New forum

[wes]

People here have knowledge and patience. Those qualities are SOOOOO hard to find in the world of interweb.

and especially so,i've found, in the laser world.

[buffo]

Who wants a "life shortened" Pointer ( reminds me of my "Laserknob" thread ) when ......
you can go to Salem .... and win a set of Scanners or go to the Uk meet
and all get great Pangolin shirts .....

Good point! I'd forgotten about that. To continue - how about a DMX decoder and an output relay board, or a copy of the LaserDesign Studio software, complete with Dongle, or any one of the other cool (and expensive) door prizes we had...

Granted, I don't know that we'll be able to do that again, but for sure we gave away a couple THOUSAND bucks worth of gear at SELEM... Pretty cool if you ask me.

Hell, forget about the door prizes for a minute. How about go to a meet and have someone hand-tune your scanners for you? How about go to a meet and have someone re-wire your projector... Or fix a software bug on your computer... Or, in the case of you lucky UK chaps, have the actual meeting inside a bar where you can order fish and chips (and a really good beer) while watching lasers. One of these days I've got to get my ass back over there. I miss the beer...

Thanks for putting it in perspective, Karl.

[allthatwhichis]

Damn... That's what we were missing. In house drinks... Damn... I think a few poeple have enough at the Artist's Cafe though huh?

[carmangary]

Well, I think it is good to have options so I welcome the other forum... although I probably won't visit it. You can't blame a guy for advertising his new forum. I think maybe he felt insulted by some of the comments about it and just lashed out.

[allthatwhichis]

I did mention it was a joke, but you do have to be a lil thick skinned here... I think it keeps the bubblegummers out.

Sorry if we offended...

[Banthai]

carmangary said

You can't blame a guy for advertising his new forum. I think maybe he felt insulted by some of the comments about it and just lashed out.

I guess your right .... but its just the attitude .. if he had come here and posted " ive just opened a new laser forum please give it a look ... thankyou" then that would have been fine, we would have all had a look, and to be honest the more laser related forums the better, .... but its the carrot dangling i dont like .... especialy when its a souped up Pointer that in the wrong hands is dangerous and im not anti pointer as i really like the one ive got.
This Forum has given away more FREE things than most ..... namely FREE ADVISE ...... which for me has been worth hell of a lot more than a pointer
(ok .... rant over)

all the best ... Karl

[p1t8ull]

Well we had a great time at UKLEM and not one balloon got hurt

Key point:

We are fairly thick skinned here, probably due to age and experience

Them over there need to realize that most people on here are excited to at last be able to fulfil a photonic ambition after years of interest and dreaming of one day building/engineering/owning one of the projectors that produced the fab shows we have seen and admired in years past, whereas they (the "pointer generation") view lasers as cool new toys to pop balloons/flies and burn stuff with. Different strokes 'n' all that.

But hey - so long as they play safely.

[carmangary]

I really never understood the desire to burn tape or pop balloons. Perhaps it is because I grew up in rural USA where we had BB guns, shotguns, rifles, slingshots, and bow and arrows to do that. And the results were always a lot more spectacular!

[laserterd]

ya im over it already. maybe we should change the title or description of that forum to "for people who want to use lasers for burning stuff" or something.

[buffo]

Laserterd;

Ok - maybe we were a little too harsh as well. I'll take it down a couple notches.

maybe we should change the title or description of that forum to "for people who want to use lasers for burning stuff" or something

Well, it's not just that... You've got some people posting stuff there (moderators) that really don't understand what they're talking about. I don't know, maybe I'm being too picky - but I hate to see a newbie ask a question, only to be answered by another newbie that just *barely* understands the answer himself. That's how bad science propigates. Especially when there are so many good references on the Internet these days, it pains me to see stuff like that.

I suppose most of the members of your forum are more interested in which model of green laser pointer they should buy (*cough* Leadlight 105 *cough*) if they want to modify it to get more power, rather than detailed answers about laser and optical theory. But there are some posts over there that contain glaring mistakes, and it bothers me that the people that posted them could have corrected their mistakes if they would have just taken a minute or two to check Sam's Laser FAQ before posting.

If you guys are having fun discussing your pointers, that's cool. While there aren't many pointer jockies here on PhotonLexicon, I do realise that there are lots of people out there that enjoy pointers, and nothing else. So I suppose it's good that you've made a place for them to gather. But I cringe at the technical posts there, and I worry about the damage an uninformed laser pointer crowd could do to our hobby as a whole.

Having said that, I also don't have time to research all the answers and go on a marathon binge correcting everyone's posts. First, I'd sound like a complete ass to everyone on the board. (Well, more so than I already do. ) Second, I really don't have time for it. And third, I'm not sure that anyone there would really care one way or another. Like I said, it appears that most of the crowd there is into burning things and popping ballons. While that's fine for them, it's not my thing at all. (And probably isn't high on the list of most of the other members here on PhotonLexicon, either.)

So that, in a nutshell, is why I was so against joining your forum. I will pledge to take a peek at it from time to time, however, to see how it evolves. Perhaps in the future it will be a place that I might want to drop in once in a while. But honestly, within a month of signing up on PhotonLexicon I had forsaken all other forums (laser related or otherwise). I *really* like it here, and that means the bar has been set pretty high...

Adam