Tag: fabby

How many times have I strained to hear an important announcement from a PA system only for some cacophony to drown out the salient content?…too many times.

Today’s invention is a public address system which is attached to microphones arrayed within the space being addressed.

When the mics register too high a level of background noise (as eg when a train is leaving a station) the announcement, whether ‘live’ or prerecorded, is delayed until comparative quiet recurs.

There might be scope for raising the volume a little, rather than wait too long for a profound hush.

Stirring paint is about as entertaining as watching it dry.

Today’s invention is a deep tray, placed in the boot of the car, which accommodates a small number of paintcans, lying on their sides.

The tray allows the cans to roll about, as the vehicle turns, and mix their contents during the journey back from the DIY superstore (assuming they aren’t already solidified due to poor stock control).

The tray also catches any spillage, in the unlikely event that a top comes off in transit.

There is a sea of discarded mobile phones in the world and it’s deepening by the day.

Today’s invention is intended to lessen the damage these cause to the environment by using real seashells as casings for phone electronics.

These shells are free, when you have located a suitable beachload, strong, visually attractive and entirely recyclable. All that needs happen is to fit a hinge and insert a phone’s guts…hey presto, a genuine clamshell design.

Today’s invention is a variant on the domestic robot vacuum cleaner.

This starts by performing the usual random sweeps within a room, but over time, it monitors how much dirt has been collected from which part of the room (its movements could be recorded with reasonable precision using eg crude ultrasound reflections from walls and furniture).

Once the cleaner realises that most crud is collected from beside the front door and under the table, it subsequently reprograms its movements so as to emphasise any such regions.

Its attention would thus come to be paid to areas in proportion to the history of dirt collected there.

Today’s invention is a pair of mittens which are set into the outside of a warm jacket -exactly aligned with where the wearer’s hands lie when his or her arms are folded.

I read yesterday about the tragic case of a girl who was killed when hit by a box of leaflets airdropped over Afghanistan.

The boxes containing leaflets are supposed to break open in midair, when dumped from the back of a plane and shower the paperwork across the countryside. The messages are intended to demoralise attackers or warn civilians of forthcoming bombardments, etc.

Well, personally I think this kind of practice is ok if it helps stop fighting, but there has to be a better way.

Today’s invention is a glorified printer which is installed in an aircraft and ‘clocked’ to pump out paper sheets at a faster-than-normal rate. This might even be placed in a UAV, with paper in the form of a roll filling the fuselage.

As each printed page emerges, it is pressed lightly by a small piston into a cylindrical mould, several times -crumpling the sheet into a 3-D object without tearing it. The resulting pellets can then be jettisoned, falling separately from a safer, increased height in a predictable way onto a targeted area -without posing any danger to those below.

I tend to think that hunt sabotage has more to do with fighting the class war than saving creatures from suffering.

Today’s invention is weapon on behalf of the ‘game’ animals and the human beaters who find themselves economically dependent on this form of feudalism.

It is a swarm of small robots which can be used to pre-beat an area of moorlands so that hiding grouse or pheasant are driven away before the chinless hoorays range rover onto the scene.

These would be capable of maintaining a coordinated line across the terrain, moving quietly beneath the foliage so as to remain concealed. The failure or destruction of one would be automatically adjusted to by the others and they could be programmed to rendez-vous later in the back of a waiting truck (using eg GPS units built into each).

Most significantly, no human beaters would find themselves walking towards a line of shotguns held by merchant bankers.

When big vehicles make slow turns, sometimes the process can be dangerous.

The diagram shows the area between the dotted and solid curved lines which is swept out by an articulated lorry.

Today’s invention is to equip these vehicles with a number of roof-mounted spotlights which shine eg red light onto the ground. These are directed, by data on of the current steering wheel position, to illuminate the road area which is about to be swept through.

If people or other vehicles find themselves located in this brightly coloured light, it’s time to pull back to safety.

This system might also be useful to learner drivers, for whom every vehicle feels like a behemoth.