In this episode, Eric Limer and Tanner Bowden explore the role of technology in products. Is there a way to quantify or define the point at which there’s just… too much it? Turns out there very well may be.
Does adding technology improve a product, and if so, to what point?
Note from Nick: I didn't acknowledge Tanner Bowden's proper title – he's a Senior Staff Writer at GP, not a Staff Writer as I said in this episode. Sorry, Tanner!
Mentioned in this episode:
Purchasing Advice:
Small-home workout gear on a $250 Budget – Maddie, Cincinnati
Beginner camping without a car – Doug, Brooklyn
Housewarming gifts for someone you've just begun dating – Kevin, Brooklyn
Kind Of Obsessed:
Nick Caruso:
This is the Gear Patrol Podcast. In this episode, Eric Limer and Tanner Bowden explore the role of technology in products. Is there a way to quantify or define the point at which there's just too much of it? Turns out there very well may be. Thanks for joining us. I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. I'm just going to start this right now. Sorry if I interrupted some conversation there.
Eric Limer:
No, we were just having a meta-conversation about the Podcast.
Nick Caruso:
You were? Wait, were you insulting me?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. I was just like, all right, now that Nick's gone. Is he really bad at this?
Nick Caruso:
Definitive and if this makes it into the episode, everybody can just comment on that in the reviews. Hello everybody. I'm Nick Caruso and you are listening to the Gear Patrol Podcast. Each week I'm here having conversations with the rotating roster of guests to talk about products and product culture and today those guests are Eric Limer Gear Patrol's tech editor. Eric, hello.
Eric Limer:
Hello. Glad to be here.
Nick Caruso:
You're a mechanical keyboard enthusiast?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. There was a mechanical keyboard hanging on the wall behind me. I'm into that. It comes and goes. I've also been into mechanical cameras recently. I like to watch springs and levers and cogs turn and sometimes transmit electrical signals.
Nick Caruso:
It's really interesting that our tech editors steeped in the industrial revolution era.
Eric Limer:
Yeah. Back when tech was good. Now it's just good.
Nick Caruso:
And then also with us is Tanner Bowden. Tanner, hi.
Tanner Bowden:
How's the going, Nick?
Nick Caruso:
You are a staff writer at Gear Patrol covering outdoors and fitness. How's it feel to be the first, second guest on the pod?
Tanner Bowden:
It's an honor. I'll say that.
Eric Limer:
I know. I feel like you're coming into this with an advantage.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. Well, we are here to explore the relationship between technology and what I'll refer to as traditionally analog products, exploring the question, does adding technology always improve a product and to what point? And if not, why? You both know that the inspiration for this conversation topic is a product called the Xupermask. And before your eyes and ears glaze over from COVID exhaustion, consider that the Xupermask is spelled with an X. And that Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas is involved. So listeners, I will describe what the Xupermask is in a second, but Eric, can I get your gut reaction to the Xupermask?
Eric Limer:
Not to get too far into it, but I don't know, are y'all familiar with Will.i.am history with this sort of stuff?
Nick Caruso:
Yes. I am.
Tanner Bowden:
No.
Eric Limer:
I was researching it and I guess in 2012 he was involved in some sort of car launch. The thing I'm most familiar with is in 2014, 2015, he had a smartwatch thing. It was this big cuff. It didn't work very well. I had some firsthand experience with it, but he has a long history with this sort of like, I don't even want to say like function over form, but just like function, function, function, design stuff, and it's all very loud and sort of never really goes anywhere. I guess it's like funny to look at.
Nick Caruso:
I guess it can be. I was familiar with the car. I don't remember the cuff though. What about you Tanner? Do you have any gut reactions to the Xupermask?
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah, I guess I'll just say when I saw it and then read about it, I was not surprised to find out that the designer of it also did costume design for X-Men and Black Panther, because it looks like something straight from one of those movies.
Nick Caruso:
It really does. And may be I'll save everyone a click. I'll sort of describe what the Xupermask looks like. It is, Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame who has a history with pie in the sky tech product innovation.
Eric Limer:
It's definitely tech products that are a lot.
Nick Caruso:
I was going to make a so 2,000 and late joke, but it doesn't matter. So anyway, Will.i.am in coordination with the brand Honeywell, who we all know makes fans and humidifiers, and those kinds of appliances., A $299 mask that fits all the way around the head as opposed to around your ear loops and Tanner, you mentioned the costume designer, Jose Fernandez, costume designer for Hollywood, but also helped with the SpaceX space suit design, which also makes sense for many reasons.
Nick Caruso:
Inside the Xupermask are two fans that the exhaust air to three speed fans with HEPA filters that are replaceable, but there's also adaptive noise canceling earbuds built-in with Bluetooth and a speaker for taking calls. And then there are led lights around the fans themselves that you can flicker on and off. So really wild sort of like a steam punky Borderlands video game kind of look.
Nick Caruso:
The Xupermask tech over-saturation leads us back to the main question. And for the sake of this conversation, I we'll make sure we're talking technology is more than just like digital electronics. It can be many things. High-tech materials, textiles, applied technologies of sorts. So Eric, I'm going to go back to you. Is there a way to sort of quantify or define the point at which there's just too much technology in a product?
Eric Limer:
It's one of those things where I think you just have to step back and take a broader view of what the thing is supposed to do at its core. And when you run into something like the Xupermask here, it is doing so many things that step back and be like, "Okay, what is its primary function?" With something like this there's a couple of different ways you can take it. If the main is the Xupermask, ostensibly, that is the most forward point of the branding of what it's supposed to be. If you come from the perspective that it is a mask, I think you have to ask yourself to what degree are the additional components helping it serve that purpose as a mask?
Eric Limer:
Arguably the fans and whatnot help in some way, the LEDs obviously don't, the headphones probably not. And all of those are going to drive up the cost of something like this. A lot more questions should be asked about putting batteries into things that-
Nick Caruso:
Interesting.
Eric Limer:
Don't necessarily need batteries. So if you have this mask with these fans in it and it is designed to be effective by use of these fans. It's like, well, is it going to be effective when the fans aren't running? And then if that's the case, eventually that battery is going to wear out, can that battery be replaced? All of the additional components, whether they improve the functionality as a mask or not complicated to use by a huge amount compared to whatever, like 25 cents to produce mask that can be mass produced and is way easier to use and you can have a hundred of them so you never misplace it. You don't have to worry about it being stolen, et cetera.
Nick Caruso:
Or running out of battery?
Eric Limer:
Right, yeah.
Nick Caruso:
On the subway or something.
Eric Limer:
Exactly.
Nick Caruso:
To go along the technology Sci-fi route. We're talking about the prime directive. What is the main function of this thing that should sort of define whether or not the technology is useful. Added technology. And you also, before I go to you Tanner, you also brought up cost, which is really interesting here, again, the Xupermask specifically is $299, which is dubious. So Tanner, what about you? What do you think? Is there some sort of like ceiling to the usefulness of added technology in a product?
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah, there definitely is. Eric, I think you really hit every key point on the Xupermask and the friction points there. One thing I was thinking of with this thing is it looks like it's hard to put on and a year of doing COVID stuff. That's been the key thing with mask, is that you're always taking them off and putting them back on, and this does not look like that would be easy at all. Speaking more broadly as opposed to like a gadget, like a laptop or a smart speaker, I think we're all pretty good at like forcing those things into our lives because we want what they can provide. But when it comes to stuff you wear, I think there's a much higher bar because you don't really want to notice your clothing all of the time, unless you are setting out to make a statement.
Nick Caruso:
That's a great point. What is this Xupermask but a statement piece.
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah, exactly.
Nick Caruso:
You also mentioned hard to put on. And that makes me think of the feeling that I will never get over, is pulling up to a store or something in my car and putting on the mask right before I get out makes me feel like I'm going to rob the place. Like I should also bag with a money sign on it. The point about not wanting to notice your clothing, it's especially interesting to enter the clothing spectrum in terms of technology, which I think on one, they're very useful, very sort of promising and our textiles and materials, which Tanner I know you know a ton about. And on the other end is like sparked clothing, it was a trend that came along a few years ago and died off. So textiles and materials, technology and clothing in terms of textiles and materials.
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah. It's an interesting thing. And I think when we think of technology, we often do think of it Eric, you brought it up, like gadgets, that's sort of what we think is tech. Phones and headphones and electronics and stuff. But there is a ton of technology in clothing already that you don't notice, which is what I would argue what makes it good.
Tanner Bowden:
As an example I wrote about The North Face's recent waterproof breathable fabric technology that they debuted a couple of years ago. It's similar to GORE-TEX but the tech that they use to make it is incredible. They use a process called nano spinning. Well, it had already been used in electronics manufacturing and in the medical industry as well and they literally take a polyurethane solution and squeeze it out of 200,000 nano-sized nozzles. And then weave all those tiny, tiny unseeable strands all over each other and make this spider web. And that's essentially the waterproof membrane and that's all going into a ski jacket and a rain jacket, but it's incredible stuff. And people buy that and they don't even know the level of tech that's in there.
Nick Caruso:
I think that that's really interesting. I think you get to a, sort of friction point that relates to the smart clothing thing and why that appeared and then disappeared. Well, that is great for the functional purpose. It's bad if you're trying to, maybe not bad, but it's suboptimal if you're trying to market a product and being like, "Look, this thing is more expensive and because it has this thing that you can't notice and won't notice, and that's what makes it great." The smart clothing stuff is the way to flip that on its head of being like, "Hey, you have to pay more for this shirt, but it has buttons on it that you can press, so you'll be interacting with it, and it will tell you things. And so you will never forget that it is smart and doing stuff." That makes a lot of sense from the perspective of some brands. But then I don't think people want that at all.
Tanner Bowden:
Right. That's kind of the thing, some of these smart clothing examples are connected leggings for yoga that tell you when you're in the correct pose, some things that track your actual muscle movements, and you can look in the app, see if you activated all your muscles and all that. It seems to be a lot of fitness oriented stuff. Maybe like silver bullet kind of hopeful products.
Eric Limer:
Tanner, I'd be curious for your opinion on this as somebody who's a little bit more in tune with the fitness side of it than I am, but my sort of like gut reaction to that stuff is like, I want somebody to tell me if I'm doing something wrong, such that it's painful. But if I'm trying to do yoga, I don't want to have to worry about whether I'm doing it 96% or a hundred percent. I just want to know if I'm doing it 5% or whatever. So I'm furious for your take on that.
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah. I am in total agreement that especially in the fitness world, there is a massive overloading of data that might be helpful if you have a finely tuned training regimen and you're trying to shave a couple of tenths of a second off of your marathon time or whatever your you're cycling route. And there's things like watches and apps and stuff that will tell you all this information, but it's still pretty illegible to a lot of people. So I don't know that it actually helps you that much, unless you have someone to sort of translate it for you like a coach, in which case you have a person there also is sort of like filling in for where the tech is failing.
Nick Caruso:
So technology like that, like tracking technology, biometric technology, pressure sensitive stuff, all that has been frequently and for a long time used in sports. Tracking how hard a swing is, how hard a hit is on a helmet, how fast someone is, how you're flexing. What you're talking about all this data is the gamification of data. From what it sounds you're both saying, and from what I've read, very few apps, outlets, companies, products, whatever, get that right. And that's why a lot of them have died out or have been supplanted by other better simpler examples. You just pointed out me, Eric, what is that?
Eric Limer:
I have an example that has been working great. Amazing for me. Y'all familiar with Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch?
Nick Caruso:
No. Tell us about that.
Eric Limer:
All right. So it's a video game and Nintendo Switch has the removable Bluetooth controllers. And so for Ring Fit Adventure, you strap one of them to your leg and you put another one in a yoga ring thing, I think is what they're called. But it's like a flexible plastic ring.
Nick Caruso:
A yoga ring thing.
Eric Limer:
You can like pull on it or squish it. You do a lot of running in place and you do exercises with this ring where you're like going through this world and defeating a bad guy by like doing squats or whatever. But I think it's a great example of the way that this can go right because it's using this technology to very, very rudimentary tracking. But that's not why I like it. That's not what I need it for. What I like is it gives me this narrative, this game and so I think that that's a really interesting use case because it has this tech angle, but it completely issues like, here's the information about the angle of your squats. I don't care. Just keep count for me, man.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. It seems like the extreme level of data is for a very specific subset. And maybe, those connected leggings are hundreds of dollars, couple hundred dollars, I think. And other compression apparel that tracks that stuff. Maybe the more elite performers among us may want to pursue that kind of stuff. But for the most part, it may be too much. Tanner, what do you think about just too much data?
Tanner Bowden:
Eric, what you're sort of hitting on right there is that you enjoy Ring Fit Adventure and I think you have to be able to enjoy the thing. It can't be like a chore to go in and look at your data and try and analyze the graphs and charts and stuff. I wear a Garmin watch for tracking my running. And there was a setting on there that told me essentially when I was sitting down for too long and it would vibrate on my wrist and she'd have a message like, "Hey, get up and walk around." And I turned it off.
Nick Caruso:
It's annoying.
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah, exactly. It was super annoying. So I just turned it off. I really think you just got to be able to figure out a way for you to make that data work for you in some way.
Nick Caruso:
But this trackers have gone from the original Nike Plus OG stuff from almost 15 years ago or more now to much more specific things. A friend of mine has an Oura Ring and she was talking to me about how much she likes it because it's not overly complicated. It's not obtrusive. And it just gives you very simple metrics. What is an ideal level of data? What's an ideal technology level in that kind of product?
Tanner Bowden:
That's a really good question. And I think it really does depend on who you are, what you do and sort of what you're looking for from it. I've recently started wearing a similar thing to the Oura Ring it's called Whoop. And it's a wrist-
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, Whoop.
Tanner Bowden:
It's like a wrist-based strap, but it doesn't have a watch face or anything on it. It's just a fabric strap with a heart rate monitor and the app is like incredibly detailed and has tons of data in there that you can dig into if you want or you can just look at the front screen of it and it will say like, "Hey, yesterday you put this much strain on your body and you didn't get that greatest sleep last night. So you're like 60% recovered." And just from that, two second glance you can say, "Well, maybe I should take it easy today with whatever I'm going to go out and do." Or on the flip side, it's like you're 98% recovered right now. Your body's ready to go. Then you can go out and do your 10 mile run or, or whatever you want to do. So it's kind of like the best of both worlds in that way.
Nick Caruso:
Well, we're kind of circling around is that we didn't have tech with your mechanical keyboard kind of stone-age thing, Eric and we added screens and sensors and data and all this overload. And maybe we over-corrected a little bit, so we're coming back to a middle ground. Does that sound about right for the tech cycle?
Eric Limer:
I think that that's true. And that there's a lot of work to be done of being like, "Okay, well, like how do we make sense of this data?" But that of course is a whole other can of worms in and of itself. You have your two extremes with this stuff where it's like, "Well, there's data overload where it's just like, look, I'm going to give you the objective sensor readings here." And then there's the other extreme of like, "Well, I'm just going to summarize all of these data readings into your fitness number or whatever."
Nick Caruso:
Sure.
Eric Limer:
It's easier to read, but it's also like if that fitness number is opaque, what does that mean? What's going into that? What is the data set that is being used to like set average or like good? You have to ask all of these first principles problems.
Nick Caruso:
If there's a learning curve, it sort of sucks.
Eric Limer:
You're either putting yourself in a position where you're having to learn how to make sense of a bunch of objective data, or you're putting yourself in a position where you're letting somebody else do that for you.
Nick Caruso:
So I want to return to what you were talking about earlier Tanner, is the materials. You're talking about the material from the North Face, which is called what?
Tanner Bowden:
It's called a FutureLight.
Nick Caruso:
FutureLight. That's right. You just wrote about a running shoe with Graphene in it. And you've written about the company Bolt Threads before. Can you touch on both of those quickly because I am positing that maybe this is the perfect blend of technology and product. Eric, you think about that, Tanner you tell us about the materials.
Tanner Bowden:
Maybe let's start with Bolt Threads. Bolt Threads is a company that they've kind of made it their mission to create manmade Spider Silk, which is just this incredibly strong, fabulous material that we have made man-made versions of it, but never at like a scale that's one affordable enough and two that the production is high enough where you can actually use it to make a garment and then sell a thousand of that garment. And then the Graphene shoe that's made by this company called Inov-8, I-N-O-V dash the number eight. And Graphene, it's a sheet of carbon I believe that's a single atom thick. So we're talking like a two dimensional object here, which we were all told in high school doesn't-
Nick Caruso:
Which is insane.
Tanner Bowden:
And so with Graphene they're still really digging into like what the potential of it is, but incredibly lightweight and incredibly strong. So yeah, they just put it in the mid sole foam of a new trail running shoe and the shoe supposedly from testing and whatnot just lasts far longer than other shoes and is incredibly durable, but it doesn't feel like it's hard underneath your foot, essentially.
Nick Caruso:
That's not walking on sunshine so much as running on Adams. And I like that.
Tanner Bowden:
That's pretty good.
Nick Caruso:
Reach out innovate if you're listening. Eric, what do you think about that? Is the perfect marriage of technology and product more analog or is it farther away from gadgetry?
Eric Limer:
I think so in most cases. In general, I am very interested in anything that makes things last longer, which is to bring it back to the Xupermask thing. That is one of the things that's most offensive about that to me is like that it is the opposite of that. Sort of adding all of these additional points of failure to an object. This sort of slow and steady improvement. Sort of adding technology to a thing by being like, "All right, let's look at this, let's look at like, what its failure points are." And then how do we improve it such that the failure point takes longer to fail, which is sort of the polar opposite of a design tendency that you'll see around of like a more, is more a tendency that's nice in a vacuum, but you've also added like six or seven different points of failure. Maybe none of them are critical, but nobody likes using something where like half of it doesn't work anymore.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. And you bring me back to my final point. To loop it back to the Xupermask. And is it fair to say that you kind of have to go way too far to fall back to true innovation?
Eric Limer:
I don't know, maybe. It depends on where you locate like the balance point, but like, I would say that we're probably going to too far past the necessary too far.
Nick Caruso:
The Xupermask is a bridge too far as the say?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. It's like the bridge beyond the bridge too far.
Nick Caruso:
A super bridge too far?
Eric Limer:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Turner what do you think? Do you have to go too far to settle out where we need to be?
Tanner Bowden:
I agree that the Xupermask is maybe a little bit too far, but I think it was trying to go to far.
Nick Caruso:
Regardless. I'm really eager to get my hands on one. I want to put one of those things on my head so badly. I almost can't express it.
Tanner Bowden:
What if you can never get it off?
Nick Caruso:
So be it.
Eric Limer:
The curiosity factor is real. I would be interested to see one in real life. Maybe it shouldn't exist, but if it's going to, I would like to see it.
Nick Caruso:
Put that thing on me and if my body melds to it like a cyborg, sign me up, I'll be able to take calls and light up my face on a whim. Sounds like a dream. We've covered a lot. I think we've settled out at the conclusion that there is a way to measure too much technology in a product and that's when perhaps it goes beyond authenticity, like an authentic incorporation into something that's a little too gimmicky. Do you feel satisfied with our conclusion?
Eric Limer:
Yeah.
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Well, you do. I don't.
Eric Limer:
It's like the only conclusion that you can really come to. Is that how far is too far? It's very clear, but I can only show you with examples and not layout some sort of mechanistic prescriptions.
Nick Caruso:
That's the final word. Tanner do you have to say anything else.?
Tanner Bowden:
I've got a thumbs up instead.
Nick Caruso:
Thank you guys for that enlightening lightning round of philosophizing about tech, we need to move on to a new segment we're introducing on the pod, purchasing advice. I have before me here, a few Gear Patrol reader, follower, and now listener requests for some purchasing advice from our product professionals. I shared these three with you both. So I'll read them off and then I'll get your way in. The first one's from [Maddie 00:27:09] in Cincinnati. Sounds like a thirties full platoon. [Maddie 00:27:14] says, "I need some workout gear wrecks. I live in a small apartment and I want to spend less than $250." Tanner, this may be perfect for you. Small space workout basics. Do you have any wrecks?
Tanner Bowden:
Yeah, 250 bucks. I think it's sort of a home gym essential would be simply a yoga mat. You don't have to just do yoga on it. It's makes a great platform for lifting and doing hit workouts and doing all kinds of other stuff. You can get one for like 40 bucks. It's kind of the cheaper end. I really like Lululemon's Reversible yoga mat is a good one. It's a little pricier at 78 bucks. You could get a full home gym set up in one of TRX's Suspension gym kits, which runs 200 bucks. And then another thing I would just say too, is like, Amazon makes a line of it's Amazon basics, like dumbbells and kettlebells. So you can kind of get into the weights through them and they start at like $20, $25, $30, depending on like how heavy of a weight. So that's all stuff that you could get a combination of and hit that 250 budget.
Nick Caruso:
Eric, how about you? Are you going to recommend a Nintendo Switch?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. I was going to say I've been enjoying Ring Fit Adventure. If you already own a Nintendo Switch it is less than $250, if you do not own a Nintendo Switch is going to be more than $250. The game and the ring itself are 80 bucks, I think. But, yeah, I got that and I was working out at least once every two days for a streak of a hundred days now, which is the first time I think I've ever done that.
Nick Caruso:
And how's that for some data? Cool. We have another from Doug in Brooklyn, heard of it, "My girlfriend and I want to get into camping, but don't own a car. So what should we buy?" Eric, I don't know if you camp, but we're talking, I think essential camping gear basics, you can carry in and out?
Eric Limer:
I haven't been camping since I was in the boy Scouts. So my information is not particularly up to date. I think Tanner is going to have to handle this one.
Nick Caruso:
Fair.
Eric Limer:
Well, you can get to some camping from the New York city public transit. That's a nice thing if you don't have a car, but a tough thing here is that the general rule with outdoor gear is the lighter it is and hence more packable and carriable, the more expensive it will also be. So my recommendation actually is if you're just starting to get into camping and you don't have a car is maybe rent gear. You can do that at REI. And you can also do that, local gear shops, wherever you're going to. Check out a couple of different things on different kinds of trips, like backpacking tent versus more of a car camping style tent, different sleeping bags and backpacks and whatnot, figure out like what you actually want and like what kind of camping you want to do before you go and spend a bunch of money.
Nick Caruso:
That's great. So you're saying maybe not a synthetic Spider Silk purchase, but I bet you can find a guide to all the things you need to rent on gearpatrol.com.
Tanner Bowden:
You absolutely can.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. Yeah. You've probably written an article or two about that. So Doug, check that out. And then lastly, Eric, I'm going to force you to answer this one. Kevin also in Brooklyn, Kevin says I need a house warming gift for someone I just started dating. And first of all, Kevin, congratulations. But second, Eric, do you have any ideas?
Eric Limer:
I think a good place to start here is something that you can both use together. So Ring Fit Adventure, I'm just kidding. The thing where my mind goes immediately is the new Sonos Roam. Sonos is a Bluetooth speaker. It's a little bit pricey. It runs 169 bucks. If that's something that's in your price range though, I think that that's a great gift because it really fits that criteria of something that can live in the apartment that you can use together. Listen to music. That's always a great thing to do with a partner. And it also is a gateway into building a larger Sonos setup if they don't have any other Sonos speakers or if they do Sonos speakers it'll fit right in. So it's sort of great either way.
Nick Caruso:
Tanner, any final wrecks from you?
Tanner Bowden:
I feel like a plant always works. Maybe a little cactus.
Nick Caruso:
Got it. Okay. So a cactus. And if you like it, Kevin, maybe put a Ring Fit Adventure on it. So what we're saying, Oh gosh, the magic of improvisation, those are all super recommendations. We will put those links to those things in the show notes and the web too. So check those out and we have just time enough to move on to our last Podcast segment, Kind Of Obsessed. Kind Of Obsessed is an audience favorite. Our guests share a product they are currently obsessing over whether it is new to them or on their wishlist or they're testing something for work. And I will toss to Tanner, what are you obsessed with this week?
Tanner Bowden:
All right. So I just bought a couple of new bags for my bike. They're from this company called the Outer Shell, small batch bike bags. I got a handlebar bag and a saddlebag. And the handlebar bag was 90 bucks, saddlebag was 50 bucks, but they come in just like really sweet material called X-Pac, which is waterproof, but it's not like a fabric exterior. He makes them in all kinds of different colors. So you can like match them to your bike, which is exactly what I did.
Nick Caruso:
Of course you did, you chic son of a gun. Eric, what about you? What are you obsessed with?
Eric Limer:
So I've been obsessing over a old film camera recently, the Olympus Trip 35, which is from the sixties. It is a zone focus point and shoot camera. So it means they are like, you just have to guess whether something is like three meters away or six meters away that's how you focus it. One of my favorite things about it is that the slowest shutter speed it has is a one 40th of a second which means that it's actually really fun to use at night because you can find situations where there's an interesting lighting thing going on and take a picture and know that the shutter speed will be fast enough that it won't be blurry, but it'll be very dark if you don't have a light source. So you have to sort of go hunting for light sources.
Eric Limer:
I got mine at a thrift store for like 40 bucks.
Nick Caruso:
Really.
Eric Limer:
It was broken and I've spent probably like at least 30 hours inside this thing, fixing it. I think I've got it fully fixed after replacing some wires and bearings and whatnot. You can find them on eBay. They're kind of expensive. Cause they're pretty trendy. They're trendy because they're cool though. On eBay, I think they go for about a hundred bucks.
Nick Caruso:
And if you find one that's broken and just send it to you, we'll put your home address in the show notes.
Eric Limer:
You definitely can. I don't promise to send it back, but please send all of them my way.
Nick Caruso:
Thank you both for running through those. And unfortunately that is all the time we have for this episode of the Gear Patrol Podcast. Guys how does it feel to be done.
Eric Limer:
It's sad, Nick, we survived.
Nick Caruso:
Listeners, everything we talked about today, kind of obsessed product recommendations and products we mentioned throughout our chat will be linked in the show notes and in a post on gearpatrol.com. So make sure you subscribe to the Podcast on your Podcast service of choice so that you don't miss a weekly episode. And while you're at it, we'd really appreciate you rating the pod. I'm not going to beg, but you'd be doing us a big solid if you gave us a five star review. The more five star reviews are on there the more people can find us and join in the conversation. If you leave us a five star review and ask for a product recommendation in it, we will see about getting you some purchasing advice on a future episode from one of my very smart colleagues. So question comments and more can go there or you can email me at podcast@gearpatrol.com.
Nick Caruso:
Eric and Tanner. Thank you once more.
Eric Limer:
Thanks for having us.
Tanner Bowden:
Thanks Nick.
Nick Caruso:
I'm Nick Caruso, listeners thank you for joining me. I hope you're well and until next time, take care.