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Half Baked Ideas
===================

The Simulacra-cycle
-------------------------
Bicycling with a light-weight (and functional!) helmet embedded with with 360
fisheye camera coverage. Also collect rotation/acceleration data and
post-process out movements to give a stable 360 video image which can be played
back with 3D goggles (or a basic computer/tablet interface?).

Enhanced version would also record bike vibrations, pedal turns, audio, and
handlebar positions, and this could be played back on an artificial bike.

Solar Autonoma
-----------------
An audio "artifact": a CD jewel case with a photovoltaic panel powering a
generative digital/analog electronic music box which outputs hundreds of years
worth of non-repeating audio to an 1/8" headphone jack.

One crude output algorithm could be the raw position of a turning machine
(probably a busy beaver) tape position over time. Another is interpreting a
meta-stable cellular autonoma's cells as notes; perhaps the combination of
these two ideas? 

Should be engineered to last at least a few decades without repairs, which
means compensating for PV cell degredation. 

Techno-cyption
----------------
Robustly encode arbirary data into techno, similar to image-based stenography
techniques. Should be able to recover the data from audio recorded live at a
concert or rave; perhaps in real-time?

Leads to "verboden" music which is illegal to broadcast and listen to?

Robotic Mouse Cursor
-----------------------
An omni-drive robot encased in a mouse, controlled by a touchstick or touchpad.
Should translate very quickly, so the user feels like they are "mousing" and
selecting over the floor. 

"Nest for Lighting"
---------------------
Auto-dimming lights to react to ambient light levels. Could also do the
opposite and stochastically vary the light level to give cloud-like effect in
window-less rooms. 

Sciduino
----------
Open Hardware LabJack competitor. Compatible with wiring, Lua scripting, full
free GCC toolchain. Support/drivers for Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, UNIX /dev
points, EPICS, ROOT, ROS, RTEMS. "Industrial Quality" for $80-100, "Commercial
Quality" $50. Characterized and well-documented analog interfaces.

General Purpose Laptop CardBus FPGA Interface
-----------------------------------------------
Computational acceleration (compression, codecs, crypto, real-time
modeling/simulation), external digital interfacing (logic analyzer, USB
debugging, HDMI, networking, etc), host debugging (watchdog, timing, console
interface, bus sniffing, peripheral emulation, kernel unit tests). High-density
pins to many different cable types (extra $$$) with logic-level shifters:
"universal digital I/O". $100.

Interforum
-------------

* similar to livejournal, reddit, slashdot
* federated accounts (user@domain.tld) with petnames via contact list
* RSS feeds of new topics started by individuals or for groups
* no concept of "friending" built in, but do have ACL (can view, can comment)
    based on contacts list
* head of thread can be a canonical URI/URL of external content
* abuse/downvote gets reported to thread-hosting domain
* by default all user content is crypto-signed by default
* policy is left to domain servers: moderation of new messages, retainment
    length, max number of users in a given topic, etc

* store-and-forward?
* primary anti-spam: only display stuff signed by people in contact lists
* need a URI scheme for discussion threads
* oauth? kerberos-like?
* domain keys used to vouch for messages and users
* integrated or parallel keyserver stuff?
* cross-domain karma and spamlist sharing?
* built-in GPG encryption, keyring
* notification via XMPP?
* crypto can happen either on server or by the client?
* "profiles" are a seperate issue (webfinger?)
* status updates could go through this, or XMPP or status.net?
* TODO: salmon?

* would need to specify:
*   storyboard of how a post/conversation would go
*   message formats
*   protocols between user-server and server-server
*   ascillary technologies: authentication, notification, encryption, contact
        management
*   interop: HTTP website

Improved Email
-----------------

* "reliable asynchronous user-specific messaging"
* same store-and-forward paradigm; same IMAP-like message archive paradigm
* every core message signed by user and domain; unsigned messages get dropped
* core message headers can be pseudo-shadowed/re-written by extention headers
* user signing can be delegated to domain
* domain maintains public keyserver for all hosted users
* forwarded messages (mailing lists) signed by forwarding domain
* users or domains can brand a user or domain as spam/abusive
* domains maintain a web of trust/karma using announcements, refuse messages
    from blacklisted users/domains
* special abuse@, admin@ "out of band" addresses for resolving blocklist
    issues, not blocked except for severe cases
* attachments signed seperately, referenced by core message
* standardize (via defaults) on compressed UTF-8 message body
    optional safe-subset of HTML
* hook into system-wide cacert/web-of-trust; individual user agents can specify
    fallback policy

Small Electronics Projects
------------------------------

Wireless "Knob": probably bluetooth; a much cheaper clone of the Griffin
PowerMate Bluetooth knob. 3D printed or hand-made case. USB chargable. Could be
encrypted with a USB dongle, or just encrypted in general.

Tiny wireless analog I/O jacks. For sensors; USB charging. I guess this is
pretty much every IoT devkit ever, but lab-oriented (raw voltages/currents,
characterized and buffered I/O).