“System 1” Chatbot #

A chatbot that simulates talking to the “system 1” part of the brain only as described in “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.

Water Saving Toilet #

Make a toilet where urine is redirected (like a composting toilet) into a separate area with no water in it (the back of the toilet still has water). Then, when you pee in that area you don’t need to flush, but when you poop (or otherwise flush), the rising water will drain into the pee area as well, washing it. This should reduce the number of flushes per day by a lot for the average toilet.

Album Cover Quiz Site #

Given an album cover (or movie cover or book cover), try to guess its genre or other thinks about it. Basically this.

Bell Pepper Cup #

Cut the top off of a bell pepper and use it as a cup.

Laser Cut Flip Book #

Main Idea #

Create a flip book by laser engraving a stack of thin wood (or thick paper) pieces, each with one frame of a gif or short video. Then, create a box that the stack can fit into snugly, with one of the walls perpendicular to the stack removed. In the place of that wall, put a mobile rod (or just make the wall removable). If you then turn the box so that the rod or movable wall is facing the ground, you can remove the wall and let the pieces fall downward, advancing the frame and animating the gif/video.

Variation #

Make the stack of frames, then drill a hole in one corner and thread a rod through the stack. You should be able to then rotate the stack around like a spiral staircase. Maybe you can animate it like this?

Money Conversion App/Site #

An app that allows the user to compare current market values of different things. For example, avocados to dollars or hours of specific work to rocks etc. Would be cool to have a web page associated that points out interesting comparisons.

String Image Formatter #

Basic Idea #

Write a program that takes in a string and an image file, then adds newlines/spaces/formatting to the string so that it looks like the image when viewed from a distance. If the string is too short to work, repeat it or somehow compress the image so it works out perfectly.

Synonym Finder #

A program (or text editor plugin) where you can search text using all synonyms of the words you typed to search. For example, searching some documentation for “log” would search for the word “log”, but also (and with lower priority) the words “stderr”, “stdout”, “output”, etc. This could also just be build in to the search bar, where a window would pop up containing reframings of what you searched for, as suggestions for what else to try.

Table Fountain #

If you have a round table to eat at that seats ~4 people, put a symmetrical fountain like those found in gardens in the middle for people to use to refill their water cups. Could have four streams for easier filling.

See Through Walls with VR/AR #

Basic Idea #

Try to (using google maps or pre-collected data) model an object in the real world at its exact real world position in a VR or AR simulation. For example, model a toothbrush in a bathroom so that when using VR in the living room you can “see through walls” to see exactly the toothbrush. Could be used to show large objects around the world at their exact positions (like the Eiffel tower or Mt Everest). This would have a cool effect of giving you a really good bearing on your location with respect to the rest of the world.