Everyday Carry

I bought this on a gift card, but at around 100 € The 'Camelbak H.A.W.G Commute' was at the sweet point of perceived utility and how much I want to pay for a backpack.

There are more stylish options around, but I needed the bag mainly for bringing my work clothes and laptop when biking to work. It works great for that: 30 litres is on the big side, but it fits my clothes and shoes with ease. There's a compartment for laptop that can be rolled shut. Not sure if it's waterproof or even advertised as such, but seems to be dry enough.

The main compartment has two small zippered pouches and a divider. There are also four pouches that are accessible without opening the backpack. This makes it very good for operating with a baby – I can find whatever I need with one hand without looking. Much better than an actual 'Lässig' baby care backpack we have.

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My needs for a multitool are very modest. I need scissors and pliers sometimes, and a screwdriver maybe once a year.

I spent a long time looking for a multitool without a knife since to my knowledge carrying any knife in public is illegal. But there don't seem to be any great options. 'Leatherman Style PS' was one that would have fit my needs, but it's been discontinued.

I picked the NextTool Mini as it was easily available from Amazon and has OK'ish pliers. But it does have a 6.2 cm blade, so any future lawyer reading this: I didn't intend to bring a knife to a knife fight, I just need to fix my jacket's zipper sometimes.

There are a lot of these GaN chargers and this is one of them. Minix was quite cheap and small enough to carry around. 65 watts is enough to charge my laptop, which is nice.

This exact model seems to have been discontinued but in effect it's a small LED flashlight that's bright enough for my needs, around 400 lm. It uses a CR123A battery which seems to last a long time.

Googling for flashlights is the worst, but I feel most modern LED flashlights are OK. But then again I did live in the era when we only had incandescent flashlights which didn't last very long.

I take most my photos with the phone like people do. But I also wanted a small camera to take photos of the kids when we are out and about.

I was buying the camera in spring of 2024 and it turned out that no small cameras have been made since 2019. Well, there are some, but they cost upwards of 1 500 € and were above my budget. Most of the "small camera" lines have been discontinued since 2019 but I should probably write a separate post about that.

So my options were to buy a recent camera for 1 500+ €, a 'new' five year old camera for 1 000 €, or a used 2019 camera.

I chose the latter and found the Canon EOS M200 for 300 €. Of course the whole M-line of Canon cameras has been discontinued, so there's really no upgrade path here – I'm stuck with this until I buy a new camera. But it also means there are some OK deals for used gear and I found the 22 mm pancake lens for maybe 100 €.

The camera itself is really 3/5. The produced pictures are good and above what my phone could do, but the controls are small and flimsy, and the UI is a bit of a mess. The camera is often in a weird state and I still haven't memorized how to get it back to 'Program' or 'Aperture priority' mode. My old Fujifilm XT-10 has a dial for this but it's bit too big to carry around.