#1203: Skintied

I’ve described knot-tying techniques before and today’s invention is a new one. Imagine trying to tie a complex knot for the first time.

Take a long rope of snap-together beads and roll around it a sheet of moist cardboard -or pastry.

Have the complex knot tied by an expert so that the coating is included in the body of the knot (have the expert make many of these). Allow the coating to dry and stiffen, forming a knot-shaped shell. Pull on the free ends of the beaded rope so that it can be extracted.

You now have a shell which can be used to pass rope through, from one end -automatically forming a complex knot. The coating can now be stripped off, reconstituted and reused, leaving the finished knot behind.

#1202: LoudCloud

Today’s invention is a shotgun cartridge which contains a secondary charge (This charge might be radially asymmetrical).

Each cartridge could be set, before loading, so that after a given flight time, this secondary charge would ignite; causing the pellets to be scattered in a pre-determined pattern around the centre of mass of the cartridge.

The pattern could take a variety of geometrical forms -from a diffuse cloud, meant to sting but not damage a target, to an annulus, intended to punch a hole in a partition wall.

#1201: Slopetop

Today’s invention is a screen management program which causes software objects (such as folders and documents) placed on a laptop desktop to behave as if subject to physical forces (primarily gravity). This would cause items to slide to the bottom of the screen unless ‘pegged’ in place.

Similarly, ‘paint’ applied to a graphic would drip downscreen in a physically real way.

All of these simulated phenomena would be influenced by the angle of the screen to the horizontal (ie the farther from vertical, the slower the movement).