I stopped by Fry’s Electronics store in Palo Alto, for the first time in 10+ years. It’s a gadget- and electronics- lovers wonderland. I was looking for some obscure USB cable adopters, and, unsurprisingly, was able to find one there. (It was their last one.) Of course, going there to just check up a single cable adapter is a massive waste of time. The store features a massive amount of electronics and parts, and I could spend a whole day there just browsing. I especially liked the fact that it carries a lot of “low level” gadgets that rarely make it into the mainstream gadget blogs. For instance, the price of a webcam seems to have plummeted in recent years, and you could buy the low-end ones for under $10. A single such camera is close to useless anyways. (I was never really into the whole video chat, with a notable exception of my family.) However, they are now cheap enough that you could buy a bunch of them for a small project that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.

On my way out I came across a cartful of small 9-LED Flashlights sold at a steep discount. These are the cheap Chinese imports that, of low quality and questionable value. However, being sold at 88 cents each they were hard to pass by. I got a couple of those – one for me and one for my wife – and have used mine as an oversized attachment to my keychain, replacing the old small single-LED light. We live in a poorly-lit area, and a flashlight like this can really come in handy. Even though it adds significant weight to the keychain.