The lovely people at Mokin keep sending me their USB-C hubs to review, and I'm happy to do so. They work splendidly with my Linux and Windows machines, and they provide more ports than I ever thought necessary. This one is positively festooned with extra ports. Let's take a look. USB-C Plug your power adapter into the hub, and then the hub into your laptop. With most hubs, that's it; you've…
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You can never have too many USB-C ports, right? It's rubbish having a cheap laptop with only a single USB-C port. So, the good folks at Mokin have sent me a gadget which turns your single and lonely USB-C port into FIVE USB-C ports. Along the side you get 4 USB-C 3.1 ports which are theoretically capable of 10Gbps in aggregate. At the bottom is a USB-C 3.0 Power Delivery port which can take…
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What a treat! Alan Cumming has the amazing gift of making a 2,000 seat venue feel like an intimate little club. The Crown-Prince of Scotland spent two hours regaling us with tales from Hollywood and singing his heart out. The name-dropping is outrageous! The stories scandalous! The singing fabulous! It feels like the whole performance is in italics with extra exclamation marks. It feels…
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Supertoys last all summer long! But batteries do not. The last set of rechargeable batteries I had leaked everywhere, and I could never find the right charging lead for the gizmo which pumped power into them. So let's cut out the middle-man and plug a USB-C cable straight into our batteries! What? These were the cheapest AA batteries I could find which took USB-C. £16 including delivery, for …
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Look, here's the deal. Sometimes companies send me products to review. I usually try and make sure they're interesting, useful, or delightfully weird. Mostly they're electronic gadgets or cool books. But someone offered to send me a shower head to review. And our old shower head had got a bit gunked up. So I said yes. I have sold the soul of this blog for a £13 bit of plastic full of magic …
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I genuinely think that USB-C might be the defining feature of the 21st century. A little port which is cheap enough to add to the most trivial of devices, and that can carry an impressive amount of power and data. All of my gadgets have it - phone, eReader, headphones, laptop, thermal printer, battery, games console - and now, my mosquito bite zapper! This is the "heat it" - it's about £30 on …
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You know it's a good gig when you're having too much fun to take photos! I'd decided to go see the Internet-famous Scary Pockets on tour in London. A few months after buying the tickets, they announced they were moving to a bigger venue due to overwhelming demand. The Troxy was heaving! It's an excellent venue with a large standing floor and plenty of booths and seats for those of us who don't…
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The good folks at Fifine have sent me this neat little microphone to review. Unboxing Sound Quality Writing about microphones is like painting about flavour. So here's what it sounds like: 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. No noticeable hiss. Captured my voice perfectly. It picked up a little clack from my keyboard as I typed. Colleagues could hear me clearly - even if they were som…
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All USB-C cables are equal. But some, as the saying goes, are more equal than others. This little gadget from Plugable is a fantastic bit of kit. Plug your USB-C power supply into one end of the gadget, plug the gadget in to your laptop, phone, or any other USB-C device. Watch the screen to see how much power is flowing. Action Shot …
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The good folk at Nank (Naenka) have sent me their latest waterproof Bluetooth headphones to review. Wear 'em while you're in the shower, swimming, jogging, or just on an endless sea of Zoom calls about quarterly budgets. Unboxing Bone Conducting??! Yup! Rather than sticking speakers in your ears, these literally rattle the bones in your head to produce sound. It takes a little getting used…
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The good folk at ChubbyCable have sent me a trio of gorgeous USB-C cables to review. If, like me, your work colleagues always "borrow" your cables never to be seen again - these are a godsend. They're available in a range of colours - you can even design your own. You'll never have to say "where's my boring black cable? Janice? Do you still have it?" No, you'll see the dayglow colours from…
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Without a doubt, the most annoying aspect of using VR is that the equipment eats batteries. On the Oculus Quest, the headset is rechargeable via USB-C - but the controllers take plain AA batteries. By default, there's no way to recharge them 😭 So a whole industry has sprung up to fix Meta's mistakes! The good folks at ZyberVR have sent me this smart docking station to review. Let's take a qu…
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