The trick to being a good hacker is acquiring a sufficient supply of useless information, such that when that information is suddenly not useless, you have it at hand.

Which is to say, it's your job to figure out what the cool applications are.

Aluminum foil makes a great, cheap light bounce for photography on the fly. Your photos will instantly look better either reflecting to the back of their head 180 from shot, or as a fill for their face.