Comparison
Travel Umbrella vs Rain Poncho
An umbrella keeps you dry and needs a hand. A poncho keeps you and your bag dry and needs none. Wind decides which of those matters more.
3 min read
Carry-On & Comfort
What has to stay with you, and surviving the seat.
Start here
What Should Live on the Outside of the Bag
Some things get produced ten times a day and belong where you can reach them without stopping. Working out which is a security decision as much as a convenience one.
Guide
Medication on a Trip Across Time Zones
The two failures are losing the supply and losing track of the schedule. One is solved by where you pack it, the other by counting doses rather than clock times.
3 min read
Guide
Too Hot, and Unable to Open a Window
On a plane, a coach or a hotel room with sealed glass, you cannot change the temperature. What works is evaporation and moving air, and one of them is free.
3 min read
Guide
What Should Live on the Outside of the Bag
Some things get produced ten times a day and belong where you can reach them without stopping. Working out which is a security decision as much as a convenience one.
3 min read
Guide
Compression Socks for a Long Flight
Sized by measurement, not shoe size, and the wrong pressure is worse than none. What they are for, and when the answer is a doctor rather than a product.
3 min read
Guide
Sleeping Upright on a Plane
The neck pillow is the famous answer and the least important one. What decides it is darkness, noise, and whether your head can fall forward at all.
4 min read
Comparison
Personal-Item Backpack vs Under-Seat Tote
The backpack holds more and is harder to reach in a seat. Which one suits your flight depends on whether you need things during it or only at either end.
3 min read
Other things that might be annoying you
- Warning lightThe light is on and nobody can tell me why.
- A long drive coming upSix hours in the car and I have not thought about any of it.
- Wi-Fi that keeps droppingThe PC is upstairs and the router is by the front door.
- The desk is set up wrongThe screen is too low, the chair is too high, and I have never changed either.
- A screen that is hard to look atGlare across it, or text I keep leaning in to read.
- Stuck at the roadsideSomething failed away from home and I had nothing useful with me.
- Taking a handheld awayCharging it, filling it, and getting it there in one piece.
- A PC that will not startIt was fine yesterday and now nothing happens at all.
- A car that barely movesIt sits far more than it drives, and that is its own problem.
- Nobody can hear me properlyHum, echo, or a microphone that picks up every keystroke.
- Losing work to a power cutA flickering supply, a failing drive, and no backup worth the name.
- Dead batteryThe car sat for a month and now it won't turn over.
- No garage spaceThe car fits, but only just, and nothing else does.
- Car clutterEverything I own is loose in the trunk and rattling.
- Dirty interiorThe interior has grit in places a vacuum cannot reach.
- Bad lightingI cannot see what I am doing under the hood or under the car.
- Lost toolsI own three 10 mm sockets and can find none of them.
- Loud PCIt sounds like a hairdryer the moment a game loads.
- PC runs hotFrame rate drops after twenty minutes and never recovers.
- Cable messBehind the desk is one knot I refuse to look at.
- Cannot drillI rent, so nothing can leave a hole or a mark.
- Nowhere to put itThe flat is full and there is nowhere left to put anything.
- Bag will not closeIt all went in last time and now the case will not shut.
- Everything needs chargingFour devices, one socket, and a flight in the morning.