Time Unknown (Entries tagged as ideas)

Stopping buying candy

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:54:55 +0300

I've decided I'm eating way too much candy, and thus I'm stopping buying any for the next 365 days. I'm not necessarily stopping having candy, just becoming a candy beggar or a charity candy case. I'm sure that will cut my licorice consumption down to a very reasonable range.

5-A-Day Lite

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:19:12 +0200

5-A-Day is an Ubuntu effort where everybody involved deals with 5 different bugs every day. 5 seems like a lot, if a person is also having work and life in addition of Ubuntu and from the project stats one can see in the last 7 days only 4 of the project participants reached 5 bugs a day. How much time it takes probably varies hugely depending on the action taken and the bug, but I'm really curious about the time spend and number of bugs dealt with by an average 5-A-Day volunteer.

Also, I'm hoping there would be "5-A-Day Lite", maybe 1-A-Day, to get people who are too busy for the time five bugs take to deal with a measly one bug a day, everyday. That too might make a difference. Currently, a solid 1-A-Day participant would make it to the 5-A-Day top contributors list easily.

Make your own iPhone killer

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:27:40 +0200

If you want to make your own Linux phone, with wifi and gps goodness, EM-X270, a screen and a pretty case might be a really good start. Even X270 on its own looks yummy. I cannot wait to see someone using it.

Feather

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:50:39 +0300

Today I switched to a new theme on my lappy, one using a background image that I actually made myself. It's very different from the previous theme, but of course I like it anyway.

When uploading this screenshot I started thinking what it would be like to have the screenshot as the background image on some of my desktops. I bet it would look just like I had those windows open that way, as all the panels would align nicely.

Twitter for work

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:51:36 +0300

Using something like Twitter might improve communications at many workplaces. Just imagine it, with once glance you could see what people are working on right now! It would much of the guesswork on who is working on what and make the employees more aware of what's going on.

(Note, I don't use Twitter at home or work currently.)

Testing tablet touchscreens

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:41:58 +0300

One can test table touchscreens handily with any app that lets the user draw. Just draw black freehand lines, horizontal or vertical, small distance apart (the smaller the better). If some lines come out dashy or dotted, don't stop, just draw the next one at the same distance as before. If you cannot the line at all, draw the next line as soon as you can, in red. The resulting picture, especially if you do both horizontal and vertical versions, is a pretty handy map of your touchscreen sensitivity problems.

The image here is on a borrowed Nokia N770, which has nearly problemfree touchscreen, though some lines failed.
In the previous log entry you can see results of a vertical freehand line test on a more broken touchscreen.

I'd like to see your test result somewhere. Please add a comment with a link.

Keyboard 'layout'

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:36:29 +0300

I want my keyboard 'layout' to spell "TRUST YOUR FINGERS, NOT YOUR EYES". Real layout would be the same dvorak variant I have now.

Hibernate AND reboot!

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:41:29 +0300

I rarely boot my Linux anymore, and mostly hibernate (suspend to disk) instead. But one option I lacking: I want hibernate and reboot. Quite often I wait for the system to hibernate just so that I can press the power button to boot it up again, into a different operating system (MS Windows, for games). Would be fun to streamline that into one action.

Party on the underground

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 05 May 2007 22:55:31 +0300

If I were a party person I'd rent a metro carriage, hire a pole dancer for every pole in it and party like there was no tomorrew.

Mommy will give you some placebos

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:51:50 +0300

I think it makes sense to arm your kids with a good selection of harmless, easily available placebos against for example the common cold. It does not hurt if some of the placebos are fake placebos in the sense that they actually slightly actually work, like e.g. breathing in hot water vapour.

World is your oyster

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:22:00 +0300

This thought exercise is very interesting and even quite inspiring!

What would you do if you were alone in the world?

A language of my own

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 12:06:11 +0300

I have decided I want to design a programming language of my own. I'm undecided on some things about it still, but at least it should be lazy, have macros like Lisp does, the maximum execution time thing from e.g. PHP and multiple inheritance like in Eiffel. I like the clarity of Eiffel in general and want the language to be very readable.

No idea of the name yet. Any ideas?

Edit: This of course was my participation of April Fool's day.

Supernatural adventure game

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:26:57 +0300

The tv series Supernatural would work really well as a classic adventure game. One would need to talk to people, get items (like salt and gasoline) and use them to defeat evil creatures and spirits. I think it could be truly great! Pity it is unlikely anyone will make it.

Stepmania for the upper body

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:57:49 +0200

Sure, Stepmania is very good exercise for your calves. It can also be used as a part of an upperbody workout.

1. From Options, choose "Holds - No jumps"
2. Grab 3kg dumbbells. Lighter or heavier ones are fine too.
3. Choose a beginner difficulty song (Yes, really!)
4. Do a right hand biceps curl every time you step with your right foot, and a left hand biceps curl for every left foot step.

Repeat steps 3 & 4, just change the biceps curl to some other arm movement, such as triceps kickback, or arm raise. Continue until your upper body workout is all done.

Music playback improvements

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:28:03 +0200

I might like a music system that recognises my voice and turns down the playback volume when I speak. After a bit of silence it could turn it up again.

Also, with music podcasts I would sometime want the system to skip the parts where the hosts just talk. Unfortunately some of the music I like contains talk too. I wonder if such system would get confused.