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ReBlade

3/12/2017

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This is an idea I have been thinking about... and there are a number of blade sharpeners out there for disposable razors, but none that I could find that gave you the ability to check if the blade actually sharpened.  All the current solutions are classic whet stone designs.  The problem with this approach is that you have to angle the blade just right to get a shape edge, and the plastic casing makes this very difficult.  A better approach would be closer to the kitchen knife sharpener where you slot the knife into a V shaped sharpener.  It would have to be very small, but I believe that it would do a superior job.

I was watching a recent nycnc video, and he said that he used a jewel's loupe to check the cutting edge on his end mills. Take this idea and add to it a sharpening tool and you have one device that performs a service and allows the user to inspect the sharpness of the blade.  $24.95
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Open Source Movie Making

7/21/2014

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Indies access the wisdom of the crowds.

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Create a website for indie filmmakers that allows them to enlist the wisdom of the crowds at points that it makes sense.  The trick with getting people to contribute to an open source project is to limit the time requirement and maximize the benefit to the people volunteering their time. To this end, there are a couple ways that I think that you could open source the film-making process.

1.  Open Source the Opening Scene - Inspired by the 3 page challenge from the scriptnotes podcast, filmmakers could submit the opening scene from their script and have the users critique it.  This helps filmmakers because the opening scene needs to be especially strong when they are submitting to film festivals who have to review hundreds of entries and may not watch more than a few minutes of each in the first round of judging.  It makes it easy for users to contribute because it can be completed in under 10 minutes and potentially have a huge effect on the final project.  You would also make it easy for users
by allowing them to browse by genre and length.  Additionally, the feedback could be rated as 'constructive' or 'non-constructive' with the order favoring the 'constructive' feedback.

2. Open Source the Editing - Filmmakers having trouble in editing a specific scene could upload the timecoded raw footage to allow others to tackle the edit.  This could be used by the hundreds of film schools around the globe as editing exercises, but also provide many variations on editing style and feedback as to what is missing.

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Proposition Incorporated

7/17/2014

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In the fall of 1997, I stood on top of a pyramid and proposed to my wife.

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If I were to do that today, I would probably pay locals to serenade her and film the whole thing.  30 minutes later it would be posted on youTube getting 10's of thousands of views.

That's the world we live in.  It
has to be big, it has to be choreographed, and it has to be streaming.

Which is fine if you are in the arts or work in film or television, but what about those schmucks with more money then creativity.

You start a business that offers to create and manage the whole event... for a price.  Book a flashmob, hire actors to create a whole scene.  Buy time on the jumbotron, or a billboard, or the side of a bus.  Then clandestinely videotape the whole thing and post it to social media 

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FILMMAKING IDEA

7/16/2014

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Shoot a feature film in one take... in 12 minutes...

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This camera (or one like it) can shoot 240 frames per second.  If you multiply 90 minutes times 60 seconds times 30 fps you get 162,000 frames to make a feature length film.  Take that number and divide it by 240 and again by 60 seconds and you see that you could record a 90 minute movie in 11 minutes and 15 seconds.  Shoot fast, play it back slow.


That is some simple math, but what would the story be?  


You couldn't record sound, so any monologue/dialogue would have to be recorded and dubbed in later... and you couldn't lip sync at that speed, so I would focus on telepathy or only internal thoughts. Something like... people's thoughts in the last moments before a disaster strikes.  With green screen, you could add a main character in later who moves in real time. A scifi premise where the main character is out if sync.


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/880958-REG/Panasonic_dmc_fz200k_Lumix_FZ200_Digital_Camera.html

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SOFTWARE IDEA

7/15/2014

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Shhhh: The Phone App

I have my phone in silent mode most of the day, and I usually forget to turn the ringer on when I leave work, and I miss a lot of calls. Additionally, on the weekends when the ringer is on, I will forgot to silence it in places where it is rude to have a loud ringer go off...


APP IDEA:  You search street address data for churches, movie theaters, libraries, etc. and create a database of restricted areas.  The app automatically puts your phone in silent mode when you enter a restricted zone,  then reverts back to your settings when you leave.  


A great, easy to use feature for a free app.  If they want to upgrade to a $.99 app, they can get the ability to add custom areas and determine the phone settings for each.
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SOFTWARE IDEA

7/14/2014

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Scratch IDE

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My 10 year old daughter has been learning to program using Scratch, a graphical programming environment developed for kids in the MIT Media Lab.


It's a great sandbox to learn programming in because it represents all the core concepts of programming, but you don't have to compile code or deal with syntax issues.


Learning a new programming language is always frustrating because of the necessary syntax.  You know how to program, but do you put a colon here? a semicolon there?  etc...


What if you have a similar tool, but instead of creating a scratch program, you  selected the programming language to output, and it spit out your code formatted correctly in whatever language you wanted (java, c, php, javascript, actionscript, c#, perl, etc)  Then all you would need to know is how to program.

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PRODUCT IDEA

7/11/2014

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Large Scale 3D Printing

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I was driving through a brush-less car wash the other day and realized that it had a huge 2 axis positioning arm.

Very similar to a modern 3D printing.  The only thing missing is the build plate that lowers.

You could retrofit one of these car wash units, and turn it into a huge 3D printer.  I'm sure that the resolution would not be great, but you could use it on large scale objects where resolution was less important.  Maybe extrude a large cell foam material to make furniture.

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GAME IDEA

7/10/2014

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Planet X

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You are a lone researcher on an outpost planet. You are contacted by mission control to tell you that a rogue planet has entered your solar system and will collide with your planet. That’s the bad news, the worse news is that they can’t get a rescue ship to you in time.  Oh and it is going to continue to take out the moon orbiting the planet and several other planets in the system.

Your only hope of survival is to find a way of hopping from one celestial body to another staying one step ahead of Planet X.

Inspired by a short story by Italo Calvino, “The Distance of the Moon”  http://www.aleastory.co.uk/The-Distance-of-the-Moon.pdf


“This is how we did the job: in the boat we had a ladder: one of us held it, another climbed to the top, and a third, at the oars, rowed until we were right under the Moon; that’s why there had to be so many of us… from the top of the ladder, standing erect on the last rung, you could just touch the Moon if you held your arms up…. I would cling first with one hand, then with both, and immediately I would feel ladder and boat drifting away from below me, and the motion of the Moon would tear me from the Earth’s attraction. Yes, the Moon was so strong that she pulled you up; you realized this the moment you passed from one to the other: you had to swing up abruptly, with a kind of somersault, grabbing the scales, throwing your legs over your head, until your feet were on the Moon’s surface.”

The solar system that you are in is very compressed and and each planet has multiple moons with wildly elliptical orbits, which at times take them so close to their planets and each other that they are almost touching.  

So the game play is to build structures to be able to transfer from one body to another when they cross each other’s path.  Each Planet/Moon being a level with it own unique problems (i.e. different gravity, raw materials, distances to transverse, lack of oxygen, etc.)

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SOFTWARE IDEA

7/9/2014

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Crowd funding for WordPress

Create a plugin for WordPress that allows users to create and manage a crowd funding campaign.

Why pay 5% to Kickstarter and 5% to Amazon when you could pay a flat $50 for the plug-in and 3.75% to paypal. 

Have all the basic crowd funding features. 

Unlike Kickstarter and indiegogo, you get paid upfront whether their campaign is successful or not.


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GAME MECHANIC IDEA

7/8/2014

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Immortal Combat

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Fighting game where all contestants have a wolverine-like ability to heal. You would have to create a fighting system where the player models could be cut(deformed) and sliced(cut in pieces).  If a player's arm or leg is sliced or blown off, it starts growing back. You would need a system that adjusts the fighting moves dynamically based on the body condition, and a system to manage the body model. 

You could probably build the body in segments and create versions of each segment that animate the segment's growth.  The body would use a dynamic IK system to string together the pieces to form the whole.

You have to take the head to win, the theory being that if you sever the connection between the head and the heart, you break the ability to regenerate... that is why severed limbs don't grow into a copy of the original.

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EVIL GENIUS IDEA

7/7/2014

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Graffiti Forever

I'm not a fan of graffiti, but if I were an artist who wanted my art to last, I would seal the finished piece with a hydrophobic spray.  Liquids do not stick to it, and it could not be painted over without taking a belt sander to it first. 
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GAME IDEA

7/4/2014

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Primitive Worlds

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A scifi-based version of Minecraft with more of a story-oriented approach.

Background/Framing Device:
Man has developed wormhole technology that will allow him to instantly travel to any of the millions of planets orbiting distant stars. That's the good news, the bad news is that our home planet of Earth is in chaos. Suffering from centuries of overpopulation and the horrific effects of global warming, this new technology is initially seen as a solution. Millions of applicants signed up for the first colonial expeditions. Within six months of the first 10,000 colonists stepping foot on one of a handful of planets, they were all gone, along with the several billion invested to send them there. Between disease, starvation, and the violent threat from local alien life forms, it was quickly determined that a new approach would have to be taken. That is where you come in.

You play Twenytu, short for 94100422. You are a death row inmate from Canamexico, and you've been in a high security Ubermax Prison so long you don't recall your real name.

The deal is simple, you and a million other prisoners are getting out... way out.

Instead of putting 1,000 people on 10 planets, the new plan is to put 10 prisoners on 100,000 planets. It reduces the prison population, increases the chances of finding habitable resource-rich worlds, and risks nothing. (Psst... You are the nothing)

You are dropped on a randomly generated planet with 2 days of food, a pick, a shovel, an axe, and a 3D printer. The printer is the smallest one available to keep costs low, but it can print the parts for a larger version. Your initial job is to create a secure base camp and start gathering the raw materials. Your long term goals are to survive and gather enough raw materials to buy your way off this planet and return to Earth a free man





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GAME IDEA

7/3/2014

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Black Hole Salvage

Turn-based strategy game where players assume to role of mining ship captain.  


Instead of traveling the huge distance between planets, salvage teams park themselves on the outskirts of a black hole and mine planets, asteroids, clouds of gas for rich mineral deposits before they descend into the black hole.  


The player must balance time spent mining on a planet with fuel spent escaping the black hole when they leave. 


Fuel costs, mineral prices, mining equipment upgrades, cargo bay size, ship upgrades… all must be taken into account when you are mining the edge of oblivion.
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GAME IDEA

7/2/2014

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Letter Drop

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Sort of a reverse Boggle crossed with Scrabble.  


You have an empty Boggle-like grid and letter tiles roll down on a conveyor belt at timed intervals. If you do not grab it in time, the letter will drop out of play.  You take the tiles and place them on the grid creating words.  The round ends when the slots are filled up, and the games ends when you have too many letter drops in a round.  


Points are added up by scrabble style word scoring and multipliers for the longer the words. Rounds increase in complexity with faster intervals and larger board area.




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AMUSEMENT PARK IDEA

7/1/2014

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Fireworks Park

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Most metropolitan areas have outlawed fireworks because of fire risk.  Understandable, but for those of us who grew up celebrating occasions with small scale pyrotechnics, something fun has been lost.

Get a plot of land just outside of town. Create a round amphitheater design where the furthest out is for spectators, and enclosed by safety netting. A series of concentric circles toward the center are broken up into sections which are individual spaces where people can go to play with the fireworks.  The closer to the center you are, the more dangerous the fireworks.  The outside ring would be for kids with sparklers and non-exploding fireworks. The next levels would be for non-flying, dancing-style fireworks, next would be exploding firecracker, and finally would be the flying rocket styles.

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The entrance fee would include a pack of ear plugs, and a variety of non-exploding fireworks.  All other fireworks can be additional purchases.  Other fun activities could include a photography booth where people could make 'Drawings with light' using long exposure photography, a nightly fireworks display, food booths, etc.

Waivers would have to be signed.  On-site firefighters and e.m.s.  You would probably get push back from neighbors about noise.

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    Author

    Hello.  I'm a creative sort of a fellow, and I'm always coming up with ideas.  I have notebooks filled with them.  I'll be posting them here from time to time.  If you like one and wish to adopt it, feel free.

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