A few years back, my older brother Rick Pescovitz invented the "Under the Weather Pod," a single-person pop-up shelter to sit inside. It's designed for spectator sports, fishing, and other outdoor events where it's raining but you are either obligated to watch or having so much fun you don't want to leave. Most recently, he came up with the WalkingPod, a wearable version of the tent. Yes, it looks ridiculous, but it's actually now being used by delivery people, police officers, and various other folks who have to move around in the rain. The Washington Post has a feature about the popularity of "pod" products, from laundry detergent pods to AirPods to whisky pods to, yes, my brother's WalkingPod. From the Washington Post:

“When I think of a pod, I think of personal space,” said Rick Pescovitz, the CEO of Under the Weather, the sporting-goods company responsible for this particular pod. “With outdoor and even indoor living, younger people want to have a smaller footprint and help the environment.”

Pescovitz admits the WalkingPod is “almost a joke-type item.” But he also says it’s great for sanitation workers, street vendors, ticket-takers, sports spectators, security guards, people who work on oil tankers. . . . And his company sells other pods, too — such as the StadiumPod, which is designed for bleacher-sitters.

Read the rest

Steve McQueen, the King of Cool, famously wore a Tag Heuer Monaco in his epic 1971 racing film Le Mans.

There are lots of debates about McQueen fashion items. The King of Cool is also frequently pictured wearing a Rolex Submariner. Let us not get into Belstaff vs Barbour. Read the rest

Amazon sells "Amazon Basics High Mileage Full Synthetic Motor Oil", perhaps the most alarming mystery meat yet to appear in the CHOAM warehouses. Project Farm decided to see how it stood up against name-brand standbys such as Mobil and Valvoline. Things get going about 2:50m in.

Dozens of viewers requested this video. I'm not part of the Amazon Affiliate Program either, since I'm not trying to sell products. I do independent testing only. So, thank you very much for the video ideas, including this one! AmazonBasics Fully Synthetic Motor Oil better than Mobil 1 Advanced Full Synthetic Motor Oil? In this video, I tested Valvoline 10W-30 Conventional Motor Oil, AmazonBasics Full Synthetic Motor OIl, and Mobil 1 Full Synthetic Motor oil for cold temperature flow, lubricity, evaporative loss after exposure to approximately 400F for 2 hours, and cold flow of each oil after exposed to heat for 2 hours.

Sleuthing (and the bottle shape) reveals the true maker as Warren, a respectable budget supplier. So you can trust Amazon motor oil so long as it comes in Warren bottles. Read the rest

If you want to get the most out of dedicated digital audio players, smartphones, cameras, drones, tablets or game systems, you'll need to pair it with the right memory card. No problem: head down to Best Buy or log into Amazon and you ca--shit there's a ton of the frigging things. You can buy the first, least expensive one that you see. That'll work for some things... but not all of the things. Some devices can benefit from speedier, more expensive memory cards. Knowing which card to jam into which thing can be daunting. Thankfully, Gizmodo's David Neild has put together a quick, easy-to-understand guide to figuring it all out.

From Gizmodo:

To start with you’ve got a choice of sizes: The standard SD ones (mostly for digital cameras and bigger gear) and the smaller microSD ones (originally developed for, and still used in, smartphones). Extra letters after the SD mean a newer, improved standard, with room for greater capacities and faster speeds—these include HC (High Capacity) and the latest XC (Extended Capacity), and both are used across the SD and microSD form factors today.

Yeah, it's pretty dry stuff. But it's well presented and deeply useful.

So, before you buy a new memory card to go along with your new digital whatever this Monday, you'd do well to stop by Gizmodo first.

Image by CompactFlash.jpg: André Karwath aka AkaSecure_Digital_Kingston_512MB.png: Andrew pmkMS-PRO-DUO.JPG: KB AlphaXD_card_typeH_512M_Olympus.png: og-emmetMicroSD_card.jpg: KowejaMemory_Stick_Micro.JPG: The original uploader was J Di at English Wikipedia..Later version(s) were uploaded by Toehead2001 at en.wikipedia.derivative work: Moxfyre (talk) - CompactFlash.jpgSecure_Digital_Kingston_512MB.pngMS-PRO-DUO.JPGXD_card_typeH_512M_Olympus.pngMicroSD_card.jpgMemory_Stick_Micro.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Read the rest

Sonic Youth is selling a couple hundred pieces of music gear and a slew of rare vinyl records including test pressings of their own LPs and other fine platters. The Official Sonic Youth Reverb Shop opens for business today. From Reverb.com:

One of the guitars included in The Official Sonic Youth Reverb Shop is a '70s Fender Telecaster Deluxe used by Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, and Mark Ibold from 1987 to 2009, and Ranaldo's Travis Bean TB1000A Artist. The Travis Bean was stolen in 1999, but Ranaldo got it back in 2002 and continued to play it until 2011.

After that same theft, Kim Gordon used a replacement blue Fender Precision Bass until 2004. This P-Bass, as well as a copper sparkle Ibanez Talman, was used by Thurston Moore and Gordon from 1999 to 2010, throughout Gordon's solo SYR5 gigs.

Befitting a band that helped popularize offsets—a candy apple red Fender Jazzmaster used by Moore for more than a decade and a sunburst Jazzmaster used Ranaldo will also be available in Sonic Youth's Shop. In addition, there are more than 100 vintage and used effects pedals used by all members of the band, including Ranaldo's Klon Centaur Silver Overdrive.

Read the rest

Musician Rob Scallon thought it would be cool to one-up the vinyl hipsters and record some metal on century-old Edison wax cylinder recording equipment. And he was right! Read the rest

Ask any photographer or filmmaker about the lamest question they get the most, and they'll probably say questions about what gear they use. Georges Antoni showed that camera doesn't matter as much as other factors by shooting the June Elle Australia cover on an iPhone 7 Plus: Read the rest

I have the earlier model of the Kmashi 20,000mAh portable USB charger. It's the one I take with me on trips lasting more than a couple of days. It can keep my iPhone fully charged for days without having to plug into an AC outlet. It's $(removed) but if you use code GEBLIOJ7 on Amazon you can get it for $(removed) Read the rest

The Camp Champ is a stately and elegant mobile kitchen with equipment and utensils for six that collapses into a compact wooden box. Its construction reminds me of a magician's stage illusion! Read the rest

I have one of these tiny inexpensive microscopes, and it is surprisingly good. But it didn't come with a clip to attach it to a phone camera, like this. It has a white LED and an ultraviolet LED so you can illuminate your specimen.

KingMas 60X Clip-On Microscope Magnifier with LED/UV Lights for Universal SmartPhones ($(removed)) on Amazon

Here's a video of a Russian guy unboxing it and trying it out:

Read the rest

Perhaps it is just local pride, but nowhere I've been diving, nowhere in the world, compares with California. The abundance and variety of sea life you can encounter underwater from Carmel to Catalina is without compare. The cold water, however, takes some getting used to.

My solution for the last five years or so: the Whites Fusion Drysuit. Read the rest

Image: Chhiring Sherpa provides the lighting for a photograph of Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck. Photo by Grayson Schaffer, used with permission of Outside.

Hint: It involves a lot of sherpas.

Grayson Schaffer, an editor for Outside magazine, is currently embedded at Base Camp on Mt. Everest, covering several teams attempting to climb the mountain's West Ridge—which Outside describes as "a route nearly as many climbers have died on as have summitted." He's sending back stories and photos from the tallest mountain in the world. But that presents a problem. The kind of photography that's used in a glossy magazine is not the kind of photography that is easy to produce with a team of one in a bare-bones climbing camp.

In a recent post, Schaffer explains the tools he's using to get his shots and shows us how he's wrangled random sherpas, climbers, and camp staff into assisting him. It's a neat bit of media behind-the-scenes.

The key piece of gear that makes it all possible is the new Pro-B3 1200w/s AirS battery pack. It's the lithium-powered update to the older 7B power pack, and it delivers consistent flashes even in subzero temperatures at 17,500 feet. We've got two of these with a set of spare battery inserts but have yet to run down in a day's shooting. To charge these beasts, we've been using a basic GoalZero solar setup, which, thanks to the Pro-B3's built-in trickle-charging capability, can top off a charge in a sunny afternoon.

Read Schaffer's post on taking photos on Mt. Read the rest