LED's

NylonDave

I've noticed that when I am out running after dark lots of people have started blinding me with LED's. Now a LED torch might be useful if you are say repairing a fence or collecting snails after but if you are using it in a low light environment the high intensity beam extinguishes your night vision leaving you mostly blind and with no spatial awareness or peripheral vision, and that's just when it is pointing away from you.

Now are people getting stupider and more divorced from genuine sensory appreciation ? Do they really figure 'well if it can be sold I want one and I am gonna use it all the time. to the max' ? I find it real hard to answer no to this.

Because the thing is I can always see perfectly all the time at night until one of these torch wielding dudes is rude enough to shine it directly in my eyes, there is simply so much light pollution that in urban areas it never really gets dark, it takes very few minutes to notice this without a torch on and eternity with one.

But maybe there is something I am missing (there isn't), perhaps an LED salesman could explain it to me, or maybe just post a link to some gorgeous looking torches.

On a related note, has anyone noticed lots of guys playing rhythm super loud on expensive guitars with no voice leading ? Maybe they like to hit a dominant seventh here and there for the tonic on a standard and not notice how unbelievably awful it sounds, maybe arguing that it said 7 somewhere in a book. Maybe they don't fell the need to including a seventh before a modulation. Or maybe a soloist whose foot taps all jagged and random or just swoops in whenever he feels like playing in the exact same register and with the same rhythmic intensity as the soloist ? Or maybe everyone uses natural ninths for the dominant all the time even in a minor key ? Or maybe someone likes to hit two and four early whenever they get excited, or again maybe drift up to 220 on a waltz that starts at 170, or maybe just a real loose 80 'in one'. And maybe they prefer no dynamics at all, preferably with everyone as loud as possible and loving the sound of the only instrument they are listening to, their own and everything drifting inevitably up to a speed where noone is comfortable.

And do you hear them talking about their next purchase more than they talk about music ?

How often is it fun ?

Incidentally I am not really a very good runner, I just really like running and really don't like being blinded.

Anyone have any similar experiences ?

rimm

The entire worlds population could fit in Loch Ness standing on each others shoulders.. is this the random topic forum? If so I welcome it.

NylonDave

We could have the missing the point section.

But that could get out of hand. I've seen whole forums swallowed up by it.

D.

Appel

Had to drop in. For some reason, it's very hard for me to log in to this particular site - it's impossible on a mobile, and I hate sitting at a computer - so, understand, I had to go into the house and sit down at the goddam computer to write that I have made very similar connections, myself, and in a similarly apposite sort of way. And. Really enjoyed your post and your writing, NylonDave - to say that directly is a little bit crass, but I'm really busy with a massive clean-up operation and just can't allow associative thought to take hold of me because I'll get going and before I know it, it'll be 4 am and all the real-time work won't get done, again - and I can feel the hackles rising, not from the discussion but just from the bad monitor and terrible chair. But - suppressing the flight side of the write-or-flight impulse for only another moment, I will perpetuate and extend my crassitude by adding that I get the impression that sitting down together and working through about twelve brilliant cocktails (I like mine on the savory side) would be a pretty fun evening.

Ok gotta go

Oh hey Rimm - really? I did NOT know that - but to survive at all in this hyper-illuminated world, I have had to fashion a kind of stylish gullibility and turn it into an art

NylonDave

I just realised that maybe I didn't give torches a fair shake.

You see I own some maps and in the dark I use a torch to consult them when I am in unfamiliar territory.

But I will stop to do that and maybe plan a route before turning the torch off and letting my night sight return.

Weird thing I have noticed is that now these new fangled LED torches are so ubiquitous I have seen a lot of people out running shining the torch at a map and reading it on the go. Sometimes they fall over their feet and stumble a bit which isn't too bad. Other times they collide headlong with trees and passers by and the like.

I think that the middle ground is better. Or maybe more and more torches. Still fancier perhaps a giant illuminated map overlaying reality. Perhaps an online version too, which would mean you wouldn't even have to leave the house.

D.

NylonDave

Hey, |I don't want to give you the impression that all misuse of light happens in the dark.

Once I had a friend who dreamed of being a post box.

'All postboxes are red' , went his logic 'everything red is therefore a postbox.

He then proceeded to stand in the sun for hours and hours sustained by the ferocity of his passion.

I would like to be able to say that I had had the dignity to leave him to his fate but that would be a lie.

I argued and cajoled and warned about sunstroke and cancer till at last our friendship was over.

I haven't seen him in a long time, guess he must be a post box now.