I have a pair of earphones for my iPod that are good at blocking out background noise (they have little rubber in-ear things), but this is useless at times because of the noise generated by wind rushing past the cables.  For example, when skiing, as soon as I get up to any speed, any music I am listening to is drowned out by the whistling of the wind.

I think there should be a simple solution to put a sleeve around the cable (some sort of stretchy fabric tube I'm thinking), to reduce the volume of the wind disruption, by sheltering the actual cable from the wind.  However, I can't find anything on the internet that looks like it would do the job.

Has anyone got any suggestions of how I might solve this problem, or what I could use as a sleeve for the cable?  It doesn't seem like it would need a very complex solution, but there don't seem to be any out there...

Look for a shoelace that has a hollow centre.

Pass the cable around the top of your ear instead of straight down, your ear will act as damping on the wire and reduce the noise.

This idea may sound a bit strange at first, but if it's an issue with skiing and your iPod is one of the smaller models, you could probably stuff it under your cap.  It seems like this would work fine with the typical knit ski caps and Nano or Shuffle -- the devices are small and light enough you should hardly notice they are there and the cables would not be exposed at all if your cap covers your ears.  You could even sew on some inside pocket to make it more secure.

hmm, mine's an 80GB classic, so that might work less well...
interesting idea though

the problem with a hollow shoelace is that it would be difficult to get the earbud on the end of the cable through, unless it was a really stretchy shoelace...

thanks for all your replies, I'm sure there must be a solution to this.

I'd just run the cable under my hat, through the back of my shirt, and out the bottom, with the iPod in my pocket.

I must advise you to keep in mind that in-ear headphones that block out noise may not be what you want when you're skiing or such, if they stop you from being able to hear what's going on around you. You want to be able to hear that "GETOUTTAMYWAY!!!"