Crazy Ideas

How to Make Boat Decking

How to make boat decking in 11 easy but detailed steps. 1 : Find a load of scrap timber. Put in on the roof and pace up and down a bit. It is crucial that you stay away from the edges whilst pacing if there is someone else on board. 2 : Remark upon the awkward disposition of the nails. It is important to spare a thought for the craftsman who came before you.

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Crazy idea: Hold music cadence machine

I’ve just been on a call with a client. They have Strauss or somesuch a hold music. Orchestral waltzes. The person on the other end picked up exactly at the end of a phrase. It was perfect. My idea: On-hold music programmed with meta-information that stores the exact timecodes of cadences and the end of phrases. When the person who is being waited on picks up the phone, the system keeps playing the music until the next point.

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Old sailor's trick: Turning safety matches into strike anywhere matches.

There’s an old sailor’s trick that comes in useful when on the high seas, when stuck with safety matches and no box to strike them on. They can be turned into strike-anywhere matches with the use of a hot stove. This also helps pass the time on the long unending days when the ship is becalmed at sea. Gloves were used because it wasn’t physically possible to get my hand that close.

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The Rime of the Housemate

This was a facebook comment that got out of hand. If this isn’t the kind of pointless string of words that belongs in a blog, I don’t know what is. The first part follows the Rime of the Ancient Mariner reasonably closely. The rest correlates with the worst excesses of Roald Dahl at his most metrically depraved. It is an ancient housemate, And he washeth one of three.

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Crazy Idea: Steering lock for bikes on trains

It’s annoying leaning a bike up against something, especially on a train, only to have the handlebars rotate and for the bike to fall down. Or to be carrying a bike on your shoulder and have the wheel come round and smack you. A simple lock on the front of the bike which could be flicked to stop the steering from moving whilst it’s being transported would solve this problem.

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Crazy Idea: LCD windscreen dazzle reducer

I don’t drive, but being a passenger and a cyclist, I imagine dazzling lights can be something of a problem to drivers. To combat this, a camera could be mounted in the head-rest of the driver’s seat of a car, so that it was able to see what the driver saw from the same perspective. It could identify where egregious bright lights were coming from. A liquid crystal matrix could be embedded into the windscreen.

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Crazy Idea: acid dispenser for continual kettle de-scaling

Limescale is a problem in areas with hard water. No more so than in kettles which need occasional de-scaling. How about making a dispenser which sits in the kettle and provides de-scaling acid in very small quantities. The acid would be food-grade. It would be adjustable to give just the right amount for the hardness of water so that the acid is completely used up in dissolving the limescale. A testing kit could be sold, or a national database could be built up giving local values based on post-code.

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Crazy Idea: Auto-reverse images

People like taking photos of themselves in the mirror, it seems. Especially with iPhones. The trouble with taking a photo in a mirror is that the image is obviously mirrored. Here’s my idea. An iPhone, or other phone with a prominent logo on the back, can do some basic shape recognition to decide whether or not there’s a logo reflected in the mirror. It can then decide whether it’s taking a photo in a mirror or not and automatically flip the image if needed.

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Crazy Idea: Matches with two heads

I strike a match to light my oven or stove, and blow it out within a few seconds. Most of the match is un-burned. Why not dip the match at both ends so that it can be used twice? And you wouldn’t have to get your fingers mucky: it’s not hard to avoid holding it by the end.

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Cooking with Wood

After success with a pizza, I’ve decided to try cooking in my wood burning stove. Little steps. Today I tried melting some cheese over some gnocchi. A good start. If I’m honest, this wasn’t anything more than melting some cheese. Next time I might actually cook something. And that’s pepper not ash in the last photo.

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