Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Front page story

Since last summer, back when we first started the fundraising efforts for Frank’s transplant expenses, a young journalism student who works for the Lockport Star, has followed Frank’s journey. Rachel Fuerschbach has been working on this story all that time and has interviewed many of the people in Frank’s life to get their take on it all. Earlier stories were great human interest and helped us with the fundraising efforts, but this is the whole story that she wanted to tell.
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USB Charged bike light

I’ve got to get this off of my chest. USB is not a very good charging scheme.

Yeah, it might be okay for your phone, and there are reasons they use it there, but still, not really good.

But, more and more bicycle accessories are using a USB source to charge them. Lights and computer/GPS accessories alike are now using this method to charge internal rechargeable batteries.

Here’s why I don’t like it.

1. Most USB connectors are not waterproof. The Knog light, shown here. claims theirs are, but for most of the accessories out there, you are lucky if they have a little rubber (soft plastic, nothing is rubber anymore, except your tires) plug that you need to pop in and out to use the connection. It’s invariably in the way and on a little flap that keeps pushing it back in the way when you try to plug in the charging cable. Continue Reading…