After abandoning our gypsy lifestyle in favor of a return to home ownership, as you might imagine, I’ve been acquiring household gadgets at a furious clip. The right tool makes all the difference. (Thank you, Lowe’s and Amazon Prime.)
By far, my favorite new addition is this Petzl Tikka 2 LED headlamp (~$30). It’s been a great help this week in tracking down and sealing mice entry points in the basement and bundling fallen branches after work (while dark). Of course, that’s a somewhat off topic for a digital media blog. Bringing us to its usage as an Amazon Kindle reading light. Sure, it’s a bit geeky to strap a light to your head for nighttime reading… but that’s how we roll.
This particular Petzl model has four LEDs and two brightness settings – low is the one for bedroom e-Ink reading. Additionally, the angle of illumination can be adjusted via 5 presets, which is useful for minimizing glare/hotspots. Lastly, the Petzl is powered by three common AAA batteries good for 90 – 120 hours depending on brightness. (Looking forward to our next power outage!) It may not be the best Kindle light, but it’s the nicest and only one I possess.
I should clarify… that’s how *I* roll. My wife would never, ever wear this. Her loss! ;)
It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one feeling like I’m in a tech slump. Maybe winter is affecting us more than we realize.
We really need to get Dave some new toys. ;)
Bill
I bought a 3-pack of Brinkmann 5 LED headlamps at Home Depot last summer. Use them all the time. Think the 3-pack cost about $15. Definitely recommend
Unfortunately, if you ever slip through the spacetime continuum and end up appearing in someone else’s first person shooter video game while wearing that, it will decrease your chances of survival.
Other than that, it seems cool.
My favorite household gadget is my Neuro Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker. But that doesn’t really help me navigate basements.
If you can get over the geek factor, these are great. Nice to have in the car emergency kit too, so you can poke around under the hood or change a tire without having to hold a flashlight in your hand. As a pilot, they are wonderful for finding charts and switches in a darkened Cessna cockpit.
My wife gave me on a few Christmases back. It stays on my desk and gets used all the time. They are excellent. We now have 1 for everyone in the house (in case of power outages – hurricanes) and have given my father 1 and my sister 2.
Or you could have done what I did..Bought a Nook Color
putting a baby seat in my car last weekend from inside the garage, because its cold/snowing outside, the dim light from the car and garage was just not strong enough for me to see what i was doing. strapping this thing to my head solved all my light woes.
I can relate. I asked for and got a Joby Gorillapod light unit (like their mobile tripods, but with a spotlight on the top) for Christmas. While I *am* a handy guy, I have yet to use it for any construction/mechanical purposes. Instead, I wrap the legs around the post on our headboard and use it for a reading light/netbook keyboard illuminator.
It works awesome, doesn’t move, and is easy to turn on and off without having to move it anywhere.
Feech, as I said on Twitter earlier today, my next Kindle will be an iPad 2. :)
Ricky, thanks for the Gorillatorch mention. Looks cool. I see there’s even a convertible version – you can use it has a headlamp or as a lantern. Hm, maybe I need even more LED lighting.
LED lighting is just at the beginning. I’ve just started replacing a bunch of dimmable PAR 30 floods around our house with LED versions to save power. These are all incandescents since there really aren’t any acceptable dimmable fluorescents. I’ve bought several from ecoBrites recently that work really well. Instant on, 7W, dimmable, no weird hum, and in theory should last decades. Also exactly the same size as the lights they replaced so even in a tightish housing these worked fine. They’re ridiculously expensive of course, which hopefully is something that will improve rapidly over time.
A couple years I bought for lamps which looks like these ( http://t.co/qRQ5qNi ) but have the added benefit of separate clamp mounts and a red blinking led setting which allow them to be used as bicycle head and tail lights as well as head mounted lamps.
Convertible options of some sort are a definite plus.
These are really good when you are trying to fish wires down a chase and don’t have another hand to hold a flashlight!
I am doing a 190 mile relay in May and I am going to pick some of these up. I see Petzl has some models that have adapters to attach to helmets too. might get that one.
Hmm… probably about time I got a headlamp, but it’d not be for reading. The best e-reader light is M-Edge e-Luminator2 (http://www.medgestore.com/products/nook-eluminator2.psp?device=kindle3) — use it with my Nook (regular). Two light settings, infinitely adjustable, much better than built-in Kindle light (not as convenient though).
Dave – I saw your tweet about NookColor browsing. Are you using iPad as a reference for speed/convenience? NC works pretty well for me. Overall, NC is shaping up to be tweaker’s dream tablet given its costs ($250 reg, but paid ~$200 on eBay: $215 BIN minus cashbacks/Bucks).