I got this at the till while buy­ing socks in San Ma­teo for 5 dol­lars.

What is it?

A small prism with a male fold­able USB sock­et on one end, a fe­male USB sock­et, a bat­tery in the mid­dle, a tiny but­ton and tiny led.

How does it work?

When you are plug­ging stuff to charge via US­B, you plug this in the mid­dle, so com­put­er -> back­up bat­tery -> gad­get. That charges the gad­get and the back­up bat­tery. Then you throw it in your pock­et/bag when you leave home.

What does it do?

It lets you recharge rough­ly half a phone's full charge, when you in­evitably run out of bat­tery, so un­less you for­get to charge both things, you'll man­age to sur­vive.

What could be better?

It could come with a mi­cro-usb male in­stead of a USB fe­male, be­cause that means you al­so have to car­ry a ca­ble (no big deal)

What does the button do?

It stop­s/s­tarts the cur­rent flow in­to the gad­get.

What does the LED do?

Tells you if cur­rent is flow­ing (green) or if it's charg­ing (red).

Can you charge anything?

Yes, but 750mAh is enough to keep a Nexus 7 work­ing for about 30 sec­onds ;-) Does a de­cent job on a Kin­dle though!

Are you going to lose it?

Oh yes, the thing is tiny.

Not a bad 5 dol­lar gad­get. How­ev­er, you can find it in Ama­zon for $30 at some places, and that's rob­bery.

I have had a Kin­dle Pa­per­white (with ad­s) for a month. I was a big fan of my pre­vi­ous kindles, spe­cial­ly the 4th-­gen non-­touch one. I pre­ferred it to the Kin­dle Touch be­cause it was lighter, the bezel was shal­low­er, and it had ded­i­cat­ed page-flip­ping but­ton­s.

So, why did I get a Pa­per­white in­stead of the cheap­er 4th gen af­ter I sold my Touch? Be­cause of the dark­ness.

Read­ing is an en­joy­able ac­tiv­i­ty, and I read al­most any­where, in the su­per­mar­ket queue, while hav­ing break­fast, while on the train, and in bed. But in bed, the old­er Kin­dles re­quired me to turn on the light, like a cave­man.

Of course, I could read in my cell­phone (s­mal­l) or in a tablet (heav­ier!) or in a book (a­gain, light­s, cave­man!) So, this was the log­i­cal choice.

It still does­n't have the but­ton­s, and it still has a touch­screen which makes lit­tle sense in a Kin­dle (ex­cept for the key­board) and the bezel is in­ter­me­di­ate. But the light­ing is glo­ri­ous. Sure, it's un­even at the bot­tom. So is the light­ing in a pa­per book while in bed (check it out­). But it's not all that heavy (even with the fan­cy cov­er), and it has a sim­i­lar­ly glo­ri­ous bat­tey life.

The cov­er is re­al­ly great. It feels like leather/rub­ber, it's solid, has a dead­grip on the de­vice, and it turns on/off when you flip it open/­closed, so you don't have to hunt for the tiny but­ton at the bot­tom.

The font se­lec­tion is a wel­come im­prove­men­t, al­though none com­pares well to the de­fault.

Al­so, WTF hap­pened to the au­dio? Why is it gone?

So my ide­al Kin­dle that will nev­er ex­ist would be: a 4th gen with front­light and smart cov­er. A man can al­ways dream.

I am thrilled to an­nounce that you can now down­load Niko­la 5.2. a new ver­sion of my stat­ic blog/site gen­er­a­tor.

What's new in this ver­sion? A LOT. Don't let the mi­nor ver­sion tick fool you, this ver­sion is packed with good­ness. Let's start with fea­tures:

You can eas­i­ly em­bed more con­tent:

• New vimeo di­rec­­tive for re­struc­­tured tex­t.

• Cus­­tom "gist" di­rec­­tive pro­vid­ing re­Struc­­tured text sup­­port for GitHub gist­s.

You can write your con­tent in al­most any markup:

• Tex­tile markup sup­­port.

• Cre­ole Wi­­ki markup sup­­port.

• tx­t2­­tags markup sup­­port.

• bb­­code markup sup­­port.

• And of course, it still sup­­ports re­Struc­­tured tex­t, Mark­­down and HT­M­L.

More lan­guages:

• New Catalá tran­s­la­­tion

• New pol­ish tran­s­la­­tion.

• New Sim­­pli­­fied Chi­­nese tran­s­la­­tion.

• Use mul­ti­lin­gual Dis­­qus (although it does­n't seem to work)

You can im­port your data:

• New Blog­ger/Blogspot im­­porter

• Much im­proved Word­­press im­­porter

• Ex­­tract meta­­da­­ta from file­­name by us­ing reg­­exp (help­­ful for im­­port­ing from oc­­to­­press or oth­­er sys­tem­s).

You can do fanci­er and more con­fig­urable sites:

• One-­­page, dy­­nam­ic-load­­ing, clien­t-ren­dered site plug­in (task_­­mus­­tache)

• Re­cur­­sive post/s­­to­ry fold­ers

• New COM­­MENTS_IN_­­GAL­­LERIES and COM­­MENTS_IN_S­­TO­RIES op­­tion­s.

• Lo­­cal search based on Tipue (ex­­tra_­­plu­g­in­s/­­task_lo­­calsearch)

• Added com­­ments to im­age gal­­leries

• New op­­tion RSS_TEASERS

• New STO­RY_IN­DEX op­­tion to gen­er­ate in­­dex.html in sto­ry fold­er­s.

• Add mul­ti size fav­i­­con sup­­port.

You can use Python 2.6 or high­er ... in­clud­ing Python 3. The on­ly miss­ing bit for full Python 3 sup­port is Google sitemap gen­er­a­tion.

And of course, a lot of bugs got smashed:

• Added sane de­­faults for most op­­tion­s, so you can have a lean con­­fig file.

• Made lay­out of the site theme re­spon­­sive, with col­lap­s­ing navbar.

• Use time­­line in­­stead of pars­ing post_­­pages in gen­er­ic_­­page_ren­der­er and task_ren­der_­­pages.

• Up­­­dat­ed dis­­qus in­­te­­gra­­tion code, added iden­ti­­fiers so it works on any URL.

• Make sure fold­er links end in "/" in the gallery code.

• Re­­moved copy of PyRSS2­­Gen, made it a de­pen­­den­­cy.

• De­­tect "names­­pace" de­pen­­den­­cies for Mako tem­­plates.

• Use con­­sis­­tent en­­cod­ings in RSS feed­s.

• Refac­­tored dis­­qus code in­­­to sep­a­rate helpers

• Use the cor­rect ex­ten­­sion (or raise an er­ror) on new_­­post

• Fix ti­­tles that in­­­clude quotes

• Up­­­dat­ed to cur­rent CSS from do­cu­tils (was us­ing ver­­sion from 2005)

• Avoid need­­less re­­gen­er­a­­tion of gallery in­­dex­es.

• Al­ways en­­sure the fold­er for the new post ex­ist­s.

• Get ti­­tle from file­­name if not avail­able in meta­­da­­ta.

• Don't copy sources if they end in ".ht­m­l"

• Don't link to un­ex­ist­ing tran­s­la­­tion­s.

• Sort tags case in­­sen­si­­tive.

En­joy!