It's funny, every noob who ever comes in here for the first time almost always asks the same thing: "where can I get the cheapest, most incredible, high quality laser that can burn a house down from 8 miles away? And it can't cost more than $40, I saved my allowance for six months to afford that!"
Or something like that. In fact I wish there was a sticky that featured that question, it would reduce traffic here by 85%!
Anyway, it's ironic that everyone wants to get a laser to burn things when the first thing everyone learns is that after a few days burning stuff gets as old and boring as your first slot-car racing set.
It's one of those bizarre hobbys that attracts a lot of people, even though the object of desire has little to no practical value. Yes, I enjoy looking at the beam too, but if 99% of the people on this site were to be honest they would admit that they don't exactly pull out their lasers and sit there, staring at the beam every day. After you've owned it for a while it's probably not even once a week.
On the other hand, I have a big interest in laser lumia shows (basically it involves shining the laser through a piece of slowly rotating, textured glass that puts big, cool, moving nebula-like patterns on the wall).
Ever since I was a kid and went to planetarium laser shows, I fell in love with this effect and always wanted to do it at home.
Now I can! And it's not even very expensive or hard to set up (believe it or not, the hardest part is finding a good motor to spin the glass). I have my laser lumia setup in my living room and have it running just about every night, all night. It's like ambient entertainment; it's awesome to see the patterns on the wall all night and it creates just enough light to see by without having to turn on the ugly, white house lights.
Thanks to lumia, I actually have a practical need for all kinds of lasers. Naturally I want all different colors, but different power levels create different patterns, as well as focusing beams (when you change beam focus through the glass, it has a major impact on the kind of pattern that gets thrown on the wall).
The only downside is I need lasers with a 100% duty cycle that won't overheat if left on all night (and despite what people have to say about Wicked Lasers, this is something they are really good at - even my 1W arctic can be left on forever and it doesn't get hot).
Anyway, burning gets boring fast, but using lasers for art never does!
