Free Idea Factory

I read once that Einstein was a napper, and that he had an interesting method of napping. He’d put his keys in his hand and his hand over the side of his chair, and when he’d fallen asleep deeply enough that he’d let the keys drop, the noise of the keys hitting the floor would wake him up. A kind of a mechanically timed nap that can’t get into too deep a sleep.

I don’t think my keys hitting the floor would wake me up, though. So how about a device that would go on a keychain and could be set by a switch to making an alarm clock sound upon impact after a short fall.

A watch whose dial, instead of being divided into 12 hours that repeat twice, and shows minutes 60 seconds long, is divided into the 26 letters of the roman alphabet, and shows minutes 52 “seconds long” (upper and lower case). No more “one thirty”, instead we can say it’s about “L after C”, or “I’ll be there in a few letters.” or “I have to work until F.”

a vinyl window sticker in a freehand rectangle shape with a colored background done in the colored dots of comic book coloration and the hand lettered text: “Meanwhile…” so that people trapped (by themselves or others) inside and looking out can have a constant reminder that they could and should be out in the world doing.

A black t-shirt with white printing, in that all too familiar font from the ridiculously regularly ripped-off slogan Got Milk that reads simply: Got It.

I don’t get the fascination with ever longer pepper mills when the total output of each grind is largely unaffected. A product I would buy if it were available would be a pepper mill that had a dinner plate sized dispenser part–it would need to have several concentric and simultaneously operating grinding elements to work properly, but, there are definitely times when I’d like to make a single half-twist of a mill and end up with complete coverage of a plate with an even layer of freshly ground pepper.

You know those gel packs you can get that go in the freezer to get cold but they never actually freeze hard but say softish so you can mold them to the sore spot? I’d love to see gel pack gloves that I could slip my hands into so that I could get soothing relief on my fingers, hands, and wrists all at once.

The Clicker is a device that’s a little more complicated than the kind used for dog training, and a little simpler than the kind used by umpires to keep track of balls, strikes, and outs. But it makes a good, solid sound like the former and keeps track of numbers like the other. There should be two buttons on it, PLUS and MINUS. It should keep track of a grand total, a yearly total, and a daily total. It comes packaged with a sheet that gives “suggested” values for various events in life that can score points. Good Hair Day? Plus 5 points! Forgot to call you Mom on Mother’s day? Minus 50 points. And encourage users to make up their own scores for their own daily ups and downs. The goals are to be able to keep track of both the good thing and the bad things that happen to us (so we’re not so fixated on the negative all the time), and, to be able to answer the question, ‘How are you doing?” in an objective fashion. How am I doing? Well, I’m having a GREAT day (1180 points before noon!), but I’m still down for the year, though, overall, life IS good, see, it’s Life 1,543,790 and me 2,347,120.

This idea is for a T-Shirt that just has three words in large block letters that proclaim: Stop Marketing Me