Yesterday evening, Felix, Rae and I went to the San Jose Tech Museum to see the Star Trek: The Exhibition exhibit. We went as part of a private event, which meant the usual prohibition against photography and videography was lifted. I hope that also means that I can post these photos up on my web site too!

Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Star Trek fan (Star Wars too, I’m an equal opportunity sci-fi fan). I’ve been to other Star Trek exhibits in the past, but this one was clearly the best. For instance, they had recreated several sets from TOS and TNG, including the bridge of the original Enterprise! It’s too bad that I didn’t have any Star Trek uniforms in my closet, or else we really could have had a blast role-playing throughout the exhibit. Another set that was recreated was the Guardian of Forever from the classic TOS episode: City on the Edge of Forever. I just had to jump through the Guardian just as Kirk, Spock and McCoy did in the episode! A TNG-era hallway and transporter room rounded out the rest of the large-scale set recreations. Having gone through the process of building a set in our garage for Autumn Gem, I could appreciate the work that went into building these pieces for the exhibit.

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Over on our Autumn Gem blog, I posted a recap and analysis of our packing strategy for our 25-day, 17-stop tour of the documentary. We’ve gotten packing light down to a near science, but there’s always room for improvement. Ideally, we’d like to go from three pieces of luggage to just one. Identifying what worked and what didn’t will help us reach that goal in the future! In an ideal world, I’d love to travel for months at a time with just a backpack. Computing and camera decisions always factor into the ability to do this, however. Carrying around a full-sized, 15-inch laptop (two of them on the tour!) and a digital SLR makes this nearly impossible.

When Rae and I traveled to France and Spain, I made what was at the time a painful decision to leave the computer and camera behind, taking only a small Canon PowerShot with me. In hindsight, it was a great choice, as the reduced bulk made moving from place to place much easier. Despite wheels and handle, rolling suitcases really do a number over time. At the time we went to Europe, the iPhone and iPod touch didn’t exist, but these devices today can replace a laptop for email and basic browsing tasks. Finally, a newer cameras like the PowerShot G11 or S90 offers the manual controls and RAW image support that I’ve come to rely upon in my DSLR.

The other benefit of packing less is that you have less to worry about losing. It was pretty easy to make sure that we had everything we needed before traveling to the next tour location; there wasn’t much to begin with!

Read the rest of the article on the Autumn Gem web site for more about our packing strategy during the tour.