My board game prototypes! Can always use more playtesters :)

My Bad Dragon collection!

Wait, how adult are we talking?

I was about to answer that I don’t really have anything to bring, but the many pointy bits of metal I’ve stuck in keyways and the many hours I’ve spent watching defcon talks actually has me ready to give a whole presentation on security

I’m bringing my lockpicks and showing how easy it is for someone to rake a standard kwikset lock. Be aware of your security’s limitations. Even if you have the best lock on the world, you do not have plexiglass windows. If you don’t have a security system beyond a simple lock, and there are a lot of break-ins in your area, it’s time to invest in an electronic security system, and then put a sign out front advertising a different system.

I’d bring an amateur radio. Fun device that gives you access to an alternate method of communication. They’re old fashioned, but amateur radio gets used here and there in emergencies. I think it’s more of a precautionary thing from a practical perspective, but it’s still cool.

Depends, is it a casual thing or more serious? If it’s casual I’d probably just bring a Trading Card Game deck (MTG, YuGiOh, Pokémon). If it’s more serious, I’d bring in some of my junk like a broken microwave magnetron, to simultaneously bring attention to the problem of short product cycles, explain a bit about how what most people see as a magic appliance functions, and show that even complex things can be broken down into simple parts.

I have a couple ideas though I’m not sure how good they would actually be. I guess anything you use for a hobby or are interested in could be used.

A 3D printer was already mentioned but would probably be the most fascinating (and bulky) thing I could bring. In that case I would probably talk about the workflow that goes into making a part, what to look out for when printing and how a print is actually made.

For simpler stuff I have 2 ideas. Firstly, I am kind of fascinated by pocket watches and have one that belonged to my great grandfather or something and is probably ~100 years old at this point. My grandmother gave it to me on my 18th birthday. The scale of the parts inside such a watch and how they work really interests me but I don’t dare take any of the watches I have apart since the parts are so small (though still larger than modern mechanical wrist watches). Did you know there are so called “railroad grade” pocket watches? They were used by train conductors and had to have a certain minimum accuracy since time differences in planning could otherwise lead to train collissions.

The second small thing I could talk a bit about are fountain pens. For that I also have an older pen (A Pelikan 140 which was manufactured some time in the 50s or 60s) which is a piston filler pen, meaning it requires using ink bottles to refill. This allows usage of some really nice looking inks. Interestingly, the color of the ink on the paper can vary greatly depending on various parts of the pen (Nib thickness or the feed of the pen impacting the wetness) and the paper which may be more or less absorbant. I have a nice green ink which will have a red shimmer on wetter line parts if I use the correct paper. On other paper types it is just green.

I’d bring some beer that I make in my garage.

Somethings ESP32 related. Meshtastic radios, a controller I am building to add some features to my car.

My radial arm saw.

My Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators.

I fuckin love these things. I used to feel left out when my friends would try to play music together, but then I found a way to be involved with a few mini-electronic-drumkits.

You can sequence a bunch of them together and sync them, easily, as well.

Teenage Engineering makes a bunch of other cool shit, too. I’m not much of a musician, though, so most of it is way beyond me.

Not sure what a show and tell is, I guess my laptop with tons of stickers, and boot up something that looks hackery. Besides that, my guitar perhaps?

If the timing is right, I would bring a mushroom grow bag with mushrooms sprouting.

If not… probably my radiacode gamma spectrometer and some of my radioactive items. Maybe a clock with radium painted dials and a piece of trinitite. I think that there are many different points of discussion that can be of interest to a broad audience (radioactivity, spectroscopy, electronics, US labor law story of the radium girls, nuclear explosions, background radiation… etc). As a bonus I can bring a UV flash light and show the radium fluorescence. Adults love UV flash lights.

Probably my wheelchair. It’s a pretty nifty little chair that has quite a few unique features. Also I would need it to get there anyway. Otherwise maybe one of my drawings.

My favorite rock. Its just neat.