I had yet another brilliant brainwave the other day: to put a hardback book’s dust sheet over my mini netbook to make it look like a book so that when banditos jump on a nightbus in South America I can have my laptop on my lap and they’ll totally think it’s just a book. After some Googling however I found that someone else has already thought of this and created an expensive laptop book disguise that you can buy.

Kind of unnecessary though to spend $80 when you can just use the dust sheet from one of the books on your shelf at home and just wrap it round.

Now I’m trying to come up with ways of disguising all my stuff while I’m away. Here are my ideas so far…

Digital camera
Depending on the size of the camera you could keep it inside a box of plasters or something. When you’re out and about taking pictures I reckon it’s a good idea to cover it in duct tape and paint it so it looks really old and crappy, like this guy did.

Wallet
I plan on taking two wallets with me – one real and one fake. The fake one will have a couple of expired credit cards, some receipts and a bit of cash so if someone with a knife demands I hand over my wallet, this is what I’ll give them.

iPod
Again I reckon you could slip it inside something innocent-looking like an empty box of aspirin or something, and do the duct tape thing again. There’s no hiding those white earphones though, so the best thing to do could be putting the ipod in a hidden pocket so it’s not easy for pickpockets to find it. Or only use it in private.

I know, I sound like I’m expecting to get robbed every day, but I’ve heard too many horror stories to take any risks. And having had three bikes stolen in the past five years I know how badly it can ruin your day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally paranoid, and to be honest it’s kind of fun thinking of ways to disguise stuff.