hey my name is mel i'm with tested and i'm here today to show you my favorite things you
might know me from a couple of the projects i've worked with adam specifically the mercury panel
all right so i'm going to be walking you through i guess the first thing which is the opf goggles
these goggles were made during the cold war essentially they are designed by the ussr
and specifically are used by infantrymen to protect themselves from nuclear flash bangs
i love these a lot they're very comfortable they do have this really neat feature of
when you have a large intensity of uv and ir they will automatically darken which is a feature
called photochromatic or people say chameleon there's not much information of them beyond that
but i you know if anyone knows please share that with me i am very fascinated with it it
also comes often in a carrying case like such you can find them on essentially most military surplus
stores that are dedicated to russian tech i found these on ebay i've also seen them on etsy they are
perceivably advertised as extremely rare but i've seen enough of them online where i believe it's
fairly accessible if you just google opf goggles all right the next thing i want to share is the
ibm model m keyboard it is one it is i think my favorite keyboard of all time especially when
it comes to coding this is considered by a lot of programmers to be the holy grail essentially
because it's extremely comfortable a type there's the clickiness of the keyboards that you often
that is very unique to the model m and the reason behind this is because ibm has patented technology
called buckling springs which actually use real springs when you press down and so there is a
very unique sort of tactile feel when it comes to this keyboard you can also find this on ebay
often through some sort of wholesale with old office uh supplies it's also kind of a collector's
item for a lot of people so it's one of those like you can find them for vintage computer-esque
things yeah i love it it is a boatload of joy um very heavy i wouldn't consider it a portable thing
and it potentially can be a bit loud and clackety for for your neighbors
but yeah if you can get away with it use it the next thing i want to share is this book
drawn by mobius it is called lefon de mars which essentially translates to the to the wildlife of
mars and i particularly like this book because one it's very portable it's it's something that
you can easily put in a bag two it's mobius and i am obsessed with his artwork and it essentially
contains a lot of ideations of what creatures would look like on mars that he interprets
there's a lot of inspiration you can take from these type of creatures
it has the classic mobius sort of curvature almost like natural organisms that come out of
like weirdness honestly and i would say mobius has such a unique aesthetic that often you can't
you can't really find elsewhere most of this is in black and white and it's in french the reason why
is there's actually very little books that have been translated and are accessible in america
and but there are some colored pictures in the back which has the classic mobius
color aesthetic essentially i found this uh particular book in my local comic book shop
you'll you can probably find it online as well i've i've done a google search and they
are available online albeit it does range in terms of price because it is a collector's item
uh my best uh suggestion when it comes to mobius artbooks is honestly checking out
your local comic book shop i periodically walk in and there's usually a little corner section
that you can find or you can ask the clerk and they're going to be like oh yeah like
we have like maybe two copies of blah but if you can check this out so i have one more thing
to show you it unfortunately can't fit in this room so we'll be going outside to check it out
okay yeah so this is the baby i want to show you it is called it is called the rad runner
made by red powered bikes i love this bike this bike is an electric bike um with a bunch of
features a bunch of add-ons you can essentially customize the base so you have the base by
like part of the bike it's single speed it has about it can go about 20 miles per hour
and all these little things are accessories so this is something that you can put you can also
put a basket on here some people have like the baby carrier i like the passenger seat with the
pegs because it adds a little cool factor a lot of my friends love me picking them up on this thing
this is the center console part which has a lot of space so essentially you can put your phone
here there's a cup holder um we you i definitely recommend it's something sealed i've tried it with
lattes it's a disaster um but yeah this whole space i've put i don't know an obscene amount
of stuff i put food in here i've put a six pack in here once which uh which was i was shocked that i
could fit it let's just say that in the front you can get an accessory for holding baskets
i essentially i love having space to carry things this is definitely a workhorse style bike
where i use it for groceries and i got the large capacity the largest capacity i could possibly get
with the add-on and so this is the large basket and then i've just added motorcycle straps to
make sure everything doesn't just fly out when i'm going on this bike it's really hard for me to own
something without modding it so i've done a couple modifications that you're not normally
going to see on this bike i've gotten rid of the stock light and have placed in a motorcycle light
and the reason behind this is when you're bombing hills in santa cruz in night where
it's pitch black and there's no reflectors and you all have just trees surrounding you 30 watts
is significantly better at making you see compared to something like a little small bike light
and yeah and then the other mods i've done besides just adding a watch so i can see the time
is i've replaced the controller with a colored lcd screen and the the motor controller as well
from a third-party aftermarket company they're called bolton bikes it's pretty great
essentially you can do a lot more customization using something like this you can
can fine-tune it to such a degree where you have the optimal amount of torque
and it it removes certain features that i was not a big fan of which is motor drag
and so that's that's pretty much all the things i wanted to share today these are
all my favorite things i hope that you guys have a great rest of the year and new year