For your personal projects you of course do not have to satisfy RoHS requirements, so you can use whatever solder you want.

60/40 and 63/37 eutectic solders are easier to work, and give better looking solder joints. There is no problem with lead solder toxicity. Lead does not evaporate at soldering temperature. May be you should be a bit careful with fine powdered solder like when you are emptying desoldering pump, but just wash your hands afterwards. And that's all, no need to worry.


Lead / lead free incompatibility is significantly overhyped. Yes you can remove old lead-free solder with a wick to get better looking shiny joints, but at hobby level, reliability is not significantly compromised even if you omit that step. For the naysayers, it is even professionally considered OK to mount BGA chips having lead-free balls with leaded soldering paste.

If you're talking about the forum and gallery software, L-G went with Coppermine Photo Gallery and Simplemachines Forum. But Simplemachines is old and not very elegant, so you might want to use Discourse instead. Discourse is elegant and full-featured. See how it looks-on the Straight Dope Message boards. You might have to create your own login/signup window that logs you into/signs you up for the forum and gallery at the same time. All three of these software solutions are open-source. I do not recommend closed-source for a forum software or most web stuff for repairability reasons.Have fun making the site! 

As an HID guy, I don't hate LED. My beef with LED in the beginning was that they didn't get even close to there rated life before EOL, and with their high price, that soured many folks...quickly. The other issue was LED luminaires were/still un-serviceable...if it fails, it goes to the recycle bin...waste of resources. HID on the other hand was field serviceable/repairable.

I guess we think the same things. I quite agree with you.

It's the larger appliances that are even more fun. Major appliances from the 70s and 80s are basically indestructible and are built like tanks. For example nothing can compete with a Kenmore washer or dryer of this vintage. I had a Kenmore dishwasher go for 22 years before it finally quit and that was nightly use and in those 22 years it never once needed repairs but my brother and a retired appliance repairman got it running again. I love the powerful motors on old appliances nowadays they just spit water onto the clothes or dishes. Or the click and hum when the fridge compressor kicks on. As for electric clocks who knows how long the motors in those last especially if they are GE.

I very much agree!!!!!!!Although I am not interested in kitchen appliances per se, I still think old 70s and 80s appliances have character, and I love the look. It's way better than anything made with an austere modern look. Old stuff for the win!

Well said

I felt this way recently, just because you don’t upload much doesn’t mean you’re unimportant to this site. Additionally, there are plenty of members that don’t upload anything at all.

I hardly upload anything at all. I still enjoy this site. I think I belong.

I’m sorry this year has been so cruddy for you. This is definitely a hard interest to have because no one else ever really seems to care. New lanterns are always exciting, and I really hope your cousin pulls through soon. I hope you have a way better second half of this crazy year.
 

Why should both behave the same on any parameter that would not matter at all? They are two independent designs, maybe driving the lamp the same way in their principle (a commutating polarity DC), but otherwise designed by different people, so ending using different circuits, with different behavior on aspects that do not matter at all, just because particular way became simpler for a given circuit.

If the frequency would be of any importance, you would see both behaving in a similar manner.
Like they are very likelybehaving very similar way when speaking about arc current vs arc voltage dependencies and so on.

Now that we’re approaching the second half of the year, I thought i’d share my thoughts on how 2025 is going for me so far.

So far, 2025 has honestly been a miserable year for me. I’ve been picked on both online and in college. I’m not going into complete detail on what’s exactly happened since I’ve already discussed it on another post, but it’s affected me quite a bit. Some other bad stuff has also happened to me this year, and there were even a few instances where I’ve felt lonely. Also, the amount of street lighting around me I’ve witnessed being replaced is insane. I know LED is more efficient and it saves the council more money, but I wish the old lanterns would’ve lasted another few years at least. Also these lanterns were a part of my childhood growing up so to see them disappear is like having a part of my childhood taken away from me. I hate this year so badly because of this, but that’s not the only reason I hate it. One of my cousins is currently in the hospital due to an infection and I don’t know if he’ll survive or not, I’m currently keeping him in my prayers.

If there’s positive things I have to say about 2025, is that I now have another lantern in my collection, I plan on taking photos of and making a video of it once I get enough time. My brother-in-law and my sisters have also taken me out to places, and I went on a trip last week with my college to a theme park. Those moments were definitely the highlights of the year for me.

Otherwise, this year has been really bad. For me, this is the worst year since 2022. I really hope the second half of the year is much better, hopefully it should since summer break is right around the corner which means I’ll have more time to spend going to places and also visiting my relatives. Hopefully, I’ll also be getting more lamps and lanterns soon which I’ll upload on my gallery. Anyways, how has 2025 been for you?

This don't occurs with my Philips HID-PrimaVision PV C 70 /S CDM electronic metal halide ballast, when I put my Osram NAV-TS 70W Super 4Y HPS lamp inside my tracklight and turning it on.