view org/ideas.org @ 35:b023ccc23f56

cleaning up ideas.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Sun, 21 Apr 2013 03:32:37 +0000
parents 80f2525cf393
children a09d3b045bcd
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1 - don't forget about that mirror in the student center!, it's two
2 mirrors at right angles, like staring at a corner of a room. The
3 light reflects so that it shows you what you actually look like,
4 instead of your mirror image.
6 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote
7 power/logic.
9 - public (distributed?) database of email->private-key pairs, to
10 enable automatic encryption.
12 - every equivalent creature will see each others eyes as black -- it's
13 universal. Even of the creatures see in radio waves, and their eyes
14 are 2m long pieces of jagged metal, when those creatures look at
15 each other, they will see black, the absence of light and color
16 (since it's being absorbed by the sensor array).
18 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields
19 are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infared
20 camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,
21 you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is
22 still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since
23 the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of
24 the food. Wouldn't need a carasouel, and wouldn't need a timer,
25 just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automotically
26 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
27 faster since it can aviod overheating; might have problems with
28 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.
30 Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
31 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
33 Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods and
34 learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been cooked
35 before -- it can get faster the more its used.
37 - brain-aware image compression algorithm
39 - Credit card proxy - would be a company which works like paypal
40 except for real world transactions
42 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete
43 with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
45 - super screw :: a screw which has only one or two threads and intead
46 uses compresion to fit into a hole (the whole shank
47 of the screw is split into multiple pieces to
48 accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle
49 bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.
51 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically seperate
52 fluids with different index of refraction
54 - chalk eraser project :: maybe make a directional eraser, for easy
55 release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a
56 certain direction.
58 - silver socks
60 - UROP: magnet gear/metal teeth tape device to distill urine through
61 evaporation and easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --
62 produce drinkable water.
64 - UROP: Make the LED in line with the flow for the microinjector, so
65 that it may transmit maximum flow. Motor that changes distance of
66 internal magnet from windings depending on desired speed so as to
67 obtain maximum power efficiency.
69 - web scraper which monitors various lottries, looking for "special"
70 gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x winnings on Wednesdays) and
71 computes expected value...
73 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make
74 old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.
76 - Conductive concrete
78 - little bitty melting pot
80 - power strip/timer programmable combination
82 - algorthms which learn what their inputs are and in what order, and
83 can adapt to changing circumstances -- they remember previous
84 arguments and adapt so as to respond to different connections.
86 - hear a true pure tone by direct stimultion of the nerves of the ear
87 mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp
89 - paper folding device :: make it convienent to fold lots of papers in
90 various ways.
92 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
94 - suspend some ball of material with a high index of refraction and
95 shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would the light stay trapped
96 forever? Could you build up unlimited quantities of light inside the
97 sphere (which could then be released slowly by frustrated internal
98 reflection?
100 - movie screening :: Movies always are too long at first. one way to
101 shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the
102 move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which
103 there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)
104 better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I
105 got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill
106 whih is composed entirely of the parts in whihc opeople had their
107 eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their
108 eyes off of? Just take those parts out!
110 - capture reading of a scientific atricle via screen capture while
111 people read it, then use it to make the article better. like the
112 movie-pruning idea.
114 - super reading program that teaches people the ideal mental mask to
115 apply during reading so as to read very fast.
117 - explosive thermite epoxy putty (one part would contain the rust, one
118 part the alumimum)
120 - use the above screen capture routine to make a quiz program tha
121 constructs questions about the content you seemed to gloss over
122 while reading. could be easy if the pdf came with embedded
123 questions. Dylan: automatically generate word-cloud about the parts
124 you found most interesting; help others who read the same stuff by
125 drawing attention to the interesting parts.
127 - make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of martensite for
128 the cutting part; it should be a better sword.
130 - use the induction technology used to recharge electric toothbrushes
131 with no metal links to send data -- without any metal at all!
133 - reading is a form of synsethesia
135 - A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into actual DNA
137 - ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro generator to make
138 electricity
140 - alcohol/fluid flow powered battery
142 - folding razor blade sword
144 - learn perfect pitch using another sense in combination (sight or
145 touch)
147 - kaleidoscope projector
149 - razor blade de-sharpener (for guilt free disposal)
151 - bricks filled with luminescent plant material
153 - metal grids with seeds inside, which grow together and form a
154 durable biological matrix. The metal substrate delivers
155 water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?) Dylan: enrich plants
156 with inorganic compounds; electrical interfaces in cellular plant
157 matter => remote-controlled photosynthetic/bioluminescent
158 structures.
160 - conducting extracellular matrix
162 - cross-modal memory hashing
164 - flossing thimble-gaurds
166 - integrate lattice learning with rules by generating hypothetical
167 examples
169 - wooden refridgerator to give food a better taste Dylan: like barrels
170 for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor planks" for
171 your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of temperature on
172 volatility?
174 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious
175 metals or something else economically advantageous.
177 - innolculate food with tons of harmless bacteria so that there's no
178 room for bad bacteria as a method of preservation
180 - pasteur - style holding jar with siphon as a way to store liquids ar
181 room temperature indefinately w/o refridgeration.(7/26/2009)
183 - Throw rude people out of resturant as a matter of course -- make
184 ambiance much better.
186 - make something that mixes soap with firehydrant water (and reduces
187 the pressure a bit) and use it to clean windows of buildings.
189 - make an ocarina out of pure silver
191 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing
192 any ink. Is ther a way to make it runnable from the
193 human's energy?
195 - website to design your own soda, and label, and have it mailed to
196 you / sell it from your own online store.
198 - solar panels that float on the ocean
199 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining
200 prisoniers, binding them to environment, etc.
202 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify
203 sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe
204 everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech
205 to text or smtg. This would store sound as an image of the
206 wavefront encoded as a vector image.
208 Oct 27, 2009
210 Mouse with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical scroll wheel
211 logic maintance system for big institutions to make sure the things they are thinking about doing are not retarded
212 Me: For a starting point, crawl public domain regulations sites looking for retardation.
214 Oct 28, 2009
216 http://www.regulations.gov/
218 genetically engineered glowing fruit -- sell seeds?
220 Me: Fruits whose skins store sunlight in luminscent flesh => useful?
222 Oct 27, 2009
224 memory slide -- IF memories are encoded using particular sensory impressions, what happens if the sensory organ itself changes? those memories would become unaccessable. maybe this is why we can't
225 remember much from our childhoods. also, could this happen throught life as well? Could S remember stuff from his childhood?
226 make a completely indestructable phone -- no moving parts or display you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal interface - never gets
227 too hot, and can be dropped into water. no holes -- uses field effects for everything from the buttons to inductive charging and data transfer.
228 Me: Start with "military" phones (like Mr. Hawley has) with field-effects interface additions and additional hardcore streamlining.
230 Oct 27, 2009
232 midi to ocarina "tabs" program (online website? buy ocarinas from it too)
233 3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns) -- like the 8.03 lecture
234 lighter flint on spring --- make hot and it makes sparkles!
235 put a plane on a treadmill, to help it do a vertical takeoff.
236 Use a nondeterministic sentence parser to understand sentences with multiple meanings. Perhaps use statistical language as a filter against unintended (or rather, uninteresting) interpretations.
237 Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational campaign and public debate forum to enforce its transparent and open nature. France needn't be the world leader in nuclear energy.
238 Me: Standardized, modular nuclear plants?
240 Oct 29, 2009
242 Textbook whose content can be varied continuously---alter
243 Me: well, actually varied over a countable "dense" set.
245 Oct 29, 2009
247 level of difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from knowledge base,
248 Me: Or, initially, interpolated over all pre-existing books.
250 Oct 29, 2009
252 along with questions that are moreover altered to guide knowledge acquisition.
253 Motivation: One book of knowledge. One.
254 Engineer a material which has both ductility and high surface tension to make the "third" minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are cylindrical catenary
255 curve, two separated half-bubbles, and a double-cone)
257 Tags:
259 Me: Color-coded lid-cup pairs.
261 Dec 3, 2009
263 Me: Dry soap (like for pets) but for cars
265 Dec 3, 2009
267 Next w ave