PC for all...

Hi there! I know, I've been away for about a year or so... well, just have been busy... what I'm going to write about today is not exactly a very techie idea, but it is related to tech and useful for many, I hope...

Many of us got old PCs lying around. With our PCs going GHz on speeds, the 500 Mhz ones are just gathering dusts cuz maybe you tried to salvage all you could from there and now it's nothing but the box with motherboard and processor. With a little initiative, we can do a lot with these... Here's a few ideas...

Linux Box: yeah - I guess many of you saw it coming. A linux box is basically a PC with the bare necessities. If you have a broadband at home, then this is the perfect security solution. Just add two lan cards, some old RAM and a CF to Hard Drive adapter. CF (Compact Flash) are super cheap as no one is using them much and they come in as large as 4GB. That adapter can be slotted with the IDE port on a PC and to the PC it's nothing but a 4GB hard drive. Not go ahead and install xubuntu. Xubuntu is a smaller version of Ubuntu which can work with less than 192MB RAM and very low hard disk space. Now this is our basic linux box. With this, you can do quite a few things.

a. Linux Firewall Box: Now just configure the built in linux firewall and have all the network data run through this box - one lan card for input and one for output. With all of us running Bit-Torrent and having our ports open to the world, this sure will take care of a lot of securty issues that we have.

b. Donate: Yep! Donate this pc to some poor school/orphanage. They sure will appreciate as kids will learn how to use OpenOffice (Which comes built in) and the basics of computing. And with some little tweaking, you can make the GUI look like Windows too. I have seen people trying out Ubuntu and doing great while all they knew is how to use Windows.

c. Dedicated Server: Add a hard disk with it and make it a dedicated file server. If your office is running some Java/PHP based office management software, pick the old PC that is not much of a use and convert it to a black box server. Use a remote login software to setup the box, in that way you're freeing up a monitor as well.

I myself got 2 old PCs lying at home eating dust. I'm sure many of us got at least one of these legacy devices which neither got any selling value nor usable. I bet there's lots of poor student out there who can't afford a PC and they sure will appreciate this gift. I have seen this orphanage type NGO who are struggling with two old PC running super slow Excel on Windows 98. Next time I go home, let's see if they allow me to turn those into a linux box and have a faster experience with OpenOffice.

cheers!

Car Tech: Profiles for drivers

Hey to you all... I've been totally gone for quite a while - had been busy with stuffs, you know - studies, family, creating havoc in the country's political scene... ok, kidding about the last one ;)

That day, while we were going somewhere, my driver had to get off and I took over driving. Soon I got busy adjusting the seat's distance from wheel, the backrest ANGLE, side mirrors and ofcourse the rear view mirror. Took me about a minute and it was a hell of a trouble to fix the passenger's side view mirror - we don't have those power adjustment things in our car. Yes, I drive an old junk.

Then it hit me - even with cars that got power mirrors, each different driver needs to readjust everything & that takes some time. Not only that, I've seen people driving careless soon after starting up because they were adjusting the mirrors and driving. Who knows how many accidents has happened for this reason?!! How nice it would be to have these all fixing themselves at your prefferable angles/height right after you hold the steering wheel???

So yeah - here comes my idea - Driver's profile... Let's try to figure out how it's gonna work:

1. Driver Recognition: How can the car recon you? Well, the most conventional methode would be what we saw in Transporter - a number pad where the driver will be entering his own password.
Second option - fingerprint/biometric system. A fingerprint scanner placed anywhere convenient, on the dashboard, beside the handgear or even embeded into the steering wheel.
A very ambitious thought - using a tiny camera sitting right under sun shades to take the driver's picture then run a faciial recognition program to find out who the driver is.

2. Adjusting the seat: There can be a small survo motor underneath the seat that can take care of both the seat's position & back rest angle. It should be fun, as the seat would make a light 'tic tic' sound while it takes 5-10 sec to adjust itself for the driver - just the way it happens in sci-fi.
A pneumatic (compressed air) system could be used instead of a motor. A cylinder underneath the seat will use compressed air to push/pull the seat & backrest angle. That'd make the whole process more silent but there after a certain time (a year or so) we need to refill the compressed air cylinders.
Similarly there could be a hydrolic system instead of compressed air too - cuz hydrolic systems are more efficient than pneumatic ones when they are small.

3. Mirrors: The side mirrors can be adjusted using the same motors they use in the power mirrors now. How the rear view mirror will move is a good question. Not only it has a very small base for a motor to install, it should be able to rotate the mirror left-right and swing front-back. I've drawn sketch of a small gear system for this purpose but still could not figure out a few details so I can't share it with you right away.

4. Steering Wheel angle: Many cars has options for the driver to adjust the steering wheel's angle now a days. Adjusting this might be a bit tricky for a motor so maybe a hydrolic system could be used.

So, in order to make the whole thing work, we also need to install a tiny computer inside the car. It should be able to store every driver's individual choice, process data from the sensors to figure out how much it should move the mirrors and also allow user to create new profiles, edit or delete existing profiles. It might sound like a lot of processing & data storage but in fact many of the present day cars has that much capability built into them. Many cars got a nice big LCD screen - which could be used as an User Interface. As far as my knowledge about present car-tech goes, any of the car manufacturers can bring out a concept car with these facilities built into them.

So, all you car enthusiasts, if you are into customize your car (especially USA pplz)- these could be a nice challange. Instead of a profile for everyone, you could have a button just for yourself as starter. Press that button and everything is set as per your choice. I'd love to see these things in a car near future.

Guess that's all for today. I hope to post the next one in a week. In the mean time, take care!

Have a great day...

Tomorrow's PCs... literally!

Hello to you all... I'm back with an idea about the PCs (Personal Computer, DUH!) we use everyday... Like, we all are pretty satisfied with the fact that PCs are super fast now, well, compared to PCs even a few years back. Intel has released Core Duo 2 which is kicking AMD left and right. Graphics cards are packing awesome punches & we got 160GB hard disks to keep all our divx & mp3s... We got LCD screens instead of bulky monitors and most of the decent sound cards can deliver surround sound f/x.

So, how else can we have a PC which truly can be called tomorrow's PC - we got all the things in our PC so far. Yes, an upgrade to even faster processor (maybe optical chips), larger hard drives or even better graphics card could do - but they're simple upgrades. Let's talk innovation here...

Display:
I do not think holographic displays are going to be a big shot thing in the home/office computing market, despite being fancy & even interactive - at least nor RIGHT away. Give it a bit of time. The prime predicament is the resolution & lighting condition - so far every holographic displays has been lower than normal resolution & you can not use it under normal brightness. But once these problems are being solved - I hope to see them bring revolutionizing changes in our life. Think of it, no more dirty touch screens at information booth, the shops sporting 3D holographic ads out in the front & inside their shops - may be you can even walk through the ads, lol.

So, next generation displays going to be a slimmer version of our flat screen displays, I guess. Yes, larger screens for sure. I guess there'll be OLED based displays, which would be cheaper, more power efficient & wider viewing angle.

Drives:

Already they've announced that soon hard drives will have built in flash memories with them. Yes, the flash memory we use in our thumb drives (usb drives) everyday. Very clever idea, it'll reduce disc access & use the flash memory as HDD cach.

I guess, in the future, the way all the pcs are becoming wifi enabled very soon we might have hard drives with built in wifi - so that you can have a bunch of wifi in the house and everyone can access it, instead of having it sticking with a PC.

the PC itself!

So far - it has been my speculation and you all must be tired of reading all these. So, here comes my own idea...

I think soon we'll have a flash memory built into the PC, with the OS preloaded there. Think of it - the motherboard is loading the Operating System at the speed of it's own bus speed! Which means, in a few seconds (less than 10 seconds, I hope) we'll have our PC boot up & ready to go!

I guess 1GB built in flash is pretty good - it can hold the bootup related OS files. Another advantage of using this would be reduced data loss. Due to power failure, we loose anything unsaved, unless the software has some recovery system built in. The flash memory can hold data even if there's no power - so data won't be lost when there's an electricity failure.

I've been thinking of this for a while - a tiny battery, the ones we use in our cell phones - could be integrated with the pc too. So when there's a power failure, it'll keep the motherboard & RAM alive for a while (say 1 hour) - so when the power's back - we're back to business. It can charge itself from the power supply. Yes, UPS are there, but they're expensive. This battery should not put much of a load on the price tag I guess. May be we can have a emergency shutdown built into the OS - so that when there's a power failure - the OS will auto save everything in the built in flash memory then shuts itself down. That way we don't have to worry even if the software we're using doesn't have auto-recovery option.

Guess that's all for today. I hope you've not fallen asleep. Thanx for checking the blog. I just hope soon our PCs have at least a built in flash memory to save us time. Till then, have a nice day :)

little things that could make life easier...

Alright, today I'm not going to talk about one single idea, but several tiny little ideas - where one post/idea isn't worth it... In our everyday life, there's loads of tiny little things which are not very convenient but we go along with it anyway - untill someone decides to solve it... For example, I loved the idea of the funny plastic sticks we had, with tiny fingers to scratch our back... Whatever you say, scratching back had always been a tough job till someone came up with this idea... I found it to be one of the most unique and genius yet simple ideas of our time...

So, first - Clips for CNG... Lemme explain - when it rains, it's pretty tough for us to fix that cover to protect us from water splashing onto us as the 'curtain' got this tiny strings that we need to tie around the metal poles... Instead of all these trouble, how about welding two strong clips on both side of the CNG's each entrances - so when it rains, just pull down the curtain, clip them on! These clips would look like the ones we use at home on the cloth drying line, just much stronger springs should be used.

Travellers bathroom kitbox... We all have a tiny kitbag, especially who travels quite a bit, where we keep our toothbrush, toothpaste and shaving accessories... I would like to have a plastic box instead, inside there'd be grooves for each of the accessories... Wouldn't it be very convenient if we just put everything inside & throw it in your bag. When you need to use them, just take the box in the bathroom, set it upright on something, use the stuffs, then put them back in the box... done! So far I've never seen anything like this...

Ok, this is a silly idea, I had long time back when I was only 12yrs old... an anti pick-pocket device... Wish I could put up a picture of it... Let me try explain anyway... It'll be a tiny electronic device that can vibrate pretty strongly. It'll have two flat surfaces, that'll face each other and be together, till we slide in a money bag in the middle... the moment we take the money bag out - it'll vibrate to warn us that the money bag has been taken away... The whole thing needs to be kind of attached to the pocket - that's the biggest flaw of my design...

Those of us who wears specs, this one's for them, esp if you love to read books... at night, with the room's lights off, wouldn't it be great if we could get light on the page regardless of whichever position we're sitting/laying? For this, we can have a clip-on penlight torch, running on 1/2 AAA batteries with super bright LED instead of a torch bulb. These new generation super bright LEDs are incredible, cheap, gives awesome light yet consumes less than a fraction of what conventional bulbs would.

And last but not least, another tiny BlueTooth idea... a bluetooth lock... Your desk drawer can look perfectly ok, no sign of any lock or key hole - cuz the key is your cellphone. You can set your password for the lock, let it be numerical or alpha-numerical. Just take the phone within the bluetooth range, open the software in the phone & type away the password. If you're wrong more than 3 times, the lock will get into a preset TimeLock, say 30 min or so. This could be used in room, drawer or anywhere else :)

I guess these were all for the time being... Take care, shower me with comments - especially if you don't like anything about this page... Have a nice day :)

bluetooth + Helmet + solar power = less accident?

Ok, I'm back with another BT (BlueTooth) idea... honestly, when I first read about bluetooth, it was a déjà vue for me - back in '98-'99 when cellphone just started to spread here, I was obsessed with this thought, "how about using a low powered FM frequency or something like that that'll have an average range of a few metre to connect cellphones with PDA/palmtops to access the addressbook I got in the palmtop. May be I can write a pager msg (did not know about sms yet) in the palmtop which will use the pager to send the message" I thought of that cuz back in those days we could save about one or two hundreds of numbers max on the cellphone.

Anyway, enough about old memories - here's the idea... A helmet, yeah, riding helmets we see people wearing while they're riding their bikes, with a bluetooth headset integrated inside. I mean, there's the same old headset, but where our ears supposed to be, there'll be a headphone embeded inside the cushion. As a helmet is a pretty big thing - place for batteries could easily be found. I suggest rechargable AA/AAA batteries - cuz then it'll be easy to take'em out of the helmet & charge them in the charger.

Ok, let's improvise... First, let's have a layer of OLED (Organic Light Emmiting Diod) on the visor, that'll bring up the caller's ID when someone call... There's already a rear view mirror that can do this - we're just using that same tech, into the helmet... This way, while riding you can see who called without looking away from the road. Another small addition - a tiny flexible solar cell pasted on the helmet - it'll charge the batteries a little bit when the on the road.

There it goes - a helmet with an integrated bluetooth headset with caller id display and solar charger! When there's a call, all the rider got to do is tap one of the sides (the switch is there) and start talking! Wish there was a way to patent these ideas from Bangladesh, sigh...

Have a great day :)

cycle power...

I guess most of us cycled at least once in our life - bicycles, not tricycles :P I used to be an avid cyclist even a few years back. At night I always wished I had a cycle lamp but never liked the existing ones available here. You know the one with a dynamo - that had a little circular knob/axel that'd spin as it rubs with the cycle tyre and produce electricity.

I didn't like it cuz it used frictional energy - wastes lots of energy, slows you down and makes a weird noise too. Instead of spinning the dynamo axel using friction, how about using turning power directly from the wheel?! Let’s get rid of the circular rough axel & introduce a tiny gear wheel. The dynamo will be situated near the hind wheel’s center, the gear wheel’s teeth will be 90° to the spokes – so as long as the wheel runs, it’ll hit the gear wheel’s teeth and spin the dynamo’s axel. Rubber coat the teeth, it’ll make less noise. According to my calculation – it’ll produce at least the same amount of electricity as the friction system & more.

There’s another idea but to install it, we need to take off a wheel first. The dynamo has to be set into the cycle, the magnet part around the center of the wheel. The coil will be steady & rigid beside the magnet – so when the wheel runs, the magnet keeps on spinning, creating a magnetic field for the coil to produce electricity. As this one is a bit harder to install than my first idea – I guess this doesn’t have much chance to see the daylight unless the cycle maker decides to have this built into the cycle during production.

Just for fun, it’d be great to replace the normal magnets in the dynamo with the rare earth metal magnets, which are more than ten/twenty times stronger than the regular magnets – should boost up the dynamo’s performance.

I really regret that I can’t provide any sort of picture to make these ideas more comprehensive. If anyone got any software that can allow me to draw mechanical/structural designs easily – please lemme know about it. I’m one terrible artist (can’t even draw a simple mug!) and don’t have the time or cpu speed to master 3d studio.

Guess that's all for today. Thank you for coming back to this page - I promise to meet my dateline next time :) Take care everyone...

Have a nice day...

self filling mug...

ok, got hit by this idea last night, when I went to get a mug of water while talking to my wife dearest over phone...

I have a problem, which is, no mug is big enough for my thirst! I filled up my mug with water, had a long sip, filled it up again & by the time I came back to my room - the mug is half empty :( "Only if there was a way to fill up the mug with water the moment I have a sip", I thought, then it hit me, WHAM!

A silly idea, but I guess it'd be fun... How about, having the mug's body hollowed out (I guess steel mugs would be a good one for this, instead of ceramic) and have a few holes inside the mug, at strategic places... I do not know 3D Studio, or else I'd post the wireframe diagram/cut view of the construction here... when we fill it up with liquid, some will be deposited inside the mug's body & when we drink, the moment the liquid level goes down, due to lack of pressure more will come out of the body to the inside to fill up the mug - we get a few 'extra' sips than what we had expected...

Guess that's all for today... I guess couch potatoes like me would love this mug! Until next time then...

Have a great day :)