User blog:JoshuaJSlone/An Elegant Light for a More Civilized Age

Over the last 13 months I've become an editor and then admin here, started a Hello! Project database, and amassed quite a collection of used CDs and DVDs... but I feel I've now taken a further step into crazy.

I like H!P for the music and performances, but a lot of the side material has little interest for me. If I want to see what a member looks like there are plenty of pictures online, without needing to get a $40 collectible towel with an image on it. BUT something I thought might be fun as a prop was a glow stick. So some months ago I started looking around and ran into articles like this, which talked about how when people wanted something good and reusable they generally had to make it themselves. This seemed more trouble than I was willing to go to for a project with no point and no certainty I'd do a good job of it, so I dropped the subject.

Recently, though, I saw a more recent article which showed that a lot had gone on in the several years since the previous article. It came down to there being one clear brand which was a top product, reusable, uses a convenient battery type (AAA), and allowed color changing for versatility. Sounded good to me. The most recent model from this manufacturer is the King Blade X10 II. A III is planned for sometime this year, but there's no information on what changes it will have. So I went looking to see where I could find the existing model.

The usual places I check for convenience first weren't a great help. Amazon had some crazy high prices from third party sellers. On eBay I saw a few decent prices, but they weren't new items, and were the model with a glitterly look rather than the plainer "smoke" one I preferred. However, I eventually found it for sale from a Rakuten store with a hard-to-miss banner about welcoming foreign buyers. At ~$30 the price seemed about the same as what I'd seen on Japanese Amazon, though of course that was before shipping. Even the cheaper shipping option was about $16, which kind of sucks, buuuut it's not like I was drowning in good alternatives, so I decided to go for it. At least the shipping turned out decently fast, because just over a week later it has arrived. So... uhh... now what to do with it?

Admire its brightness!

Help find things during a power outage!

Enhance the home concert viewing experience in a distracting way!

It is a simple and cool little device, though. It came with batteries so I haven't had to open it, but it doesn't look like battery switching will be a problem. Seems the screw is plastic so I might worry about that wearing out at some point. Operation is entirely by two buttons on the bottom, each half a circle. Holding them both for several seconds causes the light to turn on or off. While on, each button cycles through the colors in different directions. It's kind of a subtle difference, but one button is flat and the other slightly textured to make telling them apart easier without looking.