My pocket survival kit

Lifehacker continues its “show us what’s in your…” meme. So, welcome to a guided tour of my pockets.

The Jimi wallet (back pocket). It currently has one debit card, one credit card, a ten-pound note, two business cards, my driving licence and an Oyster card, the RFID-based electronic ticket for the London public transport network. I am a member of a car hire scheme which allows me to book a car online then walk to the car and open it with my Oyster card, so the Oyster is also my set of car keys. The Oyster works fine through the Jimi, so I never have to take it out. Unfortunately, the TfL RFID readers don’t like my work RFID card, so I can carry the work card separately.

Keys (left pocket). The heart of my keychain is a Kikkerland carabiner/bottle opener. I’ve got separate keyrings for different functions: one keyring for my house keys, another one for work keys, one for my parents’ house and so on. When I leave the house, I only take the keyrings I need. The left-hand side keyring has the two things I tend to take anyway, a keyring-size version of my supermarket loyalty card and the combined SD/USB card, SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus, in its holder. (The card houses a bootable Linux distro, a few portable apps, and a truecrypt loopback partition for sensitive data.)

Nokia N95 smartphone (right pocket). This is my main communicator. It’s a phone, alarm clock, calendar, to-do list, email client, web browser (when I don’t have my 770), music player (when I don’t have my iPod), (video) camera (when I don’t have my Finepix F30) and GPS navigator. I normally carry a spare battery, too. A good data plan is vital with modern handsets, where many applications require constant transfer of data. Mine includes 3GB/month HSDPA transfer at 1.8Mbps.

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet (left pocket). I carry this most of the time. It’s pretty big but not too big to carry comfortably in my pocket. The 770 comes out when I need a bigger screen for surfing the web or looking at my calendar, and perhaps most importantly for offline RSS reading during my commute. It connects to the internet over bluetooth via my N95. Whenever I rent a car, the 770 and its Navicore software becomes my in-car navigator, with a suction-cup holder, car charger and a Nokia bluetooth GPS receiver.

I know I carry quite a lot of stuff. I’ve tried to go light where I can but I still want to be connected when I’m out and about. Still, all of this fits comfortably in my pockets, and is a big improvement over carrying a laptop.