User-Activated Cell Phone Ring

Ever have this happen to you? You find yourself talking to an obnoxious person. Words are coming out of their mouth like a machine gun. As you fake a smile, you look around; there's no way to escape. No excuse to say, "I hate to interrupt this stimulating conversation. Let's continue it later shall we?"

Wouldn't it be so much easier if your cell phone rang super loudly right at that moment?

So here's the invention: A little ringer that you attach to your cell phone. Secretively, you put your hand in your pocket and activate the ringer. It's super loud. Loud enough to stop a blabbermouth dead in his tracks.

"I'm so sorry," you say, "but I have to take this call. It's from my mom."

Nex Bottles - Creative packaging for beverage bottles

I was brainstorming about ways for packaging to not just be trash. Could there be a reason for users to actually collect the used packaging? Think about a beverage: The bottle costs way more than the actual water and sugar inside. And then it's thrown away. What if the empty bottle was useful?

Here's the idea:

The bottle has snap-in or screw-in insets on the very bottom and along the sides. Thus, if you have two or more bottles, you can connect them together.

This adds functionality to the bottle after the beverage has been consumed. Aggregating more and more beverage bottles will enable the user to build creative sculptures, functional structures; an infinite set of designs can be created, limited only by the number of bottles used and the user's imagination.

The exact dimensions, shape and size of the bottle are arbitrary. The key features of this novel bottle design are as follows:

The cap of the bottle and its corresponding nozzle will be threaded so that they screw together (just in like an ordinary screw-on bottle cap.) Alternatively, there could be snap-ins instead of screw-ins.

The bottle will be manufactured so that it comprises some number of threaded "contacts" (other than that of the cap itself). These contacts will be inset all along the sides of the bottle. There will be one threaded contact on very bottom of the bottle as well. These contacts will be the same as the female screw-in part of the bottle cap, except they will actually be manufactured on the sides and bottom of the bottle itself. Therefore, once the cap is removed, the bottle can be screwed-in (or snapped-into) another like bottle.

For example, the user will be able to take one empty bottle, remove the cap and screw it (or snap it) right into the bottom of another bottle. Then, those bottles can be connected to any of the contact points of a third bottle. Any number of bottles can be attached this way.

The usefulness of the invention is easy to see:
Empty bottles do not have to be recycled; they can be re-purposed immediately by the user.
The user will invest time in the product and share his designs with friends, which will generate word-of-mouth advertising.
Designs will be shared on the internet, generating considerable "buzz" around the product.










Tentatively, I am naming this idea "Nex", kinda like "Connects." I think it sounds catchy.

Personally, I think a beverage sold in a bottle like this would generate a lot of buzz. It's outrageousness is part of its appeal. First of all, it would instantly attract creative people, tinkerers and inventors. Furthermore, it would encourage re-use of trash; even better than recycling! Therefore, it would make headlines as a bizarre new "green" product.

As it catches on, possibility for expansion is endless: different flavors of drink could be sold in bottles of a different configuration. Add-ons. Instructional books. Contests. Word-of-mouth advertising.

Downsides: I've shopped around, and it seems like nobody wants to manufacture a bottle like this. Its multiple pieces and undercuts would require special molds. Very difficult to manufacture, and therefore more expensive.

Scoring scissors

If you go to the craft store, there are scissors of all kinds: ones that make wavy lines, zig-zig lines, stuff like that.

Something I think would be useful:
Scissors that make a row of really-close-together tiny holes. Like perforations. This would enable you to make something that could later be torn really easily.

My use for this would be for my sticker-making hobby. Let's say I wanted to display a roll of small stickers on the backing. If I had these scissors, I could score a line between each sticker. Then the user could just rip off one.

These could also be used when you're making flyers: You know the part at the bottom where people rip off your phone number?

There probably would be 1000 other creative uses for arts & crafts.

Raw Vegan Nasturtium Tacos

The nasturtium is a really good-looking plant, with broad green leaves that look like water lilies, and bright red, orange or yellow flower.
I learned yesterday that all parts of this plant are edible.

The flowers have a lightly spicy or peppery flavor.

So today, while making lunch, I had one of my brainstorms: nasturtium tacos!


The filling is the classic raw vegan paté (the amounts aren't specified, because it doesn't really matter. It will taste awesome no matter what):

• raw sunflower seeds that have been soaked over night
  
• raw almonds, also soaked
  
• optional: jalapeño
  
• dash of turmeric
  
• nasturtium flowers
  
• optional: a small amount of salt (preferably sea salt)
  

Blend ingredients in food processor.

Throw the paté on top of some nasturtium leaves from your garden. Add chopped bell pepper (or onions or cilantro). Add extra nasturtium flowers for color.

Eat while lying in a hammock in your garden.

No-board iron

Ironing is a chore.


We don't even have an ironing board in the house.

Besides, I never need to iron a whole shirt. The only part that gets wrinkly are the two sides on the front where the buttons and button holes are. Those get all folded over and look bad.

So, what I need is just a little iron in the form of a clip. About the size of a mini stapler. Just to go over the sides, because those are the only parts that need to look good, anyway.


This invention could be small, portable, and even battery-powered. It could fit on your keychain!

Online music collaborative

Jesse and I came up with this idea. It's pretty complicated, but I'll try my best to explain it.

Imagine a website set up for musicians to collaborate over long distances. You could record musical ideas, upload them and share them with everyone in some public web space. Complete strangers will take your idea, add to it and put it back on the public space. In this way, musicians can collaborate very rapidly. Songs can be written in no time.

Imagine writing a guitar riff. Upload it. Instantly, everyone out there starts to add to it: drums, bass, melody. As the originator of the song, you can chose which pieces you want to keep or reject. With everyone collaborating, the song takes shape rapidly. Even the outtakes are saved somewhere and can be spun-off into new songs.

This website would look sort of like the love child of a music sequencer and a social networking site (like MySpace). Your personal profile would function to give you ownership over your creations, as well as put you in contact with like-minded musicians, and enhance your status.

Iterations on this theme

• Leader-Contributor Style: This is like what I described first. There's more of a band leader who accepts/rejects ideas and orchestrates them. All contributors get credited on their profiles.
  
• Band Style: Actual bands will form among far-away people who may never meet in real life. They might not even speak the same language.
  
• Scavenger Style: Since everyone's contributions will be floating freely in the open forum, you will be able to scavenge for material. You'll be able to assemble a song without writing a note yourself.
  
• Sound Art Stream Style: This is the weirdest iteration, and probably the one I'm most excited about. You are given a section, say 8 measures, and instructed to provide the bass or drums or melody. You hear the lead-in to your section so you have a starting place. There will probably be a click track. You can work at it as long as you want until you hit "submit." No contribution is rejected. The result will be a totally stream-of-consciousness music album written by hundreds of collaborators who don't know each other.
  
• MIDI type-in keyboard: For any of the above-mentioned styles, there will be various ways to actually create the music. Obviously, there will be people with home recording equipment. Those people will use guitars, microphones etc. But for everyone else, I'm really excited about this option: I want the user to be able to actually type in using their computer keyboard like a MIDI controller. Just like in MIDI, you can assign any instrument to your typed-in jam.
  • Any user will be able to contribute, not just those with special equipment
  • MIDI will tighten things up
    • Contributions could be automatically quantized (made to snap to the rhythm)
    • All pieces could be meta-adjusted easily (i.e., tempo could be sped up)
  • This would be a perfect compliment to the "Sound Art Stream Style" because
    • It would ensure all pieces would fit together rhythmically.
    • It would force users to choose an instrument sound appropriate for their piece (i.e. if they are assigned to bass, for example, they are only given bass options to choose from)
      
  
  
  

Why this invention is relevant now

• The idea of forming a band is so last century. It's not worth the effort to get musicians physically together to write songs and rehearse. Furthermore —— I'm not the expert on this, but —— it's not easy to be a successful band. Nor is it artistically rewarding. Record labels, promoters, blah blah blah. It's all business, not art. And that's because it's controlled from the suits at the top and not the artists at the bottom. What needs to happen is for the bottom to come up.
  
• There are plenty of vocalists who just need a track to sing over. Similarly, there are plenty of beat-makers who just need someone to rap over their beat. A program like this would pair them up instantly. Furthermore, since the people don't know each other in person, there would be no hurt feelings if someone's contribution is rejected.
  
• If you haven't noticed, the music industry is totally irrelevant already. So is the entertainment industry almost. What's replacing it? Bottom-up media like YouTube.
• Everyone is a wannabe musician. Probably more people spend money on music equipment and home studio equipment than they do buying music.
  
• In general, things are becoming more open-source. Collaboration is in. Sharing is in. Not in? Centralized currency, monopolies, corporations.
• With that said, it's not like we couldn't make money off this idea. Think of how much YouTube or MySpace makes off ads alone. Jesse mentioned that since this music is being made on "our" site, the site could be set up so that we retain the rights to the content. Then we could go through and cull the most popular songs and try to make a buck off them. However, I don't really think that's necessary. We can make plenty of bank without taking contributors' actual work. In fact, to generate allegiance to this site, users need to know that their work belongs to them.
  

The Matrix, Revision

Why do so many movies feel like rough drafts?

Anyone who has taken a creative writing class knows that you can't pass off a mediocre piece of writing even in a room full of amateurs. We nit-pick the hell out of literature. Why is our bar so low for movies?

Here are some questions the writers of the Matrix would have heard if they had taken a class on creative writing at their local city college:

• This protagonist, Neo, who is he, really? Why is he special enough to be "The One"? We don't see that he possesses any special personality traits whatsoever. He's not even very smart.
  
• IN FACT, the damn little kids who hang out in the Oracle's living room are way more awesome than Neo is. Why aren't any one of them "the one"? HuH?
  
• This so-called "love" between Trinity and Neo: Where does this come from? They hardly have one conversation at all. Throughout the movie, they act like cold fishes around each other. Then all of a sudden, she loves him with such passion to rise him from the dead.
  
• Now, let's get into the nitty-gritty of this "Matrix" premise. It's a really intriguing set-up. Terminator-esque rise of the machines. Man vs robot war. The robots must be solar-powered or something because the humans "scorch the skies" as a tactic to defeat them. What kind of plan is that? So, the skies are blackened. How do humans grow food?
  
• [This could lead to a million other trivial-but-important-to-consider questions like: What fuel does Morpheus's ship run on? And what about the crew? How does the crew look so healthy if they just eat gruel?]
  
• But all that is just the beginning. Let's look closely at this Matrix premise: Neo "wakes up." He's in his embryo-like pod, and there are hoses going in and out of his body.
  He has been there, presumably, since he was a zygote. Morpheus brings him into the real world and says tells him "Your muscles are atrophied. You've never used them." SO, what's up with the sweet muscle tone, then? Furthermore, why would Neo be bald? Wouldn't he be all hairy? More importantly, he wouldn't even have developed muscles at all. He bones and organs would be completely non-functioning.
  
• More important than even that, though: Why would Real-Life Neo necessarily bear any resemblance to Matrix Neo? Matrix Neo is just a mental construct, so it would make sense that Matrix Neo would look like Keanu. But Real-Life Neo would probably look more like Gollum.
  
• Jeez, you barely subject this movie to even the slightest scrutiny and it quickly crumbles like a gingerbread house. But I have hardly begun.
  
• Let's talk about these Agents. So they are three software programs written by the Matrix, right? Their purpose is to wipe out the Hackers. To talk nerdy for a minute, they are the "meta-police" of the Matrix. So, question: Why would there be any limits to their power at all? Couldn't the Matrix make them as powerful as need be? For example, why handguns, and not some more powerful weapon? Why are there only three of them to begin with? Why not hundreds?
  
• Speaking of the Agents, why is their aim so imprecise? They can't shoot straight at all. You would think they would have surgically-precise machine-like-aim. But no! They fire all over the place, missing even the easiest targets.
  
• But it's a movie, you say; we can over look a few creative liberties if they are small enough. Okay, then, let's look into some of the more glaring inconsistencies:
  
• Remember the subway fight scene? At one point, the agent has Neo against the wall and he's super-punching Neo's chest. Back in real world, Neo is dying. Why didn't the agent continue to pummel Neo right then? He could have killed him if he had.
  
• Okay, now remember how the fight ends? The agent gets hit by the subway (which presumably kills him.) Then the subway comes to a stop, the doors open, and to Neo's surprise, the agent walks out of the subway, revived and fresh as a daisy (but not quick enough, apparently, to fire his gun. Lame.) There were other people on that subway. Why didn't all three agents come out?
  
• I could go on and on about the Agents. In general, it annoys me when you make any character(s) too powerful. As a writer, you have to make up for the character's lack of weaknesses by getting slop-sloppy with the details. (Details like the aforementioned: 1. Bad aim 2. Failure to kill the enemy when really have the chance 3. Failure to make full use of powers). Furthermore, not only are these characters too strong, but their powers are not clearly delineated (What really are their strengths and weaknesses?) This makes the writing even more sloppy.
  
• Let's stop picking on the Agents for a minute and talk about this idea of "hacking into the Matrix." What exactly is the goal of this anyway? Most likely, the goal is to destroy the machines, right? And win the damn war? So, why are they beating around the bush? The easiest way to win the war would be to destroy the machines' source of power: The human "batteries." This wouldn't be hard to accomplish. Remember that white "Loading Program" between reality and the Matrix with all the gun racks? Presumably any type of object can be acquired here and brought into the Matrix with you. Why not generate a few thousand atom bombs? Bring those into the Matrix on a suicide mission to destroy the Matrix. It would take a few minutes, and the war would be won. (Of course, meanwhile, back on earth, you'd still have to live on a desert planet with black skies...But no one is talking about that)
  
• Oh, one more thing: Remember how Cypher made the deal with the Agents about getting plugged back into the Matrix?
  Back on earth, who plugged in Cypher so he could have that secret meeting? A person can't plug in himself. So, somebody must have connected him. And watched what he was up to.
  

I could go on and on all day about this movie, but those are some of the most really annoying things about it.

To conclude, I just want to reiterate: Why is the bar so low for movies? Especially sci-fi movies. Screenwriters insult our intelligence so hard. Every time I'm at one of these movies I feel like I'm being made fun of. They show you a little flash and dash. Bang, boom! Your head spins around, and you go all stupid and mushy. Screenplays are written in one afternoon by a committee, and nobody proofreads them. We, as viewers, need to become more critical and discerning. Eventually maybe Hollywood will treat us like grownups. But probably not.