Category: Feasible inventions

High heels may not be considered very politically correct, yet they continue to sell in massive numbers. I’m advised by my wife that the discomfort of wearing them outweighs the glamour and increased height that they provide. You can’t walk in high heels without doing damage to ankles, toes, back muscles and the parquet flooring -not to mention your dignity.

So, today’s invention is simply glamourous, well fitting ‘flat’ shoes or boots which are very comfortable to walk in, yet which also have a flexible sole allowing a pair of high heels to be clipped securely in place. Actually, there would probably have to be a slot-in shank, running lengthwise in the sole, just to reinforce the right geometry/stiffness combination.

No need to carry extra shoes to that meeting or date, just put the clip-on heels in your bag and stride there confidently (inevitably, you could then have a range of different-coloured heel inserts for each pair of shoes). If you want to get clever, you could always arrange for several sets of different-height heels to nest together to save some space in that already overcrowded handbag.

Bored by the endless online discussion about how best to store corporate email so that a judge can scrutinise them years later for traces of fraud or political incorrectness? I don’t blame you.

Today’s invention is not about that. I’m interested in making data invulnerable to attack, corruption and other bad things.

Inspired by the redundant structure of the Internet itself, one way to achieve this is to ‘store’ each file as a series of encrypted messages in longterm transit around a peer-to-peer network: -truly virtual storage.

If you need more protection, repeat the original message with a completely different forwarding route. It’s much harder to hit a moving target.

Who knows what the global cost of mis-dialling phone numbers is.

Today’s invention is simply to equip handsets, both mobile and landline, with the ability to say, via speakerphone, the numbers you have keyed in (either digit by digit or after the whole number has been entered).

My guess is that this would be significantly more effective than squinting at a small screen to check your dexterity.

A possibly useful extra service, for for those of us calling lots of unfamiliar numbers, might be to speak the name of the (directory-listed) person or company you are about to call.

If, despite all these measures, you still dialled a wrong number, the phone could be configured to allow you to record this manually and then extract statistics about what sorts of errors/ substitutions you habitually make. It could then take extra care to alert you to these in future before pressing the call button.

I remember once reading that various foodstuffs manufacturers only make a profit because people routinely fail to extract the last few drops of produce from the container. It’s particularly true of viscous fluids like mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, mustard etc but it might apply equally to higher value produce -especially shampoo/conditioner and related cosmetics.

My invention today is simply to repurpose the old magnetic stirrer device (or perhaps the magnetic window cleaner) in order to speed the evacuation of the bottle concerned. Obviously, it still makes sense to invert the container so that gravity can assist, but life’s too short to ensure that all the contents eventually come out -especially when sandwich urgency has set in.

Each household could have several PTFE-coated magnetic beans (colour-coded to avoid getting shampoo in the honey). They could all be driven by a single powerful, handheld rotating magnet unit.

It might be useful to induce some eddy currents in the bean in order to warm it slightly and reduce viscosity. Even without spinning magnets, rolling a spherical ‘bean’ up and down inside the container, using an external magnet, would be a good way to ‘spoon’ out any residue…especially for bottles with complex internal shapes (these might be supplied each with a captive, rolling bean). This technique would also be useful for clearing out coffee grounds and other hard-to-get-at stuff.

Both local and nationally famous photographers are invited to contribute images to the following scheme.

In an attempt to name and shame our ‘representatives’ in government, images of the less attractive aspects of life should be made available as ecards in order to provoke those responsible into doing something (other than whingeing about ‘lack of resources.’)

If you have a local planning issue, an eyesore such as unrestrained street advertising, uncollected rubbish, speeding traffic or public property that lies forever unrepaired, send an image to the shamecard website together with a description and the relevant postcode. This will be automatically dated and published with the names of all the officials who have failed to fix it (from local councillor to MP level).

I’d also suggest that their salaries (+allowances) be added to this information at the same time.

All of those responsible will automatically be sent a copy of the card in question (as will a range of both online and offline picture editors).

I’m a great admirer of MC Escher. There are numerous possible practical applications of his idea of single-shape tesselations.

The simplest and most obvious is to create a cookie cutter. Not only does this eliminate waste, but if you make one tray of dark and and one of light chocolate brownie, then you can combine tiles from each to create a pleasing (and highly calorific) pattern. Yum.

More on applications of Escher-like patterns later…

It’s a real pain to walk with a small child and it can sometimes also be dangerous to negotiate crowded pavements and road crossings. Rather than use the reins which used to be popular (but which seem somewhat punitive/agricultural) here’s an alternative.

A light, nylon harness clips around the child’s body. An extension strap runs down each of the child’s sleeves. This whole thing is cheap enough to be left inside the child’s coat and doesn’t add to the normal level of difficulty getting them dressed to go out.

When walking, the extension straps each have a plastic clip at the end which attaches to a corresponding attachment on a padded wristband worn by the parent. This reduces the required grip and arm tension for the child, when they are being led by the hand.  The clips can be operated by one hand, but not by the child.

This mechanism helps in getting them to walk in the right direction without bending down every five seconds to pick up some gravel or the ubiquitous dog excrement. It’s also strong enough for a parent to arrest a child before they topple over onto the ground or walk out in front of  a car.  In crowded places, I’d suggest that the parent also wear a thigh strap (with clip buckle) so that they can temporarily tether the youngster to them, whilst using both hands to eg fish for keys or cash.

Still in festive mood, I thought today’s invention should take the form of a new game.

A web page allows input of a search term by one player. It then displays the images which Google image search has found for that term (but only the images, without any text, URL’s or other information attached –Windows Live search displays the extra information only when the images are rolled over, but for some reason the images seem somehow less compelling).

The other players then have to view the returned images and the first to correctly come up with the search term, wins.

This is relatively easy for concrete nouns (eg ‘bicycle’) but unbelieveably difficult for abstract terms (eg ‘nature’).

One nice feature is that the game can of course be adapted to be played by any number of remotely located people.

You don’t have to be any kind of conspiracy theorist to recognise that powerful people have long used doctored images for a variety of purposes from selling papers to selling ideology (can you spot the difference?).

To make this very much more difficult, I propose using 3-D movies.

It’s well known to children reading a comic that when attempting to detect the almost imperceptible differences between two ‘alike’ images, all you have to do is ‘fuse’ these’ by crossing one’s eyes a little and visually superimposing them. Areas of disparity then all stand out simultaneously as twinkling regions.

Two small moviecameras mounted at interocular distance (~5cm) apart would be used to film every event. The two movies could later be superimposed by the viewer, possibly using a simple stereoscope, to see the scene in a single-viewpoint form of 3-D (although viewing one of the two movies in the conventional way would still be possible, of course).

These days, of course, Hollywood technologists can scan an actor’s face and insert it into a (2-D) movie so effectively that it looks as if he’s doing his own stunts. Without having scanned the objects or people in question, however, this insertion is pretty much impossible to fake convincingly in a sequence of stereo images: the twinkling effect is obvious. Thus the imagery is much more difficult to fake or manipulate.

The oddly-named “More Than” insurance company has done some ‘research’ in which they claim that one in five drivers admit to concentrating behind the wheel less than 75% of the time (mostly people answering this questionnaire said they thought about sex; hardly a surprising result but not very reassuring when you are nose-to-tail at 70mph).

Other studies have shown that driving skills are at their best when in a ‘flow-state’, so it’s not obvious that hypervigilance avoids accidents anyway.

Having said that, driving with your hands on the wheel at the ten-to-two position is apparently reliably indicative of safe, alert driving.

Today’s invention is therefore a simple alert message which is issued when the contact pattern of the hands on the steering wheel differs from the correct one for more than a second or two -a ‘dead-man’s handle’ for the modern era. This could be achieved by simple template matching of a pattern on a touchpad embedded in the wheel surface with one stored by the driver on taking possession of the vehicle. It would still allow the occasional sleight of hand required for a rapid three-point turn.

A more elaborate system could detect whether a driver was failing to undertake the recommended ‘mirror-signal-manoeuvre’ procedure. A face detecting camera could assess the orientation of the driver’s head in relation to the mirror and then confirm that the indicator was in operation before the wheel was turned. If the driver was persistently not undertaking the sequence safely, it might suggest that more training was required or that the driver was drunk (see also this article).