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Showing posts from 2011

Gravity Gym

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Wondering how to afford all that gym equipment to make you ripped? Look no further than using that free and wonderful thing called gravity. It's available 24 hours a day at no cost to you. So welcome to the gym that stays open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, provides you with free equipment and membership is just some of your time. Small changes make a big difference - over time Equipment is available everywhere Free equipment for everyone There is enough equipment for everyone - no queuing Free installation Every growing exercise list - supplied by members Free membership Low environmental impact Good role model for kids Gradual results - instant results are generally temporary So the idea is a simple one. Setup a website promoting using gravity to create a complete exercise range. 50 press ups before you shower. 50 sit ups before you go to bed. With a site that builds on people's suggestions for exercises that tone a particular part of the body or produce

Bellows Toilet

Why have smelly toilets when a simple bellows system can be added. As the door is opened we use the bellow to draw out the dirty air from the toilet. The particpant then completes the job, washes their hands and as they open the door to leave the bellows connected to the door again extracts the smelly air outside. Ensure air flow in the toilets Keeps the toilets fresh Is a mechanical process via the door opening which does not rely on electircal components Is environmentally sound Stops those nasty smells getting back into the office

Mushroom Table

A mushroom sat in the corner of the room, looking weird and wonderful. Then you lift the top of the mushroom up, turn it over where the center column stays on the floor and the top drops back onto the column and the underside of the mushroom becomes your solid table. I will look at creating some visuals for this idea and possibly creating a small version for my daughter from wood I've found on a path whilst cycling to work.

Walk to Work Project aka Job Swap

Wow, I've been lucky with the last two jobs in that I have the option to walk or ride to work in the glorious English mornings and meander back home in the evenings by foot or by bike. This has made me realise that it's best way to get to work, with the government creating schemes like fit 4 life and being third most obese country as of August,2011 we do need to change, but how? The answer could be we start to walk and cycle to work. Or even rollerblade or skateboard instead and fullfil a childhood dream of skating to work. So I propose to build a website or communication method (does not have to be the web) that will allow people to swap jobs or move to jobs that are much closer to home and give them this opportunity. Just think of the immediate benefits in this: save money on petrol fitness is part of your day get to work on time every time - traffic problems will disappear remove going to the gym, which always feels like a chore reduce the number of

A Garden Zoo with Friends

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After moving house and collecting a lot of cardboard packaging - what to do with it all? Straight down to the tip? Well the first load went that way and then I thought, hey maybe I can do something with this stuff? So 30 minutes later with my daughter insisting on helping me we had a larger than life "Upsy Daisy" and a "Snap Happy Annie" Crocodile in the garden made from cardboard packaging from Ikea . These look great and our little girl couldn't help but drag the 2d characters around the garden and gave them great big hugs.   Could this be taken further - maybe drop some characters in a park (nice ones only please). Build a Zoo in the city? Not too many now or else the cardboard will get everywhere but for special occasions and fun.

Rubbish Runners

Simplicity is the answer to all our problems. Maybe we should live the obvious and stop waiting for the unobvious to happen? This idea formed when I was walking to and from work and wondered what would happen if we all picked up rubbish whilst out on walks and runs. Rather than rant about the litter in the corner we picked it up on the way to work or whilst out on a walk or run. Rather than relying on the council to be our servants we do this work ourselves and take the credit. This idea was submited to the global ideas bank and I got quite a few responses. I've tried to do this but always feel a bit embarrsed and ashamed of what I'm doing, but do try to do it every so often. But let's all take a hand and make the world pretty again. We could have a website showing what litter people have found and was any resusable. Talk to me and we'll build a site that makes the world litter free. Taking this further wonder if we could ask the homeless to pick up litter and get food

Dirty Van Gogh Art

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You have a dirty white van that someone has kindly written "Clean Me" into the dirt. I want to take this further and ask artists around the world to stop and create some art work in the dirt, bring the filth to light and make people smile. So when I wake up and look out of the window, rather than seeing the normal dirty white van, there in front of me is a master piece made from the dirt. Artists , you are missing a canvas which everyone can enjoy. Graffiti artists , you can practise some new styles with a cloth and some water. White van owners why not ask an artist to draw your company name in the dirt with style. Send me your pictures and I'll post them on this page.

Paper Party People

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In a world that is consuming materials that we don't have it's time to realise that most stuff we use is transient, flat and 2 dimensional and will only end up in our attic or garage for the rest of it's life. Children can paint a box red and suddenly it becomes a boat, a house, a car, a shop and then a space rocket. So the next time you want to build something exciting think paper and think big! This site promotes the creation of all things in paper. When you next have a themed party wouldn't it be great to have lots of props around. So for a Star Wars themed party you could have AT-AT walkers on the tables and weapons from the films littering the tables - all made from paper. You could also build a Death Star which can be brought to life by walking around in it! And why not add some great posters from the film - which you can make yourself at the homokaasu.org website. The idea behind the website site was a place where people could order and arrange a party using p

Animated Timesheet

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Timesheets are ok, but does anyone enjoy filling them in? No! And now it's time to make this process easy and fun at the same time. With the AnimatedTimesheet (c) you get a great looking timesheet with functions and puzzles that will make you smile. People are represented as people - think Habbo hotel. And tasks are shown as pets, dinosaurs which get older. Big tasks are presented as big fat pets, small tasks as smaller pets. They follow you around and jump up if they need immediate attention. This is just a concept but if you want to talk more about it then drop me a post.

Things you can do

Use a flask Store your water for coffee in a flask in the morning and use it for the rest of the day, you only need to boil the kettle once for the day. Just think of the time you save waiting for the kettle and the electricity on your bills will be reduced. Defrost and refrost When you defrost the fridge, keep the old ice that you chip out in a bowl, possibly in a freezer bag. Once the fridge has finished defrosting you can put the ice back into the fridge so that it cools quickly and can get down to temperature. Saving energy that is required and electricity, plus you get to use the fridge sooner. Wine bag to gift bag If you end up with lots of wine gift bags that you will propbably never use then cut them down to size to make small gift pages. Use a hole punch to create new holes for the strings. Cut out everything Cut out all sorts of things from magazines and papers and drop them into a box. These are great for kids to stick and glue. Create different sets of items

Free Activity Play Sets For Everyone - fun for all.

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Why do kids want the latest doll or toy when they can have a paper version of them which they can stick, bend and put into their playhouses? The concept is easy enough, rather than throw all those magazines and boxes with children's favorite characters on we cut them out and store them as activity sets. Cut outs from cereal boxes, from birthday present boxes ... I think a handful of volunteers who get the magazines and cut them out and arrange them into activity sets such as a "Bob the Builder" set which can have extra cuttings such as trees and houses and bricks. Or "In the Night Garden" set which will have the favorite characters plus stars, trees and birds. Xmas 2012 Snippets Maybe we could get some Grannies and Grandads with some time on their hands to get together and cut and arrange and produce handcrafted sets for all children - poor or rich! If you would like the project files for this idea then please drop me a post.

Email Processing - turn email output into a spreadsheet

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One of the problems when I worked at PDG was the build up of a lot of emails in the Microsoft Exchange mailbox. There didn't seem to be a quick way to get all this information into a nice spreadsheet format for reviewing, processing and then sending to the client. We could also impress the client by sending a report from a backup of the emails when a database got corrupted. So I tasked myself with creating an application to take the raw text file output from microsoft mail by hightlighting the emails and doing a "Save As.." into a text file. Once the file has been produced it can be uploaded to the application which will process the file into a CSV that can be imported into a spreadsheet. Example Data This data was produced by selecting emails in MS Exchange and doing a "Save As.." into a text (.txt) file. From: info@helsburypark.co.uk Sent: 26 April 2011 18:30 To: info@helsburypark.co.uk Subject: Helsbury Park Enquiry Your Details... : * Name : mr.anonymous * T

Proximity Pet - here boy, here boy!

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This is a concept product idea for a military application; a security device or a fun toy. This can be adapted for all this things and possibly more. In essence it is a ball that has the ability to jump or hop towards something. The mechanism for movement would be pistons or a flexible membrane. Proximity Pet Toy Children could shout at it and it would move towards them, so they make the toy follow you. I'd imagined a load of these proximity pets with lots of kids calling them to get the most over to their corner - one with the most wins! With the addition of different sensors it could move towards a bright light or shy away from it. Or possibly detect heat differences or compass directions. Another option would be to follow a signal - so a child wears a device that emmits a signal that the proximity pet will go towards or jump away from. It should be lightweight and durable so it's tough enoug to get kicked by kids. Proximity Soldier Another application is for the military as

Ideas for Government

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Tax should not be taxing So goes the advert for Tax Calulations in the UK. Tax should not be taxing and I agree, but under the current system which depends on bands of tax and a link to status. It also seems the more you earn the more you get penalised by the Government for your success. So the answer for a simple and transparent tax system that all can understand is to make it a flat rate of 10% for everyone. Just 10% for all. How would this benefit everyone? everyone can work out the tax owed - 10% of what you earned the rate is applied to everyone the calculation is simple so no need for complex ever changing tax calculations this would save millions and stop a lot of mistakes happening because the tax rate is so low everyone will just pay it, it would be more expensive to try and avoid it government's would have to learn to operate on a lower income (see expenses scheme below) foreign companies will want to invest in the UK with such a low tax rate Earn your benefits You are no

Asset Manager - big box, little box

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This Asset Manager project took a simplistic view of data and treats it like boxes - things live inside things and have relationships. So to grasp this concept we start with a company, the company has rooms, in these rooms are people and equipment. Inside the equipment you have software and hardware. Inside the people you have skills and knowledge. I had a look at the files for this project and they date back to July 2005! Wow, has it been that long since I looked at this project? Er, you can probably tell from the clunky interface. The first view is that of the company with some details about it ... Then we start clicking on items and can look at who is in the studio, this shows the people and any machines that are positioned near them ... Now we've clicked on an employee, which happens to be me, and we see that they are responsible for some keys to the building and that they also have some information associated with them which is "ASP" and "HTML" skills ... S

Find the Son of Zippy

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This was a lite hearted game created for my fellow staff at Chemistry Digital to play on Red Nose Day. As Zippy became the company's mascot I created a game to find him somewhere in the office before he ran out of oxygen. You have to run around rooms and click on draws and cupboards to find out where he is hiding. This idea does lend itself to be being enhanced in many big ways.   Let users interact with a house for estate agents so they click in cupboards and look round corners. Look around your new boat and open the draws and cupboards, plus see the engine from different angles. Provide images of real items and where they are in a house for an insurance company. The program consists of some flash with XML files that link to images and specify what can be clicked. It doesn't take long to learn how to create your own navigatable spaces, rooms, places or games. If you would like the project files then please drop me a post and I'll send you the following: Source files with t

Skin Dips - what a lovely looking DS

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We both had a Nintendo DS with the wonderful Edge homebrew kit which enabled you to create great looking skins for it. But to do this took quite a bit of computer know-how.     I approached Garry at hue7design.co.uk and we came up with the idea to generate great looking skins for the Nintendo which we provided as easy to install downloads. For budding designers it came with instructions on how to create skins yourself. For the project files please send me a post and I'll send you the following: Web site source files in c# / dotNet v2 Design instructions Four designs to get you started Links to amazon and places to add advertiser spots User instruction page

Tweak My Image - better images for all

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This application will make all the images on all websites look amazing, without any graphical knowledge or expensive applications. It will let users have consistent buttons and images on intranet sites. The Tweak-My-Image code will enable you to create fan fold images from a PDF to represent the document content. It can use as many pages as you suggest to produce great looking representations of your PDF - better than a simple link. It will also resize, convert images and add special effects such as a polaroid photo. With Tweak-My-Image it couldn't be simplier. There are three different falvours of this application for you to consider using. Desktop version If you can create folders on a computer then you can use this application. The interface is as easy as creating folders and dropping images into the new folder and running the script. The script will find the images and use the names of the folders to complete actions on the images. For example to resize images to 200x100 (200 p

Add A Moustache - stop looking like a mule my friend

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The original concept was simply to let people upload photos to a website and add moustaches to them. It was used by more than 300 people and some of the images where very fine indeed. With a strap line of "Stop looking like an ass and add a moustache" how could we possibly fail to attract fun loving people to our site? The site did allow you to add moustaches to photos, download the result, email it to friends and also produce a great looking printed card. The idea was going to grow into being able to add specific items at specific times for specific things. So think along the lines of add santa hats and beards at Christmas. Wear some bunny ears at easter, or how about add a "Harry Potter" wizard hat and glasses for a fun photo. We'd also like to have seen it being used by charity sites such as Movember . Fantastic images were loading into a public gallery which had an approval process so photos were not published automatically on the web. This would be a great

Reuse vs Recycle

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Creating "stuff" takes away from the planet, makes big holes that will only be filled with plastic and clutter. So why not try and reuse where possible? We could change our habits so we are more prone to reuse items rather than recycle or just throw away. What to do with wine bottles? An example is a wine bottle, rather than use it and then put it into a recycle bin where it is broken down and then reformed into another bottle (but less pure) why not send the bottle back to the original supplier who can reuse it? I see some social responsibility of returning boxes/bottles/packaging to the original store where it can be returned to the supplier for reuse. Who's with me on this? Who can make a big difference? Recycle gives the responsibility to other people. Reuse gives you the power to make a big difference now. If you think this is a great idea and want to start something then let me know and let's get started.

Cunning Curriculum Vitae

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Here is a tip on creating an online C.V. quickly and for free, with the added feature of searching it for particular skills and information. It's really simple and easy: CREATE A CV BLOG Q. How do I keep my CV up-to-date ? A. Just go online and update it every time you complete a project, do some training or want to show some great work off. Q. How do I ensure that a particular employer finds out about my employment history ? A. Add your employment history and schooling as posts with the correct date and then tag them appropriately. Q. Can I let possible employers quiz my CV? A. Add a "Label Widget" to the design of the blog and hey presto, you can now interact with the CV. This relies on you adding the tags to posts in your blog. Have a look at my own cv blog creation which also helps in an interview so prospective employers can go over your skill set in an interactive way. Any suggestions on improving this then please respond to this post. So do