SDP: Goop for Ceramic Stove Tops

My dad was a machinist. I recall that he had something called Goop that he could put on his hands before work so that when they got dirty, they'd be easier to clean. It was a sort of protective film for his hands, like an infinitesimally-thin, dissoluble glove.

Ceramic stove tops are the most difficult things in the kitchen to clean. The microscopically rough surface of the ceramic makes liquids soak in and bind, leaving a residue that's nearly impossible to remove. Even water leaves a stain!

Amazing how the manufacturers of these stoves market them as being easy to clean. The old range top we had was easy to clean. I'd just wipe the enamel-painted surface with a wet sponge and it looked like new in about five seconds. Now we need to apply a special, expensive stove top cleaner and scrape with a razor!

My idea is to create a Goop-like film that could be applied to the stove top so that it would repel spills, or at least make them easier to remove.

SDP: Search Engine Owners Can Harvest Ideas

It occurred to me to do an Internet search to see if anyone was marketing and selling hand-held Geiger Counters to food shoppers, using the fear of a breach at the Fukushima nuclear power plant as motivation.

Then it hit me -- those who operate Internet search engines are the first to learn about new ideas.  Why?  Because as soon a someone thinks of inventing or developing something like a Bluetooth-enabled Geiger Counter, he or she would perform a search to see if anyone else has already done that, thereby giving the idea to the search engine.

SDP: Hand-Held Geiger Counter for food shopping

I see a fantastic business opportunity coming from concerns about a breach at the Fukushima nuclear plant -- a hand-held or Bluetooth-enabled Geiger Counter for your Smartphone!  All health-conscious food shoppers should have them to detect radiation in foods before they make a purchase.

SDP: Free Multi-Platform Cataloging Software

I think I need to check out the Java program Data Crow for cataloging data (such as photos). I have several years of digital photos arranged in directories named for the month in which they were taken. But if I'm looking for a picture and can't remember when I took it, I need to look in each directory to find it. A database that supports tags should help a lot.

I wish I had something like this set up when I was looking for the photo of my dog's epulis.

SDP: Try Out Sweet Home 3D

Sweet Home 3D is an interior design Java application for quickly choosing and placing furniture on a house 2D plan drawn by the end-user, with a 3D preview.

And it's free. The screenshots look impressive. It looks like a handy application for layouts of home furnishings. Right now, I use my employer-supplied AutoCAD just to get a bird's eye view of the floor plan.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sweethome3d/

SDP: Learn and Create with Processing

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

- from http://processing.org/

Art, Computer Programming, Math -- could Processing have most of my favorite topics melded together? I'm not sure I like looking at computer generated art. But you know how sometimes things seem to taste better when you cook or bake them youself? I think the same might be true of this art form.

The Processing website also has links to programming toys for younger folks, specifically Alice, Scratch and Pippy.

So much to explore -- so little time!

SDP: Learn Aramaic

It would be fun to learn Aramaic, "...the oldest, rarest language in the world. The language of God!!! Be proud of that. It is the root language of hebrew, arabic, turkish, and the alphabet for farsi (Persian), urdu (Pakistan/Indian), and greek."

http://learnassyrian.com/aramaic/
http://allthingsaramaic.com/

Editted on 2010-04-23 to add second link.

SDP: Ripping audio streams

A while ago I recommended Pandora. Now I'm really starting to like Hype Machine. I found a very hard-to-find song on there. I can play it repeatedly at will.

I wanted to get the mp3 of that song for my daughter. But when I went to look for it on eMusic, iTunes & Amazon, I couldn't find it. I recalled reading that it was possible to rip from audio streams, and when I did a search I found this software to do that. I decided to see if I could find something on SourceForge that might work and came across this. So this is yet another project!

SDP: Low-Cost Monopods / Tripods

I've been putting off getting a camera tripod or monopod for a long time. Mainly, I can't imagine myself carrying something like that anywhere. I'm sure that by the time I'd get it set up, the cats would have wandered off or stopped being cute, or the sunset would've lost its intensity.

So when I came across a couple of tutorials on Instructables, on how to make a low-cost tripod, I got very excited.

The String Tripod tutorial is very well done and made a lot of sense to me. So I tried it, or something a lot like it. I decided to make use of my SLR's camera strap mounts to connect the string to rather than the eyebolt. I figured this would provide even more stability and prevent the camera from rotating. I used about 14 feet of 20lb fishing line terminated on each end with swivel hooks, which attach to the camera strap mounts. It was a breeze to do. But the testing didn't pan out. I was unable to take clearer pictures using a bipod configuration. In fact, because I was applying an upward force to the camera, my arms shook and caused more camera shake than when I relaxed. The strings didn't prevent the camera from rotating in two axes, resulting in up-down and left-right motion of the lens.

But I think the camera shake could be mitigated by using a weight attached rigidly to the tripod mount. Even attaching a bungie cord between the eyebolt in the camera and the fishing line on the ground would limit the up-down movement of the lens. So I might try that next.

Also interesting is the instructable on making a monopod from a flag pole holder and a broom stick (or other staff or pole). That looks worthwhile. And I do need to replace our flag pole holder anyway, so if it doesn't work out, I won't have wasted anything.

SDI: Re-Using Used Headlights

I've replaced the Halogen bulb in my wife's Ford Escort headlights many times. The high beam part is usually good; only the low beam filament blows.

My idea is to use these "useless" bulbs as light sources for work lamps or as auxiliary illumination for photography. They can run on a 12 volt battery (so the lamp can be portable) and the light spectrum of halogen is a higher quality than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.

The main issue will be to devise a lens to protect the bulb, which can shatter easily if it gets wet.

Introducing My Scanner Daybook

The Scanner Daybook is a special notebook that Barbara Sher describes in Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams.

The idea is that there are certain people whom Barbara calls "Scanners." They¹ have several interests or get ideas for new projects while working on old projects. The Scanner Daybook, modeled after Leonardo DaVinci's notebook, allows a scanner to briefly jot down a new idea in order to:

• Not forget about it.
• Satisfy an immediate craving for the idea.
• Stay focused on a current project.

This is relevant to me because I consider myself a scanner, and I decided to use part of this blog for my Scanner Daybook.

The wild imaginings in my Scanner Daybook aren't meant to be entertaining. So feel free to skip these posts entirely.

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¹ Or "We," really.