Does anybody know of some interesting ways to ballast fluorescent tubes and HID lamps aside from inductive chokes, electronic ballasts, incandescent bulbs, HX autotransformer ballasts, CWA ballasts, and mag reg autotransformer ballasts?

If I remember correctly, Photonicinduction "ballasted" huge several kW xenon projector lamp with arc welder. They have current limiting electronics or tranformers in older machines.

Edit: When I lit my first fluorescent lamp without proper ballast, I used homemade power inverter, Which used MOSFETs and halogen transformer wired backwards. The oscillator was PC cooling fan speed indication signal, which was used to drive the MOSFETs. The squarewave output produced high voltage spikes on the output because current changes were rapid in the transformer coils, and 58 W 5 foot tube lit instantly when power was turned on. The transformer was so powerless and did not overdrive the lamp.

And then I learned how to make DIY ballasts from transformers .