Hasta La Gadget!

There are a few items that everyone should have in their toolkit, things so useful that there really is no excuse not to own them. Gaffer tape, or its residue-laying, brittle-ageing US counterpart, duct-tape, is one. Velcro is another. Now this diumvirate of utility is joined by a third object, a widget so simple that you could make your own in seconds, yet so versatile you couldn’t count its uses in a lifetime (well, maybe not in a dragonfly’s lifetime, at least).

It is the ball-bungee, and you can see it above. It consists of a hollow plastic ball and a length of elastic cord. With it you can hold almost any two items together. I came across them by way of the Strobist blog, and they are particularly suited to photography as there are no scratchy parts on them. You can secure flashes to poles, or even small comapct cameras to, well, anything. I wanted to make a couple to hold my umbrella to my light-stand, which is one of the “traditional” uses.

Yes, I said make. I figured that the ball bungee would make a great how-to post for the Gadget Lab, being simple, cheap, quick and useful. Like always, I visited my local hardware emporium, only to find no plastic baubles and, shockingly, no elastic cord. There were, however, packs of ball-bungees in the garden section. The price? Just over €2 for a pack of four, or about US 70¢ apiece. At this price, it’s clearly useless to make your own. And as a generic product, there’s no manufacturers page to link to. You’ll just have to go visit your local hardware store.