In which Rolanni solicits advice and assistance

[rolanni]

At 4:47 this evening, it was pitch dark on the outside of the house -- a circumstance made more dire by the fact that it was raining.

This had the not-exactly-unexpected-result of making me regret the demise of the reading lamp even more than I already did -- and, believe me, my sorrow on that front is non-trivial, mostly because I am sick to death of buying lamps that promise Forever and keep dying after a couple years. Dernit, I want a lamp I can have a Lasting Relationship with. A Forever Lamp.

So, advice: Where/How can I acquire a decent reading lamp? I can't spend a gazillion dollars, but considering the amount of money I've wasted on these consumptive brass things over the last five or six years, I'm perfectly willing to spend a bit of cash to get something that's gonna be able to keep up with me for years to come.


And! Assistance: Who is going to a convention or a book fair, or belongs to a reading group, has a relationship with a bookstore manager (or, yanno, is a bookstore manager) -- and can take some Carousel Tides postcards to put on the freebie table/in the goody bag/distribute? I have some left over from my various efforts and they might as well go to good homes.

If you can help, drop me a note at rolanniATkorvalDOTcom and I'll pop some in the mail to you.

In other news, I have created an Elegant Draped Effect for my back window, which remains shut all winter. Steve does not understand my drapey thing; especially he does not understand it on one window only. He wonders if I can't cut the existing one in half and drape both windows, in the service of symmetry.

Great Art is always misunderstood.

Comments

?

[thomas stewart (from livejournal.com)]

I am puzzled - how does a lamp fail? I ask because its never happened to me, except maybe some cheapo flex lamps back in college. Bulbs fail, shades get a little ratty from multiple moves and indifferent housekeeping, but the lamp itself still works when I turn the knob (barring only the bulb thing). The lamp by my couch is an Ethan Allen I inherited from my parents after I moved once while leaving all my furniture behind, and it's since held up through 7 moves and a some dubious municipal power. So it's at least 12 years old (I don't recall how long they had it before I got it) and was chosen by my step-mother for looks rather than utility. Did I get wildly lucky and other lamps just up and die for no good reason? Weird.

Re: ?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same, the only time I've known a lamp (as opposed to the replaceable bulb) to fail was using too high power so that it overheated and burnt out (the answer to that, as the doctor said, is "don't do that then").

My bedroom reading light is an anglepoise (the sort seen in the Pixel "Luxo Jr." animation, except it's not that brand) fitted with a 40W R63 'spot' bulb pointed at the ceiling. That diffuses the light, and pointing upwards lets the heat escape which improves the bulb life (I get around 2000 hours from an ordinary tungsten bulb, about twice its rated life, they are rated for downward-pointing fittings). In general I favour ceiling-pointed lighting.

The solutions to bulbs failing are simple: 1) keep a stock of them, 2) use longer-lasting bulbs, like CFL (if you can stand the things) or halogen (and note that the latter produce around 40% extra light and so heat the fitting less for the same light output). But if they are failing regularly at less than half the rated life there is something wrong with the fitting, or they are being power-cycled too much (turning a bulb off for only a minute is a false economy, most failures are when power is applied).