I'm reviving this blog for the holiday! I foresee that I'll be extremely bored with the time on my hands and I want to splurge some of my free time writing about random stuff that comes to my mind while sipping a cup of extra gao vietnamese coffee.
During this holiday, there are several things I want to do. While revising my old entries, it seemed that I have some stuff left undone since my last entry. But oh well, a new holiday comes new to-do lists. This time, more down-to-earth and easier to complete. Hopefully, this means that I'll be able to tick them off during this 3-month break.
a) Change the layout of this blog. The original layout was done by Lynnette during my secondary school days. Really long time ago. The coding does not support higher resolution screens of today and it is very messy considering that it has so many entries since my secondary school days. This calls for some organisation!
b) Clean my room! This sounds mundane but it is actually very difficult. The amount of intellectual debris from the aftermath of my exams is quite a lot. Hahaha.
c) Build a portable handphone charger! What is it, you ask? It is a little gadget that enables charging of handphone batteries with another set of batteries. Useful when my phone runs out of battery while I'm out and about. What I've found was that many of these portable handphone chargers sold commercially are either rubbish or really expensive. An example of an expensive rubbish will be this:
After reading several reviews, it seems that general conclusion is as such:
Very limited working voltage range
this charger can only operate effectively on lithium batteries, which are the most expensive disposable batteries available (~sgd$10 per pair). It cannot even effectively utilize alkaline batteries of the same brand. That also means that rechargeable batteries, which usually come at a lower voltage, will not work with this at all.
To be fair, many reviewers did say that it does work as long as it has a pair of expensive lithium batteries powering it. To me, the prohibitive price of these batteries will make me think twice of charging their phone with this and I may even decide not to use it in a non-urgent situation. I don't think its a good product design if the product ends up discouraging people from using it.
So yes, I want to make one with the goals in mind:
- Not so expensive (less than $25)
- Works effectively with a wide variety of batteries
- Safe and compatible with charging standards.
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