Coast HP17 13" LED Flashlight

I've typed about this before. I have an addiction. Who's kidding whom? I've got many addictions. So...

Hello, My name is Absent-Minded Jay and I am addicted to flashlights. Everyone knows about it and I'm not even ashamed of it. One never knows when you might need a good flashlight. And knowing you got a really good deal on a good flashlight, makes it even better.

I'm also addicted to getting a good...very good...deal on the stuff I buy. I'm a big fan of slickdeals.net. I believe this is where I saw my latest deal to feed my flashlight addiction.

I don't remember how much this flashlight cost (I probably hid the receipt so no one could find out that I bought ANOTHER flashlight!) but I do know that I got it for half the MSRP.

Without further adieu — please meet the

Coast HP17 13" LED Flashlight!
(tah dah!)

I took just a few pictures with my SIII camera. I tried to capture the brightness of the high and low settings but I don't think it worked very well. The first 'on' photo is high and the second is low. I think the different brightness affected the way the camera captured the light. The higher level made everything around the flashlight darker almost black. The lower level made the background show more. Neither image makes the levels look different so I'll have to try to describe.

High is pretty bright. I think the manual says it's 615 lumens. I have no way to measure. I just know that it looks pretty bright. Much, much brighter than my 100 lumens flashlight. The throw on it is pretty wide too. It can be narrowed/focused into a tighter beam but it still has a wide aura around the narrower beam. In other words, narrowing doesn't really make it a spot beam. It's more like the high beam is in the middle (smaller of course than when not narrowed) and the lower beam shines around it. Does that make sense?

Low is pretty low. It's really dimmer than I expected. I think the manual says 64 lumens. Again, I can't measure. I just know it's dim and in fact dimmer than many of my smaller pocket flashlights. I don't know why the huge difference in lumens. I would think that huge gap would be used more in a light that you can manually dim from 615 to 64 or vice versa. Not so much in a Hi/Lo switch. It's not an issue really. I truly don't know what the effect will be since I've only used this briefly in my house to look in the closet and on the small back patio. For those purposes, the high level was very bright and useful. The low level was, well, low but in that brief use, it made me think of when you are outside at night and a car's headlights drive by and you are trying to use the beam from the car headlights to see things. The headlight beam may have been useful but you may not have seen some things because the light wasn't bright enough. Does THAT make sense?

Although this probably doesn't affect one bit of the quality of their flashlights, one thing I have noticed about a few of my Coast flashlights is that they do a pretty good job with the boxing for the flashlights. The boxes are typically black and when you open them up to see the flashlight inside they are a red interior. I don't know. The box inside and out just looks pretty cool.

So, this really isn't a huge, in-depth review of the Coast HP17 13" LED Flashlight but so far it's been a good flashlight for the price. Can I recommend it for the MSRP of like $70 or more? Probably not. I wouldn't buy any flashlight for that price unless I could see shit at least a mile away with near absolute clarity. Yeah, that's asking a lot but that's me and my purchasing standards! Can you go wrong with this flashlight (especially at half off)? Probably not. It does exactly what it says although I have no way of knowing if the lumens are exact. It's a flashlight with high and low and a finger-sliding focus. It does that so where can the complaint be at this time?

Man of Tai Chi (2013)

Man of Tai Chi (2013). So this movie apparently didn't get very good reviews. I can understand why. I wouldn't say it is a horrible movie. Although I don't know if this had any kind of theater release (aka not straight to DVD), I could see going to the dollar movie to see it. Or since it's now avaible via Redbox, maybe renting it from there for $1.20. However, if you already have Netflix, it's also available there but it would be a minimal charge since you already pay a flat fee for video streaming.

The movie was very Matrix-like for me. First off, Keanu Reeves looks almost the exact same as his character, Neo. He "acts" the same. Wears very similar clothes minus the sunglasses. Fights the same. However, he's the bad guy in this movie. He just wants to put on the best damn fight club he can but add in the world wide web and he can make millions off the fights.

The main character, "Tiger" Chen Lin-Hu (played by Tiger Chen is a pretty cool fighter. He's crafty, skilled and he only wants to make his teacher proud by showing how Tai Chi can be used for fighting even though his teach does not like fighting. Isn't this the typical premise of any martial arts movie? Learn a martial art, become a phenomenal master at the art, can't prove how awesome you are at it because it's not in the code, breaks the code, loses way, finds way, brings honor to their teacher (and sometimes self).

So, based on the two paragraphs above, you might be able to assess that this is basically Kickboxer, No Retreat, No Surrender, The Chinese Connection, or The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury).

Just like all the movies I watch, there are criticisms that bother me. Stuff like "that wouldn't happen" or "why not just do [whatever] instead of [whatever]." You know shit like that. Again, I know it's a movie but it doesn't mean the shit don't need to be a little more believable in the sense of how things happen.

I'm very surprised that with Keanu as the director that a little more wasn't put in to the quality of the movie. I guess maybe the budget wasn't big enough for it. Looking here, it seems there is an estimated budge of $25M which is pretty low for "good" movie standards these days but it's also interesting to note that the opening weekend only grossed around $61K. This website show the worldwide gross to date (I guess) is only $5.2M. Slightly off topic—it makes you wonder why Hollywood would even begin to blame piracy when they put out not-so-good quality movies such as this.

That being said. If you had some time to blow, this movie wouldn't be a bad one to watch. I just wouldn't go out of your way or pay too much, greater than $2, to see it.