I use Android, but I have a case that has MagSafe on it like it does for, 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, similar to the PopSocket that Scott recommended, but it's nice and adjustable. Oh, yeah. It's a little bit horizontal. Yeah. It's a little bit higher. So this is fun. Satisfying click. Do that again.

I'll do it to to the mic. Oh, shit.

Damn.

Okay. Here we go.

This thing sucks. It's sick. Okay.

There.

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

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. That elastic is a little bit more secure than just, like, pinching with your fingers in the show. 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 Scott. But, like, I can still move around and, like like, type, and it's it doesn't feel, like, for me being cold sucks when you're working. Right? I have a heated floor in my office, heated core Node, 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, three eighteen six fifty cells, and it lasts for, I don't know, probably about five hours or so. Mhmm. 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. That's great. I think it's the future. Like, I feel like star Star Trek promised this idea of, like, personal air conditioners, personal heating devices. So, like Yeah. The fact that you don't have to pay a heating bill, but you're just walking around comfortable is great. Yeah. Just heat

heat yourself instead like, isn't that the the whole, those beds that are Internet connected?

Heat locally.

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. 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. I 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.

So my wife's fingers get really cold. So another

isolated, like, targeted heating device that heats your fingers while you're typing. Somebody sent me out with these ones, and I never figured out who it was. I went to my PO Bos 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. Mhmm. Because, like, not a single person Wes, like, like, why why did you send me you like, toast hand warmers?

So Yeah. That's good. I don't have any office picks because I kinda moved them all to my under 30 category, because I had them all in here. So we can move on to the the next one, which is tech.

My tech pick for the year is my MoCA adapter setup. So MoCA allows you to do, Ethernet over coax.

These particular ones, you can get up to, like, 2.5 gigabit, and, you just put put it in one e or 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 MoCA at it to to Ethernet and then coax MoCA to Ethernet.

And then we have, like, a Wi Fi 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, like, I have a whatever. What GitHub the hub. What are those called? Switch.

Unbelievable to me that they figured out how to do that because so many homes like, North America loves coax. Yeah. You know? They do. Every home has coax to every room. There's TV yeah. There's a TV cable TV hookup in every room in the house. Yeah. And it says they gotta have that. Yeah.

That's amazing. 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. I got one of these too. 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 am 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 JS storage. That that crucial one is is a 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 one eighty 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 become a nice little kit. But that thing is so nice and small, Four terabytes. It's unreal. Surprisingly affordable. I think that right now, it's, like, under $300.

So get you one of these. Four terabytes. That's crazy. Yeah.

I'm going to pick the BenQ programming monitors. You've you probably have seen them. There's they sent them to me. They sent them to to absolutely everyone who has a YouTube channel out there. They didn't send it to me. I didn't get one. Please, BenQ, can you please send Scott and CJ one of your monitors? So I have the about it. Yeah. The 28 inch, which is a four three Sanity, JS unreal because it's, like, a a 32 inch was is is too wide to put in 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 four three resolution.

The colors on it are fantastic.

I have a really expensive Dell monitor and a kind of a cheaper LG Node, and the colors on the BenQ ones are, I would say, even better than than the Dell one. So that one is fantastic. And then I also have the 32 inch RD 32 UA.

They have a whole bunch of features. Like, they have, like, backlight on it. There's obviously there's, like, a GitHub, 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. Man. Because the 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 Yarn almost no bezel. 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? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I well,

I'll tell you this.

Before they sent it to me, I had it in my cart on Amazon. Okay.

Because the there's several monitors out there that are, the the the 20 32 inch one is not four three, but the, Wes 28 inch one is is $4.03. And a lot of people like that for 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 doesn't really work. So big fan of that. Yeah. I'd I I would say say splurge on if you're looking at these things all day. Cool. Let's move into

food stuff.

This is for food specifically, not, food gadgets. I I'll have one here, and I don't Node, 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 that 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 little edamame's, and you can just you can just chomp on them all day, and they're they're lovely. So, shout out to b I e n a edamame's.

I'm gonna sick pick. Yeah. I'm saying it now too. Sick pick.

I I do hot sauces every year as, 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 Scott Sauce, and they they were on what's the spicy eaten wings YouTube window? They were on Scott one. 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 I ate it all.

But love it. I also like the the bottle size is really nice because I have a, like, a sauce addiction, and our fridge is just a minefield of, like, where the hell do you put this bottle? Yeah. This this is the right size, you Node? It's not massive. You can try, like, a weird Node, and and you're not getting over it. Well, it's a 177 milliliters. So I don't know how how many, like, American what do you owes you guys use over there? So check that one out. And then also, I'm a big fan of the Seals sisters kimchi mix.

And this is just a, like, a shake on kimchi, kinda spicy, and you can throw it on chicken, throw it on popcorn, whatever. You just shake it on,

and it tastes fantastic. So big I'm a big Korean food guy, so I like that one. So my food pick is, protein bars from Clif 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 a, like, a chocolate flavor and chocolate mint flavor. But, you can 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. And then That's pretty good. Yeah. And, also, I'm choosing some energy strips. It's not food, but, like, these these are two things that I start almost every morning with is a protein bar and an energy strip. So I these energy strips have forty milligrams of caffeine, thirty milligrams of L theanine, and some v b vitamins.

But you can actually they're 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.

This is like acid tabs.

Yeah. I'll show you. It's kind of do you remember those Listerine strips that people used to always use to put nipples? Yeah. We used to put so many. We used to dare each other. Yeah. It's very similar, but it's just, like, red instead.

But yeah. And this has forty milligrams of caffeine in it? Yeah. It's like half a cup of coffee. It's very light. And use at your own risk. Don't just, like, pound a 100 of these. Yeah. Caffeine can kill you. Uh-huh. Yes.

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

So I Scott, 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 or people Yarn, like, oh, don't don't let a drop of water touch it. 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 nonstick,

And it's just my favorite thing to cook with, and I'm I slowly wanna just switch out everything in our house to to carbon steel. I use stainless steel for all my pans. I know that's not the same thing as a 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, thrown in the dishwasher, using forks with it or metal utensils and all kinds of stuff. You don't have worry about it. 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 wanna think about

buying a new frying pan, like, ever again. Maybe in, like, ten years, I'll think about it, but I just wanna have something that is nice, that's good, and it's yeah. It's not gonna kill you. So

I'm gonna pick an air fryer. And I'm not picking any specific air fryer, but I am an air fryer convert. So I I will I'll I'll caveat this with the term air fryer is marketing. It's a scam. Yeah. Don't don't balance it. Paris. No. Those people are the worst. No. But their oven is an air fryer. No. Shut up. Air fryers are the best. Exactly. Oven. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Convection oven. Convection ovens are amazing, and I have a a cheap one. So my wife's, 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 it 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.

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

It's unreal. If you have an oven that does convection Wes Yeah. I will say, we have, like, a, a mesh wire thing that lifts your stuff off of another pan so that air can get underneath it. Mhmm. And that will give you more of the air fryer. It's still not air fryer, but it gives you a closer, for sure. It'll give you that. It's just not as fast. And, like like, I'm done work at 05:00,

and our kids have to eat by, like, 05:27.

Yeah. And it's just like air fryer for some of these things is just so nice and fast. Also,

shout out to Technology Connections. It's a YouTube channel. I don't know if you guys have seen him, but he 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. Yeah. He's good. He just he just rolled out another, like, hour long video about dishwasher detergent, and I was like,

I had, like, sat down. I got a beer. I was like, same. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did I switched to powder after that episode. Me too. Pretty sweet. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been a long time powder powder connoisseur because because of those reasons. But I'd the, shaking a little bit on top, that's the move. Yeah. Pre wash. Yeah. Pre wash.

We've all been misled.

I'm going to sick pick, Zojirushi water cooker.

This one holds five liters of water, and it keeps it at a lovely, a 195 or several different temperatures depending on, two zero five, one ninety five, one's of 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 four point, two quarts, which JS, again, like, five liters or four liters or whatever.

On hand at any given point, you push a button, oatmeal, tea, whatever. You got hot water twenty four seven, and they last a lifetime. They last forever.

It's really just well made stuff. So shout out to Zojirushi, and they have a cute little elephant logo. We have the,

the rice maker from Zojirushi, which ours ours busted. I'm like, I'm getting the good Node, and, like, I do not regret that at all. I'm also gonna 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 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 because Costco, but we warp 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 gotta oil it and stuff, but I'm done with plastic anything or anything like, cutting board. Like, it's gotta be wood. It's gotta be metal, whatever.

So this type of cutting board to me was really nice, and this thing is great. Fantastic. 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, like, 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. And you also got, like, a metric ton of microplastics in your vault. I know. Wes know. Yeah. I do the same thing. Yeah. I I use a cast iron pan or the it's okay.

It's okay.

Hold on, CJ. What do you do you use a a wooden cutting board cutting board? All plastic. 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, that they're, like, super thin.

We have, like, five of them because sometimes, like, you don't wanna wash the, the cutting board. So, yeah, plastic.

They're not. Yeah. The way that guys are out of your mind.

Yeah. It's not good for you, I don't think. No. Definitely not. Because then you look at it, and then, like, also the plastic ones, like, get gnarly as Wes. The food stuff gets caught in it. Yeah. And bacteria, yada yada yada yada.

I'm fine.

Look at me.

I'm picture of health. 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.

Just got new, Tuques, which is a a beanie for all y'all. Scott a toque. Yeah.

It's a toque. We got a basketball, which is, like, the best thing ever. You can see it back there, with hand Deno graffiti from a friend of mine who's a a famous b boy. We got mini skateboards. We got key caps. We got pins.

We got all kinds of stuff on here. Ass skateboards.

Oh, yeah.

So get yourself some Syntax merch.

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

Two clothing brands I like, not specific items, but, one Canadian or these are both Canadian brands. One's called Hook or Hookie, and it's at hooke.com.

They're sort of like a outdoor heavy flannel brand, And I've got a couple 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, salvage denim. And they have some of the best jeans I've ever worn. I've been wearing them for probably, like, probably eighteen 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. Also, pick a couple of clothing brands,

one of which is October, which JS, like people are asking me a lot about my clothes sometimes. This is nice clothes so that you you it's not like stuff you buy once and 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. This JS, like, Sezane's men's brand. Right? My wife loves Sezane. This is Sezane's men men's brand, and it's pretty much all I wear.

These jeans are Sezane. Like, I'm I'm 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. It's kind of like classic styles, stuff that's not gonna 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, Sezane, 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 the store. Again, very expensive, but stuff that will last a very long time, and it's just nicely made high quality quality. So I actually made CJ walk by this store in New York because we're like, oh, we should just stop by Saison while we're here and see if they and there was a line

out the door. It couldn't even get ESLint in the pack. 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 Suzanne dresses that were, like, I don't know, probably 2017, 2016, and they still look brand new. Like, Scott wearing you probably have seen Scott wear some of these things year after year, and they still look, like, brand new. Yeah. Expensive, nice clothes, for sure. Yeah.

I'm sure. Against the shitty quality

Exactly.

Like, clothing, man. Disposable. Yeah. 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 Fast fashion, I think, is the Chinese website that, like, ships you shirts for, like, $4.

Shen. Yeah. Oh, never mind. Man, we're in trouble. Stop buying that crap. That's that's bad. Yeah. I would rather save up and get something.

Exactly. And, like, keep it forever. Yeah. 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, last for fifty years. But now we we buy stuff, and it lasts, like, a year, two years, and then we were replacing it. So I'm all for it. Sustainability for sure. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I'm also just gonna pick some cheap shirts, though, so in the exact opposite direction.

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 you can't see it that well, but I actually embroidered embroidered syntax in black on my shirt. Oh. Oh, that looks good. Yeah. CJ made some bootleg, syntax gear. Merch.

But the these are great. They're nice and comfortable.

They're, like, less than $10 a piece.

I've been wearing them for several months. I have this one as well.

And in fact, I think that this purple one is what we embroidered the Syntax Big Terp Big Purp on.

It might not be exactly it, because I I bought, like, six or seven blanks before we, went ahead with the Syntax Big Purp tee just to test them all out. And that one is it they're pretty heavy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And they they last forever. Like, I've washed mine probably, like, 30 times, and, it still looks like brand new. Let's talk about some kids stuff.

Something that you might wanna go ahead and buy your kids. I bought my daughter a 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 it connects to WiFi and will automatically go and play it. All the the battery's dead on it. I, 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. It's just like Mhmm. The way I am, and my my daughter is the same way. So we go and get a podcast called Who's Smart ed? And 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 there. We have a whole web interface. You can just upload m p threes.

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. Like, at Dude. Anytime you see something, like, did you know that bees will actually walk on their hands? Or, like, just, like, random things. Like, how do you know all this?

Yeah. In the same realm, we got the Tony box, which Yeah. JS, 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 Tony box. Did you see that Tony is also now rolling out, like, cards as well? No.

You can put them on top of the thing.

It's it seems pretty cool because, like, that's why I went with the Yodos. Like, I didn't want, like, a whole bunch of these, like, figurines or the And yeah. He did. If I'm being honest, I wanted to hack it.

And now Tony has a Yarn, so that's a super good option. Plus, like, if you go to, like, Target in The States, they have, like, 20,000

Tony box, like, figurines on the wall. It's unreal how many they have. 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 a endpoint

that it pulls from so you could, again, load up the who smarted and stuff. Yeah. 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, this is also kid. Fur baby. He's your fur baby. Right? He's my fur baby. Yes. Fur baby. He absolutely loves these hedgehogs. So they're they're about this big.

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. That too. Yeah. 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.

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.

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

I have these I've been, like, slowly replacing every single switch in our house with, the Lutron, and, big big fan of the entire system. I'm going to

pick some Bos 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 kinda interesting. They have Bos, 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. So we got the smart water leak sensor, and, basically, just put it on the ground, and we put one underneath our dishwasher, and we put one underneath our Smart. 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 two Bos 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 then they also work the reason why I like this stuff is it works really well with, Node Assistant. You know, you can hook it up to all of your own stuff, which, like, would I've been a big fan of Wyze in the past, but their stuff is getting less and less friendly, towards just, like, third party systems.

So I've been trying to move a lot of my stuff away. And I had the Wyze garage door opener, which used the camera to detect if it was open or closed, but it just it was too flaky. And, the the Miros ones are just a simply a wire with a, like, a magnet sensor. Just There's a lot of tech up to close.

Yeah. We we have a, like, myQ or something for the garage door, and it works really well. So Do you have to pay for that, though? No. No. I'm not paying for it. Okay. Yeah. Because, like

yeah. I don't wanna have to pay for that. No. There's one thing that they don't have out yet, but it will eventually, and it's a, energy monitor. Oh, they do have it out now. A smart energy monitor. And it's basically, like, 16 little amp clamps, And you put it at 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. Wow. So I would love that.

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

Yeah.

Wow. I don't know about this company. Yeah. I couple of their dimmers as Wes. 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 wanna have two switches, but you also want both of them to be dimmers so you don't have to walk to the other Node, and, been a big fan of those.

Yeah. Wes, this is cool. I mean, 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 the with the caveat is that you probably need home assistant or 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 or app or something.

Oh, I see. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot of cool stuff. Along those same lines, like, I like anything that doesn't tie you in and, like, make you install, like, a random Chinese app. Thank you. And so Yeah. My pick is, anything from Kauf or Kauf, k a u f, because they you you buy them, and they have, Scott firmware on them. So Tasmata is, like, the open source ESP home firmware.

Mhmm.

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 Node 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 of research if you if you look on Amazon that, like, it says you need a Chinese app, but if you can figure out how to flash Pazmata 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 and kind of lets you stay in control. Oh, yeah. Most of the stuff that you, like, buy on Amazon or Costco and you see these, like, random mass companies Yeah. 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 Yeah. 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. And then one more pick that is a little less smart, which are these LED grow light bulbs. So they're not I 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 with 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. Mhmm. 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 or, like, the USB breaks just plugs right into your existing sockets.

They do have some that are Wi Fi as well, but, again, look out for, like, the the ones that need a Chinese app.

But these are great. Set it, forget it. It's better just just get the dumb bulb and then put a smart plug on it if you wanna turn them on and off. Like that. That's cool. I thought you were gonna be like I thought this was like a grow op thing, and I was Node gonna say, hey. Wes don't know that it's not, Wes. I mean Yeah. That's true, actually. His plants. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a coffee past them. Coffee plant and a lemon tree. So that's that's my grow op.

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 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 it's just a really nice thing to have around if you're interested in getting your kids into music. So big fan. And, like, there's an entry level kit that's, like, 700,

but it's the kind of thing that it's it's good. It's, like, professional quality. Roland's a good company. Great. Yeah. So, yeah, you don't have to worry about it, like, going to waste or

breaking. So Yeah. Yeah. High quality stuff. I love it. Sick. Wow. That was a lot of sick pics. That was a whole sick pnpm a sode.

Sick. So Just endless amount of sick pics in this one. The guys, do you have anything else to say before we get out of here? Any sick pics? Happy holidays. Enjoy your family.

Buy them some nice things.

Agreed. Peace.