Bikehacks: 5 Killer Looking DIY Bike Headlights

This entry is a Bike Hacks Classic, originally posted by Apple computer honk, Brendon. 

There are a TON of decent tutorials for building bike lights. But...how can I put this gently...they are not all equally attractive. If you showed me two lights side by side and they had equal performance, I'd choose the pretty one every time. That's probably why I'm writing this on a Mac. Ahem.

Anyway, here's a quick look at five of the finest looking homemade bike lights on the web today. This is an admittedly subjective list, so feel free to smack me around in the comments if you think I've overlooked the BEST. LIGHT. EVAR.

Read More at Bikehacks

Bikehacks looks at 5 homebrew light setups - the article includes links to the original sources, should you fancy a go yourself...

Posted via email from monkeyphoto's posterous

STUFFE

Locals & Tourists #32, Manchester, by Eric Fischer

LOCATION
Redbikes has found a useful tool for visualising your GPS tracks.

Flowing Data covers an interesting project based on geotagged photos. Initially, it showed where most photos are taken in a city - the author has, however, extended the project to differentiate between visitors and locals - really interesting stuff. See the picture above for local (to me) interest.

Lastly, Brendada was kind enough to point me in the direction of this interesting project, "Uncertain Eastside" again using GPS/Geotagging.

COMICS
If you follow Nedroid Picture Diary, you'll know that Beartato is the steady rock to Reginald's mercurial flightiness. What you may not know is that he had a rebellious youth...

DEALING WITH NEGATIVE PRESS
This article from Bicycling tells of a novel way for cyclists to respond to Daily Mail style attacks in the press - make your donation to cycling charities in the correspondent's name. The correspondent in question may be on his way to becoming the Bicycle Coalition's biggest supporter...

SHAVING
Karl on Sea has a guilty secret... (Don't forget, you can still sponsor Karl's Ironman triathlon, in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support here).

LIGHTS
I know it's the wrong time of year, but Velo Orange covers some interesting lights from Dutch company "Spanninga".

"most interesting is their "Reverse-Beam Technology". They claim it's one of the most efficient LED systems available. The LED bulb is mounted just behind the lens and aimed rearward at a mirror that focuses and reflects the light. This minimizes light loss and gives a strong focused and lateral beam."

I think this is similar to Busch & Muller's designs (although I could be wrong).

JOCHEN GERNER
Features in this post from drawn.ca. His densely populated sketchbook pages are fascinating, as is the pared down, schematic style of his published work.

In Which I Relate an Unusual Happenstance

(Not the updating of the blog, although that's unusual enough, given that I've not touched this since June last year).

It's been a fairly grim start to the year, at least in terms of cycling. The cold winter, and a large number of icy days (I don't ride in ice) have kept me off the bike, and on the days I have ridden, I've found Manchester's motorists in a worse humour than is usual. I've also read of a couple of nasty incidents recently, particularly this on Carlton Reid's "Quickrelease.tv" blog.

I was on my way home up Wilmslow Road (a quick road, nominally a 30 limit, but it is not unusual for the traffic to treat it as a 40 or 50).

I'm at the lights in a lane that can be used as a left turn onto Turves Road, or straight on along Wilmslow Road. It'd taken me a while to turn out onto Wilmslow Road, and waiting in the queue at the lights I usually stay in the centre of the left hand lane to discourage left hooking. (A left hook is when a vehicle makes a left turn across your path). A chap pulled alongside me and rolled his passenger window down - I have to admit that I was expecting a tirade about moving over to the left (has happened before along here, and as I said earlier, drivers have seemed unusually grumpy after the new year in Manchester).

So, I marshal my retorts, and get ready to reply, when the chap says...

"Hey mate! Your lights are excellent - absolutely first class - I can see you proper!"

There's a bit more in which he thanks me for considering the other folk on the road by making myself easy to see, during which I, being completely confused, mumble some sort of thanks, and then the traffic lights change.

It was nice to have something good shouted at me though.

(If you're wondering what a first class lighting setup looks like, it consists of a Torch 9x light with integrated reflector on the third flash pattern, a Blackburn Mars4.0 on steady (both on the seat post) and a Smart Superflash on flash mounted to the seat stay). Up front there's a Knog Frog on flash and a high power, Cree emitter torch.