Well my friends challenged me to build a case light brighter than his pimpy ( pathetic) cold cathode. The result?
Take a small blue project box, pack it with 48 ultrabright blue leds and marvel at the brightness! It hurts to look at directly. Pics of the light in operation tomorrow when we do comparisions at my friends house 
Only slight problem...it draws 0.96 amps and the resistors inside get hot enough to melt glue gun glue. But, with the addition of a few holes in the base and a cpu fan, its running fine at around 27C.
Woah is it bright...!
Well I got the atx relay in there. Its titchy and turns on a second atx psu when the first one is switched on... The soldering is not the best btw...but it was small!
Well, here are some finished pics
Finished case light ready to be lit
Case light lit. Picture taken in my friends living room.
Close up pic at full power, in a sunny daylight room. I did not post a head on pic as it came out as a white blob.
The relay inside the box was also tested and works fine.
What do you think?
That is quite bright.
Just to note, some modern LEDs are bright enough to cause eye damage if you stare into them for prolonged periods. It's also worth noting that some of those blue LEDs emit non-trivial quantities of radiation in the ultraviolet range. To which prolonged exposure can cause damage to the cornea, and can also cause retinal damage in humans younger then 30 years old or so. (The lens of the eye becomes more opaque to UV with age.)
Enjoy. :^>
--Peace
P.S. Even blue light in the visible spectrum may not be that great for you:
http://www.agingeye.net/visionbasics/uvlightandvision.php
Yup. The packaging said not to look at them directly for extended periods of time. My bike light also uses LEDS and that says the same thing. I was careful not to look at them headon. We also did not use the camaeras viewfinder.. Before I built it I warned the guy that will get it, that he should not look at it directly.
Dont worry...I did the research prior to constructing it.
The big question is whether *indirect* exposure is going to cause chronic damage as well. Not staring at it will keep you from getting black spots on your retina, but as to whether the light from that thing will eventually cloud up your corneas, well... I suppose he'll find out. ;^>
--Peace
Well many ppl have UV tubes in there cases....
Looking at the specs I cant see an mention of these things emmitting uv. They also running at 18mA. Far less than the rated 30 they can be used at.