Home Posts tagged "fabby" (Page 19)

Tag: fabby

#1914: Invisivac

I hate things that are made in the shape of other things for absolutely no reason.

Today’s invention is however a vacuum cleaner which can be disguised as a standard lamp.

Why? Well I live in a small house with a necessarily large vacuum cleaner. I have nowhere to store this other than in the living room where I have to look at its red and black ugliness all the time.

I propose a version in neutral matt colouring which would come with the additional components (indicated here in red). These would be a tall neck to hide the hose, a lampshade and a bulb unit, powered via the same cable as the cleaner.

The column of the lamp would be made of the vacuum cleaner tube, so that when you need to clean up, the extra parts are easily slipped off and set to one side.

#1898: Wellinktons

The parents of schoolchildren often get told to buy standard wellingtons for travel in school uniform on wet days.

These will probably all have to be black, which causes a major headache in most junior classes, when kids arrive home wearing two unpaired boots.

When I was five, a parent suggested the clothespeg solution, but this could sometimes result in the forgotten peg problem.

Today’s invention is wellies with left/right sole treads which interdigitate and remain joined as a pair when pressed together (at least until gratefully pulled apart at ‘home time’).

#1896: BasketStack

After a brutal afternoon at the supermarket and just before I get shouted at by the stupid self-checkout, I tend to get a little frustrated by the shopping baskets.

I try to drop the empty basket on the stack provided but every time one or both handles of the preceding one are in the way, so I have to bend down and adjust them -or fling the basket in the aisle in despair.

Today’s invention is a new handle design for shopping baskets.

Each handle is prevented from falling forward from the carry position (bright blue) by a small stop on the lip of the basket.

When the basket is set on the stack and the handles released, both have no option but to rotate down into the end positions shown (pale blue), guaranteeing that they will be out of the way so that the next basket can nest without obstruction.

#1893: PocketSprocket

Today’s invention is a new way to reduce the ease with which thefts of bikes can occur.

Consider the simple case of a fixed-gear machine first.

Both sprockets would have irregularly-spaced teeth, in exact correspondence with the pattern of teeth in the chain, which would be unique to an individual bike.

When an owner leaves his bicycle, he slips off the pedal sprocket and takes it with him.

A thief will be unable easily to substitute for this and would find that even wheeling the bike away will be difficult, due to the loose chain interacting with the rear wheel.

This could be extended to derailleur systems, by removing the two-ring front sprocket.

#1890: Explodrain

Blast-resistant bins have been developed which seem to me to be massively costly and probably not very effective.

Today’s invention is an alternative, inspired by a scene in the film Speed.

A solid steel box with a sprung lid is attached to a large cage.

The whole system is bolted to the surround of a manhole cover, once the cage has been inserted into this, as shown.

Any rubbish thrown in ends up in the cage in the drain or conduit. The bins are extracted and cleaned each night, when crowd density is zero.

This means that nothing deposited will ever be above ground level, so that if a bomb is dropped in, it will detonate below ground, sending blast waves along the pipe in both directions (as well as vertically), thus causing minimal injuries/damage within the street.

#1889: Coasteering

Today’s invention is a rollercoaster with points -like a railway track.

This would add a certain extra challenge to those trying to hold onto their breakfasts, by allowing the car to take multiple alternative routes.

Rather than have these points change in a predictable way, it might be possible to have them switch, during the course of a ride, in response to the phone messages from observers and/or passengers.

The next step after that is multiple cars with the potential for overtaking!

#1887: Headlinks

I have never managed to achieve fast enough Internet access (is loading 70 tabs in my browser simultaneously really that unreasonable?)

Today’s invention is a smart program which knows when my browser window takes up less space that the whole of my screen (as it often does when I’m trying to get stuff done on a laptop).

It communicates the current dimension of the browser window and requests that only those images on the server that will actually be visible get downloaded to my machine.

This would give me enough material to assess the top lines of many web pages so that I could avoid loading more content, close their individual tabs and thus free up some bandwidth for more interesting material.

#1879: SleePod

It’s getting ever harder for hotels (and airlines) to justify their prices, especially in the business class market segment where expenses are being squeezed.

Today’s invention offers a new feature that might help everyone concerned.

This is in the form of a sleep ‘pod’ which has computer controlled lighting, sound effects, thermal management, aroma and mattress characteristics.

This unit would allow a traveller to climb into a luxury version of a Japanese hotel capsule, placed in their room, and seal themselves in.

The pods would be of a uniform high-quality design, that could even be accommodated within an aircraft.

Once inside, an occupant would plug in their memory stick containing all the prerecorded data about the lights within their bedroom at home, the sounds of their partner sleeping and the stiffness distribution of their own bedsprings.

This would help eradicate the problem of failing to sleep in a strange bed when on a business trip, where sharp, well-rested wits are especially required the next day.

#1875: Fibonnacheese

Many photogarphers get so engrossed in the detail of their image, that they leave out the subject’s feet or the top of someone’s head.

To help with such errors in portraits, today’s invention is a software tool, based on an established heuristic for composition.

When a camera detected a single face within a shot, it would automatically place one eye within a Fibonnaci spiral overlay.

This would appear on the display back, showing the photographer how much to zoom and/or crop to create a much more striking arrangement.

#1874: Insectistripes

It seems that vertical stripes may make the zebra hard for parasitic flies to see.

Since I suffer greatly from insect bites, today’s invention is a travel suit, made in a vertically-striped pattern -at a similar spatial frequency to that of a zebra’s coat.

This might be enough to distract the attention of a variety of biting insects, but the suit would also be made to be reversible so that the inside would have horizontal stripes that could be worn on the outside when sleeping.