Goodies At My Door

Telephoto lens coffee mug and emergency radio/charger.

Two goodies showed up at my front door, today.

The first item was a zoom lens travel coffee mug. It's a simple, yet neat looking, 12 oz mug that resembles a SLR zoom lens. As soon as I opened it and washed it out I took it for a spin at my local Starbucks with a Tall Caffè Americano where the cashier mentioned that she'd seen this mug on Pinterest. She liked it so much that, after asking me a few questions about it, she wrote down the name of the company where I bought it.

When I returned home from Starbucks a thank you gift for my donation to KPBS had arrived. It's called a Microlink FR160, but I'm not sure what category it really falls into other than emergency preparedness. At first glance, it looks like an AM/FM radio that can also tune in the weather band (NOAA) along with a built in LED flashlight. But when you look at it closer, you can see that it has built in solar panels and a hand crank to charge its internal batteries.

Even better is the fact that the hand crank can be used to charge your cell phone or other USB devices (in theory). I tried it with my iPhone 5 and a warning kept popping up, "Charging is not supported with this accessory."

I'm guessing that the power it puts out is too dirty for delicate solid-state devices. I'll try one of these as a buffer and report back.