What's in your bag?

What's in your bag today?

I got reminded of the Flickr What's in your bag? tag project-thing today while reading Zen Pockets on my lunch break. It inspired me to check my current loadout, and see where I could make improvements.

So here it is, albeit without the fancy box-highlighted images from Flickr, more or less Left-to-Right and Top-to-Bottom:

1. The Bag: My ancient Jansport bar-top messenger that I've had since my 2nd year of college. This thing has hauled everything from school books to hammers and raw steel. In fact, it looks like its sort of on its last legs. Its back in service because my daily collection of stuff was becoming too much for "on my person" carry, especially in the warmer summer months (shorts), and especially when I'm switching cars all the time. (I drive the Miata a lot more in the summer).
2. Business cards, or at least last month's iteration thereof. We did a reorg again this month, need to check if everything is still correct...
3. Loose change, for the odd parking meter or vending machine.
   
4. Leatherman Squirt S4, my current favorite micro-multitool. I've got a whole mess of these things with various tools, this seems to be the current best mix. I carry it just about everywhere (except airports) because it sees almost daily use. It has a plunger quick-disconnect to:
5. Keys #1: House, mailbox, office, etc. type keys. These go almost everywhere too, mostly because I like to be able to get into my house and stuff... :) Not to be confused with:
6. Key(s) #2: The key(s) and whatever transmitters might be needed for whatever car I'm driving that day. Today its the Miata. These go in the other pocket when I'm bagless...
7. Writing instruments: Usually some mix of fine and ultra-fine uniballs in black and blue, a 0.7mm mechanical pencil, and a new addition: a fine "sharpie". Added recently for marking silver coins prior to annealing for my stone setting class.
8. Altoid's Tin turned iPod case: I trimmed the vacuum-formed plastic insert from the original Shuffle packaging to fit into a tin. It holds the player and earbuds in geek-chic luxury while protecting everything and keeping it clean.
9. A stack of UCSD Evening parking permits. It was a major revelation when I figured out I could buy these things in bulk. For some reason it never occurred to me and I was buying them one-at-a-time for years.
10. Standard Black "Comp Book", grid ruled. Mostly used for sketching pieces and planning work for my metalsmithing, but occasionally I take notes in it too.
11. Letter-size accordion file. This holds the comp book and all the loose papers I seem to collect, like a list of local suppliers for my metalsmithing classes or a list of instructions from the Judge at jury duty. It also serves to add a little rigidity to my aging nylon bag, so the heavy stuff at the bottom doesn't make it sag when I don't have a book or my laptop with me...
12. One 12" cable tie. Who knows, I must have thought I needed it.
13. Semi-hard case for my Sunglasses, clipped to the bag's shoulder strap. Picked up a set of Maui Jim glasses on Oahu last month, its the first set of "nice" sunglasses I've owned in quite a while. We'll see how long they last.
14. Motorola V600 Cameraphone (not shown) - I used to think cameraphones were silly, at least until I got one. I use it all the time now. Mostly I use the camera instead of taking notes. I'll photograph a price tag or store display to get a crucial model number or the physical dimensions of a piece of furniture. Also comes in handy for remembering the vintage of that great bottle of wine we had at dinner... I've always used my cellphone as a PIM, and that functionality keeps getting better, to the point that I just can't justify carrying a PDA. I just wouldn't use it. I've seen a Blackberry or two I could probably trade for my phone, but not many. The phone usually lives in the bag now, but I used it to photograph this whole mess, hence the less-than-ideal image quality. I didn't say it was a great camera.
    
15. My Wallet of Doom (not shown) - This is the one thing I really need to work on. I've gone on several pocket diets, but I just can't seem to keep the weight off. My keyrings are now wonderfully spartan, but I haven't managed to shed all the club cards, discount cards, etc. that make a wallet so fat. Maybe I'll find a way to take a page from the Zen Pockets article and move some of that stuff off to a sub-wallet I can throw in my bag...

So, what's in your bag today? Next trick is to tackle Kim's bag, maybe we can shave 3 or 4 pounds out of it... Read More...

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Why DO we work so hard?

So, I don't necessarily agree with everything Mark Morford has to say in his article Why Do you Work So Hard?, but it certainly mirrors some of the same thoughts I've been having lately (on and off for the past year or so).

Mainly, its the usual sort of post-adolescent "Is my life fulfilling?" kind of crap that I'm sure everyone goes through, but its hard to ignore. The temptations of caching out my artificially-inflated Southern California Real Estate Equity and carving out a low-impact, high-quality existance keep manifesting in my daydreams. Though I'd hardly consider myself an "artist", the idea of being able to spend some quality time doing something physically creative is really appealing right now. To build a home, to manufacture a lifestyle, instead of purchasing one, strikes a chord with me. How much more would my home mean to me if I had crafted it myself, rather than simply signed a promise to hand over the better portion of half the take from thirty year's labor in a cubicle?

The other advantage to this daydreamed lifestyle is the absence of people in it. Don't get me wrong, I'm as social as most folks, but at the same time, I don't love having neighbors, or commuting in traffic, or fighting crowds. I guess this would bother me less if I had quieter neighbors. Maybe I don't really need to trade in suburbia for absolute isolation, just someplace a little farther away from booming stereos and squealing tires at 2am...

I fantasize about living off the grid, or nearly so, in an Earthship somewhere. Not because I need to "buck the system" or stick it to "the man", but because living low-impact seems like the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm no hippie, nor a luddite, but it occurs to me that I should be able to build my own home on a quiet 10 acre plot, have highspeed internet, satellite TV, and a cold beer and still not have to suffer the hoards of my fellow man for the privelidge.

I supposed the real problem with Morford's article is that it leaves out a proper comparison of the alternatives. As romantic as a wholesale change in favor of an "alternate path" might be, it might be a bit extreme. Perhaps the best baby steps are the ones I've already taken: Try to find creative outlets I can exercise an hour at a time. Step away from my job as often as my responsibilities allow.

The other question is the real cost of such a change. While I might be willing to give up many conveniences and accomidations in exchange for a simpler, quieter life, I don't know if my wife would be willing to do the same. What I do know is that she is the one thing that I certainly wouldn't give up for anything. So unless she wants to go with me, I guess I'm staying put.

And I guess that's the answer. We work so hard because, in the balance, it means keeping the things we really can't give up. Not the paid healthcare, not the 3bed-2bath in suburbia, and not the BMW, but a Life with the ones we love. Read More...

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Hack of the Day: 2 Hour "Custom" Wine Rack

After years of searching, Kimberley and I finally found DVD storage units we were excited about: a pair of Card-catalog-look DVD racks that fit nicely under the breakfast bar in our downstairs area. They fill two of the three "areas" under the bar. That was several months ago. Since then, we've been looking for a way to fill in the center area in a way that meets our storage needs and Kimberley's interior design requirements. We considered a custom bookshelf to hold our mountain of cookbooks, an ornamental wine rack to hold the "drinking" portion of our ever-growing wine collection, and just about any other cabinet, shelf, table, or whatever we came across in any home or furniture store that looked like it might fit the space. In the end, we didn't really find anything that knocked us out. It was especially difficult because we kept going back and forth between Wine Rack and Bookshelf for the space, we needed both. After a while, you start looking for "creative" solutions, and having metalworking skills in your bag of tricks gives you a lot of ways to solve problems. On a night when we were killing time before a movie, not even looking for furniture (which is almost always when we find it), we stumbled across a Pier1 piece that was a combo "Wine Rack/Baker's Rack, ornamental-ironwork shelf thing". Kimberley liked the piece and wondered aloud if there was anything I could do to make it fit our space. With the eyes of a hacker and a blacksmith, I sized it up as about 10 minutes of cutting... Oh yeah, I can make that fit. Here's what we eventually came up with: "The 2 Hour "Custom Winerack" As I figured, it was about 10 minutes of cutting, including the time to change my grinder over to a cutting wheel. The rest of the time was spent cleaning up the posts with the grinding wheel and repainting the piece. All told I really only spent about an hour and a half, so the "2 Hour" title is rounding-up! We're very happy with the look of the piece, as it fits the rest of the funky sort of warm eclectic thing we've got going on, and matches a couple other items of ironwork in the room.

Read More...

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Lucky Guy

So I know I have a fantastic spouse. I love her, and she makes me very happy. But every now and then you get a little extra reminder of just how lucky you are...

Had one of those moments recently, thought I should share:


The setting:
~6:50am on a Friday morning
Kimberley is getting ready for work and I'm sitting in bed trying to wake up; watching the Practice Round of the Formula 1 European Grand Prix on the TiVo. (Delayed several hours, time-zones and what-not)

While Kimberley moves from bedroom to bathroom and back, doing her morning routine, the commentators are laying out the "story lines" for the coming race:

Honda returns after a 2-race ban! Will Bridgestone sort out their tire problems? Can Kimi Raikkonen take his fourth straight pole?

And of course, the big one: The FIA and team owners have agreed to change the qualifying format:

Instead of determining the race order via the "current" system of aggregating times from a Saturday afternoon one-lap session and a Sunday morning one-lap session, they will now do only a single session on Saturday, and that time will determine race order.

At which point my darling bride sticks her head back into the bedroom and asks:


"Is that on race fuel, or light tanks?"


:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

That she was even LISTENING to the commentary was a pleasant fact. That she understood the significant difference 60 kilos or so of fuel can have on qualifying speed AND race strategy?!?!?!

Wow, I'm a lucky guy. Read More...

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30 Second Hack - Play your iPod Shuffle while charging!

So every now and then I whip out some quick little hack to make my life (or someone else's life) easier. I rarely even take the time to document them, since usually the hack is so trivial as to make documentation insulting.

The last one was this little circuit for a bloke on Miata.net. Yes, I'm a lazy bastard, I didn't really draw the circuit so much as link to one someone else drew, and tell him what resistors to use. But the point is, I applied my hard-earned BSEE to the gripping problem that was this dude's garage door opener.

Well, here's another 30 second Hack. I'll literally spend 10x more time with this blog entry than I spent on the hack:

How to play tunes on your iPod Shuffle while charging the battery.

Problem: The iPod shuffle both charges its battery and does data exchange (iTunes and thumb-drive) via its built-in USB port. Normally this is great, except that for some inexplicable reason, any time the iPod has a data connection going, it disables the player functionality.

Why is this a problem? If you're sitting at a PC, why not just use the PC to play music? In my case, I work at any number of PCs, both in my office and in the lab. For various reasons (company policy, not the least of which), I don't have iTunes installed or any .mp3s loaded on any of these machines.

So my choices are to either play my iPod and run the battery down, despite being inches from a suitable charging port, or to charge the batteries in silence. Dumb.

Solution: I made a USB "Power Cord" which charges the battery but doesn't establish a data connection, so the iPod keeps-on-a-rockin'.

For background, consult the USB pinout standard, but you can just duplicate this in all is simple-gory details below.
You'll need the following:

Parts: Electrical Tape, 1 USB Extension Cable with suitable ends (probably Male 'A' and Female 'A')
-or- a regular A-B cable and one of those Female-B to Female-A adaptors (which is what I used because we have literally hundreds of these things lying around at work).

Tools: X-acto Knife, Cutters

Disclaimer: If you somehow manage to mess this up and fry your iPod or your PC's USB port, I accept no responsibility for this. Simply disabling the data lines should be safe, if you can accomplish that task without doing anything stupid.


Procedure:

1. Using the X-acto knife, Slit about 1" of the USB cable's outer insulation, preferably near the iPod end, but it doesn't really matter.
2. Your cable probably has a woven shield and/or a foil jacket around the actual wiring. Try to slit and part this to expose the 4 wires, while doing the minimum amount of damage here.
3. Using the cutters, snip the Green and White wires (data lines). For neatness, I actually snipped out about a 1/4" of these wires just to make sure they wouldn't short to each other. I suppose the really anal types might work harder to ensure no shorting of the data lines to the shielding occurs. I didn't. Doesn't seem to matter.
   
4. Tuck the wires back into the shield weave/foil.
5. Wrap electrical tape around the slit.
6. If you're like me, the electrical tape will be a sufficient indicator that this is now a USB POWER CABLE which will no longer serve any other purpose. Otherwise, you might want to label the cable somehow, so the next unsuspecting geek doesn't try to use it to sync his PDA or something...
7. Plug in the cable to your PC or hub. Plug in the iPod to the cable. Confirm that the amber light on the battery indicator is lit (charging). Marvel at the amazing ability to charge the battery and listen to music at the same time.
   

Yep, that's it. Told you it was simple. Apple will probably make a "iPod Shuffle Computer Charging Cable" at some point and sell it for $29... Read More...

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