What's in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. Show us your bag in this forum post.

Be prepared — it’s the Boy Scout motto and something I’ve taken to heart over the years in Japan. I like to be able to carry a lot of stuff if the need arises, and this Visvim Ballistic 20L backpack (see below) is like a bottomless pit. The internal frame (a hard plastic back panel) makes heavy loads easy to carry, and the side zipper makes it easy to grab my camera without having to take the pack all the way off. Here’s what I had stuffed in it during a recent trip to our New York HQ.

Work Expensive stuff MacBook Pro 13-inch (Mid–2009) Like the majority of the Verge staff, I’ve moved on to a 13-inch MacBook Air, but the Pro has been a very dependable workhorse for me for the past two and a half years. Sometimes I miss the 8GB of RAM I used to have in this thing, but the Core i5 and SSD in the Air are so fast that I hardly ever notice the memory constraint.



iPad 2 (16GB WiFi) My new Air is so light that I don’t really bother composing on my iPad anymore, but I use it almost every day for reading on public transportation. iBooks only has the classics in Japan, but between Mr. Reader for RSS feeds, Kindle, Instapaper, iTunes U, and my New Yorker subscription, I consume a lot of media on it, and its big screen makes using dictionary apps and inputting kanji by hand really easy.















Nikon D90 and SB700 The D90’s low light performance isn’t the best, so I always throw this Speedlight in my bag whenever I grab my camera. I tuck the body in a toque (aka "beanie") to make sure I don’t bang it up too badly when I’m throwing my bag around, and while I do have a proper LowePro Nova 200 AW for my bigger lenses and backup body, keeping the camera in my backpack avoids announcing to everyone that I’ve got pricey photo gear on hand. The SB700 is really bright, and it's a lot of fun to play around with off-camera flash.



iPhone 4 32GB I know, I know — all Apple everything — but this phone is totally indispensable for me. Lots of people argue that competing platforms are catching up to iOS in terms of the number of apps available, but until there are equivalents to The Wisdom and Daijirin on them I’ll be re-upping with whatever new device Apple pumps out every year. I haven't kept it in a case since my Bumper bit the dust six months ago, and I’ve never dropped it (knock on wood).