TechOnABudget: Tech Geeks on a Budget Lifestyle

If you live around or visit one my favorite places in the world, San Francisco, head across the Golden Gate Bridge to visit one of the best deals any geeky family can find: The…

U.S Army Corp. of Engineers Bay Model Visitor Center

…where you will find plenty of free parking, no admission (that I recall), and a physical 3-D structural model of the San Francisco bay and surrounding areas (with water in the model) covering 1.5 acres (yes, ACRES).

Actual research using the model stopped in 2000. But, it remains open as an educational tool. I took my daughter there in 2003. She had a great time wandering around the model before we headed to Sausalito for lunch.

If you were a little kid in 1969, something pretty incredible happened on the last panel of the last page of the comic book Avengers #69 (Oct. 1969 publication date which means it probably hit the newsstand around August or September): A team that looked a lot like DC’s Justice League of America appeared to face of against Marvel’s Avengers. Nighthawk (above) was Marvel’s copyright-free clone of DC’s Batman.

Dr. Spectrum was the Green Lantern clone, Hyperion was the Superman clone, and Whizzer was a Flash clone. This is as close to a true Avengers/JLA meetup that we would see for a long time. The actual JLA/Avengers - Avengers/JLA mini-series would have to wait for 2003-2004 publication dates.

The Squadron Sinister, as this bad-guy JLA clone team was called, hit the covers of the next issue (#70). They proved so popular that a good-guy alternate universe version of the team called the Squadron Supreme was later created and allowed for stories that were essentially a darker version of the then relatively bright DC universe stories.

I happen to think that having a mix of standard battery operated flashlights and crank-charge flashlights is a good idea. So, I have a small collection of crank-charge flashlights scattered around the home “just in case”. I bought a 2-pack of this Duracell Crank Light 3 in 1, 3 LED Flashlight, Radio, Charger from Costco for around $25 (if I recall correctly). The phone includes a flashlight, flasher, AM/FM radio. The feature that intrigued me the most, however, was its purported ability to charge other devices from its USB port (see photo below).

When the switch is set to USB out, it is supposed to crank out (literally) 5 to 6 VDC at 450 mA (not much but potentially useful to provide a minute or two of voice in an emergency). In practice, however, I was unable to find any of my phones that showed as being in charge mode when connected to the flashlight and cranking the handle for a couple a minute or two.

While the flashlight has a pretty big rechargeable battery, it does not seem to retain a charge as long as other crank flashlights I’ve tried. And, unlike other lights, it does not immediately produce light when being cranked when the battery is completely drained. Its odd shape and weight distribution also makes it more difficult to crank than other crank charged lights I have. Finally, note that it has a Type A USB port on its side. This seems ok until you look at your collection of USB cables. How many Type A to Type A USB cables do you have? I have zero in my collection. I have a bunch of Type A to Type B and Type A to mini-USB or micro-USB. I have have a Type A to Type A-extender cable. But, I have zero Type A to Type A USB cables to charge the flashlight from my PC. And, yep, the flashlight does NOT include a cable in its package.

So, good idea, poor implementation. Even worse, the Duracell web site has NO information at all about this or any other multi-function flashlight products.

Batman The Dark Knight opens this weekend. So, I dug up some old Batman comic books and have some Bat-themed blog posts over the next couple of days.

So, let’s start off with a little mystery. Back in February 1995 (in comic book publishing time anyway, this was more likely December 1994 in people time), three different comics had near identical covers: Detective Comics #682(where the first Batman story appeared way back in 1939 in issue #27), Robin #14, and Shadow of the Bat #35. I’ll skim through these issues over the next day or two to try to figure out why they did that. If you know the answer, let me know.

The Hershey’s Kiss with Macadamia appears to only be available in Hawaii. I bought a bag (photo below) from a Costco there. However, if you are in Hawaii, $9.95 for a 30 oz. bag is a pretty tasty deal.

I bought the…

iFrogz Vibez

…mini-speaker from iFrogz during their after-Christmas sale and received it, hmm, late January or early February. It’s list price is US$24.95, but I bought it for $14.95 during the sale period. This mono single speaker is not going to challenge your whiz bang high speaker system for sound quality. But, it gave me exactly what I wanted: A super-small speaker that I could use with my iPod or Zune to plop down and listen to podcasts while I puttered around the house (I hate wearing headphones and ear-buds).

The USB connector is used to charge the speaker. I use it a couple of times a week and recharge it every 4 to 8 weeks. The mini-plug plugs right into any MP3 player like an iPod or Zune. There’s a three position power-volume switch (off, speaker on, speaker on a bit louder) and a green power light. The accordian looking middle can actually collapse to make it even smaller for transport. The speaker cable has an easy to use auto-extender/retractor that has worked well so far. I’m definitely glad I purchased this little speaker and have gotten a good half-year of use from it so far.

Like a lot of geeks, I used to have a dedicated Linux box running 24×7 as a home server. In the days of relatively cheap electricity and very expensive online storage years ago, this seemed like a good idea. Today, however, electricity is expensive, online storage (like Amazon S3 or Carbonite) is cheap, and broadband access can be had by either wired or wireless services. Is the idea of an always-on home server (like the Microsoft Windows Home Server) or consumer NAS (network attached server) boxes now a bad idea from an electricity cost point of view?

I have a couple of active (powered fans) notebook cooling pads. But, they all require wall power. So, I bought the Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad when I saw it for $19.95 at the local Costco ($23.48 at Amazon). It does a good job of cooling my usually hot Apple MacBook. However, there I have a couple of issues with this product.

Unlike my other pads, this one is curved. I’m holding it upside down here. You can see its feet pointing up. The notebook sits on the concave area with air being blown up to the notebook and then out sidewards through the tunnel formed by the notebook sitting on the pad.

The photo above is the bottom of the pad. The top compartment is actually the pad’s stand. It is pretty flimsy and I’m pretty sure it will not last more than a year or two. This also means that it is not really designed to be used on the lap since the fan is at the bottom of the curved surface. Without the stand, I’m not sure how much air it can draw when sitting on a lap (vs. a desktop). The compartment on the bottom is where the USB power cable can be stored. However, it is so flimsy that I am relunctant to open and close it often. So, I usually carry the cable separate and hope I don’t lose it.

One of my big concerns about this product is the USB power cable. As you can see in the photo above, it has a standard Type A connector for the notebook. But, the pad’s connector is a tip-ring type power plug instead of a USB Type B or mini-USB connector. This means that the power cable is unique and you are SOL if you lose it. You can see that my daughter’s pet rabbit has some reservations about the cable connector design choice too

Despite my complains here, the Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad does do a good job of keeping my MacBook running cool in the summer heat and think my $20 was reasonably well spent.

My daughter and I dropped by a local community college hosting the Smithsonian sponsored tour…

Key Ingredients: America By Food

…that provides a history of food in the U.S. It takes about 30 to 60 minutes to go through the exhibits. There’s also a presentation each Sunday afternoon at the local exhibit. Check out the main web site linked above for information about an exhibit near your area.

There aren’t very many advantages to getting older. But, there are a few. One possible advantage for those of us who maintained our childhood collections of stuff in reasonably good shape is that we can enjoy that stuff decades later. Back in the old days, comics were 12 cents (and 10 cents before that!) This The Avengers #40 is from May 10, 1967 and is among the good cheap fun things I’ll be retro-reviewing here on an ongoing basis. A near-mint copy of this one goes for around $180 according to the Comics Price Guide. But, you can find it pretty good shape like this for quite a bit less I suspect. And, of course, if it is in your collection, well you already paid your 12 cents way back when