I’m a fan of Reelights. As I wrote in an instructable, three years ago:
For staying safe at night, magnetic induction lights are a great way to go. They just bleed off a tiny sliver of your momentum to generate nice, bright light. They’re perfectly silent (unlike dynamos) and need no batteries (unlike clip-on bike lights.)
The reason that I had to write an instructable, though, is that I had to hack the lights substantially to work around a number of drawbacks. Here were the things that I had to fix:
The problem with Reelights, though, is that they are mounted directly on the wheel axles. This makes the actual product small and compact (the coil and light are in one integrated unit) but has a number of shortcomings:
The lights are very low to the ground, making them less apparent to drivers
The arms can flex a bit as the magnets pass by them, so they have to be adjusted every so often
The arms are kind of ugly
Fortunately, Reelight finally got their act together and are releasing new versions of the lights. They address every problem I had to work around. They upped the slick factor, to boot. Since I had one stolen off my bike in the Tenderloin last month, I’m going to get a new pair when they’re available on the Reelight site. A rep told me this should be by April 1st at the latest.
They were annoying, and now there’s Google Buzz, which collects all the same information. You can see all my public Buzzes, here: http://www.google.com/profiles/ericnguyen
I’ll find a way to integrate those with my blog, later.
I’ve been doing a little more sparring these days, usually a couple times a month. As always, it’s incredibly frustrating to see myself on video. I look so slow, so inflexible, so flustered.
Mark says I’m getting better, though. I looked back at the last sparring video I posted and the differences are subtle. My core seems more stable. I’m less perturbed when I get hit. Also, some of my strikes are getting longer. Good form means my attacking side opens way up, while the other side stays tight in a guard. I see some of that.
But gah, what a mess…
Here’s another, of boxing. We do this first to warm up, usually. This is a longish video, but there are a couple moments for me to refer to as I try to improve my responsiveness and speed. Annotations are in the video itself.
