Home 2008 (Page 4)

Year: 2008

#718: Equalisear

When moving the sliders on a graphic equaliser, I never really have a clue about how to optimise the settings -even in general, let alone for each piece of music. This is partly because my ears aren’t particularly musically attuned but also because the variables seem to have effects which aren’t independent of each other. It would be tough enough to optimise the sound created even if they were.

Today’s invention is a way to achieve ‘optimal’ settings by relying on the opinions of many listeners ie crowd sourcing the equaliser sliders’ positions.

Every time someone felt they could tune their sound card to perform better, their settings for that card and the music they were listening to would be recorded by their browser and relayed to a central server. Here, the data from many expert listeners could be amassed and statistically analysed for the benefit of the less musically gifted.

When a piece was later being played on a networked system, the option would be provided to use one of a small range of the equaliser settings eg a) those of various celebrities, b) the average of all listeners, c) the choice of the recording artists themselves or even d) the settings adopted by the most discriminating of audiophiles.

#717: Steerclear

When I drive a car, being longer in the back than most people, the steering wheel tends to obscure some or all of the instruments (The dashboard itself remains a fairly primitive tool; a throwback to the gauntlets-and-goggles days of early motor pioneers when everything was made of wood and brass).

Despite the fact that I actually want my vehicle to have a fighter jet’s head-up display, today’s invention is a simple modification to the established steering wheel.

This would be a torus of perspex with flattened front and back faces creating a non-distorting optical path via which all that hidden driving information can be better seen (irrespective of the angle to which the wheel has been turned).

This could be made just as strong circumferentially as current designs and because of the possibility of moulding in controllable stress raisers, probably less dangerous in the event of a head-on accident.

#716: iBookPlate

There’s not much I can suggest to improve the Amazon.com business model. Today’s invention is, nonetheless, a small potential enhancement. Buyers of books or DVDs would be offered the chance to upload a hand-drawn picture or a handwritten message, imaged using eg a camera or cameraphone.

This would be printed onto some spare space on the existing paperwork included in the delivery packages (possibly with a self-adhesive strip around the outside). This would be inserted in the postal box at the dispatch warehouse so that a recipient could then stick the personalised dedication into the book or DVD case.

(For people who can’t draw or spell or have limited expressive ability, there could even be a selection of standard templates provided online in sufficient numbers of combinations to offer a measure of genuine personalisation).

#715: Wingwarmer

Chemical de-icing of planes is known to be very bad for poisoning the local groundwater at airports, so I started to think about mechano-thermal solutions.

There are lots of patents awarded for aircraft de-icing systems -all written in that unintentionally laughable form of English which can only be intended to appeal to some judge (I haven’t been able to find the following in a brief search of various online patent databases).

Today’s invention is for de-icing jet aircraft on a runway. Since, even at idle, the outflow from a jet engine is much hotter than 0 degrees C, the idea is to create a duct mounted on a trolley. One end of this would catch some of the idling aircraft engine’s outflow and redirect it onto the icy wings’ surfaces via a coarse particle filter and some kind of flexible nozzle.

#714: Beanban

Having had way too much coffee during what I laughingly described as my working day, I found it hard to sleep last night. The upside of this insomnia though is that the following idea took hold.

Today’s invention is a coffee machine which contains a clock. Anyone ordering a double espresso after 3pm would be given a warning message: “Are you sure?”

This machine could also come supplied with a proper, ie plain ceramic, mug for every one of its users. They would be encouraged to draw a mark on the base -which would allow them to be identified by a small camera in the machine’s dispense chute. The system could then issue healthy guidance like “Hello John, how about some green tea, since you’ve had five coffees today?”

#713: Bladderoof

I was visiting an expert in energy utilisation recently whose office had a) a very high ceiling and b) a fan heater running full blast under the desk.

My irony indicator went FSD and set me thinking about the energy which is wasted in heating the upper portions of rooms which were designed in an era when their occupants wore multiple layers of tweed and rarely disrobed (bathing being a well known source of moral delinquency).

Today’s invention is a way to keep people in tall rooms warm in winter. It consists of an inflatable bladder attached to the ceiling. This would be filled with (low pressure) air and would thus temporarily lower the ceiling height of any room to which it was fitted. These bladders could be constructed of low-conductivity material using the carpet as a template.

It might be more convenient to simply supply a number of cuboid, air-filled sacs, each of which could be attached to the ceiling using eg velcro or double-sided tape.

#712: Ovenonion

I’m always a little disturbed when cooking things in an oven that the space heated is usually vastly bigger than the food itself and opening the oven door causes the whole waiting-for-dinner thing to take even longer (by evacuating all the heat and moisture).

Today’s invention is a range of nested, pyrex chicken bricks….a little like a set of Russian dolls or the layers of an onion.

To cook something, choose two adjacent bricks in the nesting sequence, just big enough so that the inner one will accommodate the food in question. All of the bricks’ top halves have two small ports. The brick in contact with the food will always have its ports plugged. The outer brick will have its ports connected, via an insulated chimney, to the oven’s heating element duct.

Hot air can thus pass through the space between inner and outer bricks, rapidly cooking the food inside the inner one and maintaining its succulence whilst heating only a small volume of cycling air. The food remains visible throughout.

#711: Loglife

I invested in a woodburning stove recently. One difficulty in using it is that it’s easy to forget to throw another log in until the decrease in room temperature alerts me to the need for one…there is then a delay whilst the stove (and room) gets back up to working temperature.

Logs last for a time which, roughly, depends on both their size and the current temperature of the stove. Today’s invention is a simple electronic device which would monitor both the decrease in weight of the logbasket and the stove temperature.

It would thus be able to calculate the stove-life of a given input of wood and issue an alert (preferably direct to my desktop) when that period was about to end.

#710: Obeseats

I read today that airlines in Canada can’t charge obese people for two seats even if they don’t fit into a single, standard size one.

(Aren’t there rules about having to wear seatbelts? I don’t really believe that these offer much added safety in a crash, but they might stop the wearer banging their head on a locker in turbulence -so what happens if you don’t fit a normal belt? What happens if you have trouble squeezing down an aisle?)

Today’s invention is to fit bench seats in a section of an airliner equipped with a sliding set of armrests which would allow people to accommodate their different girths. Inertia reel belts would extend to fit pretty much anyone (Having worked on airline projects, I realise this is unlikely, since they wouldn’t fork out £5 for even smokehoods -which are proven lifesavers).

People would be asked when buying a ticket if they would fit in a standard seat and if not, they could be allocated space on a flexi bench at no extra cost. They would thus occupy less than 2.0 seats each at the cost of 1.0 seat. Thinner than average people could be encouraged (eg via special meals or movies) to sit in this area and each occupy less than 1.0 seats at the cost of 1.0 seats.

#709: Chainge

Today’s invention is a chain-like structural component. Two of these are indicated in the diagram. As shown, the two parts are free to rotate, relative to each other, in any direction. When these are pressed together, so that the two pairs of cylinders bear on each other, the links together act as a single rod.

Using many such chain links would allow rigid structures to be quickly extended and collapsed -for ease eg of transport (imagine a bicycle frame made of these and collapsible into a carrier bag).

Corner units, consisting of multi-ended links, could also be created to provide 3-D arrangements as well as purely linear ones. The links might be connected by springs, in order to add tensile strength to the rods which they form.