Did a bunch of RSS feed pruning - dumped a few broken / no longer interesting feeds, added a few things.
First, to make this abundantly clear: these are for making you visible to others, not for making your surroundings visible to you. So I'm recommending these based on cycling in a reasonably well-lit city; you may want to read a bit more if you're cycling on unlit country roads or the like.
Firstly, lights: I had a set of generic LED lights powered by a pair of CR2032 batteries, and for all their low consumption those things eat batteries and the batteries aren't exactly cheap. And they also don't come in rechargeable form, and you have to carry spares because the failure curve for the battery tends to be "I'M FINE I'M FINE I'M FINE I'M *kaputt*". All hassle, especially for someone hard pressed to remember to bring basic things like his bike when going cycling. So, my shopping criteria summed up: LED lights, annoying flashing pattern, rechargable. Do not ask me how I came upon them, but I found the Knog Blinder O series lights, available as a white LED light
for the front and a red LED light
for the rear (currently this has one incorrect image showing it as
white; trust me, it's red). For a measure of brightness, you
can't look directly at the red light without getting
afterimages. The white one causes people to flinch when you
demonstrate it to them, plus when I'm stopped at tee junction it
lights up the other side of the road. The units are small - about
5cm square on the face, with a bit of bulk on the back. The light
comes from four LEDs which can show a solid beam or a
pattern. There's a switch on the back that operates as on/off,
hibernate (i.e. long-term off), and pattern select; there are five
patterns, including solid on, rotating flasher, etc. I don't use
the solid beam, but I imagine it might actually work as
illumination. The units are also sufficiently waterproof to work
in heavy rain - I don't know if they're immersion-safe, but hey,
this is cycling, not scuba-diving. Attachment to your bike is via
a rubber strap with a metal clip; the main complaint in negative
reviews on Amazon appears to relate to the rubber breaking, but I
did note that there's advice on the instructions that come with
the light that you don't use the metal latch as a lever when
attaching the lights and I imagine disregarding this might shorten
the strap's life considerably. Best of all, though, is the
rechargable battery: you plug it into a USB port. Since I work in
IT, I have an abundance of such things available to me, including
a portable USB booster battery. The bulk of the units does means
you can't necessarily plug them into adjacent slots, however. I
have no idea how long a full charge takes as I tend to plug them
in when I get to the office and leave them until I'm heading home
again. Charge lasts long enough for a week of half-hour-both-ways
bike rides on the interval flashing mode (and I use these
regardless of light or weather conditions - be safe, be seen!); I
would imagine that the solid beam mode chews through the battery a
bit faster, and there's an eco-flashing mode which probably lasts
a bit longer. The lights are small enough that you can take them
off the bike and slip them into a pocket, and also small enough
that they may well escape the attention of thieves if you
accidentally leave them on the bike. I strongly
recommend these if you're doing city cycling.My other recent purchase was a Hump waterproof / fluorescent backpack cover
because I'd taken to using my laptop bag instead of my panniers
for the daily commute. My only disatisfaction with this is My Own
Damn Fault: the 20-40 litre model only barely covers my employer's
original standard-issue HP laptop backpack when it's filled with
laptop, change of clothes, lunchbox, and assorted
whatnots. Everything else is exactly what I needed: it's
waterproof, it's high-visibility, it has a good strong elastic
that pulls the lip close around the backpack's corners, two strong
elasticated straps with snap fasteners to secure it in place, and
you can even use the bag it came in as a waterproof bag for stuff
you want to keep separate from the rest of your backpack contents
- it clips, using more snapfasteners, to the inside of the
cover. Again, another strong recommend - but do check the
sizing!I've a bunch more gear of longer tenure, which I may or may not write up here at a later date - right now I'm just providing notes on the things people have commented on recently.
(For the record, I wear a helmet. The jury is out on the actual safety provided, but it makes me feel a bit safer, and that's good enough reason for me.)
Reassurance, if I needed it, that closing out one of my AIB accounts was the right thing (closed due to excessive bank charges and apathetic customer service): I still have one account left on their systems, and I went to check it out via online banking, and when I log in - correctly - I get an error saying that one of my accounts may have been closed. So what, that means I can't access any of them? I think, as soon as the opportunity arises, I'll remove the last remaining trace of dependency I have on these inconsiderate customer-haters and move to someone who gives a crap (there are such banks, surprisingly enough)