Sundries

[trixtah]

• My hairdresser is a dude, seriously. He even thinks PJ Harvey is the sexiest woman in rock, and the second sexiest woman evah (after his wife)
  
  
• I had a real mission finding a lightbulb that I could use to replace the blown one in my lounge. Have they actually gone and banned incandescents without my noticing? My lounge light has a bayonet fitting with a fairly tight plastic sleeve. I spent $24 on energy-efficient bulbs (three different kinds!), but the base of those was too thick to fit into the sleeve part (it would get most of the way down, but not enough to screw it into the bayonet fitting). Luckily, I tracked down some halogen bulbs that look just like incandescents, but which are apparently 30% more energy-efficient. More importantly, they fit. And, hey, if I actually had dimmers, the bulb would work in those too!
  
  
• I found a horribly addictive geography Flash game. You have to try and click as close as possible to the location of more or less obscure cities on a world map. It's a little bit repetitive after a few goes, but not too much, and I am determined to get to level 10. At present, I've gotten to level 7, and 10000 or so points. It turns out I know nothing about the former USSR (other than where St Petersburg and Moscow are) or 90% of Africa, while central Europe, and South and Central America is decidedly hazy. At least I know where Reunion Island is. And Bucaramanga in Colombia.

Comments

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

PJ Harvey totally rocks.

And yay for you for buying energy-efficient bulbs; I do the same.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, PJ Harvey. So cool.

Oh yeah, I can't remember the last time I bought regular bulbs. Not for years, once they came out in other shades than "deathly white".

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Halogen bulbs are incandescent. Because of the halogen cycle they can run the filament hotter without it going poof. Because it is hotter it gives out more light per energy consumed, so it is more efficient. There are concerns over here about general use. Fifteen years ago one could get halogen pole lamps. But pole lamps are tippy, and a very hot bulb can cause fires. Also, some have handling sensitivities - getting normal skin oil on the bulb can cause problems during operation because of the high operating temperature. I don't know if that is still true, but you should read the fine print with yours.

They (halogen bulbs) have been used for photo lighting and projectors for a long time.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

p.s. Thanks for the geography link!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yay! :-)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I know that they're technically "incandescent" rather than "florescent" due to the fact they have a filament rather than excited gas. But that's the common way to distinguish them.

These look exactly like regular bulbs, and the inner lamp (which contains the filament) is actually protected by the outer glass bulb, so no problems with handling it there.

I've got a pole lamp sitting by my bed right now with one of the more usual vaguely cone-shaped halogen lamps in it - again, the inner lamp is protected with a thick glass coating. I do feel the heat coming off it if the room is cool, but it doesn't seem to be much more so than a normal lamp - probably because of the thick glass. Haven't had any mishaps yet, and they're still for sale in the shops here. Maybe they run at lower temps due to the design of the lamp or how we wire things up.

I certainly wouldn't want to handle an umprotected halogen lamp with anything other than gloves - I used to have to change them in a large format flatbed camera in a print shop.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you folks have a more rational approach than what I fear is here. Big push here is to go to fluorescents. They are very efficient - and I'm part of that push - but the more use they get, the more breakage there will be. There have been newspaper articles on the correct way to clean up broken bulbs - it is a pain, and the waste becomes hazardous waste. As these things become more prevalent, the number of incorrectly cleaned up breakages will increase.

Well, LEDs are becoming more popular. Wonder what the dark side of them will turn out to be?

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

LED lights still aren't bright enough for all-purpose applications yet. From the little I know of them, they're solid state electronics, made mostly out of silicon (very common element!), last practically forever, don't think there's anything toxic in em (but the new ones??). Very very efficient as they translate current directly to photons. But yeah, I'm waiting for the downside :) There's some very pretty soft downlights being made with them that change colours with a remote control. :)

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

The other day I measured the wattage of a pole lamp for a client, and nearly choked, 340 watts. It had a halogen light bulb in it, and was intensely hot. The client was already concerned about how much electricity her boarder was using, and had bought this lamp for her, and I was like I know it's a waste but GET RID OF IT! It was giving off an intense amount of heat, and in a tiny room with an airconditioner, I was like, you know this is going to make the aircon bill even more insane. What a useless and possibly dangerous invention, the halogen pole lamp! Just get one with some fluoros, I said, 30 watts max!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, 340 watts is a bit excessive. Honestly, I haven't felt that halogen lamp pumping out noticeably more heat than a normal bulb at similar distances, but maybe I'm a but oblivious. But using halogen downlighters instead of normal lighting is one of my pet peeves - there is no excuse being so wasteful when you're trying to broadly light living areas, kitchens, whatever.

But my reading lamp must have heard us casting aspersions on it last night, because it blew! It's the first time it's blown the bulb since I've had it, and I'd already sussed out the replacement bulb (https://www.onlineledshop.com.au/product_info.php?products_id=69). I agree that LEDs aren't ready for area lighting yet, but it should be perfect for my bedside reading light. :-)

As for dimmers, eh, I don't own this place, so I'm reluctant to fit one. With the long-life bulbs, I think if you wanted to get nice dim effects, you could do that with area lighting instead (I don't think much of those dimmable long-life bulbs, but they're better than nothing if you don't want to get extra small lamps).

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

If the bulb you bought is the same brightness, and uses less power, it probably pumps out less heat. I'd never heard of one of those globes before.

You can also get halogen downlights with an infrared reflector, it uses less power than the normal ones because it maximises the power output or something. A lot of people are reluctant to switch over to the fluoro ones cos they don't give as focussed a light source, plus an electrician needs to get into the roof to change them over to a 240 volt source which costs.. A disadvantage of halogen downlights is that they are much more prone to blowing from voltage fluctuations, die more easily anyway, and sometimes they can cause fires.

I use a 500w halogen worklight to expose my silkscreens, that's so bright you don't wanna look at it or put your skin near it, it carries a fair amount of UV as well as being very hot.

/geek!

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

I doubt the landlord would mind as it "improves" the property - ? If they even notice you could say you got an electrician to do it. But yeah, it costs money, and if you don't really need to do it..

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

I think you can install dimmers pretty easily yourself, B*nnings has them, turn off the mains, screw off the switch plate in question, unscrew the wires from the plate, and screw the wires onto the dimmer switch plate as diagrammed.

[goatsfoot.livejournal.com]

Me again, you can't dim fluoros though, you prolly know that, you need a special fluoro with circuitry that dims to discrete brightness levels. I carry one around to show clients who object to fluoros replacing their roof-full of those bloody little power-hungry halogen downlights.