On Friday 28 February 2025 11:35:52 am wn4isx via groups.io wrote:
A friend and fellow idiot sent me this link
Insanity!
I am impressed and bow down to this guy. [and I'm glad I live nowhere close to him.]
Ditto. When I became more aware of some of the higher-powered LEDs out there I ordered some. I got 10 10W units, the kind with 3 rows of 3, and so far I've built 3 lamps using these, one of which is over my desk. I've not been overall very impressed with the failure rates of the higher powered ones. I'm running these at 3 watts or so, so I guess they'll last a pretty long time.
I gave up bicycles when I turned 16 for motorcycles with the logic "Now I can outrun cars...."
Heh,
They still don't see you, even at night with your headlight on drivers will cut you off with frightening regularity. I gave up on motorcycles after seeing two young riders get splatted by a 'queen mary' [any large car] while driving down the road. The bikers were in their lane driving sanely, the cars just ran them down.
A guy who used to work for me back when I had my shop came in late one day. When I asked him why, he told me about some lady in a caddy that tried to make hamburger out of him. I started that battery store gig in January, and the guy who trained me had to ride his bike for a bit. He had a truck, but for some reason the brakes kept on locking up on him. Turned out the culprit was an apparently symmetrical hose that contained a proportioning valve, he'd put it in backwards. He used to hell me about some close calls as well. My brother has a couple of what he refers to as "scooters" (smallish bikes) and when he rode was constantly bitching about what people in cars were doing...
I used to ride a 10-speed, but gave it up for that same reason.
Anyway, the light from a Honda CA-77, CB-350, CB-360 wasn't anything to write home about and it was easy to outdrive your headlight, outdrive refers to driving faster than you can see ahead. [perhaps one shouldn't drive 80MPH on narrow back roads.....]
I am hardly driving at night at all these days, that being a part of the reason.
Now this headlight would let you see far enough ahead to be useful....but blind the poor sod coming at you so he'd probably splat you.
While I've kept my motorcycle endorsement, that's more because I'm stubborn then practical. There is no way I'd ride a motorcycle unless my life depended on it. I suspect my artificial knees would be most displeased.
Consider the project as proof humans can do amazingly stupid things....I'm proud to be a member of such an inventive species. Worry about our long term survival chances, but what the heck, we can have fun in the mean time.
Yup!
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
