This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
Flying with wires
I'm going to be spending most of the week in California, traveling for Sakai. I've done a lot of traveling in the past year, and recently I've come to sort of enjoy it again. I travel with a lot of electronics, and have fun working on my laptop, listening to my iPod, etc. I get some good work done when I'm flying.
I'm a pretty obsessive light packer, but still about a third of my small bag is devoted to my laptop and selected peripherals. I also end up with quite a few cables, (iPod, cellphone, iSight, the monitor adaptor, headphones) plus the small peripherals themselves. Here's a tip I have if you are a nerd traveller like me.
I pack all of cables and little gadgets in a small zippered bag with a mesh top. When I get to the x-ray machine I take it out of my big bag and let it run through the machine on it's own. That way if I get pulled over for having a suspicious mass of metal and wires (which happened to me on my last flight out of Detroit), I've got the suspicious bag out already, available for inspection. Given the ritualistic insanity of airport security rules, they only search the small suspicious bag. If I keep in with everything, they are required to pull my whole bag apart. If it's all by its lonesome they just look at it, maybe do a couple swabs for suspicious chemical, and I'm on my way.