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I have one of these:

http://www.petzl.com/en/outdoor/headlamps/core-rechargeable-battery

You can easily swap out the USB rechargeable battery with standard AAAs if you need longer lifetime out in the wilderness

personally, it's hard to walk my dog at night (so it poops/ pee before bedtime). I have one hand on the leash, another on the flashlight, and then somehow manage to scoop the poop....especially in the rain while trying to balance an umbrella.

Allow me to introduce you to a revolutionary new concept.

My floodlights are on motion sensor, however. It helps cut down on the obnoxiousness.

In my experience, motion sensors on external floodlights are perpetually triggered by wildlife.

Everyone keeps mentioning "bring a flashlight" and people are suggesting makes and models of their favorite types of other gear but I haven't seen any other suggestions for a good flashlight so here's mine:

  http://en.petzl.com/petzl/LampesProduits?Produit=4 64

Petzl's Zipka models are incredibly small, run forever on 3x AAA batteries, use LEDs, have multiple brightness settings, and can be worn as a headlamp or attached to your wrist or backpack or a post to light a person-sized area. Because of the retracting head-string these are the smallest headlamps and probably the smallest flashlight anywhere. The only possible downside is if you have long, curly hair it can get tangled. Yeah, digging through your backpack with a headlamp is a lot easier than doing so with a flashlight in one hand.

And you can use it to write notes late at night if you heed the (excellent) advice to leave the lappy and take a notebook and a few good pens.

Have fun!

A stronger longer lasting battery would be nice, but sometimes it's not the battery but the high energy consumption of the device. I recently switched from a four AA battery reading light with a standard bulb (a Fliplite) getting about 8 hours of use to this reading light with brigher LED's giving about 100 hours on 3 AAA's.

First off, I am a machinist.

There are several other companies that do exactly what emachineshop.com does, and you can probably find them listed somewhere at Modern Machine Shop.

I prefer to either buy Chinese, or work with a small local shop that can cater to my needs. The small local shop will probably be very expensive though. A part that costs $200 from emachineshop or similar, could (but not always) cost double that from a smaller local shop.

Machine shop rates in the USA have been around $60 to $90 per hour since about the 1970's...and no, that's not adjusted for inflation. What that means is that the costs for getting things made have dropped off quite a lot in the USA, due to CNC machines and their automation abilities, as well as deeply declining wages for skilled machinists - Yep, you guessed it, if you were making $10/hour as a machinist in 1970, you're STILL making $10/hour in 2004. On top of that, compared to the 1970's, the taxes and cost of living are higher too.

A one-off part that might cost you $200 in the USA could probably be had for maybe $30 from China. The reasons for this aren't simple...You can't say Americans are lazy, or the Chinese are smarter, or anything like that. My opinion is that the USA is terribly inefficient, and it's economy is being pissed away in one way or another by the goverment, and it's poor policies, all the way down to the individual level. The result is that, despite our technical know-how and hard-working tradition, the USA isn't very competitive with other nations. We have high taxes, high unemployment, low standards of living relative to our wealth, and lots of well-paid lawyers. As far as I know, despite our amazing potential and ability, America isn't a clear world leader in anything anymore, except military might (which is fading too).

For a real world example, in one area that I used to work, there were 3 machine shops. One of them had been in it's location since the 1950's and was competitive in it's pricing, and consequently, was doing quite well. One of their contracts was for making Petzl Carabiners. The second machine shop dealt heavily with government contracts, and was paid top-dollar for even simple work, and had no fear of competition. The third machine shop was only about 5 years old, privately owned, and it struggled to survive continuously. It was the last new machine shop left in the area, as all the others were already out of business.

The second machine shop, with it's steady diet of government contracts is not terribly interesting, since it's obvious why it's a success. So, I'll just tell you why the Old Shop was doing well, and the New Shop was not. Basically, the city where they were located had enacted some building regulations several years ago that required all of the buildings to be "pretty". Meaning, landscaping, fancy brick, etc, etc. So, the Old Shop was basically just a corrugated steel warehouse, that despite it's size, only cost about $20,000, and was paid-for decades ago (I asked the owner, that's what he told me). The New Shop did similar work, but it was in a fancy brick building, with city-imposed landscaping, etc.. That building cost over $100,000, and was maybe half to 3/4 the size of the Old Shop across the street. On top of this, since the property that the New Shop rested on was so pretty, it had a higher value than the industrial-looking property that the Old Shop rested on, so the New Shop had to pay substantially higher property taxes.

I made some custom medical test equipment in the New Shop, and part of the order was for some little clamps that were to be used to pull on bandages to test the strength of the adhesive. The parts were simple, but we charged the customer about $1600 for each clamp. The really sad thing is that no one bothered to tell the customer that they could do the same thing with an off the shelf clamp from home depot that cost $4.

I have a headlamp that runs on 3 rechargable AAA batteries. I've been finding it so useful that I carry it around in my pocket all the time. (Note that even pocket-knives don't make this grade for me, YMMV).

Also, I bought a bike about five years ago. Its been so succesful at filling my transporation needs I got rid of my car. A bike that's good for me might not be the right one for you, but for what its worth its a black trek 730 hybrid.

• Cannot focus the beam, as the reflector is inside the LED itself
• Thus... the beam must be either non-focused, or too focused. Short focus LED lights have a very small range of 30 feet or so, while exceptions (like the PAL light) have such a focused beam that it is useless in close range)
• The "white" light, while impressive and cool, is not that great for night-time viewing. It can ruin your night vision, and does not display contrast as well as the yellow light. (of course, no one wants to put a yellow LED in their flashlight, even if they exist, because it's not "cool")
• pricey. (new technology is always pricey)