Year: 2009

The gaming machines industry is big business. Today’s invention is a new variant.

A player causes coins to dropped somewhere onto a pile of similar ones resting on a flat plate. The plate has vertical edges on three sides. Eventually the pile becomes critical, so that adding a single coin will cause a ‘landslide.’

These events will vary in size each time a coin is dropped on the pile, so that a variable number of coins will fall off the open front edge of the plate into a prize tray accessible to the player.

Under these conditions (self-organised criticality) there will be a very small number of huge avalanches and a large number of very small avalanches (Frequently, the initial landslide will fail to trigger others and no coins will fall from the plate).

This combination would strongly encourage people to play, whilst actually paying out minimal amounts in winnings (statistically limited, over the long term, but occasionally giving the impression of uncontrollable ‘house’ losses).

Ships have propellers which are designed to fling water relatively rearwards in an efficient manner. Tidal power is one area of ‘alternative energy’ which seems as if it has some chance for being cost effective.

Today’s invention is to combine this information and create a simple source of energy.

Take ships which, due to economic conditions, are not currently being used and moor them securely in regions of high tidal flow activity. Equip each with a generator, if they haven’t already got one on board. Allow the tidal movements to drive the props with the hulls anchored in position (they might need to be driven up to speed to overcome inertia). Store the energy extracted in batteries which can then be transported into dock when fully charged and connected to the grid.

I’m told, by various women of my acquaintance, that they dread the holiday season because it’s then that males of every type are seemingly entitled to plant wet, celebratory kisses on their cheek.

Today’s invention provides a way to avoid the unpleasantness of a refusal to be kissed -as well as that of being drooled over by someone with no skills in social osculation.

Women would be equipped at a party with a pack of large, laminated paper lips. These would have an adhesive patch on the rear face. When the dreaded mistletoe, greeting or new year kissing is about to begin, these lips could be attached to a woman’s cheek, allowing her to direct any incoming kisses to this patch.

Done with a smile, this could avoid any awkwardness and the patch could then be quickly discarded and renewed with a new one from the pack.

One of the major reasons that people cite for not using public transport is that they have to sit next to other members of their species. A UK Transport Secretary once ineptly summarised this feeling by referring to Jean-Paul Sartre‘s considered view of bus travel: “Hell is other people.”

Another issue with public transport is that trains, planes and buses are all excellent locations at which airborne diseases can be exchanged.

Today’s invention is therefore a personal module containing a seat and windows: something like a modern sedan chair. These would take the form of a one-person compartment which would isolate the travelling public from each other and together fill the interior of a bus or train. At journey’s end, porters could even be hired to transport any box and place it on a small wheeled base for weatherproof pavement transport -like an electrically powered invalid carriage.

Now that LCD projectors are available in pocket sizes, I can’t imagine why somebody hasn’t incorporated one into a cellphone or compact camera.

Today’s invention is to use a pocket projector to project a part of an image or video sequence into the scene being photographed. This offers numerous extra opportunities for digital creativity. The captured images could be processed in-camera and then superimposed, in some modified form, on the target scene.

This might be done with a section of video, so that, for example, a new composite movie could be created of someone dancing at a given instant, together with their movements of a half-second ago.

Similarly, projecting a grid of fine lines onto a scene and then recording the result could provide a cheap, quick alternative to laser scanning for the extraction of 3-D data.

Don’t know a Lox from your Lotushead? Neither do I. I’m never sure why there are so many different types of fasteners. I just know that I can reliably destroy both my screwdrivers and my screws by using the wrong tool to drive the wrong head (especially by using a driver that’s only slightly wrong; even I rarely attempt to apply a flat-blade driver to a star-shaped screw).

The simplest solution would be for manufacturers to supply a driver head for every type of screw used in each product (Ideally each product would have only one screw of one type. Even better, why can’t everyone just use a single design?) Manufacturers traditionally dislike people hacking stuff they have purchased, though.

Instead, each screw used could have an identifying number stamped into the head that would enable only drivers with the same number stamped on them to be used. Today’s invention, however, is a compromise which works by providing a warning that the driver you are about to use is of the wrong type.

Driver heads would be made with shanks which each pass into the driver shaft to slightly different depths. Inserting one into a driver allows it to be identified by the size of current which can be passed through it from the shaft (an insulated surface region is shown in grey). When the driver head is in contact with the screw, an electric current is similarly driven through the head and the screw. Its magnitude is dependent upon the contact area between these two. If they are misaligned or of an incompatible geometry, the current flow will be detectably less than the expected, optimal value for the head identified by the driver -and a warning beep will be emitted.