Tag: fabby

I recently spent an unhappy couple of hours staring at traffic cones from a stationary motorway queue.

It occurred to me that there may be economies in the world of traffic cones: hence today’s invention. The idea is to make existing cones undertake twice their current duty and thus limit the costs of producing ever more examples. Each existing cone would be cut, using a simple, van-borne tool into two halves as shown.

The resulting halves would each still be able to stand stably and be only marginally less detectable visually -even if not optimally aligned. Although there might be some wind generated rocking (which could even boost visibility) it would still be very difficult to topple these in any direction (My guess is that the maximum drag coefficient for a hollow half-cone would be much less than double that for the original cone).

The semi-cones would also still nest and allow twice as many to fit into a given space during transport.

Somehow, neither a shower nor a shallow tub delivers the same relaxing soak that a hot bath provides. Think of the energy required to heat a whole bath of water, however. In these straitened times, when bond traders are down to their last billion, this might be considered an extravagance.

Today’s invention is therefore a bath which is in the shape of the bather (eureka!). Most people would fit into a pretty generic gingerbread-man-shaped one, although those with a more rotund figure might need to order a bigger than standard size (think more doughboy).

The person-shaped tub would require much less hot water to fill and thus help save what’s left of the planet. It might be harder to find the soap, though.

Expert opinion, I understand, is that people who are being attacked need to do one thing: run. Forget pepper sprays, electronic stun guns and all those judo lessons. The first line of defence is to get moving away, fast.

Today’s invention is a second line of defence, when one’s exit route is blocked and you are too numb to undertake any violent self-defence moves. It consists of a conventional rape alarm, but modified to enable it to be attached, immovably, to the body of the would-be attacker.

When confronted by someone blocking your path, or otherwise within your personal space, whip out the device. This comes equipped with a set of open jaws, like a big bullclip, strong enough to grip someone’s clothes, but not sharp enough to be considered an offensive weapon. Smack this against the arm or chest of an attacker. This activates the usual, startlingly loud alarm, whilst also causing the jaws to snap shut and stay put.

You can now make an easier, high-speed escape whilst the low-life’s attention is distracted both by attempts to disengage from the source of the aural pain and to become less conspicuous.

Whilst waiting in a restaurant for some wireless handheld device to make a pronouncement about my validity as a trustworthy economic agent, I noticed there was an awkward silence. Eventually, my pin code was accepted but in the interim it occurred to me that this is hardly the way for a service based business to round off an otherwise pleasant customer interaction.

Today’s invention is a small extra facility on board such mobile card readers. Having entered your pin, the machine would present you, the customer, with options to eg hear a section of music or read out a joke, a ‘fortune’ or some trivia to your fellow guests.

No more embarrassed silence…at least until your card is rejected.

Plants seem to have all sorts of positive effects within working environments…it’s really not clear why, but provision and maintenance of such greenery is a massive business. Good gardeners can usually tell what plant to place where by intuition. Many shrubs have a very strong preference for suprisingly specific lighting conditions. This can make the difference between abundant, verdant leaf growth and an etiolated, parched stick. With the cost of plants quite high, it’s increasingly necessary not to have them just defoliate. I’m also sure having a corporate foyer full of dead leaves negatively affects the share price.

Today’s invention is a way to ensure that plants are optimally tuned to the local light levels within buildings.

Start with an architect’s ray-tracing model of a future (or existing) building to compute light intensities everywhere within a space. Link this to a horticultural database containing the detailed lighting requirements of a wide variety of candidate plants. Even if these data are not always available, it would be possible to generate more by having people in the plants’ countries of origin make measurements beside healthy examples (this might be done using a small array of photographic equipment). Then, each spot in an office could have a list of plants, happy to live there, drawn up.

This might be further refined by reference to an aesthetic model which would calculate what would be flowering when and avoid unfortunate juxtapositions of eg yellow and bluish petals.

It can be quite difficult for people with limited hand strength to open a bottle of wine (I’m talking here about the conventional cork-stoppered bottles, rather than wine boxes or twist-off tops, although these can present their own difficulties).

Part of the reason that it’s hard to extract a cork, even when using one of the many levers-braced-against-the-bottleneck type devices, is that you are pulling the cork out against a partial vacuum created behind it.

Today’s invention is a standard helical corkscrew but with the modification that it is formed from a tube, rather than a rod. The end of the tube would be a closed needle-like shape, as usual, but downstream from the sharp end there would be a few small holes made from outside into the tube interior. Once the sharp screw end has penetrated the cork, there is therefore no difference in pressure between bottle interior and the atmosphere, making cork withdrawal much easier (These breathing holes would need to be angled so that bits of cork could not get through them).

Purists will, once again, choke on their Jefferson Lafite at the very idea of passing the corkscrew all the way through a cork -but they will all have wine butlers to do the business for them.