After editing a non lighting related video for YouTube, since I had nothing else to do today, I checked every single lamp ending of every fluorescent lamp I'm using in my apartment, for any possible hotspot movements. All of my fluorescent lighting in use are CFL's, including PL-L lamps on HPF Rapid Start circuitry. Most of my CFL's have "fair weather" end blackening, including my two 2D 38w CFL's. Some have heavier end blackening, but none of which are indicative of potential EOL as of now. The two remaining PL-L lamps that I have used since 2019, are the most likely to have hotspot movement, but nothing crazy yet, and no rapid end blackening.

Made plans to install lighting in a BIG wooden showcase at work. It's about 10m of shelving in total, with about 50 shelves, all at different heights. The plan is to get led strip of 3000k with a >90 CRI and mount those behind some L-shaped plastic or aluminium strips so you don't look right into the LED strips.
Probably gonna use this stuff: https://www.ledstripxl.nl/led-strip-warm-wit-1-meter-60-led-12-volt-ultra.html
It's double the price of the bog standard warm white LED strips, but if we're gonna mount about 18m of this stuff, it better be good.

Right now, no one even looks at the showcase, because you can only see what's in there if you're right in front of it. At any other angle, the glare from the windows makes it impossible to look at it. Lighting the objects will make them actually visible and attractive. Right now, it's a dark 'hole' in the wall, so to speak.

First attempt of lighting was with a little 8w fluorescent, which worked very well. But a whole new installation with 8w tubes is not a smart thing to do, because of the availability of spares later on, as well as the need for 50 individual fixtures and ballasts, and the associated high power usage of over 12w per fixture, VS about 5 or less for the plan with the LED strips.

After a recent storm, I went out looking for damaged streetlights. Turns out, there were plentiful ignitors and capacitors fallen, and even some where the complete lantern was fallen! I got to see the insides, 150w tubular hps with magnetic ballast setup.

@LightsAreBright27- did you keep any luminaires or gear?

@Baked bagel 11
Unfortunately no, the truck that replaces them was already there. The lantern glass was shattered and the gear and lamp were generic.

Today, I did a favor to the lighting department. I went to a park with a giant statue, and there were lots of bollards with small colour cfls. Many which had a cfl had a rusted socket and the ones with a good socket had no bulb. I swapped them around, so more working lights would be there. The best part is, nobody questioned me, even the guards.

@LightsAreBright27- Good on ya!

@Baked bagel 11
Thanks ! I wonder, how did nobody question a random guy running around removing and placing lamps...

I made a mock-up for adding lighting to our show case with scientific instruments (spot the 90w sox! That's my private property), taxidermied animals and historical media things i found in the building like video tapes and diskettes. It's always been very gloomy because the hallway is not that bright. If you walk past, you cannot look inside due to the glare from other lighting and from outside.
I have gotten enough 'Yes, that's good!' reactions, to now start making a full budget estimation.

I am pretty happy with how it looks. 2700k instead of 3000k LEDs would have been nice, but because the hallway light may be converted to 4000k leds at some point, the 3000k you see in this picture will stand out nicely and 2700 will definitely look too yellow.
Spot lights would have been most eye catching, but since there is no room inside of the show case to point them at the front of the artifacts, and shining them through the glass would cause tons of glare, i opted for LED strips.

The LEDs used are strips with Epistar SMD2835 ones with a CRI of >90 that can run at a maximum of 40mA a piece, though they will not be running full blast probably. In total, there will be about 16 meters of LED strip in the entire show case totalling close to 160w - one strip of 50cm below each shelf, hidden from view and glare by a piece of angled aluminium. Everything will be dimmable with a random PWM dimmer i have, and the power comes from an old server PSU. The main 12v bus will be inside the closed-off cabinets that the show case is sitting on, with a spur going up to each set of shelves.
The extra light is very welcome in the gloomy hallway, currently lit by 1 56w 830 fluorescent per 6 meters i think.

Changing of the seasons...

Over the past few days been putting up Christmas trees & stringing lights on them in the familyroom.
Also took down my 'flag of lights' in that room.

Yoink!

Liberated these brand new TL-Ss from the recycle bin at a hardware store near me. I saw them, and literally made a little jump when i figured out they were warm white. Although these were not uncommon in trains and such, finding them in consumer hands was incredibly rare. So i really wonder what person had this bunch of tubes stashed away.

I have no use for 8 of these. I'm gonna save two, for use with a Stabilux-style ballast (incandescent lamp serving as a ballast and to fill in the gap in red light emission) and one spare. Should serve me for the rest of my life.

The others i have already offered for free pickup on a different forum, but keep your eyes open - if no one there wants them, i'll give them away here.

I also took an 8w 830 tube (since i actually use 8w fluorescents to fill in dark corners) and a 4w 640 because they're cute and it's nice to put them in my battery operated fluorescent lamp. 

Nice saves @Laurens!

And now i tried out a Stabilux (incandescent lamp used as a ballast while also improving CRI) configuration with those TLS lamps and made a video about it: https://youtu.be/RshwQnh_tXw

It works somewhat well, though the lamp is driven at 22w instead of 20w and the incandescent lamp is well underdriven at approximately 180v instead of 230v. To make this work efficiently, i need to find 'weird' voltage incandescent lamps.
For running two of these in series, i might already have found a Czech supplier of suitable lamps, but i'm not sure yet. Either way, they can only supply in boxes of 100pcs which is a bit much.

Ordered a Son Comfort 150w. A color improved, but not SDW-T HPS was on my wanted list for a while now.

Now to find a driver for it. Already found one for sale, but i'm gonna visit the local scrapyard where there are some unknown power SON street lamps hanging around.

Got some more stuff. Didn't find the lamps that I was looking for, but still some new colours!