Isotonic Swimming Pool

If water comes contact with your eyes or nasal passages, it should be slightly salty. That's way contact lens solution and nasal spray are salty. Just saltly enough, but not too much. This is called "isotonic," apparently.



If water is hypertonic (too salty) it can make cells swell up and burst. If it's hypotonic (not salty enough), cells shrivel up (like your finger tips when you stay in the bath tub too long.)

I just went swimming in my parents' swimming pool. I went for a dive, and forgot to exhale, so water went up my nose. Ever have that happen to you? Kinda hurts.

If you've ever tried to wear contact lenses in the pool, you'll know an even greater pain: The contact lens shrinks, squeezes your eyeball, and maybe even pops out. (The contact lens pops out, I mean. Not your actual eyeball. That would be ... well, kinda cool actually.)

All this got me thinking: Why not add some salt to the pool? Add just the right amount so the pool water is isotonic. Instead of it irritating your nose and eyes, it might even feel kinda nice.

Of course, there's the issue of chlorine. Chlorine in pools has never really bothered me, but it probably isn't too healthy either. I wonder, have we thought about any alternatives to chlorine?

Fun Computer Viruses

Why do computer viruses have to be all gloom and doom? There should be fun viruses!

Like how about digital "drugs"? You download a little app. Like taking a pill of your drug of choice.

It infects your operating system for 4 - 5 hours. During that time, everything looks psychedelic: icons "trail" when you drag them. Rainbow colors and mirages appear. When you type, it comes out different than you expected, but much more hilarious.

Would be great as a prank, too.

Special thanks to Kassy for helping brainstorm this one.

Computers for the Blind

While I'm on a roll talking about computers, what is there available out there for the blind? I did a quick google search and the best that I could find were various types of "screen readers."

Why not build entirely blind-friendly computers?

They would use much less power since they wouldn't need a screen at all. Therefore, they could probably be made quite portable.

Navigation could be tacile and/or auditory (some combination of noises and vibrations).

Typing accomplished by voice recognition software or keyboards with Braille labels.

"Reading" of text would be accomplished by a robo-voice screen reader, or, even better, phonemic speech software. Or...!

How about a

Dynamic Braille-reading pad

Imagine a plate about the size of a book. Braille dots actually raise out of the plate (like whack-a-moles). You run your fingers along the Braille plate. When you get to the end of the plate, you push the "page down" button.

Somebody get me a patent application.

Text Only Computer Book

There's lots of stuff to read online. It just sucks to read off a screen! Staring at a lightbulb is hard on my eyes. You know what else sucks? Wasting paper by printing it out.

All you computer designers out there: I need you to make a new type of laptop computer. One that is portable, small and uses very little energy. A reading computer.

A new type of laptop computer that is:

• About the size of an open paper-back book
  
• About the weight of a paper-back book
  
• Is easy on the eyes

I heard they are working on e-book technology that is like a refined version of a Magna-Doodle.
Instead of being lit up, the image shows up mechanically: the electronic signal calls little flecks of metal to the surface of the screen, and they stay there because of static electricity or something.

It uses less power because once the image is displayed, no electricity is required to keep it displayed.

This is a reading book. The screen will be black and white. Probably low resolution. But that doesn't matter. The purpose is so you can lie in bed and read stuff off the internet. Or download stuff to read later. This will be way more affordable than a real laptop because less RAM and less storage space is needed.

Let's review how awesome this idea is:

• Less power use
  
• Less paper use
  
• Hand-held
  
• Portable
  
• Affordable
  
• Encourages literacy
  

That last bullet point is important. Think of how these reading laptops could be used in an academic setting. Each student could have one with all of their textbooks loaded on it. They could even use it in the classroom, and you wouldn't have to worry that they will be swapping photos on facebook or looking at videos on youtube because the resolution of the little B&W screen isn't even good enough for photos or video! Text only.

---

Update: It looks like this is another of "my inventions that someone has already invented." But I'm not too surprised because I knew they were working on such devices anyway.
"In January 2007, the Dutch specialist in e-Paper edupaper.nl started a pilot project in a secondary school in Maastricht, using e-Paper as digital schoolbooks to reduce costs and students' daily burden of books."

From: Wikipedia's article on electronic paper.

There are a few different eBooks available out there. Some of them even include a robot-voice reader! But in general I'm a little disappointed with the options. None of them are very low cost. They all seem to work kinda like iTunes: you download the books you want for a couple dollars. Pretty useful, though. I'll wait a few generations before purchasing one.

As far as I can tell, all the options are just for eBooks. What I want is the whole internet available on this thing.

Online White Noise Generator

I'm in the computer lab at school, and there's a trio of people talking loudly (right under the sign that says "Quiet Please.")

Even my earplugs can't cut them out. And then I think: "Someone should put a white noise generator on the internet!"

I googled it, and there it was SimplyNoise.com

(Another of "my" invetions that's already been invented)

Doodles

Sometimes class is so boring, the only way I can tolerate it is to get lost in my abstract pen-and-ink universe.





What are they supposed to be?

My goal with these drawings is not to depict anything. In fact, I make an effort not to represent anything at all.

I want to eventually compile these into a book or zine entitled "100 Drawings Depicting Nothing."

Computerized Phonemic Speech

You know computerized speech? Where you type in something and it "speaks" it for you. Sounds all stupid. You hear it all the time in janky electronic music.

Why haven't we improved that technology in over a decade?

Here's my proposal:
PHONEMIC SPEECH

Instead of typing in "Hello, I'm a cheap computer" orthographically, use the IPA system: "hɛloʊ aɪm ʌ tʃip kəmpjutɚ".

THEN, oo, this will be good: you can DRAW the suprasegmentals right over the letters:
volume, pitch, even rate. Drawn on. Kinda like in a MIDI sequencer or something.

The letters could shrink or increase in size as you adjust the volume up or down. They could lengthen or contract as you adjust the speed faster or slower. Pitch could be the customary line riding above the letters.

Sure, it will be more complicated from the user's end. But also way more fun. And you'll get a much more human-sounding result.

Let's pretend that this technology were widely available, and some nerdy-yet-sizable percentage of the general public got more-or-less used to typing this way.

• Internet content typed this way would be immediately available as audio. (Imagine Wikipedia pages that you could listen to on your mp3 player!)
  

A program could be written that would automate the process; it would turn orthographic text into phonemic text. Ideally, the results would be edited by a human to check for things like homographs ("read" past tense, "read" present tense). But actually, maybe not so much if the program had a built-in grammar checker to choose the proper homograph based on context. Potentially, the human editor could also add the prosity, dramatic pauses and length. But all that are the nerdy details, which wouldn't really matter in the face of the big picture: Any text that has been digitized can be made instantly available in audio format. Actual listenable audio format. Not janky robot format.

Even Bigger Picture:
If this technology catches on, future layman will know the IPA alphabet and use it widely throughout the internet. Even keyboards would be updated.

• People studying foreign languages could do so with much more attention to pronunciation.
  
• The blind would have access to all digitized text
  
• People with apraxia of speech or other communication deficits (i.e. Stephen Hawking) could communicate in a much more normal-sounding way.
  

Boo YA!