sometimes.digital / solarpunk web server
Some time ago, on Mastodon, I’ve stumbled upon compost.party. I love this project in its entirety: the domain, the setup, the trash museum, and everything else. I was also impressed by kaimac running his site on a repurposed EMF camp badge and talked with Tomoe a lot about running a set-up similar to compost.party on an older phone.
I started looking for a solar charger online to buy second-hand and found one listed as “solar charger?” for around €3. I got it mainly because of the intriguing title, but also because it had speakers and a multitude of dongles. I hoped that one of them would fit the Casio digital diary, but sadly the thin barrel is too thin and the thick one is too thick.
The charger is surprisingly nicely designed (and documented), although a bit difficult to disassemble because of the glued bits. I assume it’s from around 2010 because it mentions the PSP in the manual, the 30-pin Apple connector was last used in an iPhone 4s in 2011 and there’s also a review online from 2012. The review says that the case cost $59.95, which adjusted for inflation has the same buying power as $83.26 in August 2024. I don’t think the charger was ever used because it still had a protective film on.
Here’s a link to the manual shown above as a PDF (with OCR). Is this interesting? I’m not sure. But I like the pictogram of the Sun with a smile.
