Stargazer's Garage

I recently purchased a Nitecore EA4W  flashlight after educating myself with some of the excellent reviews written by Selfbuilt over on CandlePowerForums. I'm very pleased with this high-powered compact LED flashlight that runs on only 4 AA batteries. Before I knew anything about the real world of flashlights I purchased a  MAGLITE® LED 3-Cell D Flashlight from Walmart. You can see it in the top picture. It's brightness is rated at 131 Lumens. By contrast, the Nitecore EA4 is much more compact and rated at 860 Lumens . The picture on the bottom right shows the Maglite on the left and the Nitecore on the right shining on a fence about 30 ft away. The difference is clear. The Nitecore is noticeably brighter in the grass directly in front as well as on the fence.  I bought the "W" version of the Nitecore EA4 that has a warmer LED than the cool white that is also available. The Maglite has a cool white LED. The compact size of the Nitecore EA4 will make it much ea...

This TYLT Energi Backpack with Built-in Battery was my fourth successfully funded Kickstarter campaign, but the second one to ship. The whole project was very professionally run and actually shipped early. The bag is awesome: very high quality with lots of well designed pockets like my SCOTTEVEST products. The built-in battery can charge 3 devices at the same time and has the capacity to charge an iPhone about 6 times.

I recently picked up a number of items that I had ordered online including a Titanium Spork from Light My Fire. I used it this morning to eat an omelette and I'm glad to say it worked quite well. I expected the knife/cutting section not to be sharp because it goes into your mouth, but it cut surprisingly well. Our staff room at work is notorious for not having enough proper eating utensils--especially when needed the most--so the Spork will definitely come in handy. 

I recently acquired a Garmin fenix Outdoor GPS Watch through an air miles reward program. This awesome watch uses GPS and a variety of sensors so that you can track, navigate and gather all sorts of trip information whenever you are out and about. You can also upload your tracking data to a smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth to view your progress or review your journey. What's even more awesome is having enough loyalty points the get Garmin fenix including shipping and taxes without having to pay anything extra! The Garmin fēnix comes with a variety of user-programmable Profiles that tailors the data shown on the watch to the particular activity you are doing, such as Hiking, Running, Cycling, and Geocaching. However, I encountered a problem where some of the profiles shown to me in the setup wizard were deleted once I started to use the watch. The ones I was interested in were: Mountain Biking, Hunting, Military, and Off Road--not because I was going to be participating i...