Monthly Archives: November 2005

NiMH Rechargable Batteries and Charger Review

Hardware, Reviews

I’ve been using NiMH batteries for quite a few years now. Ever since my first-ever digital camera came with a free AA charger and four free rechargable NiMH batteries. I’m still using that charger, and it’s been almost 10 years.

I have a few complaints about my existing charger. It won’t charge AAA batteries, and it doesn’t have a discharge feature. Without that, it can be difficult to avoid shortening battery life due to the memory effect which even NiMH batteries are susceptible to. Also, it charges batteries in pairs, which can result in various charging problems when dealing with batteries of uneven charge or uneven storage characteristics.

Also, many of my batteries were old.

So, I set out to find a better charger, and to find the best current NiMH batteries.

The Charger

A little Googling revealed a very useful page at Steve’s Digicams. They suggested the Lacrosse BC-900 Advanced Charger. I ordered this unit from Thomas Distributing and must say it is a very slick unit. It has four main modes: charge, which does a simple charge-until-full; discharge, which will discharge then charge a battery; refresh, which discharges then charges the battery repeatedly until no increase in capacity is measured; and test, which checks the condition of the battery.

The charging and discharging current is fully configurable. I opt for a gentle, slow 200 mA charging current. But others can increase it to many times that. The BC-900 has a built-in temperature cutoff circuit, so it will pause charging if your batteries are about to overheat.

The BC-900 can charge up to 4 AA or AAA batteries simultaneously. Each battery is charged individually, and each battery can have its own mode and charging/discharging current set.

The unit comes with some starter NiMH AA and AAA batteries, plus a carrying case for batteries and the charger. Thomas Distributing also added four more free AA NiMH batteries (nice).

Batteries

I found the Great Battery Shootout site to help with choosing batteries. I eventually chose Maha Powerex batteries and have been happy with them as well. They come in various different capacities (including some larger than are listed on the shootout page) and Thomas Distributing had good prices.

Hope this helps if you’re planning on using rechargable batteries.

What’s The Deal with Amtrak

General

First off, Dan Zukowski has some very informative articles about Amtrak. It’s particularly funny listening to Mineta say that the Bush administration wants to support Amtrak. After they proposed $0 for it in their most recent budget proposal, saying that bankrupting Amtrak would be a good thing. Hmm. Doublespeek seems to be in vogue these days.

I’ve watched about half of this week’s 4-hour hearing about Amtrak governance. One very interesting thing about it is that the Amtrak board, which fired David Gunn, may not have had a quorom for months, or even years, including the meeting where they fired Gunn.

Secretary of Transportation Mineta, who holds a seat on the Amtrak Board, appears to have never actually attended an Amtrak Board meeting.

I wonder what will come out next about all this…

Detained

General

Why is it that the media always uses “detained” instead of “arrested”, “jailed”, “tortured”, etc? Jordan isn’t delaying terrorists from reaching their destination… they’re putting them in jail. Let’s call it what it is.

Scanning Slides & 35mm Negatives

General

It’s recently become apparent that I need to scan a bunch of slides and 35mm negatives into digital form. My church has a bunch of very nice slides from the 60s, my parents and grandparents have quite a few as well, and I have a bunch of 35mm negatives that I’d like to get digital.

It’s also quite obvious that flatbed scanners aren’t going to do the trick for me.

Scanners that start to approach the quality I’m after seem to start at about $1000. Does anybody know of a good scanning service? Or have some other ideas? Ideally, I’d like to scan hundreds of photos, but the $1000 is a bit tough.

I found this service, which looks decent.

He was doing a heck of a job at Amtrak, so he was fired

Politics

That’s the title of an editorial in the Austin-American Statesman, which begins:

David Gunn, a noted railroad-turnaround specialist who was making solid progress in putting Amtrak, the national rail-passenger system, on the road to financial stability, was unceremoniously fired last week.

Astonishingly enough, Gunn was canned not for doing a bad job, but for doing a good one. Apparently he thought his assignment was to make a success of Amtrak, while the Bush administration seeks Amtrak’s collapse.

And this is my last post on this topic.

Stop the credit card solicitations

General

If you’re like me, you get credit card solicitations in the mail almost every day. I really don’t care to have a card other than the one I have. Most of these solicitations arrive because credit bureaus sell lists of customers with specific credit attributes.

I’ve known for awhile that you can call 888-5-OPT-OUT to get the credit bureaus to stop sending you these things. But it’s annoying.

There’s a new feature now: you can go to their website at www.optoutprescreen.com and opt out there. Well, maybe it’s not new, but it’s new to me anyway.

New console gaming system

Entertainment / Arts

Thanks to everyone that responded to my earlier post looking for suggestions for a video game console.

I wound up choosing a Playstation 2, and the game that tipped the balance was Ico. I’ve only spent a few minutes with it, but it looks great. I especially like that it has no on-screen status displays, messages, etc. whatsoever. A refreshing change.

I am a little disappointed with the lack of 16:9 games available on any console.

Also picked up a nice Logitech wireless controller from the local GameStop. Very nice little unit.