Rik's Micro-USB hack

by "Scrap-Iron" Rik

My Kindle reader, my bicycle lights, headlamps, and a number of devices I own are recharged through the legacy (introduced in spring of the year 2000) micro-usb socket, formally known as USB 2.0 Micro-B:

micro usb socket

These devices are not going away, and it was always a pain to get the cable and socket aligned correctly, since there is a wide and short edge to them both and they are so tiny:

socket and cable 

I have discovered a solution that works well with all the cables I currently own. I noticed that they all have a little USB symbol on them:
micro-usb symbol
I also noticed that, on all the cables I own, the imprinted USB symbol aligns with the side of the cable with the short edge of the connector... 

 
From there, it was simple, I would mark the cable that alignes with the short edge of the connector. I initially put a sticker dot on that side, then I discovered these markers:
Pilot Gold & Silver markers
The nice thing about these are that the ink in them is very liquidy. What I did, after shaking the silver pen as instructed, I lightly touched it to the usb imprint, and now my cables all look like this:
painted usb
Not especially "within the lines" but quickly visually identifies the short edge and makes cable insertion fail-proof every time.