thermoleum
Winter. Cold. Great.
Underfloor heating solves one of the minor problems of life, but can also take away one of its great joys. Cold bathroom floors in the morning with no socks on - heaven - wakes you up quicker than a double espresso and a slap in the face.
But underfloor heating exists precisely because sometimes the thought of that cold floor is enough to keep you in bed until Thursday. We’re doing up the bathroom, and I want to partially heat the floor - but only partially. For fun, I want to tile the hot bits red, and the cold bits blue. My better half has better taste than me, so I’m not allowed to. But it triggered an idea:
Introducing thermoleum, the heat reactive floor vinyl / lino / tile. Works exactly the same as those stick on refrigerator thermometers, only on your floor. Just imagine the fun! I’d be tempted to heat very small hotspots in front of the sink, the loo etc… where you would expect to stand most often - but leave the rest cold. Just because it would look cool.
For larger bathrooms, heated ’stepping stones’ could make the long hike from the shower to the basin a pleasure.
One additional challenge is of course to make it react quickly enough to show where you were standing a minute ago - like ‘heat cam’ on ‘police stop criminal’ or whatever it’s called.
flying cable monster
If you have owned a computer for more than 20 minutes you end up with a pile of cables that looks roughly like this:
I call it geek spaghetti. I keep mine in 2 storage boxes, the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and a big Tesco bag for life. The ‘best stuff’ is in the Tesco bag. For ‘best stuff’ read ‘newest stuff I don’t actually need yet‘. I need a nicer way to organise these or I’ll have to move them out to the garage.
Introducing the flying cable monster - part flying spaghetti monster, part habitat cable tie light shade.
Option one was to simply tie things to each other. But that might damage the cables and make them difficult to get at. I need a system which allows any single cable to be removed without need to disrupt the rest. So… find something that can just have cables hooked into it. Rummage in garage, bingo! An old dish rack we never used - steal the floppy shelf, tie some speaker cable to the corners. We have a dangley rack.
Just poke the USB style connector ends through , rotate by 90 degrees, bingo - they hold. Doesn’t work for fat, thin or round connectors. Time for some pliers to squeeze some of the rails together to create fat and thin bits. That works.
Hardly a thing of beauty, but a whole bag of jumbled leads - 37 in total so far - turns into a neat spaghetti monster with stacks of space to spare. I probably have 5 - 6 times that much to go, hopefully it’ll all fit.
IMPROVEMENTS
Some kind of bungee web sphere, where you pop the end through between a web of elastic would be more elegant, and likely hold the cables more securely.
Dangley LED lights, to complete the chandelier effect. This could become a genuine light source for your games room, geek room, that kind of thing.
Dangley bungee grips - like hand loops on the tube - to hook bigger cables into. Perfect for scsi / parallel cables. Why I have so many scsi cables, when I only have one scsi device left I don’t know!
wall mounted cushion - like the bungee sphere, but hangs on the wall so it doesn’t clatter your head when you stand up forgetting that its there.
Rainy Sundays huh - gotta love ‘em! Pics on flickr here.
the washcounter 3000
Black T-shirts go grey. They just do. Unless you never wear / wash them. Use ‘color’ detergents, use ‘colorstay’ dryer sheets, use voodoo and magik. Nothing stops the inevitable ageing of your black shirt into a grey shirt.The age old question though, is which t-shirt lasts longest? I have a feeling that the Meh shirt from thinkgeek stayed black-black for WAY longer than my Roots tee (the one with the cool Atari joystick). But did it, or did I just wear the roots tee more often. How many wash cycles did each pass through?
Introducing the washcounter 3000.
The washcounter is a tiny rfid embedded in the label, which has a heat sensor to tell it when it goes through the machine. It can be interrogated by the washcounter drawerwatcher - which sits in your shirt drawer / closet / wardrobe / rail. This will simply give a list of your shirts, with a simple count of how many times each has been washed. You could even post this to the washcounter live website. You would have an overall score for how often you’d worn each shirt. Some would want a low score, the dark greens would want a high score.
The trivia side alone is worth my money. But the satisfaction of knowing that Meh lasted 10 more washes than Roots must approach that of making a lumpless tasty bechamel, or nailing a perfect level on Q*bert. American apparel could boast exact figures for how black their shirts stay.
Clothing manufacturers could use them to encourage restocking - for example as my Meh shirt appraches 30 washes the drawerwatcher could start to say ‘Meh is getting grey dude, buy something fresh’. Direct access to my brain at the moment that I’m looking for something to wear. A marketers dream!
As I write, washcounter.net is available to anyone who feels the urge to take this on.
Cycla nanotech fabric
This nanotech umbrella sheds water like a ducks back. The nanoscale surface repels water absolutely, so a single shake dries the brolly. Hurrah!
If I had gone down the road of materials research, and currently lived in a little lab in the basement of some university, surrounded by white coats and Apple ][s, Nano would be my thing.
For one simple purpose.
Cycling gloves / mitts usually have a multicoloured patchwork back. This is not for style or fashion. This is not for an ergonomic comfort fit. This is simply so that you know which part of your glove you just wiped your nose on. So that you don’t then wipe your eye with it when a beastie gets lodged there.
So my nanofabric would have a simple use.
Grip tightly to wet stuff, but as it dries, shed it cleanly and immediately. I should be able to dip that thing in tomato soup and it should hang on to that soup like mad. It should be an orange ball! The bowl should be empty. But as soon as the drying power of the wind gets its way, the mitt is sparkly clean again. Bingo.
Cycla is probably sueably close to Lycra as a fabric name. But who cares. I’m not a materials scientist. Sadly.
bubblewrap socks
It struck me when unwrapping my latest bike purchases while standing barefooted in the kitchen, that standing on bubblewrap should be quite insulating and warm. And it was.
In my book that counts as product development research! So…
Introducing bubblewrap house-socks (you know, those oversized socks you wear like slippers, with grippy soles). Some tougher, yet softer, material would be required, but the basic principle would be the same. Just lots of little air bubbles trapped within a waterproof layer.
Think of the advantages over standard house-socks:
- Insulated
- Bouncy
- Bubbly looking (i.e. cool)
- Transparent
- Squeaky
- Waterproof for running out to the garden for herbs
Cool Toes. Taking the idea a little further, for comfort they could have different liquid cores to the individual bubbles - shoes could be bought slightly too big – and the liquid interior could be released through the day to lessen overheated swollen feet syndrome. Christmas or Ikea are the only times I suffer from this.
I don’t think overheated swollen feet syndrome is ever fatal, but if they can sell cans of cold to spray on your feet, I bet they could sell bubblewrap socks you can feed cold water into.
They would be great for use in wellingtons. The double squeak of welly rubber and plastic sock would sound terrifying.
Warm toes. For cycling they could be attached to a pump / heater which cycles warm liquid around your frozen toes on frosty November mornings. This would be an environmentally friendly option, extending the season where cycling to work is a reasonable option. The reservoir of hot water / battery / heating element could be strapped to your leg for a cool robocop look.
wearable led throwies
The months have moved into double figures and it’s starting to be properly dark in the mornings as I cycle to work. I need new lights. My bike currently sports a grand total of 4 leds. Not enough.
I used to have a 3 led bike light sewn into the lower back of my cycling fleece. It worked pretty well, made sure I didn’t forget my lights. But it was a bit clunky, and people laughed at it.
Introducing GLOWIES - the clicky wearable mini led for cyclists.
A simple, single, red LED held on a plastic clip which ‘pin fastens’ through your waterproof / fleece / jersey. (I know this could break your waterproof goretex perfection, but hey, it’s just that last inch of fabric, all it’s protecting is your shorts!). A swappable watch battery provides the power. So far so simple. So what’s new?
I haven’t seen anything like this with a simple switching mechanism. Making them wireless would be too much hassle, and too expensive. Making little switches on them would be an amazingly fiddly process when you have January fingers, and would get gunked up. No - we need a simple, inexpensive, ‘do it with gloves on’ solution. And who better to provide this than our friend the magnet.
With every pack of glowies comes a trigger magnet. This goes on your keyring or something. You just wave the trigger behind the glowies to turn them on, and in front of them to turn them off. An internal switch is then … well … switched to the appropriate position. Simple. The real benefit is obviously that the switch itself is sealed inside the glowie, so can’t get gunked up.
Creative types could draw flowers with them. Rock gods could spell ‘MAIDEN’ across their back in sinister glowing red. But more importantly, I could run a nice row of red lights across my back to make sure cars see me on roundabouts and country roads. And they wouldn’t have a flash mode. I hate flash mode.
desk chair stat monitor
I’m addicted to the stats from my bike computer. I’m addicted to my blog stats. I’m addicted to stats at work. I’m pretty much just addicted to stats.
I want more stats. This got me thinking. Put a Wii style accelerometer in your chair. It can sense your movement on the chair. It can wifi information to your PC to plot your day. It would be able to tell when you were seated, moving, away from your desk etc… At the end of the day you could look at your chart and see that you spend 12% of your day away from your desk.
As well as the soul nourishing stats this could also provide health benefits. A tray icon could flash a warning when it’s been 2 hours since you last left your seat - so you don’t get a seized up body through inaction - or DVT.
Productivity advice could give the opposite message - “you have spent 3 hours so far today away from your desk - lazy boy!“.
Tiny games like minesweeper could be controlled by jiggling about in your seat. Or messages like “you have burned 48 calories by zooming around on your seat today“. These guys have to add this to next years models.
bike saddle post locator
I’ve been cycling a lot recently, requiring me to leave my bike locked up outside the office, outside shops, all over the place.
I’m always paranoid about theft, so I lock the bike. I pop off the front wheel and lock it too. Just to be safe. I don’t pop off my saddle as often as I should though. Usually I can’t be bothered. Not because it takes time to remove - but because it takes time to put back in exactly the right place. That doesn’t mean it won’t be stolen someday though.
Introducing the bike saddle post locator thingy.
I line up my saddle post using the line of grease and grime that builds up. But if I’m in a hurry it can be a smidge too high or low, and a smidge to the right or left. This can have a serious impact on certain parts of a chaps anatomy if he’s not careful.
The locator is a collar you attach to the post which fits exactly where you want your post to rest (the excellently drawn white thing above). You just push down until you feel the clunk - and drop the quick release. Job done. No brain input needed. You could do it in the dark. Easy.
That deals with the height. The rotational alignment is handled with a lug pointing downwards at the back of the collar. This fits between the fastening bars for your quick release. Angled to be a universal fitting, it simply drops between them to get everything aligned. Bingo.
I’ll need to prototype to see if the act of tightening the quick release scuppers this part of the plan. On a test with a big screwdriver and some duck tape it looked okay though.
I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find anything like this. The fabrication would be easy, it could be a cool color. It could weight almost nothing. It could have an LED in it, or a mount for a light. It MUST exist.
And while I could replace the quick release with a straight bolt, then I’d have even more hassle getting the bike into the back of the car than I do now. And yes I could just leave the bike rack on the car at all times, but that’s just not very green. Is it.
CC bike post pic thanks and credit to http://flickr.com/photos/rulerofheck/380537663/ (saved me washing my own).
what color is my website - colortoy 2
I’ve made a modest extension to colortoy 1, and quite grandly titled it colortoy 2. Where colortoy 1 told you the average color of a single image, this version tells you the average color of a webpage. Just enter a page URL below to see the color of that page. One step closer to the webcam weather project.
Just tap in an address or try it for bbc.co.uk, techcrunch.com, boingboing.net, facebook.com, nick.co.uk. Green peppers and red tomatoes.
The thumbnails are courtesy of the excellent thumbnail generator at artViper.
This will run more slowly than colortoy 1 because the thumbnails are being generated before being tested.
pot hole quick fixer
I’ve done some googling and can’t find anything, but I’m sure this must exist already.
Rural roads get potholes. Potholes need fixing. This takes time, closing the road, and causing general dismay, delay and hassle. Top Gear did a thing about it. As with all things TV, it’s on YouTube here.
The idea. A special heavy truck with a 3 foot square drill bit and a compactor. It drives over a hole in the road, is stationary for just 5 minutes per pot hole - scoops out broken bit, drops in pre-set cube of surfaced tarmac into a puddle of molten tar. A perfect surface in an instant. Well, 5 minutes. Maybe 10. It wouldn’t handle some problems, but it would deal with a huge percentage of problems I see.
It would also look very thunderbirdy!
The important thing being that the road doesn’t have to close. It would be a low cost 2 man operation – ideal for single track roads in remote areas, or heavily used streets in city centre where closure would cause vast hold-ups.
For some reason this job feels like it would be similar to fencing, with all the excitement that entails. Someone must know of a site / link where this kind of thing exists.
CC workman sign from http://flickr.com/photos/currybet/24754916/
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Steve invents things while travelling to work on the train. He sketches them in his moleskine notebooks. Instead of actually making them (and becoming a billionaire overnight) he posts them here for the good of mankind.
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