Girl Power Accessory
The Head Hand Bang is really an actual hand bag shaped like a head for the sole purpose of enabling females to experience a sense of girl power without the need for violence. It’s not available commercially but I could easily see something like this work commercially.
related links
Yaelmer
Originally
from sensoryimpact.com
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Jan 17, 2007, 10:04PM
Avaf Bag
Psychedelic Artists, Assume Viviv Astro Focus go Takashi Murakami* with their own line of bags by Le Sportsac
*Reference made to Japanese Artist Takashi Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton even though Le Sportsac is hardly LV.
related links
Assume Vivid Astro Focus by Le Sportsac
AVAF: Assume Vivid Astro Focus
Originally
from sensoryimpact.com
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 18, 2006, 7:07PM
The perfect black bag
The young consultant lives or dies by the
"all but only" rule. He or she wants to travel with everything needed
to survive life on the road, and not one thing, one ounce or one feature more.
Further to my occasional series, "advice to a young
consultant," here are some thoughts on the perfect black bag. (We are talking briefcases here. I will
leave the perfect suitcase to a later post; the consultant’s world is a
two bag world.)
I welcome the comments and advice of other travellers. This account does not pretend to be definitive or exhaustive.
The perfect black bag
The
bag itself should be cloth, expandable, study and probably by Tumi.
The bag cannot have hard sides. It is going to have to expand in some
moments and collapse down in others. (Consultants should be able to do
the same.) Hard sides make this impossible. The bag cannot be made of
leather. This dries out and looks bad in the long term. In the short
term, it will be seen as a "rookie mistake" by your fellow travellers.
The Tumi brand has also become a "secret signal" for the sophisticated
traveller. Don’t buy something like a Hartmann or anything showy. You want to keep a lowish profile in those moments you find yourself in the company of thieves.
Contents of the perfect black bag:
Earphones
To
protect yourself from the punishments of life on the road, you must have
noise cancelling earphones. They work well on the plane and reduce the
fatique of air travel substantially. And they mean that you can
actually hear the dialogue of the movies you are watching. (Travel
outside the US turns out to be a great way of catching up with popular
culture inside the US. Those trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trips
allow you to watch 3 or 4 movies at a go. You can also wear the
headphones when the airport or traffic gets noisy, and here they are
life savers. Finally, headphones are good when you find yourself
seated by a kucklehead or a bore. Nothing says "don’t bother me" like
a headset. (I did actually sit beside someone who suffered "pressure
of speech" so enormously that they kept talking to me even after I put
my headphones on.)
The insider’s choice at the moment is the
Bose headset, but recently, having lost my Bose to misadventure on the
road, I purchased a set of Sony MDR-NC50 and I think they’re better.
They cover the entire ear, which is essential, and they can operate as
a headset without a battery inserted. I think this is key. Who wants
a battery held against one’s skull for an 8 hour flight? The price
might give you pause, but believe me $200-300 is the single best
investment you will make as a traveller.
Camera
If you
want to be an ethnographic consultant, you are going to want to take
lots of photos. I am still looking for the right camera. I have a
Nikon Coolpix 3700. The perfect camera would turn on, focus, and
refresh instanteously. Lots of cameras lag in one or all of
these areas. Much of your photography will be shot from the open
window of a speeding taxi. Any kind of lag is intolerable. Also the
camera needs to be really little so that it can accompany you in a
jacket pocket. It should have some telephoto capacity. I would love
to hear suggestions here.
Laptop
There is no substitute
for the ThinkPad by Lenovo. It is incredibly light, incredibly
dependable, and it has the best keyboard, the point of interface that
matters most. The new models have dramatically better battery life and
hard drive capacity. (They also have that new, special "explodo" battery made by Sony, but I understand that’s being fixed. )
Cell phone service
If you are doing
lots of international travel, you will want to have a phone capable of
taking a SIM card and GSM/GPRS service, and this means Cingular and
T-Mobile. The former give me good service and reception in Russia and
China.
Food stuffs
This is a special concern for me
because I have subject to anaphylaxis. But the thing about travel and
consulting is that schedules are hectic and its easy to miss a meal.
Miss a couple in a row and you are light headed and miserable. My fall
back are granola bars from Kellogg’s .
A book
You
only have room for one so you have to chose it carefully. This is
going to be your companion when things get really unpleasant, so it has
to be written with perfectly clarity. Last trip I took The Elizabethan
Underworld by Gamini Salgado, but it is laboriously written. This is
one of the "desert island disks" question, so beloved by the English,
and it makes an interesting exercise. What is the single best literary
companion. You might say Shakespeare’s Sonnets, but often you will be
reading while exhausted, groggy, jet lagged and distracted. I don’t
know about you but if find I actually have to pay attention while
reading the Sonnets. Maybe the latest volume of Patrick O’Brien’s
Aubrey/Maturin series. It’s swashbuckling without being too boy’s
own. Pound for pound, word for word, what is the best literate pal to
have along for the ride?
iPod or Zen
I think a well
appointed laptop should serve as a substitute for these devices, but
there will be times when you want to protect your laptop battery or
travel without encumbrance. The iPod is everyone’s favorite. Ideally, we want one capable of music and movies. I welcome recommendations here.
A sweater
I
know this sounds dorky but if you take a sweater, you can get them to
hang up your suit jacket and the less "suited up" you feel while flying
the more pleasant it will be. Travel is a process that wears away at
you. Anything you can do to "give yourself a little space" is to be
recommended.
Etc.
adapter laptop for plane
business cards
charge cords for phone and laptop and iPod
extra battery for laptop
folders
paper
pens
plugs and adapters for Europe and Asia
SD card for capturing images on camera and transferring them to labtop
thumbdrive for backup
transparent envelope for itinary
transparent envelope for project reading
transparent envelope for receipts
(remember to charge everything the night before you go)
Redundant systems
It’s
up to you to decide which of these systems is so essential you should
take a backup. Strictly speaking, I guess, this should be your
laptop. But if you are transitioning out of the Microsoft world to the
Google one, more and more of your essentials end up on line. Don’t
hesitate to email yourself that Powerpoint presentation, for a backup
you will be able to access anywhere even in the effect of a cataclysmic
lose of your perfect black bag.
Hard card
This sounds
dopy, too. but it’s essential. What you have decided on "all but
only" the contents of your perfect black bag, you will want to type
these in a list on a piece of paper, take the piece of paper to
Kinko’s, and have them cover the piece of paper with something
transparent. Your bag is now a little universe of some 30
heterogeneous objects waiting to go astray. Hard cards make it easier
to keep track.
Bon voyage.
References
For more on the Patrick O’Brian series, see the W.W. Norton website here.
Originally
from This Blog Sits at the
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 4, 2006, 2:59PM
Ask the Readers: Laptop case must-haves?
Reader Mike writes:
I am a college student who just purchased my first laptop; I also travel quite frequently back and forth to school and for personal travel. To make life easier, I’m trying to put together the ultimate laptop case of accessories. But when it comes to filling that laptop case I hit a roadblock, since I know I can’t think of every scenario myself.
Filling your case with the right items can definitely be a life-saver, but it requires that you be prepared for unexpected situations. Here’s what Mike has come up with so far:
- Small surge Protector with 2 or 3 plugs
- A few blank DVDs and CDs
- A thumbdrive
- SD card
- A universal power adapter for your laptop
- Important installation disks, like your Office or OS install disk
- Finally CABLES CABLES CABLES. Who knows what situation you might run into during a presentation - a good selection of cables, from USB to video and audio cords, can come in very handy.
Mike’s initial list is a pretty good start, but it certainly doesn’t exhaust the issue. As such, we’d love to hear what you put in your ultimate laptop bag, so give us your list of laptop must-haves in the comments.
Originally
from Lifehacker
reBlogged
by michael
on Sep 26, 2006, 5:00PM
Latest from Nokia
Yesterday was a big day for Nokia at their Open Studio event—eight new products, an indy store driven Music Recommenders service, David Bowie appearance, Gnarles Barkley concert, Om Malik panel discussion and a tricked out Mustang alongside a smoothie stand. All of this grounded by their new(ish) message that they make “multimedia computers with telephony capability” as opposed to mobile phones that do lots of other things.
Among the eight there are three worth highlighting. The N95 is a all-in-one device with high-end music, photo (5 mega pixel!) and video capabilities. It can connect to virtually any form of wireless network and has built-in GPS for all your hunting and gathering needs. And you can talk on the phone, either via your carrier or with voice over IP. For a computer that does all this it’s pretty small, but for a mobile phone it’s a bit chunky. One useful novelty is the 2-way sliding display—slide it up to reveal the keypad or slide it down to get the music and video controllers. Of course, the image and interface on the display rotate accordingly.
While it will be awhile before the N95 makes it to the US, the N75 is built specifically for us. Available in time for holiday, this is the first great-looking clamshell-style handset I’ve seen from Nokia. It’s thin, full featured and has beautiful displays on the inside and out—which is necessary to show off your pictures taken with the 2-megapixel camera. The integrated music player also makes listening to tunes straight-forward using the three control buttons on the cover of the handset.
Last but certainly not least is the music-enhanced N73. Like the N70 and N91 which were also part of the music edition the device is clad in a slimming matte-black finish. It’s amazing how much sexier this phone is in black over the silver and orange version currently on the market. I’m partial to a candy-bar style phone and this one is my new favorite. With a fast 3.2-megapixel camera featuring a Carl Zeiss lens and built in flash, this phone makes me comfortable leaving the house without another camera. And yes, it has a handy built in music player that works in all the right ways.
TAGS: Devices, Mobile Phones, Music, Nokia,
Originally
from Cool Hunting
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Sep 28, 2006, 2:45AM
