An array of small changes

Notably, a couple blog posts and a new page in
/uses

Oh, and the mysterious addition of a byline to the
blog.

3 files changed, 27 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Let me tell you about battery chargers.
+
+One of my favourite attributes in a piece of technology is when a wear component is easily replacable and standardized across manufacturers. To this end, I'm a huge fan of rechargable AA and AAA batteries.
+
+Now for the past few years, my standard appliance for charging these batteries was a basic Duracell charger that took four batteries, charged them in groups of two, and hung from the outlet like a phone charger. You know the type.
+
+This thing sucked ass. It was annoying to use for batteries that were used in odd-numbered groups, annoying to use in general because it could only be placed in spots with an AC receptacle, and it loved to cover more than one port on all sorts of power strip layouts if you tried to use it with one. More than once I looked into USB-powered chargers to try to replace it and got a bunch of lithium AA's with micro-USB ports on them. which is apparently a thing that exists.
+
+My solution for *storing* these batteries was a cute little dispenser that attached to a pegboard, which was nice until I moved and didn't set up that pegboard again for over a year, at which point my strategy became "they live in the moving box you put them in, when you use one put it away in a drawer and pray you remember which drawer it was".
+
+This, as I'm sure you can imagine, is a pretty terrible setup. Luckily for me, some genius at IKEA apparently had the same problem and fixed it for me.
+
+One day like a couple months ago, I was at IKEA buying a lamp or something and saw this AA/AAA battery charger for like $20, thought "that's neat", and impulse-bought it, like you do at IKEA, and it proceeded to transform my entire relationship with cylindrical rechargable batteries.
+
+Everything about this device is a massive upgrade compared to its predecessor, and it makes me very happy. It charges eight batteries, individually, so you can charge eight random batteries without having to know that their states of charge are the same. It's powered via an AC cable that doesn't get *close* to blocking any neighboring receptacles. Wonderfully, it has holes to mount it to a wall, and check this out:
+
+<figure class="media">
+  <img src="greatattentiontodetail.webp" alt="The back side of an IKEA LITOSFÄR battery charger. Of note is the two screw-mounting holes, and the written measurement between them indicating that the two holes are 70 millimeters or 2.75 inches apart on center.">
+  <figcaption>Oh my god, I just noticed it also lists what all the indicator lights mean on the back.</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+See that? It indicates how far apart the holes are so you don't have to measure them to drill accurately! I love this. What a nice little detail. And the stroke of genius that *might* be my favourite feature of this device is that it stores the batteries as well. It has slots for 8 AA's and 4 AAA's, which is fewer batteries than I have, but more than the amount I have that I'm not currently using.
+
+This thing solves all of my rechargable battery problems. It might be the best product IKEA has ever made. I think it may be the platonic ideal of the type of thing that it is. I think this deserves to be the iconic transgender IKEA product more than the shark does. They should be making *these* in limited-run trans flag colorways and donating one to a sexual health centre in Halifax.
+
+I don't know what my point is here beyond glazing a $20 battery charger from an enormous furniture company. I guess buy one if you use a lot of rechargable AA's. It's got my official seal of approval.
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+<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/blog/post.php');
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