Making My Wallet Thinner

One of the unexpected lessons from the Virgin Festival this year was rediscovering how thin my wallet is when I take all of the shit out of it. (Related: there's a lot more room in the back of my car when I take all the shit out of that, too.)

It's regained a little bit more of its thickness since then, but one thing's that helped was consolidating my frequent buyer cards -- I'd gotten up to six (plus my gym card). Even using the smaller key tags (which I don't put on my keychain, which has enough stuff on it), they still take up a lot of room:

Wallet cruft. Like ephemera, except more annoying.

Now, a year or two ago, there was a Digg item about a card consolidation site (www.justoneclubcard.com), where you pick the stores you need from a drop-down and type in the account numbers, and it'll generate the barcodes on a printable, wallet-sized card. Pretty nifty.

At the time, it didn't support all the places I needed, though now it's pretty comprehensive. Of course, it doesn't have my gym, so I decided to make my own.

Not having an iPhone (and really, saving digital pictures of your club cards on your iPhone so you can run the on-screen image over the laser scanner seems kind of... perverse), I went lower-tech -- I threw the cards on my printer/scanner (you could also use a camera, carefully), adjusted them in Photoshop to print to twice the size of a business card, then folded the resulting paper in half to make a two-sided, wallet sized card:

Attention miscreants: The numbers are dummied up.

The sloppy lamination is just using those no-heat laminating stickers from any office supply store. And I saved the layered PSD file in case I need to make future changes.

Here's a closeup showing the difference in thickness (more or less):

I haven't had any problems with it so far.

Anyway, it's just a little silly wallet space-saver so I have more room for more fat wads of bills. And my way was kind of a pain -- if justoneclubcard.com has all the places you need, just do that, it's easier.

Then again, I suppose you can save even more space by going the functional tattoo route. But save that for the Google/SkyNet work camps.

Tags: club cards, loyalty cards, discount cards, frequent buyer cards

Need Help Fitting a Yardstick in My Wallet

I'm throwing this question out to the Webs -- I have a leftover IKEA paper ruler (it's either a really long yardstick or a really short tape measure, I haven't decided), that I want to fold down to wallet size.

Despite my childhood experience with ninja throwing stars, and my recent forays into dollar bill origami, I really don't know what I'm trying to do, or what the best source of information would be.

Here's my first attempt -- I basically wrapped it around a business card:

It's not very tidy. Someone can do better.

Now, the ruler is a single strip of paper, just over a yard long and 3/4" wide. The only "rules" I'm looking for are:

• You can't rip the strip -- it has to stay a single piece.
  
• It has to be standard wallet sized, so about the size of a normal business card (though it doesn't need to involve a business card.) This means it also has to stay as flat as possible.
  
• It has to be relatively easy to undo.
• Contrariwise, it should hold together pretty well (though if it's kept in a credit card slot, it should be pretty secure).

Why do I need a yardstick in my wallet? I don't really, but if it doesn't take up much room, why not? I mean, it's not like carrying a tape measure around, like certain Farkers:

I've heard of measuring contests at parties, but not like this.

If anyone has any attempts they want to show, suggestions or links to relevant paper-folding resources, please let me know.

Tags: measuring tapes, paper folding, wallet junk, wallet yardstick

My Keychain Is Prepared For Disaster

Here's a photo of my current primary keychain, which I will warrant is more prepared for disaster (both man-made and natural) than most people's pockets, purses and man-bags:

First, holding it all together in the middle is a flat wire gate carabiner from Bison designs. (It was originally blue.) Because it's a biner, I can add and remove individual items pretty easily; I can also clip it to the top of my pocket. It's pretty secure, though I still have to make sure everything stays together, lest disaster happen.

Then, starting at the top and going clockwise, I've got:

• My car keys and remote; they're together on their own split ring. Also on that section is an orange Photon II keychain light. For fun, there's a now-obsolete NYC subway token.
• An ARC AAA LED flashlight. It looks a lot like a Maglite Solitaire, but it's not -- it costs 3 times as much (so, about 30 bucks) and it is worth every penny. It's incredibly reliable, practically indestructible, and it doesn't have a bulb to blow out -- the LED will last thousands of hours.
  
• A Swiss Army Knife Rally, which has a blade, bottle opener, phillips screwdriver, nail file/flat screwdriver, tweezers and toothpick.
• A Spyderco Ladybug knife; it's on a quick-release plunger so I can detach it if I need to go somewhere where knives aren't allowed. It's got a partially-serrated blade that's a smidge under two inches.
• A safety pin. Useful things, those.
• My housekey (The cuts are photoshopped so you can't dupe it from the photo, though if you were going to break in, it would be easier to just make a bump key.)
• A green Traser Glowring -- it will glow in the dark for about 10 years, because it has a little vial of Tritium gas, which is radioactive (but perfectly safe). If you want one in the US, you need to find someone abroad who can send you one, since they're not available here and can't be shipped in.
  
• A storage capsule, also by Bison Designs; I keep a rolled-up twenty and some Pepcid AC antacid tablets (critically important, for reasons I've mentioned before).

So why carry all this crap on my keychain? It's not just "be prepared" stuff -- I use a lot of what's on it pretty much every day.

The lights are probably the most useful things. Lights are incredibly handy to have even if you're not worried about blackouts or being stuck in elevators or on the Metro. (Flashlight geeks like to say that there's a 100% chance of darkness every night -- what more reason do you need?)

On any given day, I'll use the ARC for looking under my desk, poking in the dark corners of my laptop bag, or checking inside my mailbox.

The knives I use less often, but only because I usually have a handier knife or multitool available.

Now, there's other stuff that gadget and personal preparedness types might carry that I think is overkill, at least for a primary keychain -- whistles, magnifying lenses, hotspark fire starters, pens, mini-compasses, mini-prybars, small multitools, GI can openers, etc.

Plus, I try to avoid any other keychain junk: USB drives, SecureID tokens, buyers club cards, wifi hotspot detectors, coin purses, condom holders, laser pointers, and the like.

(Besides, if I need to carry any of that other stuff, it'll usually be in another pocket or my laptop bag.)

Short legs = short pants = small pockets, so I don't want too much stuff dangling from my keychain.

As it is right now, it's fairly discreet, with no jingling. Everything goes in my pocket except the car remote, which I let drape over the edge of my pocket.

I guess it also helps that I only need to carry two keys.

Tags: arc, keychain, spyderco