2019 Gift Guide

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in it. Get ready. Here is Scott Dolensky and Wes Moss.

Welcome to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats. Today we've got a really fun one for you. It's an entire episode of Sick Picks. We've got the holiday gift guide.

So these are things, whether you're looking for something to ask for, whether you're looking to buy for a techie or a web developer, these are things in tech, food, experiential, clothing, that Scott and I think that are good gifts. So we're going to sort of go through it. So it was a fun one. We did this last year and people loved it.

It's just also a neat way to discover new products and services and things like that. How are you doing today, Scott? I'm doing good. I'm tired.

Yeah. At that time, you know, the kids are maybe both not sleeping. We've landed into his big boy room and he's sleeping in a full-size bed because that's all we had in that room. So a little guy's in a giant bed and he's getting used to it, but sleep's been disrupted, so to say.

I also had a little bit of an issue this morning with my robot in my house. I told Gorgel to turn on my right power strip. Yeah. I said, Gorgel, turn on my right power strip.

And it goes, turning left power strip on. I said, turn on the right power strip, Gorgel. So it's turning a left power strip on. And I said, Gorgel, you are MFing dumb.

And then Gorgel says back to me, sorry, I'm still learning. I'm like, oh, okay, I don't need my darn robot talking back to me. I didn't know that was a thing. I got kids that talk back to me.

I don't need a robot talking back and say, my mistakes are, like, come on. I don't know. It made me feel, not feel bad for swearing at it, but it made me feel bad. I don't know.

It made me feel creepy. It was creeped out by this thing, apologizing. Yeah. We have that with the Chromecast.

About half the time when we tell it to show us something on our TV, like we're like, show us photos of camping or show us photos of swimming. And about half the time, it's like, all right, putting them on the TV. And then the other half of the time, it's like, oh, I don't have a screen. And like, come on.

There's like, I love the Google Home stuff. We'll talk about that here. But sometimes you can tell that they're like constantly tweaking it. And like, when you think you have a handle on what to ask it or how to exactly say it, then they change it on you.

Yeah. It was like for one week, if we were to tell Gorgel to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars, because Lane loves that. Lane will be like, all right, Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle. So we'll tell it to sing it.

And then for like one week, it would be like, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars on Spotify. We'd be like, no, you sing it. We want you to sing it. Don't pass this off.

No, it's singing again. It didn't sing it for like a couple of weeks. And now it's singing again. So I have no idea.

They need to stop tweaking. Oh, man. All right. Well, today we are sponsored by two awesome companies.

The first one is Parismic, which is a headless content CMS with a GraphQL API. And the second one is FreshBooks. It's just cloud accounting software. We'll talk about them partway through the episode.

So we're just going to go through some categories here, things that are nice. Yes, some of them are just like very generic. And you can find them anywhere. And some of them are actual specific products.

And for those ones, we'll have links in the show notes if you want to check them out. So I don't feel like you have to write them down while you're driving. Hands on the wheel. Hands on the wheel.

So let's kick it off with some tech gadgets. You want to grab the first one there? Yeah. I recently have bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I got the Apple Watch.

And let me tell you, it's darn good. So if you have an iPhone and you're on the fence about the watch, check out the Apple Watch. I know this is old news here, but I really like mine. And I was definitely a holdout for a long time.

So I use it all the time for absolutely everything from tracking workouts to controlling my podcast. Honestly, probably my favorite feature on it is the decibel meter. I use it all the time to check how loud things are, which sounds ridiculous. But I really love it.

Like my dog's barking. And I'll be like, oh, this is really bad for my ears right now. Or I can even just tell the ambient level in my office. Like I can visually get a good indication that my ears are hearing what I'm thinking I'm hearing correctly in my office.

So either way, the Apple Watch is great. And I highly recommend it if you need another recommendation for it. Awesome. I'm going to pick up wireless chargers as the next one.

So I've got this little pad on my desk. Most phones now have the, what is it, QI? How do you say that? QI?

QI? QI? QI? QI?

I don't know. It's basically, you lay your phone down or your headphones or whatever that has wireless charging on these pads and they charge. Just make sure that you get one that does 10 watts. There's a bunch out there that are five watts, seven and a half watts.

Do one that does 10 watts. I personally have the Sovereign one, which they sent me for free. That's why I have that one. But I'm just looking on Amazon here and the Unker ones are much cheaper.

And Unker has never let me down on anything. I love their products. So I would probably go for that one instead. Although the Sovereign one that I have has this like really cool light ring around it.

And it does get the likes on Instagram because it looks cool. Can you use it in the bedroom? Like I need my charging pad to be not lit up. And this baby monitor can't, like the baby monitor thing itself has this huge light on it.

And you're like, what? Come on. Like, I don't need this light on 24-7. Why is this light on?

Yeah, I just bought this huge pack of every color electrical tape available. And I just went around our house just taping everything with a light on it. I was like, why does everything have such a blinding light? Don't get the Sovereign one if you want to put it in the bedroom because it's bright as hell.

I honestly don't use the charging pad in the bedroom or anything like that. It sounds weird saying in the bedroom. In the boudoir, yeah. Because I like just having it on a cord is fine for me.

And I've got recommendations for wicked cords. But I do use it on my desk because I take my phone out and just lay my phone on this thing when I'm at my desk and get a couple extra percentages while I'm sitting there. Nice. Got to get those percentages in that battery.

Got to be charging that battery all the time. But these are the class-leading noise-canceling headphones. And we're mine absolutely every day. At some point, I have them on my head.

The battery lasts for the longest time ever. The sound-canceling properties of them are absolutely fantastic. Class-leading is absolutely as good as it gets. Definitely worth the price.

So these are my personal headphones of choice if you're not rocking a pod situation. But these are great. Absolutely awesome. Essentials for flights.

Yeah. They're USB-C too, right? Yeah, USB-C. Yeah.

I was looking at these. They're on sale for Black Friday, like $80 off or something like that. And I was so tempted. I have, which I guess will be my next pack.

I have the Bose QC35s, which are one of the best ones you can get as well. You can connect two devices to them as well. So you can flip between your phone and your computer. So if you've got a call to listen to music and you've got a call, you can flip between.

Although that's not perfect. It sometimes confuses itself as to which one it should be connected to. I'm a big fan of those as well. And the only problem with them is that they're amazing.

And I've had them for, I don't know, two or three years. And they're nowhere close to needing to replace ear cups on them. And they feel like brand new headphones. So maybe in another three or four years when these things die, I'll be able to check out these Sony ones.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Who knows what they'll be like by then. Next one we have here is a USB-C hub.

So if anyone has one of these new MacBooks or really any computer that is USB-C based, you'll know that they often don't come with any ports. So having like a rock solid USB hub has been, or is super important. I've had many different hubs in the past and a lot of them don't work. A lot of them flake out.

And I go to conferences and do workshops and I can't have a flaky one. So the one that I got was the Soberant 8-in-1. It's kind of expensive, like 55 Canadian, which is probably about 40, 30, 38 American, something like that. But it's got your HDMI in it, got a bunch of USB regular ports, a couple of USB-C ports.

Just does everything that you need. So I've been a big fan of having that one. And then just like the cord on it, because like what happens with these things is that you get the projector and you have to bend the cord to put it in the side. And that's where these things flake out is when they get bent.

And then it's really flaky. And this thing has been rock solid for like two years. So I'm a big fan of that one. Yeah, I have one that is the Satechi.

And this one's really good as well. It's been doing good for me. But I also, I like what you're saying about Anker. Like everything that Anker makes has always been good for me.

So between the Soberant and Satechi Anker, I'm sure you can find a really good one. This is a neat little gadget for those of you who are maybe potentially getting interested in streaming. Maybe you have a camera, you're interested in upgrading your webcam. You don't have anything overlays on it.

It's just straight up video. You can use that as your webcam. You can use it to record directly onto your computer. You can use it for just about anything live streaming.

This little device is really super cool. It looks like a USB drive and it does so, so much. So check it out. Elgato Cam Link.

Oh, that's cool. I'm just looking at these. How much does that cost? Like $110?

$150? That's pretty good for if you've got like an old DSLR kicking around. As long as it outputs correctly. You would have to make sure it's on the list, which I have on the website.

I'm really tempted to do this. I'm getting kind of sick of my webcam right now. I've got a 1080p Logitech webcam. And it's good, but like everybody's stepping up their game with these like DSLRs.

And God, it's amazing on his. And my only problem is I don't have, like I'm right up against the wall where my desk is. And I don't think I'm far enough away. I think I need to just tear down everything in my office and rejig the layout.

You just need to build an extra few feet behind your wall. Just knock down the wall. Keep your desk where it is. Instead of just moving your desk, you just shift everything a little bit.

Oh yeah, I badly need to redo my office. I just got wires everywhere. I need like one of those like rack mounted things that I can put everything into. Yeah.

Nice and clean. Yep. Next one we have here, which is still under tech, is the Unker 5-in-1 Quick Charge Hub. So I've said this a couple of times and I have a couple of them throughout my house.

So the problem that you have is that generally you have like a couple of USB things plugged in. You've got like underneath our couch, we've got two lightning cords for both of our phones. And then we've got a couple of USB micros to charge random things from around the house. And a bunch of the kids stuff is USB and some of it's USB-C.

And then we have an old iPad, which is the old 30 pin. And like you've got all of these different connectors. And sometimes they need to be charged at the same time. And you don't want to have to like keep switching out the cord.

Like this is a bit of an aside, but I always go nuts to my wife because she is a cord mover. You know the type of people that have like one nub and one iPhone cable and they like carry it around with them? Like if you go on vacation, they like unplug it from beside the bed and like pack it. I'm the complete opposite where I'm like the cord should always stay in one spot.

And you just buy more cords and put them where they should be. And you never move them because that way you never lose them. And they're never in the wrong spot. And you always have one when you need it.

Oh, totally. Yeah, what's funny about that is that like there gets to be a point in which you have like an Apple power cable that costs like 120 bucks or whatever. And you're just like, yeah, okay, maybe I'll just move this one around everywhere. The laptop has been an exception.

You can move that. That's the only one I will move. But everything else, like all just devices, USB charging devices, you just have one where you are. Anyway, so this thing is 63 watts.

You can get them with five, eight and ten ports. I believe I have the five one. And then you just have like USBs coming out of this thing and you can charge all your stuff at once, which is awesome. It charges super fast because it has, mine has a thing called IQ in it, which will detect the max charging rate that the device will take.

Like it will keep bumping up the charging rate until it realizes it's not taking anymore and then it'll back it off. And then these new ones have quick charge in them. So if you have a device that accepts quick charge, then there's two of those ports that are quick charge enabled and the rest are IQ powered, which is pretty neat. So I love this thing.

We have three of them throughout our house. Kind of expensive, about 50 bucks Canadian, but well worth it, I think. Interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Quick charge hub. Yeah. Oh, I got one more. So my last one on this kind of gadgets here is are these new three in one.

Like I'm a sucker for a weird cable. I have these cables that are like in the same plug. They're USB. And then if you turn it upside down, it's micro.

Like it's not like a little adapter you take off. It's the same plug. And it works pretty good. And in the past, I've tried those like magnetic tearaway ones in the past.

And I recently found these three in one cables that are braided, first of all, because braided cables are the best. But they have like three. You plug one into the wall and then they have three. They have a USB-C, a lightning and a micro USB all in the same one.

And they all work at the same time, meaning that you might not even need the last thing that I expect unless you need a high charge rate because it will charge them all at once. And it's just the best. I bought one to try it out for a couple of weeks and I've been loving it. And now I have ordered one for everybody in my family.

It's going to be like a little stocking stuffer. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, I got them on. So there's just like, you ever go to this website, dealextreme.com?

Nobody sounds awesome. So yeah, dealextreme is spelled with an X instead of an EX. It's actually dx.com, DX, like developerexperience.com. Oh.

And this website is awesome. It's all kinds of cheap little gadgets that you get from China. Oh man, I just got transported back in the 90s in the 90s. So you can, I don't know, you can find it.

I got them on this website for about four bucks a piece. The only downside is that they come from China. So the shipping is anywhere between a week and it never shows up. Yeah, yeah, never.

So I have seen them on like Amazon, things like that for about 10 bucks a cord, which is, in my opinion, well worth it for a high quality braided cable. Nice. Cool. You got to be a little careful with buying tech sometimes though.

One time my buddy bought some RAM for his girlfriend's computer and they had only been dating like a year. And she's not techie. She's just like, she was like a writer. And she's like, well, her computer was slow.

No, the only gift you got her. Like, dude. It's like, but it makes sense. It's a practical gift.

I'm like, dude. It's like giving her on a vacuum for Christmas unless they really want it. Yeah, unless they're asking for RAM for, unless she was like explicitly like, I really need some RAM for my computer. It's like, well, I heard her talking about how slow it was.

Oh my God. Okay. Oh man. Yeah, careful with that one.

Yeah, careful with that one. The next thing we want to talk about is automation, home automation. I feel like smart home stuff over here. I know we're all a big fan of the Wyze cams, but one smart home device that I really liked more than a lot of anything that I have else in my house is the Google Nest Home Hub.

For me, I really get a lot of use out of this. Courtney and I both have one and it has like a revolving door of family photos on it. This is like our family and friends photos. It has a screen, right?

Yeah. So it's basically like a little, it is small too. The small one is pretty little small and it's like a little photo frame and it is so smart and nice. To be honest, this thing really, really has, and it's probably the best smart device because you can tell it to do things, but it has a good speaker, but you can also swipe when you need to swipe, push when you need to push.

Landon can yell at it to the weather in the morning because he really likes to do that, but he'll just sit there and swipe through pictures and he'll be like, that's grandma, that's Uncle Rob. Like he'll just go through all of them and it's so much fun for him. So we really like our Nest Home Hub. It's really nice device for the price.

Yeah, we just got one on Black Friday and I brought it home, plugged it in and it does all the stuff that Google Home does. But the frustrating part about Google Home is there's no screen. So when you turn on the lights, you still have to yell at it if it did it wrong. You can also just like run over there and hit the dimmer on it or something like that.

The kids love it for swiping through the photos. It plays YouTube videos. It's like an iPad, but it doesn't have a browser, which I'm surprised no one's hacked it yet. Like first thing I did, I was like, all right, who's got custom firmware for this?

Nobody has hacked it as far as I can see. But it was $89 Canadian. It's so good. We went and bought another one just to have another one in our cottage.

It's so cool to have the family photos just constantly on. That's so good. Because it detracts our kids from wanting to watch TV because they just like sit there and watch the photos and swipe through them and then go back if they miss one, which is really cool. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I love it. Yeah, I'm very tempted to get the Max one, which is a larger screen. I think the cheap one is like an 8-inch screen, which is big enough, but the Max one is like three tons. We'll be getting an A-Max one for the kitchen, I think.

Yeah? Corny would really like to use it for like watching TV while cooking or asking for recipe stuff. Oh, yeah. You have YouTube TV, right?

We do. Does that go on the Google Home? Yeah, you can just say, put this on this. Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah, Corny does that all the time. That's like having a TV in your kitchen. Yeah, if she's in the bedroom and just hanging out on the bed, she'll just tell the Google Home because it's right on her nightstand there. Play something on there because we don't have a TV in there, you know?

Yeah. Man, the future is awesome. I was just thinking about that when my kids were watching a YouTube video on it, and they're just sitting in front of it. I was like, like 10.

year old me would have killed to have a little touchable tv like this i love that content yeah we've talked about all the wise stuff on end in this podcast if you want to get somebody a nice camera the wise cams are 19 bucks uh american they're amazing there's no monthly cost associated with it they're usb powered i have seven of them in my house now i have two of them outside which they're not supposed to be outside but they're holding up okay uh in the canadian winter big fan the wise plugs are good ones you've got a couple of the bulbs right i don't have the bulbs yet i don't have any of the bulbs i don't have anything but the cameras tonight or the most i'm sorry i have the cameras and then i have the motion sensors or the proximity sensors oh yeah yeah i got that as well and those have all worked really good you know we have a motion sensor in the garage as well so i can tell the garage doors open i have one in all the doors it's really nice i like it a lot yeah no way we just make sure everything's all good yeah that kind of stuff is great 20 25 gift for somebody oh yeah and i think you get you get your bang for your buck on that kind of thing yeah um the sensors ones are really cheap for what they are and they work really really well so um big big fan of those as a nice cheap fun gift apparently the wise outdoor cam was delayed they were supposed to release it by the end of the year um and they just sent an email saying apparently it's going to run on battery for like six months which is pretty cool probably similar how the ring doorbells do like whenever there's motion it will turn on but then you can also hardwire it which is pretty cool but apparently it's delayed i'll be happy to do mine battery wise because we don't have a lot of good wiring situations as is with this house so be nice to get some of those and not have to worry about that aspect yeah and it's not a big deal to like have to grab it down once or twice a year and plug it in for a half an hour to charge it totally um what else here google chromecast that's always a cheap one to give somebody um if they've got it a tv with hdmi port you plug this thing in at the very basic for most tvs google chromecast will turn your tv off via google home so you just say okay gorgul turn the tv off and like that alone is good but also as a picture frame like you turn your entire tv into a picture frame and then things like watching netflix and whatnot is pretty cool although we don't we don't like doing youtube and netflix all that much because then you don't have like a remote control which is frustrating so we like to go just use actual tv remote to do netflix and stuff like that yeah we've been getting into once our tv got the apps that are really nice yeah good apps that's like really sort of what changed it for me was using the apps in the tv but before we had a crappy old tv and the apps were all terrible so we always chromecasted everything and now we do a little bit more of the tv usage just because of how nice that is let's get into i guess one last thing that i have i have a smart power strip that i really like i'll post a link in the show notes here but i really like having these smart power strips because you can control each outlet individually or the whole strip itself it has four usb plugs on it my camera's powered by it my studio monitors are on it my uh video monitor all of my studio lamps so i can tell it like various commands to say oh it's recording time and then all of my lamps will turn on my monitor will turn on my studio monitors will turn off it's so good uh so i'm a big fan of having something like this to give you that like fine grain control who makes this one um i'll have to look it's to be honest i'm not sure without looking at it i'll have to post a link cool i've been thinking about getting one but then i also just have regular power strips i was at a garage this summer and i found all these like super high-end power strips and i bought them all and i was like i just plugged this into the wise outlet thing and and then it's smart so just put that on the end yes that works sure okay that's the red or the clark griswold of our home all right what's next here we've got uh last movie reference west lost that's one of the movies i've seen like probably dozens of times uh christmas vacation oh yeah that's a good one let's take a quick break for our sponsor which is prismic uh and i'm gonna just ask you to go to the website prismic.io forward slash syntax because it's actually hilarious what they built right here oh this is so funny they found a clip of scott breakdancing and a clip of me and they've sort of pitted us against each other as scott being team view and west being team react that's funny and then they've taken their employees and like pitted them against so they levi's on team west well phil is on team scott that's great team scott team scott oh so anyway what is prismic um they are a cms that has a graph dual api so you log in you create your content types um you create relationships you create what kinds of inputs that you want um and then they've got a json api as well as a graph dual api you can pull that data into gatsby react apollo um pretty much anything that accepts data which is absolutely everything but um you probably want to use it with a view in nux or next or react something like that check it out it's the component base cms that you didn't know that you needed prismic.io forward slash syntax um they've got a bunch of docs and starters uh that will sort of get you up and running with a little example so maybe over the holidays if you're looking to try something new check it out prismic.io forward slash syntax yeah it looks like they have some really nice getting started stuff on that forward slash syntax page as well so that's something you check out there at least run through the getting started i'm sure you'll be pretty amazed at how easy this stuff is pretty cool also check out the prismic youtube channel as well they have been bringing in people that are in the industry just in for some like chats just about the tech they're doing it really well people huh just some people some some amazing good looking people now obviously i was brought in to talk about react hooks and next versus gatsby and something else and i think like once a month they're bringing in someone and i think it's a perfect example of like content marketing to me because they're not like sitting you down being like so tell me how prismic is going to be change your world they're just talking about tech in general and i think as a side effect of that that makes you have a positive outlook on a company like that so yeah good job at content marketing in that respect so anyways let's keep going with our gift guide yeah so next thing you have a laptop you have a desk well maybe you need a laptop stand for that desk i personally have the one by 12 south it's a really nice it's all one piece it's really sturdy uh it puts the laptop in the perfect spot uh that's the one i like to use i know you have some other options here but this 12 south one is really nice if you're a fan of this brand that's really nice stuff in general i personally have the rain design m stand and i've had this thing for probably 10 years now and they still sell the exact same one and it just looks like your actually now that i have a space gray laptop it doesn't match it anymore but it's just a solid piece of aluminum and it's perfect for just like putting your laptop on it and raising it to the right height but there are some other sort of designs that have popped up in the last couple years the big one was the roost stand and this thing is like a like an umbrella and you unfold it and you get this like really cool oh i see that okay explain it it's like this like origami thing umbrella is a good good way to explain it yeah and you can put it at different angles it's sort of like a spider from wild wild west um i don't even know what that is what is that it's a will will smith movie from the 90s and uh there's a giant spider in it oh it looks a lot like that you know like connexor those kind of things yeah yeah google that looks like a stand the benefit i've seen to this roost stand is first you can travel with it because it's portable um second you can put it at any angle that you want so often i'll see people even at like coffee shops or on a on a plane they'll just set this thing up and put their put their keyboard like put their macbook like almost all the way open very angled um and then you have like an external keyboard underneath it so well that's pretty cool roost makes a nice one next stand makes a nice one there are a bunch of knockoffs now on amazon uh i think the roost one is like 100 bucks something like that the next stand is like 35s so uh i'm kind of tempted to get this but i don't i don't need it yeah if i was like when i taught the boot camp we had a bunch of students they would bring an external keyboard and then they would just set this thing up on their desk and they would work all day from this that's the perfect setup you don't have to like punch over your laptop all day long you can just set this thing up in front of you yeah i don't know if i would do that i i like typing on my my laptop and showing my face up into the screen and yeah definitely like that another option would be maybe phone cases one of my favorite phone cases is the rhino shield this case is a little bit different it's like a bumper case uh it just goes around the rim of the phone i've got my phone i've now had three phones with rhino shield i dropped them hundreds and hundreds of times i've never had a single issue never a screen crack never anything all my phones are great and i'm a clumsy dude anybody who knows me knows i'm bumping into things 24 7 so uh the rhino shield for any device i think they have them for about every major phone has just been a fantastic phone case for me for ever and ever so big fan cool i don't have any uh phone i use a phone case but i'm not even sure which one it is i just go to the mall and try them on until i find one that feels good and that's the one i'm shaking my head over here but yes continue i mean i'll check your rhino shield out next time um next one is something we did last year and it's got a lot of heat on twitter when i asked for gift guides and that's a mechanical keyboard and david elster on twitter said that's like buying somebody a mattress without asking if they like their bed firm or softwares and it's kind of true so mechanical keyboards are awesome um it's such a good gift for a developer but you it's such a particular thing because the keyboard itself the keycaps the switches underneath all of those things are customizable by you so maybe even just getting someone like a decent bass keyboard and then or gift card and letting them spend money on the caps and switches themselves might be a good idea gift cards to keyboard stores i'm sure that exists is that a thing i'm sure that exists you can get gift cards for like the gas station so i can i'm sure you can get mechanical gift card um i have the control keyboard ctrl big fan of that one i also have another keyboard here that has been sitting on my desk for six months and i have not yet been able to put it together because it just it just doesn't work when you do so yeah it's a big project and it didn't work um i also i have the code keyboard which is a really nice um it's a variation on another keyboard i have the code keyboard for a wired option and if you're like uh you know somebody who's just maybe not like a mechanical keyboard crazy person because they exist uh i like this keytron at k1 and it's a keycron sorry neutron it's like a really low profile mechanical keyboard it has these really interesting mechanical switches the latest version of it's really nice and it's something a little bit different maybe maybe there is a mechanical keyboard fan out there who might find this to be maybe a novelty but i personally use it as my daily driver keyboard and really like it because it's clicky and it's nice it's tactile it's also low profile it's mac first mac focused yeah it's just really nice i think this is really cool i'm looking at this you've said it a couple times and i think i would be really happy if somebody gifted me this for christmas i think if somebody charges via usbc it's bluetooth so it's wireless which is a big thing for me yeah a lot of them are all wired and they're all wired why because people like don't want to have that tiny tiny tiny tiny little bit of latency that you don't click button uh leds radiate out in a rainbow pattern and it's pretty fancy it's not expensive either under what 74 bucks i'm looking at it right now yeah for what it is it's really nice i think if somebody's like a if somebody's like a hardcore gamer don't get them this oh yeah i think someone's like a web developer designer loves mac products that's this is probably something that they would enjoy yeah they're playing starship or whatever that those games are don't get them that yeah if they're playing starship you better believe this is not the right keyboard when they're on that starship what's the famous line from that starship game starship oh uh what's the famous one they always say they say right before uh the beginning oh live long and go forth or something like that live long and go forth from the game that was it's got that bill nye and what's his buddy the other scientist guy in part of it yeah bill and neil and uh neil miko kaku is that his name all right uh next is matt mice um i recently switched to the logitex logitech mx master i got two which was quickly i realized why it was on sale it's because number three came out a month later but i've been loving it i had huge problems with it not connecting and i went through absolutely everything it turned out to be the dongle can't be plugged into like a hub or like there's too much interference so if you get somebody this mouse also get them just a usb extension cable for like three bucks and then you can extend the dongle down away from the hub that they're using to where the mouse is so it makes it kind of wireless it works amazing since i've done that i love this mouse so much i would highly recommend you get this for someone cool um what else we have here uh lamb cow flexible tripod so my wife is a fashion worker and she goes through tripods like crazy and i tried to get her like for a long time i got her like some knockoff gorilla pods and they weren't all that good because eventually after like half a year they would start slouching the camera would would fold over um and then i got her like a legit gorilla pod which is like the number one um these are like little tripods that you can wrap around like a tree or a fence or anytime you need a quick little tripod they're these bendy tripods um and the gorilla pod is amazing but i recently got her there actually over a year ago i got her this lamb cow flexible one which is i think even better than the gorilla pod because it bends in any way it's basically just like a big bendy three bendy sticks and it comes with all these attachments for your phone and for your tripod um you can wrap it around i personally we have like a ring light i'll personally put my phone in this tripod and then wrap the tripod in the middle of the ring light and it looks amazing when it happens so that's pretty cool we should specify that this is if you're if you're just listening and not looking at the things it's not lamb cow like a little lamb and a cow that gives you milk it's all one word l-a-m-m-c-o-u lamb cow yeah big fan of this thing and it was it was much cheaper than the gorilla pod as well cool if you want to get into some expensive gifts like you're talking big money gifts and you know this person is really wanting a new camera obviously this is something like this is something you'll probably want to consult with with them but at least you could have a conversation with about if you know that they're interested in cameras my camera which is the sony alpha mine's a sony a7 III is just an absolutely fantastic camera in terms of quality these sony mirrorless cameras are absolutely blowing away everything else that's out right now for the price so if you want to get a nice nice nice camera possibly used for all sorts of things video whatever 4k video the sony a7 III is a beautiful camera it's running 1798 so it's pretty expensive for the body itself santa is coming this year yeah so this is a high-end gift but this is a very nice camera so something to maybe have that conversation about if your person is interested in a nice camera we're gonna move on to experiential gifts here so some of the best gifts i ever got were just like like a knife skills class or a cooking class or a massage and um because these are things that i will normally not take time out of my day to go do or spend my own money to go do but when somebody gives you a gift card for a float or massage or knife skills or cooking class and you go and do it you kind of look back and go huh that was actually really fun i took a knife skills class maybe four years ago and i still have the knife i know how to sharpen it really well because of that and like i have i think i have like pretty good knife skills from just that one day class i think that was pretty cool nice yeah i personally get a massage every couple of weeks because of my uh it turns out when you spend you know good 15 years spending on your head uh your body doesn't like it when you're 30 something so i have to get a massage every couple of weeks here so this is the kind of thing especially as developers i know how many people have bad posture habits i've seen it you're hunting over i've been there you're slouching at the end of the day it's two o'clock and you're just passing out your posture's gone to absolute hell so a massage is going to go a long ways we did this floating experience which like honestly you mentioned already but um it was really nice for the overly stressed out person in your life the floating experience that the salt was just saltwater floats or whatever they're called the deprivation floats which is absolutely like a great relaxing thing for me yeah i went back and did my second float the other day i remember we talked about like oh i'm not sure if i'm gonna go back um and it was right after i launched my course and i was feeling like need something right now and i went and had a float and i felt amazing after so highly recommend going for a float class or getting somebody a card for that yeah totally i'm just going to knock out my couple of ones here and then i'll let you just rattle off the rest because you got a lot here on your food yeah my two food ones are a cold brew coffee maker which is essentially just a giant i'm talking giant mason jar and filter you just ground up your coffee you put it in this thing and then you fill it up with water and then you leave it in the fridge for a couple days boom cold brew coffee i have two of these i always have a pot of cb going cold brew skis all around the house in the tulinski household uh because we got a couple of these and uh another one is going to be these prep naturals glass meal prep containers this is funny somebody on our twitter actually suggested this but we have a ton of these maybe have like 15 of them maybe 15 20 of them and these are great they're hefty glass it's all uh safe plastics and you don't have to feel bad about you know using this plastic tupperware that are just creating waste on the planet and granted this is glass so you could recycle it a little bit better so i absolutely love these things they held up really well we've had them for about half a year right now we do all of our meal prep inside of these containers so big big fan oh yeah i'm just looking at these right now these are we have very similar ones they're called glass lock and about two years ago i like standardized our entire house on glass lock yeah we just did that yeah you just gotta like just go with one and like find one like we've had all of the different kinds out there and they're all garbage and finally found this glass lock one so it looks very similar nice good quality the lid is plastic for these good locking hinges on each side um it just looks great in your glass it looks great in your fridge as well that's really what's the most important part when you have company over they better open that fridge and be like oh wow that glassware you have lots of leftovers if somebody opens my fridge they'll say wow you have a lot of hot sauce um i'm i'm like a i'm a hot sauce kind of sewer i would say they would say i have a lot of soy sauce in my fridge oh well i wouldn't have any soy sauce in my fridge um a good like a really nice hot sauce it's such a good gift and it's usually under 10 bucks so it's like a little stocking stuffer or something like that um the two i'm going to pick right now are blue top creamy buffalo um any of the blue top creamy ones are amazing they have one that's like a like indian spicy indian one the creamy buffalo is really good um and then a new one that i recently found at my local store it's from canada thunder bay heartbeat hot sauce hey i know thunder bay do you oh my god happy players that are born there oh that's all that comes well that's all that comes out of there plus their hot sauce this one is the pineapple habanero which i bought it and then i posted on instagram and everybody's like oh that's on hot ones this year or this season i love a good hot than your own man and i look it up and it's good so order those up for the person that loves loves a hot sauce next one is maldon salt this is just like really high quality flaky salt it's a finishing salt that you sprinkle on on literally anything um and it just tastes great so what i'm doing this year for my family members is i bought these like really nice they're called whack jars so it's like if you're like if you appreciate like a ball mason jar these whack jars are on the next level of of glass jars so i bought a bunch of these um whack jars that look like um tulips and i filled them with maldon salt and for i don't know for 10 bucks out the door you have like a really nice um stocking stuffer for people in your family oh yeah good one i bought a bucket of maldon salt which is probably more than i'll ever need my salt pans i'll uh you know i understand next one i have here is thick sheet pans and pre-cut parchment um so sheet pans are like the cookie i don't know some people call them cookie sheets or baking pans things like that they're called sheet pans baking sheets um the the half sheet is is the normal size that you have um i have ones called viking and they are super good quality get the really thick ones so they don't warp and bend in the oven um and then get their standard size so if you go and buy pre-cut parchment paper those two things make cooking so enjoyable because you just you whip out your sheet pan you grab a couple pieces of pre-cut parchment paper you're making amazing brussels sprouts in just a couple minutes you get some sprouts going love it yeah top five kitchen gadgets i think ever for me is it's good pan and pre-cut parchment paper cutting parchment paper to fit is yes for the birds it is not something that i spend more than five seconds thinking about in my life but oh my god it kills me yeah well like those are the kinds of things that like not people that are not into cooking don't really think about that but man i spend a lot of time thinking about these things next one is a good instant read thermometer part of being a huge part of being a good cook is having it is just knowing like what's the tempo of your food so you don't undercook or overcook it and i picked this a while ago it's called a mr sheffer it's one of the best no-name thermometers i've ever had i've had expensive like a hundred dollar ones and they're called a thermal pop those are amazing but they're also a hundred dollars and i think i got this one called mr sheffer and it's like 20 bucks and it's just as good it's nice and fast it reads it quick um which is also what i said nice and fast and it's got backlight things like that nice and big so i like that one a lot next we have umai dry um steak aging and charcuterie bags so these are one-way breathable bags that you put meat into and they will you put it in your fridge and they will dry age or pure charcuterie which is pretty cool so if you normally want to dry age a steak you need a whole bunch of like equipment and whatnot and these bags sort of do a control it's a bit of a cheat code um and a lot of people who do proper dry aging of steak turn their nose at them but from what i've seen they're pretty cool and last couple um just some eco-friendly ones i recently switched using mesh produce bags and they're awesome um you don't have to like take the little plastic bag off the thing at the grocery store you just bring all these mesh bags um they're see-through so if there's like apples or something in there the cashier can still read the code off the apples and it's good for the environment you're not throwing all these gross bags into the garbage every week alongside that beeswax wraps for wrapping your food in so instead of using a plastic cling wrap to put over a bowl or to wrap a piece of cheese in just take a piece of it's basically a cotton that's been submerged in beeswax so you can on a bit of a anti-plastic kick the last year in our kitchen um i've been sort of honing in on it these mesh produce bags have been a bit of a game changer the hardest part is trying to remember them when you go to the store though i've never heard of that that's the hardest part about bags in general for me yeah i know i get the whole foods and i'll be like shoot yeah the bag we live like two blocks from whole foods so i i always like walk there to go get stuff and then bring it back and then uh i i'm too much of uh too prideful to just be like no it's okay i'll take the paper bag i'll just be like no i'll carry it all so then i'm like walking several blocks i try not to drop anything with my arms full of food well the uh the earth appreciates here yeah appreciates that i was like are you sure you don't want a bag yeah i'm sure i got it uh last thing i have here is just yeti drinkware um so stainless steel cups that keep your tea or coffee hot forever um i've tried a lot of them and a lot of them after a year start to peel or you put them in the dishwasher and they start to discolor and the only ones that i've held up are the yeti ones which are way too expensive for what they are but they do hold up and uh i've got the the low ball with the it's like a mug with a handle on it and i've been loving this thing and my wife got one as well we like them much better than the really tall ones um because they don't tip over on your laptop screen or something like that yeah they just don't fit in your car cup holder so they're not to go cups they're just like a mug for busy parents who forget their coffee can't forget that coffee man uh next up i have a few wellness items these are mostly gym related uh one of them is a theragun this is a percussion massager it's basically this like you can imagine what's that tool like a jig like where those and saws like a jigsaw is a jigsaw uh like a saw yeah like a saw yeah so it's basically like that yeah yeah and oscillating so yeah so it's basically just like that with a giant rubber ball on the end and it hits you really hard so you point it your muscle goes like really really fast you have one of these i just ordered one uh i've used them before and uh they're really cool so i'm really excited to get mine i'll let you know how it is when it when it comes here but i've heard really good things from both massage therapists physical therapists i'm gonna use the light out of this thing on my neck my back shoulders all that good stuff another one is a foam roller if you don't have a foam roller by now you gotta get one that's real cheap just lay on it for a minute if you've got back pains this thing is just so essential for getting the muscles in your body to chill out um save some money by not having to go get a professional massage the last one is power blocks these are really awesome they're adjustable dumbbells i've talked about these a long time ago in syntax but we have these specific ones that power blocks you can adjust them anywhere from five pounds up to 70 pounds at five pound or even 2.5 pound increments and i use these every day they're perfect for the person in an apartment who maybe wants to just start moving around a little bit more like because you start at five pounds you can start with whatever you want you can use them for every single exercise before we had our home gym we literally did every exercise with these things so i'm a huge fan of these power blocks um and then wes added the japanese nail clippers because people really like those last time it's such a hard time for them and like everybody like if we're looking at like clicks and stuff like that for everybody was all over these japanese nail clippers yeah they're from uh seiko if i'm pronouncing that or seki seki yeah seki i don't know why i type seiko uh seki edge these are stainless steel nail clippers and they are darn heavy duty like uh this is the heaviest duty nail clipper it could probably little chomp your finger off if you let it uh these things cut through absolutely anything that japanese steel uh you got some samurai steel apparently in these uh but i absolutely love these nail clippers they are just darn heavy i mean they are just absolutely beastly i got a couple of them in i can't recommend enough it's something you use all the time nail clippers so you might as well get some really good ones because you don't you don't know just how good good nail clippers are until you get some of these beasts that could cut off your finger or something and they're not too costly they're i mean 13 bucks for a big one or something but they're not too bad man i'm just looking at these deep tissue massage guns i always try to get my kids to walk on the backs of my legs yes yes and um if i could just give them this that's a secret hey could you just pin me with this thing you just hold it yeah i'm really excited to see uh what this is like i did not get the 24k gold edition that cost a thousand dollars which is ridiculous i don't know why you need a gold-plated there gun but you know you there gun yeah i guess they know their their target market well yeah right oh i gotta get a gold one i gotta get the rose gold one yeah cool well let's move into some sick pics the entire episode was a sick pic um shameless plugs i can finally shamelessly plug my beginner javascript course um beginner javascript.com slam dunk your javascript fundamentals it's a fun exercise heavy approach to learning modern javascript um it's been selling like hotcakes i've been super happy about it the feedback has been amazing people have been saying things like man i never understood closures or like functions like i don't know how you pass arguments into functions and things like that that was always like a little bit like fuzzy for me and now i've had that aha moment which is really cool so i'm so happy to get it out beginnerjavascript.com yeah just take a little bit uh here to say you know what i really admire all of your courses is how fun you make that stuff like when i look at your examples i'm like man these look so fun uh yeah yeah i really admire that about your courses they're really super really super fun um i'm going to sick pick or not sick pick i'm going to shamelessly plug level up pro level up pro is the tutorial service where you get access to every single tutorial series on level up tutorials.com there's so many from testing react animating react uh there's a bunch of basic view stuff basic stealth stuff a full stack react and next my latest course is a react in typescript for everyone those of you who are interested in learning how to write typescript within react or even level one typescript if you're looking to just simply understand what the heck typescript is so check it out at leveluptutorials.com forward slash pro sign up for the year and save 25 percent all right that is it thank you so much for tuning in hopefully you picked up a thing or two or someone in your life or maybe just yourself yeah nothing wrong with that and uh we will catch you on monday peace head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows and don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show