They won't last forever, but at $7-20, they get the job done in the near-term.

But whyfor kick yourself? Do you want me to scoot over to the College Park store (nearby, easy to get to) and get a couple to mail to you? I'm just about due for an IKEA staples run (tea lights, napkins, and random other small objects).

If you have a canopy-style bedframe, you can make an entire star field (-:

Yes, I know this from personal experience.

This is such a beautiful image ... and it reminded me of the paper lampshade Paul K. used to have hanging in the dining room of our old house, which I loved for the warm glow of light it gave out.

I have a capiz shell lamp hanging from a chain next to my bed. We bought it in the Phillipines when I was seven and it's one of the things I liberated from the house after my father married my stepmother. I rewired the cord so there's a rotary switch right at night-stand height, so I can turn it on and off from the bed. The monofilament that connects the shells is getting pretty degraded and I've been wondering if I should try to write down how the weaving goes.

I'd almost forgot about those things. My parents went through a . . . um . . . wannabeatnik phase in the early 60s, and I just remember the tail end of it, when we had paper lamps and sling chairs in the house.

We had a capiz shell lamp in entry stairwell of the house my folks sold four years ago. Since they bought the house to go with the lamp, they left it hanging in the stairwell.

It was a kind of boxy thing, but quite lovely in its way. And the light was soft. I have moments when I miss it.

i have a fondness for the multicolored xmas strings. not as, er, classy(?) looking. but a comforting glow, eerily reminiscent of certain star trek scenes.

Excuse me. I must ask my komodo dragons how they feel about this.

Oh, and while a pickle casts a green light, I've been told that a pickeled onion gives you a nice white glow...

Which raises the obvious (to me, anyway)question, has anyone made paper lamps that look like our more popular gas giants? Saturn might be tricky, but a nice Jupiter or Uranus should be doable.

Practically anything can be made into a lampshade or lamp as long as you can do a little wiring and are careful about heat exchange.

For a real lighting trick or treat check out www dot lynnsparadisecafe dot com. At the Kentucky State Fair each year this restaurant has an ugly lamp contest. (see top right picture after clicking the 'fun' icon)

Of course if you really value your eyes get yourselves a Bell & Howell Sunlight Lamp for reading and doing close work. It is expensive but gives better light for much less electricity.

Congratulations on your new place!

MKK

So I found myself having him take me in the limo to a hardware store, where I bought a soldering iron, wire, bulbs, sockets, dimmer switch, lots of wire, solder, and electrical tape. The universe is not held together with duct tape by the way, but electrical tape which comes in three colors for the gluons. But I digress. The lamp was magnificient, if I say so myself.

Another time, back in Brooklyn Heights, I made a lamp for someone, where the stand was a humongous ten kilowatt vacuum tube of some sort from the radar stuff at an Army/Navy store. I suggested caution, as there was mercury visible inside, blobbing around. I heard that a cat knocked it over, and they needed what we now call HazMat to clean up.

About that same time, I made a transparent lampshade (oxymorons, anyone?) from a something like 720 plastic cups, in a luminous homage to Bucky Fuller (and have you seen him on that new First Class stamp?). To hold it together, I had to buy about a dozen tubes of plastic cement. Eyeing my freaky long hair, the owner refused, figuring that I was going to sniff the stuff. I got my little brother, dedicated model airplane builder, to vouch for my responsible use of plastic cement.

All in the name of Making Light.

Have Photons, Will Travel.

I don't much care for fluorescent lights, but I adore my odor-neutralizing Fresh2 fluorescent bulbs, which I bought after reading the review on Cool Tools. I know it sounds like a scam, but they work great in my basement; if I leave the light on for 20 minutes or so, I can't smell the litterbox at all. (It only works when the light is on, alas.) They work great on Mystery Corgi Aroma, too.

I don't \know/ the exact spectrum distribution, but I'd be surprised if fluorescents were a \significant/ UV hazard considering that just 15% of their output is visible light. (15% sounds bad until you look at incandescents, which do 7%.) Almost all of the rest should be heat.

If you have a surplus unused vertical surface (a wall on a floor not strong enough to support bookshelves, and you haven't gotten around to matting & framing those pieces of ArtWork you've acquired over the years), you might consider a large, shadow-box-style frame, deep enough to hold a string or two of the tiny clear (or possibly colored) Christmas-tree lights and a few small mirrors (mobile ones, if the movement of light doesn't make you nervous, possibly weight-driven with a small crank on the side). Cover with shoji-paper (if plain white seems too austere, use the kind with embedded leaves or butterflies, or laid-texture designs -- or a combination of these with Modrianesque dividing strips) or transluscent cloth (sheeting, white or colored or dye-decorated by an artist) or strips of _yukata_ cloth (perhaps a multi-colored design suitable for a girl or very young woman, rather than the plain indigo-and-white proper for a man or older woman).

The inclusion of a Richard Tatge Light-Show Machine (slide-projector aimed at a revolving disk covered with small pieces of mirror) presents some difficulties, but might be an option. So, perhaps, would be an apparatus such as Thomas G. Digby once created in a gutted TV-set, controlling light intensity and colors by a sound-feed from his record-player. Maybe it's time to return to the '60s. Ah! to have studio space, and time enough for Creative Puttering.

In the interest of completeness, I'll mention my own Great Idea -- an LCD-filled lamp connected to a system involving a small storage battery and a tiny generator hooked up to the exercise-wheel in a cage of pet hamsters, mice, or rats. This could, at least, be considered ecology-friendly.

CHip: I don't \know/ the exact spectrum distribution, but I'd be surprised if fluorescents were a \significant/ UV hazard considering that just 15% of their output is visible light. (15% sounds bad until you look at incandescents, which do 7%.) Almost all of the rest should be heat.

And whatever the spectrum, all normal indoor lighting has low power compared to solar radiation.

Almost all of the rest should be heat.

I wince when people say that, because all of it is heat once something absorbs it. Also, all of it is light before it's absorbed. (Taking 'light' to include all frequencies.) Infrared seems to get singled out as "heat radiation" by science writers even though visible light can also be perceived as heat. [/pickiperson]

Now you get to make fun of me for saying "ATM machine."

Nice to see the inimitable Thomas G. Digby cited. Strange but powerful mind. Engaging personality. Amazingly weird and delightful poetry.

My late mother-in-law considered him one her favorite American poets, thanks to such gems as "Time Gum." Tom Digby achieved Stapeldonishness in a poem contrasting beings in the first sub- picosecond after the Big Bang, world weary, sure that they are the last forms of life; and beings quintillions of years from now, exuberent, thinking themselves the very first lifeforms.

We lost the lighting ring on the ground floor of the house for a while a year ago; after a couple of hours of dark panic we drove to IKEA and spent about £50 on standard lamps and clip-on shelf lamps; enough to restore lighting so effectively that it took a considerable force of will to get round to sorting the original problem out.

I expect somebody has beaten this somewhere, but the most excessive use of string lights I've seen was the Boston-for-Orlando-in-'01 bidding party I built at Bucconeer (1998 Worldcon). I think a number of participants here saw the result of hanging half a mile (no, that's not figurative) of string lights to cover the ceiling of a 40'x50' room; it wasn't photo-quality lighting, but there was more than enough light for a sociable party with the room fixtures turned off.

Speaking of light, the house I grew up in had been owned by a wiring instructor at CSU when it was in town. They moved it out to where we lived in it, and cut a hole in a hallway for basement steps. Some rooms never seemed to get the wiring reconnected, but it was the one place that came close to having enough outlets for us. There were switches -- often multiple switches -- by every door, and a light could be turned on or off from several locations. There were switches that activated outdoor outlets, and even the smallest closet had a light in it.

Marilee & Kathy: I used to take capiz thingies for granted in Manila. I guess I do miss it a little. I ought to look around for a capiz lamp.

I don't believe the tiny UV exposure contribution of a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) is a health concern. As a rough estimate, the UV irradiance at 30cm of a CFL bulb is perhaps 2.0 uW/cm^2 UV-A and 0.1 uW/cm^2 UV-B. As a yardstick, I think a couple of relative comparisons might be helpful. First, fluorescent lighting emits much smaller amounts of UV light than halogen lighting which in turn emits about 1/3 of the UV of sunlight. Second, if you light a room to standard office illumination levels using exposed CFL bulbs your UV exposure during an eight hour work day would be equivalent to perhaps a minute of mid-day exposure on a clear summer day.

In general, transparent plastics and glass block significant amounts of UV radiation and UV "degrades" quickly upon each "bounce" off of many visible-light reflective surfaces due to absorption. Thus, many lighting fixtures and techniques (enclosed luminaires, indirect lighting, etc.) will further reduce or eliminate the small amount of UV emitted from CFL lamps.

I guess I should also point out that while it is best to consider all UV exposure potentially harmful in extended doses, the total elimination of UV exposure might also be a concern since the human body requires small amounts of UV-A radiation to manufacture vitamin D along with the resulting absorption of calcium.

Except from the point of view of the photon. To a photon, the 8 minutes or so it takes to leave the photosphere of the sun and fly through space until it impacts your skin (or retina) is, as Saint Albert Einstein says, zero time, as the trip is at the speed of light. From the point of view of Theophysics, the principle of Contagion applies, and Action at a Distance, and your skin (or retina) is now entangled with the sun. Or something. ** waves wand and rolls eyes **

Except for some "daylight" fluorescents,. They seem to be relabelled Gro-lites; be careful of them. Some display-case lamps used with art are also available in UV-filtered versions, so sometimes UV emissions are a problem.

I believe they're supposed to be clearly labeled.

I've had a lot of trouble finding those. I keep hoping for a less expensive alternative to the UVA-UVB reptile lights I have to buy for Gamera.

Regardless, Richard is right about the UV blocking ability of glass and plastic. It's why reptile keepers have to use lamps; too little gets through windows and tank sides to do the animals any good.

Richard: what is it about halogens that ups the UV? The torchiere bulbs I've seen are like the theater lamps that were starting to come in ~30 years ago (when I was last seriously active); they're still incandescents, just with a much smaller envelope. (The "quartz" envelope might let through more UV than standard glass -- I remember using quartz cells for to hold liquid speciments for UV-absorption analysis -- but how much UV does a tungsten filament at ~3000K generate?) Aside from the appalling color, is there something different about halogen headlights?
For other people annoyed by the actinic glare, a side note: per Boston Globe, halogen headlights are so expensive that they're worth stealing; prying out the lights does damage that can take several days and $1000 or more to fix.

True, just not the situation I had in mind. Many surfaces don't chemically react when light shines on them. Engineering radiation analysis is geared toward determining the temperature of all the surfaces and any participating media (e.g. air, beer), to stop them doing something perverse. The starting assumption (unless one knows otherwise) is that there aren't any reactions happening, because otherwise the problem gets too hard to solve at all. Even if there is a reaction, if the energy required to drive the reaction is much smaller than the amount that goes into warming up the beer (say), then you could ignore the reaction as a first approximation. You might get away with that when the beer is first placed in the sun but hasn't sat there long, since the reaction would be slower in cold beer. Then you could use that approximation to predict when the beer will be hot enough for the reaction to be important, and ask a friend to observe the beer while you go do something in a safer part of the room.

Actually, your skin, retina, bones, kidneys, pancreas etc. are already entangled with the sun, since it is the source of the energy you use to live. Unless you've been eating tube worms and such. Principle of Common Origins.

And, of course, you're also bound to the earth, since it's where all that food grows (or it eats things that grow there etc). And the sea, since it produces the majority (? buttloads anyway) of the free oxygen in the atmosphere. Not to mention being the ur-source of all life.

And you're bound to all that life, since we're all ultimately related.

The only bonds you have a choice about are the moon and the stars. I personally choose to bind myself quite heavily to both, as both celestial objects of great beauty, and as spiritual symbols. You can also choose how strongly you feel these various bonds.

And you can choose how much of this energy gets reconverted into light (I'm speaking metaphorically now). It's well known that the placement of a bushel basket over a light source will greatly decrease its output in lumens, and cause its heat production to be much more concentrated. I.e. not only does it keep your light from shining out into the world, it makes you damn cranky.

I speak from experience.

For other people annoyed by the actinic glare, a side note: per Boston Globe, halogen headlights are so expensive that they're worth stealing; prying out the lights does damage that can take several days and $1000 or more to fix.

The difference in light quality as a driver is phenomenal. The halogens provide better illumination and safer nighttime driving IMNSHO, it would be much more valuable to put effort into getting everybody to aim their headlights correctly, than effort into stealing headlights. I still find SUVs with their lights aimed directly into my car, rather than at the road dangerously irresponsible.

What is it about halogens that ups the UV? The torchiere bulbs I've seen are like the theater lamps that were starting to come in ~30 years ago (when I was last seriously active); they're still incandescents, just with a much smaller envelope. (The "quartz" envelope might let through more UV than standard glass -- I remember using quartz cells for to hold liquid speciments for UV-absorption analysis -- but how much UV does a tungsten filament at ~3000K generate?)

Aside from the appalling color, is there something different about halogen headlights?

There are actually two technologies that go by "halogen"--a hot-running incandescent lamp that generates a bit more UV than regular incandescents, and the headlight technology, which is called a metal-halide lamp. MH lamps are a kind of super-fluorescent. Their luminous efficacy (the more useful measure than efficiency) is much higher than any incandescent lamp, and they put out lots of UV.

For those who haven't heard of them, HID lamps are a class of highly efficient lamp, of which the two most common types are metal halide and high pressure sodium. While their color rendition is typically not as good as incandescent or even fluorescent lighting, they are highly efficient, have a long service life, and can be much brighter than fluorescent lamps.
You can commonly find metal halide lamps used to illuminate big warehouse-type stores and the high pressure sodium lamps are frequently used in street lighting (you can recognize them by their distinctive yellow-orange color). Also, as Randolph mentioned, HID lamps are indeed significant sources of UV radiation - all HID bulb/fixtures combinations I am aware of include either a UV absorbing envelope as part of the bulb or a UV filter as a component of the fixture.

I hate HID's on cars - too many are misaligned and they seem to zap my night vision for longer than standard halogens. I wonder if that's a spectrum thing or a brightness thing.

By the way, some very cool decorative luminaires in the photos of this NYMOMA design exhibit.

We are gradually putting in light where we need it, on a slow basis.

An expensive visit from an electrician allowed us to install window A/C units (the most cost-effective/non-house destroying concept), and HE had to make a second visit because he looked at our magnificent NEW circuit box (220 circuit breaker, installed before we moved in) and didn't open the second cover to see how it was wired. The idiots who had wired it had put ALL the household circuits into the first four 30-amp breakers... sigh for stupidity. It's all distributed now, and the freezer in the basement has it's own breaker....

Also, things like that don't have to slow down your computer. I'm sure you know about "nice" in Unix/Linux machines (and probably in OS/X as well), but you may not know you can do the same in Windows -- you can set the priority of processes deep in the task manager (specifically, by right-clicking on the process in the process list -- not the application list), and if you give your process a "below normal" priority, it only uses the CPU's free time -- not time it would otherwise be using for "normal" things like the browser.

Unfortunately, I had two copies of the Alpertron open, one background, and one which I was just using to check some smaller factorizations. When the system crashed, the state vector of the little one saved, but not the big one.

You enlighten me! I hate Windows so much, I've aftively avoided learning it, and thus depend on my 15-year-old son, a college Junior Computer Science Major. And I really should have a Unix or Linux box of some sort. Thank you again for useful suggestions!

Oooook.

First mistake-- not downloading the source code and having your son show you how to run it freestanding.

Second mistake-- not bribing your son with some arbitrary reward for taking the provided Java source, and reimplementing it in some other language.

It's partially working now, but I have a class project to finish.

ooooh! That so reminds me of one of the 'features' of our former Unix editing system (which did have good things too - to me, vi is still superior for text editing than most windows-style editors). It was always the really big, important & difficult things that got trashed, and the tiny inconsequential ones faithfully retrieved - there may be some part of Sod's Law involved.

[Err ... just ran into your spam-reducing step. Good idea, if awkward. Sending as many positive thoughts as I can muster/spare for you. That stuff is awful.]

The name of my business is Luvulamps.com or http://www.LuvULamps.com

You should go out more often.

[link removed --jdm]