Be Excellent To Each Other

Pockets: train pass, wallet, work pass, phone
Bag: kindle, coat, pen,magazine

I bought one of their laptop bags off the strength of it's name alone... Crippy Duck.

Cost around £75 I think, and it was massive because I had a 17" laptop. I used it for travelling to and from home when I was at uni and it was ace.

I haz one too.

Military gear is so practical and durable. The bag has a load of straps that tighten and loosen in one pull and clips and bits that keep your items in place or help fold the bag into the smallest possible package. And it’s affordable.

Only downside is you won’t look like a metropolitan hipster with your MacBook Air cushioned in a waxed canvas chocolate canvas batchel.

The other downside is you look like an insane gun fetishist.

Work day. Phone, house keys. Car key.

Non work day. Phone, house keys

House keys? How 20th century. We have passcards to get into the apartment. One less thing to carry around.

On the downside, my wallet is having to get bigger and bigger.

Workdays, it's a shit laptop bag with a shit laptop in it, plus yards and yards of random cables and miscellaneous headphones and skype headsets and whatnot.

Friend of mine kept forgetting his keys and locking himself out of his flat, so he installed fingerprint-ID on his front door.

Which seems marvelous, but not sure I could go for it. My finger often won't register on my PC's scanner when my hands are really cold.

Technological locks just don't feel as secure to me. I expect it's just luddite bias though, but a physical key feels much more controlled than a passcard or scanner of some kind. A much smaller chain of trust involved.

I prefer a key. Saying that though I'd like central locking on my house.

In all honesty I do agree- particularly as we have a shared lift opening into our apartment and the only thing stopping randos coming in is the fact that the keycards work...

Nah, don't fancy that.

In the threat scenario of a rando walking up to your door and trying to get in, a non-networked key card lock is pretty definitely more secure than a physical key lock.

In the scenario of someone compromising the point in the process where keys are encoded or cut, I wouldn't say there's a lot of difference between the two.

ProTip: don’t read up on how keys can be 3d printed very easily from even quite low grade photos.

Also if you're in a rented flat, it's far easier for the landlord to change the pairing on the key card/lock than it is to change physical locks, and ex-tenants can't flash a new key card on every high street.

How so? Surely in both scenarios the door will have a lock or latch on it? Surely either one could be forced open just as easily if the rando was persistent enough?

Sure. They can both be forced, one of the two can also be picked.

I wonder how many burglaries get carried out by people picking locks, defeating electronic locks or 3D printing keys? I'll bet it's an amount not worth caring about.

Good point.

I remember the security doors at a place I used to work at. They were held on by very strong magnets which could be broken by giving the door a good yank. I never had to worry about losing my door pass card.

There is a difference in the encoding compromise though. It's a lot easier and quicker to have a portable card encoder than a portable key cutter...

I agree with the rest of everything everyone has said, like I say, it's a luddite fear not a rational fear.

It would probably work better than my own fucking key to the building at the moment. Can take me a couple of minutes to get the lock to turn sometimes.
Management company are deciding whether now is the time to refurbish the doors, or replace them, so obviously can't be expected to fix the lock until they decide that...

Absolutely. We're right.

I had a Bench backpack for years, but that was because I used to cycle to work, so needed to carry clothes to change into when I got there, a lunch box, and a few other random bits like a puncture repair kit, bike tools, pens, etc. but that was pre-laptop/cell phone days.

I still only have a backpack (a Nike that my daughter bought me when the Bench finally fell apart after about 10 years) but at the moment it has my work tablet, my Macbook, sat nav, web cam, notepad for recording journey details for mileage and parking claims, but then I have to put stuff in it when I arrive at the site I'm working at, e.g. LAN tester, LED torch, a couple of CAT 5 cables, a screwdriver set, portable HDD with various apps and tech guides on it, a small paintbrush for cleaning the dust out of server vents, reading glasses, bluetooth headset charger case, security screwdriver bits, iPod and something for lunch.

I have a second bag with documentation that I might need, that I keep in the van just in case I need it, but that's a cheap expanding case from Argos that I've had for years and has been surprisingly durable for the price.

I wear work trousers with plenty of pockets, so my work and own phones are always in there, as is my wallet and van keys, and some change for the rare occasions when I can't pay for parking with a contactless card or by phone. When I spent 9 weeks in Scotland at the end of last year, I only had to use cash once, to pay £1 for parking at East Kilbride shopping centre that where they had cash-only parking.

When I'm not at work I don't carry a bag around with me.

Humna humna

https://www.sfbags.com/products/tech-sling-bag

It's a bit small.

Single strap over the shoulder isn't good for your back

It’s not supposed to be holding much weight. It’s a small bag.

I can see that look in your eye