Digital Diner

I’m quite fond of my Kindle. Sure, the design’s a little bonkers; and it’s a wee bit awkward. That aside, it is easy to read, easy to use, and mine happens to be loaded with books I want to read.

Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when I’m travelling. As a result, I tend to carry lots of lots of books along for the ride. For unfathomable reasons, one book is not enough. I must have at least two or three, sometimes more. Consequently, I end up schlepping somewhere around three-point-two million pounds of books to the far corners of the world.

It’s a proven fact that books get heavier the longer they remain in your luggage. It’s something to do with gravity, airplanes, hotel food, relativity, dirty socks, quantum mechanics, and the amount of missing dark matter in the universe. Perhaps, too, the TSA is involved. I can’t quite explain it.

Nevertheless, somehow — depending on the number of books you’re carrying and the length of your trip — they get heavier. It’s one of the true mysteries of the universe, right in my briefcase.

For me, the Kindle has solved this problem. I’ve cut my beastly book burdens down to one pound. I do still, however, manage to clutter up my briefcase with lots of other stuff, but the book weight has definitely diminished. Sadly though, the addition of my Kindle contributed to what I call “the YAB epidemic” (Yet Another Brick). The Kindle added one more power brick to my ever-expanding multiplicity of power bricks; another brick for the wall.

Obviously, the Kindle’s designers were suffering from some form of contagious group insanity when they decided on an almost proprietary charging system. I had just one thing to say to them: “What are you nuts?” (I’ve yet to get their response.)

Just to rub it in, though, those same nutty designers added a mini-USB jack right next to the power connection. I simply fail to understand their thinking. There’s a USB connection right there! USB equals voltage, five volts to be exact. I think they were smoking something and all “ooh, my hand is so huge” and spaced it. There is no other explanation.

Now, supposedly you can use the USB to “trickle charge.” So say the docs. Reality says different.

I haven’t been able to get it to do squat — and I’ve tried with great diligence, several times. And, I mean great diligence. It’s been a diligence driven by the discovery, upon arrival in some faraway place like Sterkfontein, Ashtabula, or even SoHo, that I have once again forgotten to bring the damn charger.

Trust me when I say that I get very diligent when presented with a choice of: A) staring at the walls of my hotel room for a couple of hours, or B) watching late night TV in Afrikaans.

After tiring of the Afrikaans’s late night soaps, and after pummeling a few unlucky people with one or two thousand-word email messages on esoteric subject like telegrams or time travel, I decided to figure out how to fix the Kindle; how to cure my YAB problem and avoid this sort of late night tomfoolery. A few minutes with Google and I had my answer. I’m sure the people that got my meandering missives are all the happier for it too.

It turns out to be easy. The secret is USB. The Kindle wants 5 volts (DC); a USB cable delivers 5 volts (DC). Problem solved. I just need to trick the Kindle into actually charging from a USB cable. After a little research into USB pin-outs — what wires carry what in a USB cable — I was ready to go.

The solution: a cable with a USB Series “A” plug on one end and a “Type-A” power tip on the other end. The trick is to plug the USB’s power into the Kindle’s power socket. I added the solution to my list of stuff to do when next near a soldering pen with a few hours to kill.

The tough part, it turns out, was finding a “Type-A” power tip. Radio Shack had the right stuff, a modular plug and matching cable, but I didn’t like the idea of the plug being detachable. I’d lose that, and end up in the same boat, up a creek without a cable.

We are gathered here today to join these two cables together…

Remembering my father’s advice of “when all else fails, do the obvious,” I took the easy road, bought a replacement Kindle power adaptor direct from Amazon($15.00), and just cut the brick off. (I figured if it didn’t work, I’d just glue everything back together and award myself the consolation prize of a spare power brick — YAB!)

The severed cable gave me the connection to the Kindle — a nice Type-A power tip with wire attached. It turns out the USB side of the equation was equally easy. I just cut the end off of one of the ubiquitous USB cables I have laying around my office. With wires in hand, I proceeded to get down and get funky with rosin core solder and Heat-Shrink tubing.

Might I just break in briefly here to talk about “Heat-Shrink” tubing? It’s second only to duct tape in my panoply of necessary things. Like duct tape, it can solve problems, save the world, and be great fun at parties. Heat-Shrink can save your project or — in my case — make a mediocre soldering job look nice and neat and professional. Everybody should have some around the house.

My cabling ménage à trios:

One “type-A” power tip, Heat-Shrink tubing, and the flat end of a USB cable

The assembly was easy. (The hard part here is remembering to slide the Heat-Shrink tubing onto the wires before you solder them — I got it on the second go-round.)

Knowing what wires go where is also easy. On the USB side, Pins 1 and 4 are the power and ground, respectively. Typically, once you neatly strip off the outer insulation, they’re the red and black wires. Pins 2 and 3 are data (green and white). I just cut them off. Don’t want them, don’t need them.

(Note: I said typically. Who knows what kind of fly-by-night cables you’ve got. You’re on your own. Trust but verify. I ain’t responsible for frying your Kindle, singeing your fingers, or burning down your house.)

Then, you dig out your soldering pen, some rosin core solder, and connect up the following:

• Solder the Red USB lead to the center lead of the power cable.
• Solder the Black USB lead to the braided ground of the power cable.
• Admire your work.
• Realize you forgot to slide on the Heat-Shrink tubes and start again.
• Cut all the wires and slide on all the tubing you think you’ll need.
• Strip the wires again, and solder them neatly for a second time (see above).
• Slide the Heat-Shrink tube up to cover your not-quite-perfect solder job.
• Heat the Heat-Shrink tubing, watch it shrink like magic, and then admire your work.
• Say “argh, ain’t that right purty” like a pirate.

The happy cable couple

The final proof is always in the pudding. So, watching for stray sparks, I plugged one end of my new “hybrid” cable into the Kindle, and the other into my laptop, and was greeted with the warm glow of the “charging light.” Heat Shrink — gotta love it. It even looked and felt relatively neat and sturdy.

Confident in my craftsmanship, I’ve made a special place for the cable in my briefcase, right next to my various passports and my treasured collection of unreturned Kimpton Hotel keycards. It’ll be there, ready, waiting for the next time the Kindle’s batteries are about to die. No longer will I be faced with the vexing choice of either staring at the hotel room’s ceiling for a few hours or watching Hannity and Colmes. The ceiling usually won anyway.