The Nikon MB-D11 Battery Grip

So yesterday I mentioned my camera upgrade, and today, I talk about a neat little attachment, who’s primary purpose is pretty cool, and secondary purpose is neat, but ultimately unnecessary (for me).

Upgrading Cameras: D80 to D7000

First: Yeah… new year, long time no see, I get it. I’ve been working on a lot of things here, as well as, well, work, since bills need to get paid, all that fun stuff. Hopefully I can get that all sorted out soon, and I have a massive backlog of things to put up. But for now, we’re starting with this.

In my various other posts, you might have picked up on the fact that I’m a Nikon person. And until now, all product shots you’ve seen here, from item galleries, to Hackintosh shots¹, it’s all been off that camera. Until now.

A Minor Upgrade: Switch and Battery

See also: managing to mildly destroy a network for 5 minutes while the switch has an anxious breakdown. Unfortunately, my reliable Dell PowerConnect switch has, well… it failed (kinda), and I was looking for an excuse to upgrade switches, so… I did. Admittedly, my impressions of Netgear kit aren’t the highest, but, hey, this switch is actually stupidly good for the price (I paid).

Oh, yeah, I also replaced the UPS since the entire network was offline anyways.

Making My Pi-hole Real Metal

Note: Not sponsored. Just excited.

So, fun fact, I run Pi-hole on my network as a relatively easy set-and-forget ad-block. For a while, this has been, and please stow your pitchforks, a VM on the main hypervisor. As of now… it’s that thing up there. Pi-hole’s resource requirements are so low that no matter what I assign that VM, I’m wasting something somewhere. Besides, I have plenty of those little machines, so why not?

Phoenix Filecube: Rise From the Ashes

Amazingly, this was something I got for free… kinda. Meet a Netgear ReadyNAS RN10400, a 4-bay utter piece of crap that has all the processing power of a BeagleBone Black.

Let’s just get into it.

Some Good Wireless Buds: JLab JBuds Air Sport

Believe it or not, these are actually really good to my ears. And it gives me to do the chance to do something I love: point out where an Apple product is objectively over-priced for what it is. Anyways, let’s get on with it.

This Annoys Me

Do… do I even have to say anything about this? I got that less than a week ago and it’s, while still functional, it is now useless. Not just from a cosmetic standpoint, more from a “I don’t like microscopic shards of glass in my fingers” standpoint. At least the inner display is fine and that’s the important one. LG… we need to have a talk.

Review of the Bionik Power Plate

Yeah my camera was not happy with this one, prepare for a few blurry shots.

That is the Power Plate by Bionik, a $50, 5500 mAh battery bank for the Nintendo Switch that acts as a Joy-Con charging grip, and a battery for the Switch too, if you want.

But more than just that… it’s really just a USB-C power bank with two Joy-Con rails on the sides.

Oh Nintendo, How I Love You So...

So that is a picture of my Switch… and before you get bent out of shape, there’s a glass screen protector on top of a microfiber glasses cleaning cloth separating the screen from the linoleum table surface.

Either way, you cannot tell it from that picture, but I wanted to upgrade that part right in the center of the frame: the console kickstand, give it something a little more rigid. Well as it turns out, that will be impossible without some real effort put in.

Review: the LG V60 Dual Screen Case

Note 1: this is a review of just the case, not the entire phone. That review can be found here.

Note 2: I am in no way affiliated with the YouTube video found in shots taken, “The US President’s $2,614 Per Minute Transport System” by Wendover Productions, it’s just what I happened to have pulled up on the app at the time. Good watch though.

So, the dual-screen case, what feels like LG’s response to the Galaxy Fold. In some respects, it’s cool. In some respects, it’s a downgrade. Either way, I’m here to give as objective as a review of the thing as I can.