Category: Inventions

Avatar Timer.exe

Here is a gift for you at the end of August.

Sometimes you have a rummage around to find something and you turn up another thing entirely. Recently I was looking through some old CDs I’d burned in the 2000s with backups and old pictures on them to find something, and found a little file I’d forgotten about. 

In about 2000, when I was supposed to be revising for my A-levels, there was a part of my revision where, for some reason, I needed to do something in a certain amount of time. I could do that by looking at a clock, but what would be much more productive, I decided, was halting all work on revision while I coded a small Windows application to count seconds and minutes. I am happy to embrace the very obvious fact that this says a huge amount about the person I was aged 16.

This was a terrible use of my time, and plainly an afternoon spent procrastinating instead of revising, and the program has only grown less relevant with the passage of time as smartphones have given us all sophisticated stopwatches with lap timers and other features in our pockets at all times. 

Still, the nice thing about it is that, 24 years on, it still works perfectly on any Windows PC, so if you need to time something in a very feature-limited and inconvenient way, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Timer.exe

Avatar Proto-Papples

I’ve been digging around my old boxes of nonsense again because new content doesn’t find itself and bringing old things you’ve forgotten about back into the light is a good process. Right?

FYI, expect more of this over the next month or two.

This page was lurking at the front of one of the many notebooks I used to keep. It definitely wasn’t the genesis of the name ‘Papples’ because Chris and I definitely came up with that when I was visiting and we tossed off the idea of continuing the music making antics of The Office and recording an album. I must have been musing on the mythos, considering the chumblies and trying to develop a chart for people who didn’t quite understand.

It takes a while to comprehend both the genius of the name and the music of The Papples.

I’m not entirely sure why I was developing a gun of sorts to turn good apples to pap apples, then again I am an inventor so it must have come naturally (?). Let’s go with that.

Avatar Woodwork

I think this confirms that my transition to middle age is now complete. A few weeks ago I cleared out the garage, which had become a bit of a dumping ground, and decided it was time to finally put the space to better use. Every time there’s been a bit of DIY on the go, you see, I’ve ended up sawing and sanding and painting things on the garage floor. This is bad for my back, the floor and the end result.

My purchase of a small folding workmate bench a year ago has helped with this, but only so much. So I built myself a workbench, using bits of wood I’d pulled out of the loft when I boarded it out and some cupboard doors that were meant for the new kitchen but which had a paint defect.

I had expected it to be wobbly and uneven and possibly even end up rocking backwards and forwards if you touched it, but to my enormous surprise it is both level and extremely sturdy.

So this is just to say that I built a piece of very solid furniture from scratch, it was the highlight of my week, and I am now a middle aged man. Thank you.

Avatar Business Smock

What do you think of when you think of ‘smocks’? Comfort? Practicality? Style and fashion?

As everyone knows, a smock-frock is a coat-like outer garment often worn to protect clothes in specific lines of work. If you’re huddling in a field somewhere or working the mean streets, you definitely need a smock. I personally have no need for a smock as a data monkey however if I could get away with wearing one I would. There has to be some kind of middle ground whereby I can still look presentable for work and also protect my frail body from the wrath of winter. What I need is a business smock.

Businesses are varied in what they need so we would have to ensure the business smock was varied or adaptable to almost everyone. For those working in the service industry, it would have to give the appearance of a fashionable suit or tuxedo. For those rocking the office look, there would have to be various pockets for pens, notebooks, coffee cups, maybe even one big one on the front (or inside) to put a laptop in. A CEO of a Fortune 500 company would need secret compartments to hide, I don’t know, fat wads of money and secrets? Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Our designers have thrown together this mock smock. Please don’t knock the smock as it’s still a rough sketch and is not in stock.

Smooth with a capital smooth

Given the ludicrous nature of the fashion industry in this decade (for an example of this, please look up anything involving an ‘oodie’, a ‘shacket’ or, my personal favourite, the ‘coatigan’), I believe that the business smock would not be out of place. There’s even currently a website called Smock London – ROCKING SMOCKING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. They’d be the perfect fit for the model. They’re all about the smocking.

You may not work in business but you may mean business meaning the business smock could still be for you. A range of colours and designs to suit your desires.

The business smock; ready to smock you right in the kisser.

Avatar A new book thing

The highly technical online doohickey that lets you read our incredible books was already, of course, basically perfect. Nobody could deny that. But what if it could be more perfect?

As much as we all enjoy starting at the first page of an 80-page book and then repeatedly clicking “next” until we reach the page we want, sometimes, when we’re trying to find something specific, that process is not as quick or as direct as we’d like. What we need is a faster way of seeing what’s on all the pages so we can choose the one we’re looking for.

So I made that happen. Now you can go to any book (including the Mr Smiths) and click “page index”.

You’ll then be taken to thumbnails of all the pages. Clicking one will take you to the full page.

This improvement comes at no charge to you, and completes the latest upgrade to your increasingly brilliant life.

Avatar Inventing the Future

I, like you, have a pair of feet (that is unless you’re Chris and you have three legs, or maybe four, I forget about that conversation in and around his shoe poem) and there is nothing that I wouldn’t do to protect my feet.

Someone invented shoes and the world rejoiced. From then there was some protection from the tiny little stones on that the ground, the acorns, possibly broken glass and even if someone has been a bit careless with their muesli. Oh, what a happy time it was.

But there was a catch. Each shoe was a one-way street; there was never a chance that the left shoe could be put on the right foot and vice versa. If you lost one of them then you had to find another that would fit. The unique shape on the foot meant that only a lefty would fit the left. People should have the freedom to wear what they wanted and that would never be the case.

Do you remember the old expression, “the shoe is on the other foot”? I see that as the future.

Imagine a shoe that could slip onto either foot. You’re no longer held captive by these prehistoric methods of yore. You’re so engrossed in that three bean salad podcast that you’re not even paying attention to what goes on where and, you know what? It doesn’t matter. My invention, the Neutral Shoe (no trademarks yet, please don’t steal my ideas), is pertinent enough to adapt to its surroundings, namely your foot. I haven’t drawn up the blueprints yet however I imagine the same sleek design from the heel to the long bit in the middle. At the end though, that’s when things get interesting.

It curves around so it’s wide enough to fit either the left or right foot. Your toes are free to wiggle about yet it’s still snug enough to not feel as though you’re walking around in a pair of flipflops (nobody wants that). The Neutral Shoe will be a thing of beauty; not necessarily solving any of life’s major problems but there to offer a helping hand (or foot) when you need it most. Putting on a pair of shoes will be different and new at the same time.

All I need is five hundred thousand pounds and I can get to work. You have my bank details, gentlemen, and I look forward to seeing you all at the champagne launch ceremony in six to nine months time.