Seems another of my ideas was listened to:
although as normal not a great implementation
Just like the implementation of MP’s recall … They’re not even doing Douglas Carswell’s idea of recall ….nevermind my thoughts of voting in that we should be able to change our vote at any time and the MP would then take the seat whenever they’ve had a majority for a few months:
As normal, no inspiration and no cojones.
I know there are devices available which you can put one in your bag and the other on the phone and if they are split then this would lock the phone.
But they are clunky and people just stick them in the same place and they get robbed together.
So another idea using NFC, why not have a ring that is used to unlock the phone so that whenever it is held in the hand it is unlocked and then locks again automatically.
The key is then that if the ring is taken off (a pressure/light switch or even skin electrical detection on the inside could be used for this) it will take another device to make it work again.
This can be a USB device so would log any attempts and can be secured via the web.
(Of course emergency calls and perhaps a fixed number can be called when it’s locked.)
This USB device could be left at home/work and so no chance of it being pick-pocketed and would even make mugging pointless.
What better way to get your weekday evening underway than drinking to the local news…
Take a gulp for…
Technical…
Bad music sync on the handover from national (drink double if you see a shot of sportsdesk or other region)
“Including…” [cut to VT]
The mention unnamed people as an excuse for the story or balance section…
“Residents are angry”
“But campaigners say more money is needed”
“Calls for an enquiry”
“Calls for a ban”
“The Mayor has been criticised”
“That’s the opinion of” (after reading a highly unbalanced first person opinion)
Down your drinks….
Someone moons or otherwise jeers behind the weather presenter who is out on the street for no apparent reason…. extra shot if this happens in the studio! – Double if it’s you!
Celeb on red carpet either talks nonsense, appears drunk or just uninterested and walks off… extra if they don’t realise they’re on live TV.
Boring re-occurring themes…
Olym-/Paralym-pic Legacy/2012 … Drink extra if they say “2012” as shorthand for the Olympic Games.
Lakanal house
Baby P
Council house residents complaining about dirty windows/mold.
—
Maybe some of these will work for your local news too if you are elsewhere.
Feel free to comment your extra suggestions below!
There’s lots of cards with NFC in people’s pockets .. cards that can be read by a passing reader or the wrong card read when using it.
If the antenna in the card had 2 contacts exposed like in the pic above that required, the card wouldn’t have enough power to work until a finger was placed over to make the circuit thus both securing and ensuring the card is only read when the user wants it to be.
Shouldn’t add much to the cost I wouldn’t think.
Being a non-religious meat-eater, I’ve been trying to cook/eat vegan for lent.
I decided to do this before the horsemeat stuff, which is a bit annoying as people (or my nectar card) will think I’m doing it ‘cos of that.
Being Vegetarian is quite easy – everything has a label but then I guess that’s because vegetarianism is quite well defined.
But I don’t see the point in it – You may not be killing the animal to eat it’s stuff but eg. what happens to all the male cows? They are all killed early as they aren’t worth keeping. So indirectly drinking milk and eating eggs is killing animals.
And I know of vegetarians who don’t care if their eggs are free range; They don’t want an animal to be killed but don’t care if it has a bad life (I think you have to believe in an afterlife to go with this one and think killing it is more traumatic to the animal)
So the next choice is vegan.
But where do you stop?
Honey is created by animals but not from them – is that OK?
Is using animal products like manure for growing vegetables OK – I suspect many vegans would prefer this to GM crops that can grow without such stuff (if they even really think about it at all)
So what I propose is a new labelling system so people of all fussynesses can see at a glance if the product is good for them.
The label would be based on a 4line grid system which could be printed quite small but can be read by a mobile phone to give a clearer indication.
Supermarkets can provide tablets at the end of aisles for customers to use (in fact they should do this anyway for people to scan barcodes to look up extra information and provenance – may need 2d barcodes on stuff for that but they can do that on own-label easy)
The idea isn’t that everyone can use it for everything but if you do have a dietary requirement then you would learn what to look for and so be able to tell at a glance.
The levels will mean different things for different columns.
This will mostly be:
0 – Contains ONLY this.
1 – Contains some of this
2 – Produced in a factory which processes this
3 – None
(descriptions optional)
There would be certain restrictions such as the British (or whichever country) produce one would refer to everything being grown/produced here and not just assembled/cooked here (there could be another column for that)
The icons can be interchangeable but has to be a black bar and the P=produce line has to have the flag of a country – or blank for produce of more than one country.
This does mean there could be multiple P columns.
The QR code is optional as the phone app should be able to read and decode without a net connection but it should preferably be unique to the batch and so the website it links to can contain all the provenance details, along with the best before dates etc.
New columns can be removed/added – there is a letter symbol as this is easier to read when small and also by a phone camera.
I’ve used darker colours so it could also be printed black/white and also avoided using “traffic light” colours as you end up with the top-trump problem where one person’s good thing is another’s bad.
Anything with spots/dashes across all columns is the equivalent of Not Applicable.
The first half is grouped in order of diet restrictiveness so a Pescitarian/Vegetarian/Vegan can just check the length of the bottom bar even when the label is displayed tiny
Another type of people are usually more bothered about where it is produced which is why that is on the other end.
If this becomes standard then for online food shopping it could be used in reverse too – Check the boxes which are acceptable to you and only see those items which match.
There’s plenty of reviewers who will tell you how great the Lumia 920 is (it is!) – but ain’t nobody got time for that. Here’s the downsides…
Upgrading a Nokia is always excitement, tinged with disappointment. Maybe it’s that Finnish air that even if you’re having 24hour daylight parties, you know the winter is coming.
I recently upgraded from the N8 to the Lumia 920.
Here are the things I miss, or were missing on the N8 too… most are software issues so maybe it’s just a disappointment in having to wait and hope.
Overall… Great phone, love it… well done Nokia.
Yesterday was announced the new route for the 2nd half of HS2, the high speed rail for UK.
Now I do think they should do the northern bit first…. perhaps actually a big private company should just do it and show them how it’s done.
A big circle going Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Stoke, Crewe then back up to Liverpool…. perhaps a spur to Birmingham
This would help regenerate the north, especially when the shale gas money starts coming in.
People would then go there rather than just use it as a nice place to commute to London from… Would be a vote winner for the Conservatives too!
The lines running northwards at the moment aren’t too bad, especially west-coast.
There’s talk of capacity problems but this is where technology can come in.
With more advanced signalling and better trains they can be made to run faster and closer together… with more use of splitting trains, perhaps whilst at speed but also…
(..and we now eventally get to the idea that I was writing this blog for 🙂 )
Train Pods.
I think they should be used on the tube but would equally work on real trains.
This is where the vestibule of each carriage is detachable.
To get on the train, passengers get into a pod on the platform which is then accelerated to the same speed as the train as it passes then simply slots in to the train.
The doors on the pod then open allowing the train to carry on without stopping, saving time and energy.
Getting off is the reverse – get into the pod which is pushed out and then slows down to the platform
(on a seperate track to the side… monorail maybe Edit: or how about over the top of the train on a track on it’s roof so the current platforms can be used?)
If there isn’t enough room for everyone to get off then there should be a button so the train does have to slow/stop, but good ticket/train management could prevent this from happening often.
This would be better for disabled/elderly people too as they have the whole time between stations to get in the pod, rather than be rushed whilst the train is stopped.
Given there’s more time then tickets could also be checked in/out of these to save time at the station.
Using this system then there’s no worry about platforms not being long enough for the train, so these pods could be quite large for many people and possibly just fitting between standard carriages.
If this was used on the tube then I would envision perhaps fewer stops in the centre but with high speed walkways between.
These walkways would be like the travellator type but fully enclosed and one way.
This way, every few yards people could step onto a new platform which is going faster and faster.
LED Lights on the wall would also go faster, so people could end up travelling at high speed, but as they’ve no reference points then think they aren’t going fast at all.
Whilst I’m on the subject of rail productivity I’ve been reinventing in my head the high speed rail that will go to “Boris Island” airport …. the train that I would put the airport terminal inside so all security and baggage check is done en route to the airport.
I’m imagining double decker trains where the baggage/workers are on the top level and customers on the bottom, walking through each carriage as each section checkin/security/baggage and then waiting… waiting carriages can have screens to pre-order stuff from the shops, ready for them when they get to the departure lounge.
One day I’ll do a post not about travel in some way
Just found this post in drafts from Nov 2010.. not sure why I didn’t publish – maybe covered in a different post….
All this talk of sending someone on a one way trip to start colonising mars – why don’t we try underwater?
Using a spinning thing to reduce pressure in a cyninder and send bubbles to the outside through a gas permiable membrane we can extract the oxygen from the water and so they’d only need to send power cables down and the voyagers can gradually get deeper and more used to the odd air and pressure and lack of light and cold etc.
Although that doesn’t sound very pleasant and I think colonising mars would be more fun than getting cold and wet and recreating the film waterworld.
Why mars anyways and why not the moon – or is there already people on the dark side we can’t see?
Seems the highways agency has taken up my idea for a Rubbernecker’s Screen
See http://cars.uk.msn.com/news/new-m-way-screens-to-stop-rubberneckers
Although they seem to have gone for a more expensive option than I’m sure my idea would cost.
Seems they also picked up on my idea for 3D laser scanners too but I don’t think I even wrote that one down.
My idea was that it would take photos too so could recreate the scene either in a special projection room or just onscreen – this would not only get the road opened quicker but mean the conditions would be more like when the accident happened.
I also thought a special vacuum could hoover up the small debris and so could be placed in the projection room, but then if the laser/photo recreation is good enough then it’s probably not needed.
I was just reading about the prize for the inventing the tricorder which reminded me of medical inventions that I can’t remember if they exist in reality or just my head.
The tricorder would be good in that it can be set up in booths in public such as shopping centres (or perhaps night clubs if it does STIs too – you could provide patrons with ‘clean’ bands!)
What I’ve not seen is the device like an airport scanner but with a mapping laser and camera takes a 3D&HD all over body image (yeah, you have to be naked) which can be done on a regular basis to detect changes and computer analysed for things like cancerous moles & other stuff – I’m sure that exists?
After they are about then there needs to be something where you lie face down in special goo which can make an firmness map that can’t be done with a laser which can both aid with healthy living but also perhaps check for odd lumps.
These body maps can then be sold on to niche fetish sites to make some money back for the NHS. (not really!)
..and whilst were on the subject of boobs (well, nearly) why don’t they put lots of thin silicone strands on to implants which can be fed under the top layer of skin (using a needle on the end inside and a magnet outside) up and over the shoulders to create an internal bra type thing to prevent skin stretching/droopage?
Norm's Inventions for a greater universe 