Mon 18 November 2024

In Part I, I went over the items in my pockets. In this installment, I will go over the items in my backpack.

Yes, I'm milking the posts to try to catch up to my WritingMonth quota. Hush. 😄

Here's what's currently in my backpack:

Large items

• Laptop
  • Currently a Thinkpad X260 running Debian, but often a Pinebook Pro running Armbian. What the Pinebook lacks in processor speed, it makes up for in lightness, and the amazingly good 14" 1080p IPS panel. The only real complaint I have of this now 3.5 year old machine is the lack of Full-Disk Encryption (in most OSes, since they're pre-installed binary images, rather than bespoke installs made by an install program like Calamares)
  • In years past, my EDC laptop was a Thinkpad X200 running Linux or some variant of BSD, before that, a 2014 Macbook Air running Mac OS X (Up to High Sierra), and before that, a 2008 Macbook (classic white, non-unibody) running OS X Lion. If you want to go back decades, then a Dell Latitude XPiCD 166 MMX was my glorious daily driver, and a couple years before that, a Dell 486 laptop with an incredibly murky 640x480x16 gray passive-matrix STN display, which I happily carried uphill in the snow both ways while walking to college. Before that, my NOT daily driver was a gloriously luggable compact Mac (SE). ;)
  • The main reason I'm not EDC-ing my Pinebook Pro right now is that the screws holding the chassis together keep falling out. I need to replace them, and apply some generous thread-locker.
• Journal
  • I'm trying to get back into paper journaling after being away from it for over a year. I've had a digital journal (bespoke shell script) that I've used for nearly six years, but I've journalled on paper (in fits and starts, to be honest) for almost a decade.
  • Right now, it's a dot-lined journal I picked up from Walmart, but it's usually some fountain pen-friendly paper journal. I had to learn the hard way that while Moleskine-brand journals are nice, they are not Fountain Pen-friendly. The quality of paper just isn't there. This otherwise cheap ("EXCEED" brand) journal is of pretty decent quality, and is pleasant to write on.
• Bible
  • I'm carrying around a rather large NASB "Thinline Giant Print" Bible in my bag at the moment.
  • I don't use a "Study Bible," and haven't for many years. I got tired of being steered towards one popular theological slant or another.
  • I keep the bible in the cardboard case it came in, as it's a softbound bible with very thin "onion skin" pages, and otherwise wouldn't hold up to being carried around in a backpack.
  • I'm just now trying to get back into the habit of carrying a paper bible with me. It's not particularly light or convenient, but it's nice to have, especially when I have my coloring pencils with me for highlighting.
  • I might end up replacing it with a lighter bible that only has the New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon, as I don't read from the full Tanak (a.k.a. "Old Testament") very often.
• BSF Workbook
  • I'm currently going through a study of the Book of Revelation at Bible Study Fellowship, and they printed out a copy of all of the worksheets as a single, rather large (US Letter-sized) spiral-bound book.
• Kindle (2014 edition)
  • I'm not using it much right now, but I'm hoping to get back into pleasure reading soon
  • It's still in the same hard case that I bought with it 10 years ago. The cloth is getting a touch worn, but has held up quite well.

Small items

• Reading glasses
  • I hate these, I hate these, I hate these, I hate these, I hate these.
• My BSF nametag
• Very cheap USB battery bank and USB A-to-C cable
  • Just something I bought from Walmart. It doesn't have much capacity (less than one full phone charge), but it works in a pinch, both for my phone and my Pinebook Pro
• A couple extra mechanical pencils, just for marking up books/workbooks
  • A PaperMate "clear point" click-on-a-button-on-the-barrel-type pencil
  • A Ticonderoga auto-advancing pencil with a 3d-printed pen cap
  • I've got a Kuru-Toga pencil at home somewhere, but I find the mechanism used to auto-rotate the lead doesn't work very well when you're making long lines on books (for notes/highlighting). It's better for normal writing or math.
• Pen case
  • I do have a fancy leather pen roll at home, but on-the-go, I just use a cheap vinyl fabric/mesh ("EVA" material) pen case I bought online. It can hold 3-4 pens and some accessories. It currently holds my TWSBI Eco (a fantastic pen, Amin-jaan even agrees!) with Noodler's Black and my second TWSBI Eco in Noodler's Liberty's Elysium (a blue-black ink). It also holds one of my PaperMate mechanical pencils (for marking up paper books I'm reading), and a folded-up napkin (for cleaning up fountain pen mishaps — they happen!). I don't have one in there now, but I usually also carry a small vial of Noodler's Black ink in the pen case, in case I need to refill (the already sizeable capacity of) my TWSBI Eco on the go.
• A dozen "Veritas"-brand colored pencils
  • I bought this fancy set of coloring pencils from a bookstore, and use them for highlighting my bible (I have my own color scheme where each color is indicative of a different theme). I haven't gotten very far with highlighting in the past few years, though. I'm hoping to start spending more time in the paper Bible.
  • The pencils came in a nice cardboard tube. I enhanced it a little by putting masking tape on the inside lip, so that the lid would stay on very firm, and not fall off while jostling in side my bag. I also took the little foam pad meant to protect the tips of the pencils from inside the pencil case/tube cap and stuffed it at the bottom of the pencil case (and turne all the pencils around), so that the colored butts of the pencils could be sticking out, instead of the tips.
• "Disposable" film camera
  • I bought this on a whim about six months ago when I saw it on the shelf at Walmart. My cousin had come to visit me for a couple days just prior to that, and he's been on a huge film kick for the past couple years.
  • I have two exposures left, and I keep it in the aluminized bag it came in to protect it from stray sunlight and dust.
  • I grew up in the era of crappy fixed-focus (and later, poor infrared range-finding autofocus) film cameras, so I don't exactly miss the film capture part of the process, but I did dearly love developing black and white film and prints in high school.
  • Bonus: I hope to save the fixed-focus lens when I get the film developed and adapt it onto a Canon EOS body cap for my dSLR, like this person did
• A to-go communion cracker/cup combo.
  • I forgot I had that in there, haha
• A spare surgical mask
  • I don't wear them much anymore, but I did wear a KN95 every single day for four years.
• A spare (cheapo) pair of Bluetooth earbuds
  • If you spent more than $50 on your earbuds, please immediately go give yourself a wedgie for contributing to the late-stage capitalistic dystopia we're living in. Thank you.
• A copy of The Mortification of Sin, by John Owen
  • I'm not a huge fan of the Puritans, but I do like them more than the average person. I have a soft spot in my heart for doomed-from-the-start super-idealistic spiritual endeavours... not so much the persecution of religious minorities, though. (It's sadly ironic that they fled persecution in England only to persecute the Quakers in the New World.)
  • It was a gift from a brother at the Anglican men's bible study I go to on Wednesday morning. I don't know when I'll actually start reading it, though. ADHD, yay. 🙄

That's my backpack EDC! The backpack is just a random cheapo I found at Walmart. "Ozark Trail" is the brand. And no, the laptop cushioning isn't really adequate (particularly in the bottom). It almost never is in these things.

Note: This article has a Part III!

Category: Tech Tagged: Computing FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Hobbies Informal post Non-religious post Productivity QuickPost WritingMonth