Mon pays

The Carlisle-Desroches Quidditch Hoop Construction Manual

I discovered last week that the Carlisle-Desroches Quidditch Hoop Construction Manual was incorporated into the latest version of the IQA rulebook! Hooray!

We never received any official notice from the IQA—we found out about this when one of my teammates noticed a reference to the design on the IQA site. Anyway, we’re honoured, and this has inspired us to put some more work into it. Also, one of the members of the McGill Quidditch team has asked us to re-think the bases for the hoops this summer.

Hence, we plan to build, test and release the Mark II Carlisle-Desroches Quidditch Hoop over the course of the summer. The new design which will be the same as the original, but with an alternate base that’s probably made of PVC rather than the current bucket-o-concrete. For the record, I like the bucket-o-concrete, but some have raised concerns about safety. They’re afraid that people will hit their heads.

April 26, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: I have a great idea Quidditch

Diminished reality glasses

Technology and autism

Recently, two of my classmates gave a class presentation on the subject of autism, which included the following video on the subject of Carly, a child with autism, who uses technology to communicate for the first time.

Carly is able to express herself by typing on the computer. This is a huge breakthrough for her and her family, and I think it worked because typing is a very linear and discrete form of communication—that is, you only type one letter at a time. Typing abstracts away many of the difficulties of verbal conversation and can be accomplished without the same level of motor coordination and timing that writing with a pen requires.

What struck me in the video was when Carly was asked, “Why do autistic kids cover their ears, flap their hands, hum and rock?”

She answered, “It’s a way for us to drown out all sensory input that overloads us all at once. We create output to block out input. … Our brains are wired differently. We take in many sounds and conversations at once. I take over a thousand pictures of a person’s face when I look at them. That’s why we have a hard time looking at people.”

Google’s augmented reality glasses

Recently, Google published a video about Project Glass (which I’m pretty sure isn’t another of their April Fool’s jokes) and it gave me an idea.

The principle behind augmented reality glasses is that you can add context-relevant input to your visual experience of the world.

Diminished reality glasses

So here’s the idea: I think that this technology could be adapted to help children like Carly. In the Project Glass video, the glasses are used to add extra information to one’s already busy visual field. But imagine that we first filtered out most of the busyness of the visual world with darkened glasses (not too dark—she should still be able to walk properly). Then we could use the same glasses to give pixel-by-pixel control to Carly over what she sees. We could also include noise-cancelling headphones that play white noise.

Carly says that she takes “a thousand pictures” of a person’s face, and so she has a hard time making eye contact. A single image, icon or word could replace a person’s face when Carly meets someone.

I think the way that the augmented reality glasses are demoed in the video would be ill-suited to helping Carly, but I think that they could probably be adapted so that they only display the information that Carly wants to see at the time.

That said, I have no idea if this would work in real life.

April 7, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: I have a great idea Nursing Technology

Solid dairy confinement

Solid Dairy Confinement

I am in the process of writing a post on the 2011 Quidditch World Cup, but I’m too tired to finish it right now, and I haven’t even gone through the photos yet.

So in the meantime, here’s something I pulled out of the file on my computer marked “not quite ready for public consumption.”

I’ve thought for a while that the attached image or something like it, would be good on a t-shirt. I think it’s funny. And it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had for a t-shirt design.

Incidentally, the linked image is sized to make it fit nicely onto an iPhone lock screen.

November 15, 2011 | 2 comments | Tags: Funny I have a great idea This would be good on a t-shirt

But what do we call them?

In school this year, we have spent a good deal of time talking about our relationship to our patients. Actually, that’s not true. We have actually spent more time talking about our relationship to our “clients.” It’s surprisingly difficult to find any reference to “patients” in our readings or texts.

There has apparently been a movement away from referring to someone as a patient, because of the meaning of the word, I suppose. In philosophy, the word “patient” is sometimes used in opposition to the word “agent.” For example, a moral agent is someone for whom her actions, character or the results of her actions are the proper subject of moral evaluation. By contrast, a moral patient is someone for whom her treatment by others is the proper subject of moral evaluation. (So a human being would be a moral patient. An inanimate object would not be a moral patient, since you can treat an inanimate object any way you please without it being even slightly wrong, as far as the object itself is concerned.)

If that is the way that we conceive of a patient—someone who is acted upon, then we make an implicit divide between “us nurses” (the agents) and “those patients” (the patients). On this conception, it is we who act upon the patient to bring about health. By labelling her a “patient,” we take away her agency.

I can understand this concern. This is why the language has changed. We now interact with “clients.” On this model, the client comes and uses the services of the nurse. I think this word is better than the word “consumer,” but only just. It has a very economic feel, I think. When I call someone my “client,” it sounds like I see them as someone with whom I am about to have a business transaction.

What’s funny about this is that I’ve had some instructors at McGill who disapprove of the word “patient,” and others who disapprove of the word “client.”

I’m tempted to just use the word “buddy.” E.g. “I’m going to give my buddy his meds.” It’s non-gendered, it doesn’t imply a lack of agency, and it doesn’t sound like I mainly have a business transaction in mind.

September 22, 2011 | One comment | Tags: Bioethics I have a great idea Nursing Why is this so hard?

Skuttler

Skuttler Logo

About a month ago, I had an idea. This is not unusual for me. I have lots of ideas. What’s different about this one is that I actually decided to follow up on it.

When I’m in a vehicle, often it’s the case that I want to send a message to the driver of another car, and I usually don’t have their telephone number or email, so that makes it difficult. But the nice thing about cars is that they all have a unique identifier—their licence plate.

So what I did was write a very simple piece of software. I call it Skuttler. It’s a public messaging platform to allow users to send short messages to licence plates. (Such messages will be called “skoots.” Naturally, skoots are to Skuttler as tweets are to Twitter.) Then, anyone (whether they have an account or not) can look up what skoots are sent to any licence plate. Users can also claim to be the driver of the vehicle with that plate, and they can “follow” licence plates that are interesting to them if they want to receive email or SMS notifications.

I imagine that many of the skoots that go through Skuttler will be road rage-related. But then, I can imagine a number of other uses for it too. I, for one, am perversely curious to know what sorts of messages other people would send my family and friends.

As of today, the service is up and running, which means that you can sign up and use the full web version, and there’s also a mobile version for your convenience that has been tested on an iPhone 4 and an iPod Touch. I have not tested it on an Android or a BlackBerry, but I will do so at my earliest convenience. I’d call this a beta release, since there’s certainly going to be bugs in it, and I’m still field-testing it. That said, everything “works” on it. (Except changing user settings on the mobile version.) Just promise me you won’t use it while you’re in the driver’s seat, unless the car is in “park.”

Writing Skuttler was a fun little challenge. I had to brush up on my parameterised SQL queries, and I learned a lot about best practices regarding safe storage of user information. (What? I can’t just save users’ passwords as plain text? :P)

I’m sure that the French version has some … erreurs. That said, I came up with the second greatest pun in my life while working on it. Shortly after decreeing that Skuttler messages would be called “skoots,” I remembered that in French, “discuter” means “to discuss.” So if you go on Skuttler using a browser set to French, instead of saying “nouveau skoot,” it will say “diskooter.” Now, I just need to think up an equally fun English pun.

There currently is no native iOS app for Skuttler. I wanted to focus on making a web version that is platform-independent before I got too crazy making an iOS version. I expect that I will write an app for Skuttler in the near future, but for the time being, if you want Skuttler for your iPhone, you can install it as a web app, which works great!

I’m treating this mostly as a social experiment, and I also plan to use it myself as a place to vent automotive frustrations, but if you want to join me for the ride (or if you have some suggestions regarding the way it works—or my French), please check Skuttler out!

September 21, 2011 | 4 comments | Tags: I have a great idea Skuttler Work Yintewang

Buying my textbooks

I haven't even bought all my textbooks yet

I’ve made a number of trips to the McGill Bookstore to get the various texts that I require. While standing in line, I came to a realisation:

I would seriously be willing to pay full hardcover price for the ability to download my textbooks as a PDF file with no digital rights management. If I could get my hands on a PDF for all the textbooks I need to buy, I would then buy a Kindle or a Kobo or an iPad and carry that around, rather than the gigantic stack of books.

There is no reason for me to be hurting my back by carrying around huge stacks of papers. We have the technology to make that a thing of the past.

Of course, this isn’t going to happen, and mainly for economic reasons.

While I do recognise that authors and publishers need to be paid for their work, and I don’t pretend to live in some make-believe world where everyone is so morally upright that pirated textbooks wouldn’t happen, there are massive inefficiencies all around in the way that textbook publishing currently works.

For example, Fundamentals of Canadian Nursing actually comes with an online e-book version included. This is great! What’s not great about it is the fact that I can’t download the e-book. It’s an online one. So that means I can’t load it into a tablet or an e-reader or something like that and take it with me. I’d have to bring a computer, and that computer would have to have electricity and internet access.

More importantly, the access code for the e-book version expires in four years. Assuming I don’t die and I’m still working in the same field, it’s likely that I’ll still want access to my textbook after four years. This means that if I take notes on the text, those will be all gone by 2015. That’s a huge disincentive for me to use their e-book. It’s not mine. It’s just a rental.

There are also inefficiencies for the publishing industry here. They put a lot of work into making sure that I could see the textbook, but not keep it. And they’ll have to keep investing money to stay ahead of the efforts of hackers and computer-savvy students who are okay with breaking the rules.

I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is, to be honest, although maybe the case of Fundamentals will be instructive: Fundamentals is a text that I would have much preferred to buy used, due to its price. I had to buy it new, though, because of the online access code. The text comes with online videos, the aforementioned e-book and tests that will be used as (mandatory) evaluations for the course. The access code can be purchased separately, but it costs $48. So in order to not take a loss on buying a used copy, I’d need to find a used copy that’s at least $48 cheaper, which seemed unlikely to me.

This is where I think the solution to the problem is: The secondary product (online testing) in this case provided an incentive for me to get the primary product. Even better than this would be something like giving away the primary goods/service and subsidise that cost with a purchase of a secondary good or a subscription to a secondary service.

There are plenty of businesses that work on this model. Cell phones, printers, web comics, Apple. See Table 1 for a few examples. Maybe it’s time for the textbook industry to move in this direction.

Now I’m no print media industry expert, but it seems like it’s a whole lot easier now for people to pirate media than it has ever been, and industries like music recording or computer software have had a hard time preventing pirating of their content from happening. The publisher of Fundamentals for example, spent a lot of money working on a system for displaying a textbook that would not allow the user to save the textbook and send it to others. That’s really inefficient for the publisher. Because the user can’t save her work, it’s also really inefficient for the user. That’s a lose-lose situation.

However, if they gave their textbooks away for free or for very cheap, they could spend the money they save on some secondary product or service that would provide value to students, like tests for example, and if the tests were structured in units that followed the text that was given away for free, the textbook would work for the publisher like an advertisement. This is a win-win situation.

The risk of this alternate strategy is that the publisher has to come up with some secondary service that would be so good that students would find it indispensable, or that professors would make it mandatory. That said, there is risk in continuing to work under the old model—there is a chance that someone may find a way, despite a publisher’s best efforts, to make and distribute a pirated copy. Further, there’s a risk that another publisher might be the first to switch business models.

Table 1. Primary goods or services subsidised by secondary ones

September 7, 2011 | One comment | Tags: I have a great idea Money Why is this so hard?

How to tell someone’s fortune

I have to admit, I can’t take full credit for this idea. Steps 1–3 were Pickles’ idea. This technique will only work if you have a smartphone and you take public transit regularly.

1. Sign up for a Twitter account and a Google+ account.
2. Next time your bus or métro is late, open Twitter and Google+ on your smartphone and search under “nearby” for tweets and posts that make reference to the bus or métro stop where you are. (A Twitter user’s first instinct, when his or her bus or métro is late, is to tweet about it.)
3. When you’ve found a recent tweet about your particular public transit problem, try to identify who it is that wrote it. Often you can do this from the person’s profile photo and by seeing who is fiddling with a smartphone.
4. Read back on that person’s tweets and try to infer 5 or 6 minor but specific details about that person’s life that couldn’t be guessed from the person’s appearance. Memorise these.
5. Look for one major thing, like a fight with a family member or an assignment at work or school, that is recent enough to not have been resolved yet. Try to guess what it is that the person would like to hear about that.
6. Approach.
7. Ask to see the person’s palm, or the pattern of coffee grinds in the bottom of her cup, or (my personal favourite) grab the person’s earlobe, and say, “Your pagh is strong, my child.”
8. Use the minor details that you have gleaned from his or her Twitter or Google+ feed to gain the person’s trust. (E.g. “Your roommate—she doesn’t do the dishes very regularly, does she?” or “Did you just get a promotion at work?”)
9. Act surprised about something, and then play “hard to get.” (E.g. “Oh! Isn’t that something!” / “What?” / “I don’t know if I should tell you. It’s about [major detail from step 5].”)
10. Let the person offer you money. Begrudgingly accept.
11. Tell the person what he or she wants to hear. (“Your brother puts up a tough exterior, but deep down he forgives you.”)
12. Cackle, disappear in a puff of smoke.

August 13, 2011 | One comment | Tags: I have a great idea Making friends Money Public transit Sketchy

GPS, governors and traffic police

When a police officer stops you on the road to issue you a ticket for speeding and you’re only 20 km/h over the limit on a major highway, generally the real reason you’re receiving the ticket is not one of safety. If the issue was safety, your licence would be taken away, your car would be impounded and the fine would be much higher.

This is what is done (in Ontario at least) when someone is caught speeding 50 km/h over the limit. We rightly think that this is dangerous behaviour, and the coercive powers of the state are brought in to make sure it doesn’t happen.

In the case of a ticket for 20 km/h over the limit on a highway, the real reason is one of revenue. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way that this tax is being applied brings about some irrational consequences.

What we have currently is a “speed limit” (as posted on signs—usually 100 km/h on the highway) and then an actual limit (as enforced by police—usually 150 km/h on the highway). For speeds at or below the “speed limit” (as posted), the highway is free to use. For all the speeds between the posted an the enforced limit, there’s a non-zero chance that you will be required to pay a fee to use the highway at that speed. The chance that you will be required to pay the fee increases with the amount of time that you are driving above the “speed limit” (as posted), and the amount of the fee increases with how much faster than the “speed limit” you are driving.

This is essentially a pay-as-you-use tax applied to drivers who want to exceed the speed limit, but instead of applying the tax equally among the community of drivers, we use a lottery—a random number generator (the distribution of traffic police in space and time) to decide who will pay.

So if v is your speed when caught by the police and t is the number of minutes you are speeding, let us take p(t) to be the probability that you will be caught speeding by the police (p is a function of time), and f(v) is the amount of the fine that you will pay (f is a function of your speed when caught). So if you are rational, you can expect to pay p(t)∙f(v) dollars for speeding at speed v for t minutes.

Unfortunately, people don’t expect to pay that much. Humans aren’t rational. They blame it on bad luck when they get caught, and they chalk it up to their own cleverness when they get away with it. Everyone wants (and expects) to be the lucky one who gets away with not paying anything.

It is the fact that this tax is applied in a probabilistic way that makes people act irrationally. Have you ever noticed that traffic slows down considerably when drivers see a traffic cop on the side of the road? There is no reason for that. By the time you see the police officer, it’s already over. He knows how fast you’ve been going, and if he’s going to radio his partner to pull you over, slowing down won’t help you out at this point.

This randomised way of distributing taxes brings in a number of other inefficiencies too. I don’t have any data to back this up, but I think it has a negative impact on our attitudes toward law enforcement. On being caught speeding by a traffic officer, who among us hasn’t thought, Don’t you have something better to do? It is also, I think, a poor use of a police officer’s time to have them standing on the side of the road with a device for measuring the speed of passing vehicles and a radio.

There are already a few technologies that exist today that could combine to solve all of these inefficiencies and irrational behaviours.

There are relatively cheap GPS machines that can indicate what the speed limit is in any given stretch of highway with very high accuracy. There are also governors—machines that regulate the speed at which a vehicle can drive, regardless of the preferences of the driver.

I propose that instead of using the “who’s gonna get caught by the police?” lottery to decide who pays the “driving over the posted limit” tax, we could use a GPS/governor system to limit and tax the use of highways at speeds greater than the posted limit.

First off, a GPS/governor system could actually enforce strict speed limits where we want them. For example, we do not want drivers to be able to drive more than 150 km/h on the highway under any circumstances. As a society, we’ve made that clear in the laws that we’ve enacted. A GPS/governor could actually prevent a car from accelerating beyond that speed. Or in the city, a GPS/governor could strictly prevent going over 30 km/h in a school zone. It would not be a matter of punishing offenders—the technology just would not allow for breaking the rules.

Then, in cases where we have already decided that we do want to allow for a certain amount of speeding, but we want to tax it, like in the case of a car travelling at 120 km/h on the highway, a GPS/governor could record the time that the driver is over the limit, and by how much. The area under that function would be the fine, and you could make that to be equal to what one would rationally expect to pay under the current system, if one was caught exactly as much as one would expect to be. So, if you are speeding for t minutes at speed v, at the end of the month, you would receive a bill from the Ministry of Transportation for exactly p(t)∙f(v) dollars. You’ll note that it’s the same amount that a rational person speeding exactly the same amount should expect to pay under the current system.

Such a system would free traffic officers to be watching for actually dangerous driving practices (texting while driving, extremely aggressive driving, etc.), and it would save money in the long run.

The difference is that all the people who think that it’s their own cleverness that has allowed them to get away with speeding will hate a system like the one I’m suggesting.

August 12, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: I have a great idea Technology Traffic

Sweden Sour Pork

Bork bork bork

The result of a mispronunciation of “sweet-and-sour pork,” Sweden sour pork is a great culinary idea for someone looking to make it big in the competitive and lucrative world of naming foods that don’t sound very good in a way that makes them sound nearly the same as other more popular foods.

To pull it off properly, though, you’d need to be a chef from Sweden. A Swedish Chef, if you will.

February 18, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: I have a great idea Muppets Profit

Smelly candles that don’t stink when you blow them out

I’ve always got a bunch of great ideas. Seriously. This is even better (and probably more profitable) than my idea for replacing “quatre-vingt-dix” in French with “trois-trente.” (“Trois-trente huit, trois-trente neuf, cent—prêt pas prêt j’y vais!” Anyone who has studied French as a second language will agree that this is a very reasonable first step toward reforming the French language.)

By the way, if you take my idea and make a million dollars off it, by reading this sentence, you agree, in a legally-binding sense, to give me the trifling cut of only 40% of the profits. I’m pretty sure that’s how this works. I saw it on the internet once.

Here’s my idea. I have some candles in my apartment. Smelly candles. Some are supposed to smell like fruits, some like gingerbread. When the candles are burning, they smell wonderful. This is good.

The problem comes when I blow the candles out. Every smelly candle does this: When you blow it out, it smells like smoke and something burning, and all the benefit of having lit a smelly candle in the first place is gone forever. This is bad.

Here is my proposed solution. Someone should invent a smelly candle that doesn’t stink when you blow it out. You could do this through the use of … umm … chemistry. Or maybe some sort of apparatus that contains the smoke and releases it slowly over several hours, so that I don’t notice it until it’s already over. At least there wouldn’t be the swift and dramatic difference between everything smelling good, and then all of a sudden, smoke and burning things. Maybe I just need to get an airtight jar made of a strong kind of glass whose top I can close when I want to extinguish the candle. I imagine that there would be complications because the air would all be burned up inside the glass, but we can let the engineers solve that one.

Any thoughts?

February 17, 2011 | 2 comments | Tags: French I have a great idea Profit