I have just had occasion to move house. In the rain. Not fun and especially if you have a donkey back, absolutely not recommended. But that was not the worst aspect of it; not by a long shot.

If I have a pet hate word at the moment, it is “cable”. I had no idea I had so many cables! When all packed up (and this is only from my office/studio, not the house as a whole), they filled two of the large plastic containers you can buy on wheels from so called $2 shops, as well as a large Grace Bros Removals packing box. And it was right there and then I made my fatal mistake (well it didn’t kill me, but you get the idea ...)

I didn’t label either them, or the myriad of power supplies that I have for external drives, monitors, phones, modems, VOIP devices, keyboards, cameras and the rest of the plethora of gadgets I have. As a consequence, setting it all back up again has been a nightmare. But just when I thought I had it all together after crawling under desks, finding power boards, piggy backing double adaptors and the like, I find there is one, just one, power supply I cannot find. If it was for a mouse or some such thing, I wouldn’t be bothered, but it is for my 500MB external Firewire drive with all my current raw footage under construction on it!
Power supplies are like USB or Firewire cables I find.

In an emergency, you can never find the one you want, do you trot of down to the local Dick Smith or Tandy store (which can be difficult if like me and a few others in my craft you live in the country) and get a new one. I now have something like 5 Firewire cables to make my laptop to camera connection; the last cost me $40 in Tumut on a Sunday afternoon ....

To alleviate the problem for the future, I now have an aluminium case ($45 from Bunnings) with foam inserts ($25 from Clarke Rubber) to contain my major camera and a backup, plus power supplies, spare batteries, Cokin filters and adaptors, cleaning kit, spare tapes and lastly, a collection of every conceivable cable I’d ever need.

Of course, this does not immediately help me find the one missing power supply. Logically, as everything in and under my desk was packed first and in one box, it MUST be around somewhere, however I predict Disk Smith might see another visit from me soon.

That’s the problems with us creative types; no patience.