Pascal's Crazy Ideas

For The First Time

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:46:00 +0100

For the first time, I actually implemented an idea I posted on this blog. Over the last few days I took some time and created some simple PHP scripts that do most of what I talked about in “Show Images Really Simple”.

It’s nothing really fancy, but it works (See a working example here). Oh, and I made it open source and called it “flabs file dump”: Fork me on Github!

Show Images Really Simple

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:25:25 +0100

Yeah, I know, there are millions of websites out there that do exactly what I need. But—you probably already know that—I am a minimalist. What I want is a webpage where I can easily upload pictures to and get a page with just that picture (but with some alignment and file information). And I want it to be simple.

My idea is to use Skitch (the most awesome Mac app for taking screenshots) and it’s ability to upload to FTP servers. Then I have a simple index.php and a .htaccess. The .htaccess tells the webserver to not show the image, but to call the index.php (a PHP script) with the filename as parameter. This script returns a small HTML page that embeds the original picture and beyond that it displays the filename, the file’s creation date a small textbox with the HTML code to embed the image with a link to this page.

Additionally, it would be quite cool to generate preview images (75x75px crop jpeg) automatically when first opening the images’ webpage.

And even more, it would be great to add an archive.php that loads all the information it can get about the files I uploaded (just a directory listening in PHP) and displays it sorted by date and with preview images. Furthermore, I would like to upload more than just images (like zip archives), but these files would not get special pages or previews.

Fancy Alarm Clock

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:27:00 +0100

Last night I couldn’t sleep. So I lay there awake for at least an hour and I thought of some things. Mainly just irrelevant stuff, but often I get some new perspectives on things just by letting my brain go out and do the job it does (hopefully) best, (re)organizing memories. Suddenly my stream of consciousness reached ‘alarm clocks’.

I had the (crazy) idea that it would be quite cool to have a super simple alarm clock that is actually user friendly. I don’t know what fancy clocks you’ve got but the most alarm clocks I own are much too complicated to set up for just letting them wake you on a specific time. Of course I know, they are not that difficult to understand that nobody could use them, but as my aim is to create the most perfect minimalism there is much room for enhancement.

What I imagined: A block of perfectly white plastic, about 10x5x2.5cm. On one side there is an almost borderless display (monochrome, but pixel-based and with high contrast, maybe OLED or something like that), on top is a huge button for ‘snooze’ and on both sides it has ‘arms’ you can move up and down (fancy levers) which also have an LED at the end.

It will behave like this: to set your alarm you just push both ‘arms’ up (enter alarm mode) and than you can set the alarm time by using the left ‘arm’ for setting the hour and the right one for the minute. Wait some seconds or push the arms up again and the display will say, ‘alarm set’ (yes, it should really use lowercase letters).

What happens if you wake up before your alarm clock? Usually you have to deactivate the alarm at all so it won’t go off later. With my alarm clock you just had to push the ‘snooze’ button once and it will ask you ‘already awaken?’. You then can either confirm this with another hit on ‘snooze’ (‘good morning!’) or you can, of course, ignore it and the clock will do nothing.

(Yet Another) Interactive Archive Page Idea

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:17:00 +0100

This morning I found Quicksand, a jQuery plugin for easy filtering of elements using really nice animations. Have a look, try it and say that it’s perfect for an archive page like the one tumblr uses. Sadly, you can’t change the template of the archive page on tumblr. (If I’m mistaken with this, please contact me!)

Well, let me tell you what archive page I would like to create (and maybe will create for another site in future): On top you have this tumblr-like selection of year, month and, as I would really like it, a tag cloud for a general filtering by subject/category. And, a search bar. Actually, I would like the search bar to be on the left, followed by the tag cloud in the middle and then the years and months. This area would have a fixed width so that you have to scroll vertically to reach the earliest years/months. And of course, you could combine these filters. Beneath that, I would like to see the articles put in little boxes similar to how they look on tumblr right now.

This is where Quicksand comes in. When you apply filters the new set of article boxes is instantly loaded via AJAX and replaces the currently visible ones using the effect Quicksand comes with. IMHO, this would be a pretty cool archive browsing experience!

PaperPlane iPhone Game

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:15:16 +0100

Last summer a friend and I wanted to develop an iPhone game and came up with the following idea. Sad to say, we are both no iPhone developers and had no chance of realizing it. Nevertheless, I think the idea might be quite unique and maybe even cool enough to be actually implemented someday. (If you happen to be a developer and would like to do this, I would very much like you to contact me!)

Our concept was based on the idea of creating paper planes on your iPhone. When you start, you have a sheet of paper, which you can fold and turn by tapping on and tilting your iPhone in order to build your own paper plane model. Then you are able to paint it (e.g., by putting images on the sides and the wings).

The next step would be to let your paper plane fly (in 3D space, of course). You could on one hand throw it and let it fly on its own—e.g. in a virtual environment with special items like fans or walls—and measure the distance. On the other hand you could pilot your paper plane yourself and evade obstacles.

A final step would be to create an online platform to share your personal paper plane models and high-scores. Maybe later, you could even challenge a friend to play a multiplayer game with you (via WLAN or Bluetooth).

Why Ideas Are Cooler Than Facts

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:00:00 +0100

I just had a crazy idea: I blog about why I started a blog about crazy ideas.

Mostly, it was not a philosophical but practical decision. I made several attempts to write a regular blog about my life and the things I do, but it almost always turned out to be quite boring—even when I had something to write about.

Recently I wanted to try out tumblr for a new blog with minimalistic design and this time with real content and a concept that helps me to find ideas for new articles easily (and hopefully regularly). Since I’m a guy who considers himself creative and since I almost every day am annoyed by something (yeah, I’m very easily annoyed) and instantly have ideas how to make it better, I started thinking about writing these ideas down. First on my iPhone as notes, but then I chose to publish my best ideas on the tumblr blog I wanted to create anyway.

But why just ideas? Ideas can inspire you. Ideas can make you think of something you would never have considered in the first place. And ideas do that quite clearly whereas products mostly do not intent to inspire that directly.

And ideas have another real advantage. You can think of ideas, you can have ideas and you can communicate ideas without having to do any actual work (that’s the part I like most). I have, e.g., no idea how to build a glue that breaks on specific radiation, but I can think of it and can have the idea that it would be quite neat to have that kind of glue.

You see, ideas by themselves are quite effective and it’s not that hard to convey them. Besides that, I believe in creativity, and thus in ideas, lays the future of mankind. I know, it may sound quite strange, but when you think about it, or, when you think optimistic about it: It could be possible for mankind to resolve economic problems, make great materialistic standards possible for everybody, but then—what are we left with? I believe it’s our creativity—and that’s why I started a blog about ideas.

Create Print Layouts Using XML and CSS

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:25:00 +0100

Currently I have to use InDesign for a small magazine for school. I know, it’s a very feature-complete and extensive program, but most of the time it’s just terribly complex and everything but intuitive. Therefore I thought of what I would consider a better alternative.

What you may need to know: I do a lot of web design and enjoy structure and clean separation of content and appearance. So, what I came up with is basically just a combination of these experiences: On one hand I know that the concept of InDesign does not work well for me, and on the other hand I know that CSS is a powerful tool for designing and specifying layouts of webpages.

I thought, if CSS works for the web, why shouldn’t it work for print? The next step was to determine how the content should be represented. Well, I chose CSS so the logical choice would be XML for the content. Now, why would anybody want to make a layout using style sheet language instead of buttons and menus? And even more bizarre, what would you achieve by that?

I’d say you can benefit at least four times from the concepts of XML & CSS here:

You can structure your layout without any problems, just by using XML.
You can use classes and ids to apply styling of your elements using CSS. As a result, you can easily style related design elements coherently with minimal effort.
You don’t need to search menu items in a messy application or are forced to use just one app, you can create and edit your layouts and contents with every small editor.
You can create the XML of your layout automatically with almost every programming language in a blink of an eye (I myself like to do this in Python).

Besides that, you can theoretically view your layout in a regular web browser.

Of course these are the advantages. Sad to say, the disadvantages are quite serious yet, but I’d say if someone would really like to implement this whole idea it wouldn’t take long to eliminate them. Currently, there is no system I know of that uses pure XML and CSS for print layouts, so there is no standard in any way yet (naming of elements and properties). Also, there is no way I know of to guarantee that the typography looks anything alike when you render it across platforms.

All in all, I would say that the possibility to manipulate and see all the elements and style of your layout using rather simple XML and CSS is a really promising alternative to sticking to proprietary default applications for that job.

Digital Information Management As I Would Like It To Be

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:01:00 +0100

Maybe you already know it, but this blog is about crazy ideas. Here’s just another one I thought much about lately.

I would like to store much more information digitally and I would like to enjoy using it. I image a scene where I take my iPhone, push some buttons and get the information I need in that situation. The idea is that I don’t want to open an app and scroll through lists—I would rather enter some search term and see instant results.

When I think about it, I would almost say this search should work like a command line where you enter what you want to know and the software shows it to you. I would like the software to give me an outline of my information and then help my dig deeper into it easily—with the chance to enter new things as well.

For example: I enter a date like 5.2. (2 February) and get not only a list of appointments I have on that date but also other relevant information. When someone’s birthday is on that day and I have a note somewhere what I wanted to give him, this note should be displayed right here.

You see, interconnection between information is quite essential for this idea and I don’t know whether there already is a system that supports that kind of context creating as flexible as it should really be. And again, it is not about what apps you use but about the information that should be independently saved and that is just accessed and displayed/edited by them.

I really want to be clear on this one: I want interconnected information that can be stored and accessed independent from specific apps (but dependent on a specific system the apps are based on). I think this is where personal computers and technology in general should be headed to regarding information management.

Story with Non-Coherent Time

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:33:39 +0100

Sometimes I have these dreams where I have to achieve something and when I fail to do so I am set back to some other point in time. At first I thought I dreamt of some video game but then I realized it was actually common for my dreams to happen in non-linear and non-coherent time.

Anyway, I got the idea to write a story sometime that is set in a dimension or place where various timelines and chains of possibilities are mixed up and not as coherent as in our reality.

Public Domain Me Post Mortem

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:53:26 +0100

After my death, all my work should be public domain.

Although I don’t know what I will achieve in life, I am pretty sure that it would be a good idea to have my work free for every one to use after my death. I won’t profit from it anymore anyway, so why not be kind and let the following generations use my work?

Glue You Can Break Using Microwaves

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:44:00 +0100

I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what crazy ideas are about. It may be possible to break the adhesion of a new (imaginary) kind of glue by energizing the glued materials using specific microwaves or some other non-fatal radiation. This way one may develop a glue that can be quite strong but also easily removed.

I came up with the idea when I saw earlier this week that the ear tips of my in-ear headphones are becoming kind of loose and I was going to lose another pair if I wouldn’t glue it in some way.