What if you had one charger to rule them all?

This is the state of electronics today. Each of your products may come with an excellent AC adapter which gives you unlimited power so long as you are by a wall outlet. But that’s exactly the problem–each and every one of your products has its own charger with its own tip that follows a different voltage and current. That’s a lot to carry around.

When you step away from that wall, you’re out of power for products that don’t have their own battery. And you still have to carry around that power brick that is now just a brick weighing you down. Imagine an AC adapter that didn’t just charge your product, but also kept a capacity of its own so you can stay powered later.

You have many alternatives to the cluster. The finest I’ve found so far is XPAL’s XP18000 external battery (rebranded by Energizer). Think of this as an universal AC adapter, power strip, and mobile wall outlet all in one. It can charge up to 3 devices at once, serving like a power strip: one via USB, 9-12V, and 16-20V. With the largest library of tips, the XP18000 can charge anything; I’ve gotten it to operate my microUSB phone, a Netgear WiDi box (kind of like a router), a 23″ LED monitor, an HP mobile printer, and of course my laptop (which is really a high-powered tablet).

“But if I get one, that’s one more thing to carry around!”

Not exactly. While it is true that the external battery itself uses an AC adapter to charge itself, you don’t need to carry it around so long as you’ve already charged it at home. Your phone or laptop already have batteries of their own, so this battery serves to extend that life until you get home  in both the long and short term.

The XP18000 is advertised to give you another 6 hours on a laptop, but will definitely revitalize your cell phone many times over. With new ARM processors and Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge, you can expect their lower voltages to result in better battery life to get you through the 24hour constant of a day. Unfortunately, smart phones are a little too smart and laptops are still not at a point where their resources will carry you through the whole day, but this external battery might take you there.

I was not subsidized by anyone to post this. After cleaning up my whole room, I collected all loose cords and was just in shock that I had to share this!

Now, as you’ll find below, you will see the ripened results of those new styles in play:

Steve and ATM

Tiffany

Baby Zoe

Baby Nikki and Nina

Victor & Stephanie

It’s important to remind myself why I’m doing this Project 365 today. Everyone has their own reasons and motivations to undergo an experience like this, be it improving their technique, vision, or endurance. None of those were on my list of things to do so instead, I sought to share this craft with others–to get others excited about what’s possible using the power of light… lightly.

To that end, I’ve taken many people on many different adventures from rooftops to the mountaintops, even meet and greets in the streets. The world is a big place, but we can see it all little by little if we each share with each other the vision we see. Photography has been accessible for the past decade as film advanced, and is now even more accessible and easily shared across the web. But for this project, I not only wanted to share my photos, but also my company. For everything out there that I cannot see, I want someone else to see it for me. And for everything that I do see, I want others to see it with me.

It’s been a success so far and I hope this trend continues =)

This photo of Buddy looking forward concludes Pets Week, but that doesn’t mean you wont see these two pups in more pics

See the resemblance?

Buddy and Sarah clean up after each other

And Time is what I had in excess last Saturday, which I spent well at Joshua Tree National Park. Together with my photographer buddy Don, we conquered a 3mile hike up and down Ryan Mountain. Once we arrived at the top, it was only appropriate to whistle the Final Fantasy Fanfare in triumph.

Afterwards, we returned to multiple viewpoints we had scouted out earlier in the day. This included obscure hideouts by Baker Dam and even the side of the road by Quail Springs. The photo below was actually intended to be a silhouette of a Joshua Tree, though thanks to the generous headlights of a car driving by, it was just enough for me to categorize this entry as ‘strobist.’ =)

You can do so much in one day!