Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 07/01/05 starting at number
236. It's spring cleaning time. Most of the ideas in this go-round
are pretty
bad. I'm just
throwing them out here to get them off of my list of ideas waiting to be
published.
236. Intelligent Binoculars -
See only what you want to see.
All good image editing programs let you select the background and make
it transparent so you can put a picture on
a web page without brining along its background. Intelligent binoculars
that could do something similar would be
useful. Instead of selecting the background you wanted to delete
though, you'd move a cursor onto whatever you
wanted to single out on the image coming in through the lens. Once
you'd picked your target you'd click a button to
start tracking it. As soon as the binoculars could determine at least
a partial outline of the object based on its
movement it would white-out everything else coming in through the lens
leaving only the your target in the picture.
An example: Suppose you picked a bird and the only thing you could see
was its head sticking out from behind a
tree. The binoculars would isolate that head as soon as it moved
and put it on top of a white background. If the
bird started to fly away then the image would be adjusted to include the
rest of its body based on logic built into the
binocular's software program.
There'd be other uses for something like this besides bird-watching too.
Rifle scopes could easily be enhanced with
this feature once the imaging program was written, giving both hunters
and soldiers and advantage out in the field.
237. The Upskirt Defense System -
Frustrate photographic voyeurs.
The idea - produce skirts that have reflective bands of material on the
inside. That way the flash from a hidden
camera would ruin any shots taken by voyeurs on the prowl.
238. Mensa Mice -
Let them do the thinking for us.
Since stem cells can be turned into any kind of cells the body needs it
might be interesting to take a line of stem cells
from mice and turn them into brain cells for a group of mice. The bigger
brains would still have to exist in the same
size skull so folding would probably occur like it does with our brains,
but the brains could still work. If it made the
mice smarter then they could pass their knowledge from generation to generation
faster than us since they have
shorter lifespans. Given enough time they might even be able to create
their own little research centers. If that
happened then we could just borrow whatever new ideas they came up with
that sounded useful to us.
239. Baby Purse -
This would work like a crutch to prevent back aches.
There was an article in the paper the other day about how more and more
parents are having back problems from
carrying babies around. The increase seems to be mostly due to the
fact that people are becoming parents at an
older age now. A baby purse would solve their problem.
The purse would have a plastic seat and canvas back, both held inside a
plastic frame. The seat would rest on top
of a telescoping pole. When not in use the pole would be collapsed,
leaving the seat resting on 4 fold-out legs. When
you were ready to use it you'd strap the baby in the seat, put your foot
in a stirrup that was on the pole, pull the pole
up to a comfortable height, and fold the legs back up under the seat.
Then you'd just kick the stirrup up with your toe
so it folded against the pole. This action would also release a brake that
was locking a rubber wheel beneath the pole
in place. A sling built into the back of the canvas seat would give
you a comfortable place to rest your arm as you
held your baby close to your side. The seat would be at a 90 degree angle
to the wheel so it would face you as you
rolled your baby along. Upper end models could have a small shock absorber
between the seat and the pole so you
could raise the seat a little higher than necessary and still keep the
wheel on the ground. If stability was an issue the
single wheel could always be reconfigured into a small 3 or 4 wheel platform.
With a little more tinkering we could
probably also change the design so it acted as both a purse and a conventional
canvas stroller.
240. Radio Roulette -
Auto station changer.
This idea is for a new radio channel that wouldn't be confined to a single-themed
playlist. Instead, when you hit the
button for it there would be a 10-second delay, followed by the beginning
of a song chosen at random from all of the
stations available. (This would work best with satellite radios that
could send a 'start signal' before each song on each
channel.) The 10-second delay is there so the radio can operate like
TiVo and create a smooth transition between
songs after the channel's been selected. There would be another button
beside the channel to let you skip to the next
song in case the current one turned out to be annoying. With a channel
like this I could hear a country song followed
by a rock song followed by a hip-hop song. The format wouldn't stay
boringly single-threaded.
241. Doggie Walkie-Talkie -
Stop shouting.
When you know your dog is somewhere in the neighborhood (having gotten
out of the yard despite your best
efforts), this walkie talkie might get him back without a lot of shouting.
The device you hold would the same as any
normal walkie-talkie. The device your dog held would be stuck in
his ear like a hearing aid and designed so the
signal came in stronger from the direction you were calling from.
I have no idea what would happen when you
called him on your walkie-talkie but who knows, he might come home.
242. Ionic Skiing -
More fun things to do with comets.
Comets leave ion trails behind them, often as long as a million miles or
more. We could take carbon nanotube cables
and position a package with a couple of spools of it in front of an inbound
comet. The package would be cushioned
by the same type of inflatable devices used in the recent Spirt/Opportunity
missions on Mars. The bags would inflate
right before the comet hit, leaving several spikes exposed facing the comet.
Upon impact, the spikes would lock the
package onto the comet.
After that we would go skiing.
The bags would deflate and spit out 2 smaller packages containing spools
of cable at a 90 degree angle to the
comet's momentum. When these smaller packages reached the end of
the lines that still attached them to the main
package, the comet's momentum would drag them back towards each other,
but behind the comet now. Once they
were behind it they could unfurl the ionic sails contained in boxes on
their ends and begin skiing the comet's ionic
wake. If we picked a comet that had an unusually long orbit around
the sun (long enough to take it beyond
Neptune), we could release mini-skiiers that would use the trail to change
directions and head towards whatever
looked interesting. There would be cameras on both of the main skiiers
and all of the mini-skiiers so we could
visually ski along with them.
243. Magnetic Trash Collection -
Slowly cleaning up Space.
This would simply be a satellite that used solar power to maintain it's
orbit and collect the garbage that's floating
around up there. The garbage collection method would take two passes
to complete a cycle. During the first orbit
the satellite would release clouds of magnetic tape fragments (sticky on
one side, magnetized on the other). On the
second pass it would turn on a magnet to attract these pieces into an onboard
bin where the tape would be stripped
off for recycling and the trash compacted for later disposal (via ejection
into the atmosphere where it would be
incinerated). The cycle would keep being repeated until the sun could
no longer provide enough power for the
satellite to stay aloft, at which time it would dispose of itself through
atmospheric incineration.
244. Bumper Gate -
Defensive patience.
There's nothing like being in a long line of cars on the freeway/motorway
patiently waiting your turn to get by an
accident that occurred in the other lane while other, less patient drivers,
go down the clearer lane to get as close to
the accident as they can before merging with the rest of us to get by,
thus saving themselves at least several minutes
at our expense. If I get annoyed enough I'll usually pull my car
over and straddle the lanes just to block them (road
rage be dammed). A better solution would be to have a metal rod attached
to my bumper that would shoot out to
the left or right at the push of a button, blocking that lane. There'd
be all sorts of reflectors on it of course to give
rude drivers fair warning. It would also have heavy duty springs
near its base so if a car tried to ram its way by
anyway the metal pole would gouge a line down its side.
This same bumper gate could be used to thwart tailgaters. Swinging
it straight back would force them to leave some
more distance between the two of you. (In the US a little red flag
would have to pop out warning drivers something's
sticking out behind the car, but that could be handled easily enough.)
In the event that the tailgater decided to ignore
the extension, which would look like a pole in this case, he'd be free
to ram into it. The gate would be of the
telescoping variety of course, so it could safely collapse back into its
holder after putting up just enough resistance to
poke a hole in the tailgater's radiator.
245. The Mouse Help-Desk System -
It would be nice if my mouse could monitor when I'm about to go postal
over a programming problem (judging the
number of times I slam it down) and automatically notify a mentor that
it would be a good time to stop by my desk to
help step through the problem. If he was busy he could slam his down
and the next one in line could come over for
a chat.
246. Wet Brake Indicator -
Add a wet brake sensor to warn the driver that his brakes have gotten so
wet that they might fail.
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