2016 — 19 January: Tuesday
Why would I assume that, just because the packaging says "50,000 hours", one of my fancy, bright, cool-running and economical £10 Ikea LED 13 watt bulbs — supposedly equivalent to a 100 watt incandescent — (made in China, naturally) would last as my bathroom illumination for more than a year or so? What could I possibly have been thinking?1
Non Fiat lux
Still, at least now I know the warning signs of impending failure. You get quite a light show. There's intermittent flickering for a month or so, followed eventually (last night) by a one-second full light, full dark, repeating cycle...
I shall first let the frost out there melt away, and then nip out in search of the Lost Lumens as I also have a rather lower-tech little package I need to post off to Canada.
I have been living...
... in complete ignorance of the Bogdanov affair. Were I to describe the meandering web trail I've been following (there are currently 10 tabs open in my browser, though I'm now closing them with only a gentle shudder) the world would not be a happier place.
Today's mystery object
In thumbnail form...
And if you need a bigger clue.
I shall celebrate the fact that a chum was led suitably astray by Messrs Bogdanov with a spot of late lunch, methinks. He tells me he lost his morning when he stumbled into a six-dimensional de Sitter wormhole, but I shall refuse to rise to the bait.
It was sufficiently cold out there as I performed my postal and other chores that the Mazda protested with an alarmingly loud "ping" each time I started the engine. Since said "ping" appeared to correlate with the barely-visible snowflake symbol displayed alongside the temperature I assume it was trying to warn me there might be ice around. Of course, the combination of bright sunshine and my Polaroid clip-ons made it tricky to read the 4C it was showing on its LCD display at the same time as said flake.
Speaking of "bright"...
... as is often the case in my long and fraught relationship with technology, the gentle hammer tap on the mystery object has resuscitated it. So it now lives on (and shines very brightly on) confined to shiny duty as my desktop lamp. Though (since I assume the diffuser cap that I knocked off might also have been reducing any undue UV component) I'm being careful not to let its fearfully bright emanations directly reach my delicate Mk I eyeballs.
Having read...
... this afternoon's interesting2 delivery:
... to give myself a head start on last week's DVD delivery, I not unreasonably thought "OK, now let's now remind myself of its predecessor" having read it just once, nearly 17 years ago. Could I find the damn' thing? Of course not. (Though I did turn up the book of Heinlein calligraphy...
... that I'd searched equally in vain for one gestation period ago!) My life is like that.