What did you use your flashlight for today?

[desert.snake]

Today I was walking along an unlit section of the road, I heard a rustle under my feet, turned on the flashlight - hundreds of toads crawled out and sat on the path. The last week it has been very hot, about 32-35 Celsius, and yesterday there was a little rain, it became quite humid, apparently they like it.

With a high CRI, they are clearly visible, with a low CRI, they are not so noticeable and can be accidentally crushed. I had both options in my pocket and could be compared. But only at low brightness, if you make the brightness to the maximum, then Cree does not matter much, everything is visible, but only if it is not monochrome light. In pure green, blue or red light, these frogs are hardly distinguishable.

 

[Poppy]

Last night I stepped into a puddle of water by the kitchen sink. I grabbed my niteye MSC20 and looked under the sink. It was dripping from somewhere up there. So not wanting to deal with it, I pulled some of the stuff that is under there out and turned off one of the three valves under there... fortunately I got the right one.

This morning, I put on my Sofirn D25L headlamp. I put three patio chair cushions on the floor so I can lie this squeaky old back on them and not lean against the sharp edge of the sink's cabinet base. Fortunately the leak was just the valve stem, and a little 15 degree tightening of the stem nut was enough to put an end to the leak.

So often a headlamp is the handiest of tools.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Very nice, Poppy. That reminds me that I have to empty out the siphon in my own kitchen sink. We don't really eat grease and certainly don't dump grease down the sink, but somehow it still builds up a lot of gunk over the months.

 

[Poppy]

My plumber told me to occasionally dump lots of really hot water down the drain. Once in a while, I'll boil a fairly large pot of water and dump it.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Yep, I know of this trick and used it in the past. Problem here is, the gunge builds up in the accordion hose's folds, and the boiling water sails right over them. It clears clogging, but doesn't deal with the stench.

The way I found to clean it out is to remove the hose, then compress it to push all the nasty gunk out, then extend it and run water inside to clean up the remains. Neither hard nor time-consuming, just gross (wearing a face mask helps!) and I have to stop procrastinating on it already

 

[Poppy]

When I had a garbage disposal in my sink, once in a while I'd throw orange peels, or better yet tangerine peels, in it and let it chew them up. It had a nice citrusy smell for a few days.

Now... that my friend is how to procrastinate!

 

[nikocamf]

My little collection is great for finding Mr B when he decides to bugger off down the woods at night lol

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Used my old Convoy S2 (not S2+) XM-L2 on 10% power to guide my elderly mother through the dark bumpy sidewalk on this nightly walk. It'll pull the same duty soon on our way back.

I have many newer lights with more efficient drivers, a few with newer better emitters, but the old XM-L2 on that deep OP reflector still makes for a solid concentrated beam. Plus its 4C-but-rosy tint is an absolute winner at the lottery.

 

[3_gun]

Used it to see in the shadows caused by the bright sunshine while doing a "service" check on the MC. All good, lets ride

 

[knucklegary]

AAA is handy for peeking inside oil bags on old m/c that operates on a "constant loss" oil system. Summer evenings is when I miss not owning a bike the most

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I dropped a tiny black laptop screw on the floor again, so I used my PD36R positioned parallel with the floor and I found it instantly.

 

[hsa]

You seem to use the same flashlight for about everything. It must be your favorite.

 

[bridgman]

I ordered a few different sizes of Keeppower Li-ion cells a few weeks ago along with a couple of chargers (that's another story, only intended to buy one). They arrived this week so I unpacked and figured I would try charging new batteries with new chargers.

The chargers are Nitecore "new i2" and "new i4". In both cases the instructions are nicely detailed but leave out obvious things like "how do you know when the batteries are charged ?". Before I realized that the "new" instructions assume that you are already familiar with the "old" charger I was trying to make out the numbers and letters etched into the dark plastic that covered the LEDs.

I had a Surefire G2X Pro handy because a couple of the new batteries were 16650s that I wanted to try in the G2X Pro as an alternative to disposable CR123's. On low and at exactly the right angle I was able to read the voltage and %charged numbers. Given that information it seemed likely that 3 solid green LEDs meant 'charged'.

And yes, I realized later that the first picture in the manual showed those numbers clearly. D'oh !!

----

re: how I ended up with 2 chargers, the first order was from www.nitecorestore.ca - they had the charger I wanted (an i4) at a great price so I ordered it. No confirming email, no response to questions about lack of email, so started to wonder if I had run across an old and no longer operated web store. Figured I would give it a couple of weeks then ping the credit card issuer.

In the meantime I ordered an i2 along with the batteries from Illumn so I would have something that could charge the newer batteries, since my only Li-ion charger was an UltraFire 139 bought along with a bunch of AW cells and the UF139 seemed to be N/R for 16650s.

A week later the i4 showed up from nitecorestore, nicely packaged. I settled on a Convoy S2+ 4000K on medium for reading the scratch & sniff validation codes - needed enough brightness to make my irises stop down and sharpen things up a bit. If I held the package far enough away for the writing to be in focus then the numbers were too small to read

 

[blah9]

It's been a long time since I've been super active here, but I recently purchased the new Fenix TK22 TAC, which has now become my EDC and general go-to light. I'm loving it.

Anyway, I've been actively using lights for a very long time, but just this past weekend it was useful for seeing in my aunt's yard when leaving her house in the dark, making sure we grabbed all the kids' items they brought with us and played with in the yard, looking in some nooks and crannies of my house with my dad to try to figure out some things I can do to improve a couple situations that have been going on, and a few other miscellaneous tasks including getting ready for bed and shutting off all the lights.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I used my PD36R to examine a loose connection inside of a bar code scanning station.

 

[bykfixer]

My puppy must've eaten something that did not agree with his digestive system... something else rather, and woke me up at 4am to go out. I used the 6 lumen Sofirn C01 (sophie version) to spot his reflective collar while he did his thing.

 

[bykfixer]

An example of a puppy's diet sometimes...
When he was real young it was a stepping stool to get in the back door. Now it seems to be a chew toy. Hey if it keeps him from gnawing on the wood furniture.....👍

 

[Monocrom]

Poor thing might have some kind of mineral deficiency if he's chewing on that.

 

[Jean-Luc Descarte]

Last night I used a Lumintop Tool to try and troubleshoot my leaky swamp cooler. In one night it pissed away half the tank down one wheel, and soaked the floor.

Long story short, it was totally my fault: I took off a screw that holds the back cover in place thinking it wasn't needed because the cover had clasps to hold it in place, without knowing that said screw actually applies pressure to the membrane pad behind the cover and keeps it aligned with the pump's outlet. It must have been 1 or 2mm out of alignment, enough for the water being pumped up to escape the pad's intake and flow into the outer shell, and from there to the floor. After I put the screw back on and tightened it nicely, no more flooding.

The tiny Tool was also very handy to look inside said pad intake to see how dirty it was Luckily nothing a toothpick and some flowing water couldn't scrub out.

 

[bykfixer]

Poor thing might have some kind of mineral deficiency if he's chewing on that.

He's a puppy. They chew on anything and everything while they are teething.
That's an adapter for a roof drain down spout drain to go from metal pipe to plastic pipe. He pulled the plastic pipe off the metal down spout this morning and decided to keep the connector after he figured out how to disconnect it from the pipe.
Note: the photo was taken using a MagTac2 adding fill light.

A flashlight he stole off the coffee table while I was not in the room.