Category Archives: George

Change Log August 25, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • The Alphabet Game: Fast Version is a version of a semi well-known game that I adapted to suit myself a bit better
  • The Scientific Ideal World is about an idea I want to have but can’t yet. I’ve categorized it under misc. until I can find what I’m looking for, which is explained in the post

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • I added three new things to the To Do List, the three that are second, third, and fourth from the bottom.

Of Special Note:

  • In the future I think I’ll add things to the top of the to do list instead of the bottom

 

~ George

The Alphabet Game: Fast Version

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas,

There’s a game that I learned how to play about a year ago called The Alphabet Game. I suggest reading the Wikipedia article that I linked so that you understand the game before reading the rest of the post (it’s not too long).

One thing that make the game harder to play is how long it takes to finish the alphabet. So I made a few modifications to make it easier to play on shorter trips:

  • I made it Single Player: This way you don’t have to race for the needed letter, and the third change works better
  • You can use licence plates: When I learned it, you were allowed to use words on vehicles so long as they weren’t on the licence plate. You can still play like that if you want, but being allowed to use licence plates for letters like J, Q, X, and Z can speed up the game a lot, making the game more playable for shorter trips
  • This one is the main difference: All you need to do to pass off a word is to say a word that you’ve seen already and remembered. For example, while looking for a word that starts with “A”, I might see a sign that says “Bus Stop”. After I’ve found a word that starts with “A”, if I can remember that I saw a sign that said “Bus” I can just say “bus” in my head and pass off the letter “B” without waiting for another word that starts with “B”. However, if, for instance, I need a word that started with a letter “S”, and I can’t remember that I saw the sign that said “Stop”, then I have to find another word that starts with “S”, or wait until I can remember that the word I’d seen earlier was “Stop”.

Put together, especially the last one, the game can be finished much faster and is easier to play on shorter trips, although it still might take a few hours to complete if you’re unlucky.

Other versions I’ve played to keep myself entertained:

  • Instead of looking for signs, watch the subtitles in a movie for words starting with the needed letter
  • Another way to play it without signs is to listen to people talking, looking for the needed words in the conversation
  • When you start looking for the letter “Z”, start a new game at the same time. You then continue to look for Z-words, but also whatever you’re on in the new game. One time I almost had both games to “Z” before I found what I needed.

Have fun,

~ George

Change Log of August 24, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • I added a new item to the To Do List, the second to bottom one

Of Special Note:

  • The reason I’ve been on crutches for the past two weeks (not that you’d necessarily know ) is that I was jumping of a dock and hit a rock on the bottom of a lake. Luckily nothing was broken, but I had to be on antibiotics for a few days, crutches for a few weeks, and in a boot for another month. I just figured I’d explain why there was a post about crutches.

 

~ George

Invention Idea: Crutch Stand

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas, ,

After two weeks of being on crutches (fortunately I don’t need them anymore), I’ve had plenty of time to notice how annoying they are. One of the many annoying things is that every time you sit down you have to find somewhere to lean them without them falling over. So I thought, why not make a stand of some sort that you just put wherever you usually sit so that you can always hang your crutches on it? I can’t decide if I’m serious or joking about it, but I’m adding a tag to this post for humor either way. Here’s an illustration to show the idea:

Blog - Idea Level 3 - Humorous Invention Idea - A Crutch Stand - Crutch Stand Drawing

🙂

~ George

 

The Universal Dream

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas,

What if everybody was sharing one universal dream? The “dream world” would be built by people’s memories, of real things or of fake things, and everything you see would be something that someone else (or yourself) has seen/imagined while awake. If this were true, then when you were in “dream world”, your mind wouldn’t be creating the crazy things, it would be seeing what has already been made. That could explain why sometimes you go to the same place in different dreams. And perhaps when you learn and/or create new stuff, “dream world” is expanded when you  sleep and think about it. Perhaps this is why independent breakthroughs of the same thing are often made within a short time of each other; once someone has imagined it, the other person might stumble across it in their exploring.

Also, what if everybody you saw in the dream was simply exploring the world while they were asleep to? They probably wouldn’t remember seeing and interacting with you in their dreams though; after all, you remember very little of your dreams after you wake up. While this might not make sense if only one of you was asleep, it still would be interesting to think about.

Needless to say, this post was inspired by a weird dream I had a few nights ago

~ George

Change Log of August 20th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • I’ve made a site To Do List! Although, since it’s in my are of the blog, perhaps I should say it’s my to do list. IDK, if I need to I’ll make a site to do list.

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

  • I changed the text that I copy and paste into each Change Log a little bit, fixing a few things that were bugging me.

Of Special Note:

  • The reason this is being posted on August 22 is that we lost power (for a few hours) and we didn’t manage to get the computer to turn on till this morning.

 

~ George

To Do List

George, miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Posts

I’ve wanted to have a public to do list that could show various things I want to change about/add to the site, so here it is. I will cross off things as I do them, and at the beginning of every month I’ll remove the checked off items. Making the to do list in the first place was the first thing on it 🙂

In no particular order:

  1. Make a private to do list for myself for things that wouldn’t make sense to others and/or apply to future posts?
  2. Find all the places I use the underline to separate topics and make the underline longer (sorry if that makes no sense to anyone besides me)
  3. Add an “About Us” page
  4. Decide on the Idea Polish Level of Interesting Observation: Social Norms, Story Idea: Benedite, Time-Based Game (Tag?), and Type-able Lewis Dot Structure.
  5. Add a featured image to each post
  6. Make a section/page for things I find online that aren’t “Certified Brilliant”
  7. Find a way to make “Certified Brilliant” work again
  8. Add a category for my favorite posts?
  9. Make a “Change Log” that includes links to posts I made before I started using change logs
  10. Find the site mentioned in The Scientific Ideal World
  11. Go through all the posts and make sure that the links function properly
  12. Finish the To Do List 🙂

~ George

Change Log of August 19th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • The Planets of Star Wars contains some of the thought I had while watching Star Wars Episode I earlier today. I’m realizing just how cool a universe such as Star War’s actually is 🙂

Major Changes:

  • I added the new 4th paragraph to Story Idea: Benedite, after thinking about how benedite might have affected the food industry. I also changed the last two sentences of the post.

Minor Changes:

  • On the main “George” page, I added a link to the latest change log to the  very top of the page
  • Previously, the “George’s Posts in Reverse Chronological Order” (that’s a mouthful) only showed the last 20 posts, but since by now I’ve posted more than 20 things (Yay!!) I increased the number, substantially. (I added a zero 🙂

Of Special Note:

  • I’ve made a game idea that is actually playable! It took me a few days, but I’ve written a post explaining how to play it. Now I’m just waiting for it to be read by a few select people to see if I explain the game well enough to play 🙂

 

~ George

The Planets in Star Wars

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

My family an I just watched Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and I enjoyed it more than I ever had before by thinking of how amazing the galaxy of Star Wars is. Having just finished reading Orson Scott Card’s book Speaker for the Dead, I have an even greater appreciation of what an interstellar society would be like.

What I thought was most interesting about the film was something its makers probably didn’t intend. When Qui Gon Jinn left the space ship and set foot on Tatooine without any preparation I realized just how much technology it would take to make it safe to do that. Think about it. What is the likelihood that so many planets have the perfect atmosphere and gravity to support not just humans, but aliens from thousands of different stars?

This is a feet of massive scale. Somehow, the sentient species of the galaxy have managed to make every planet compatible with every species in the entire galaxy! This could be accomplished by a combination of a few things that we currently know of.

Massive Terra-formation (the changing of the planet itself) would be required, ranging from increasing or decreasing gravity, changing or even creating an atmosphere, and maybe even moving the entire planet, so that the planet is the “right” temperature. And they would have to do this to almost every single planet they encountered, because face it, not very many planets would be even close to being able to sustain human life.

Now that there are planets that are uniform, every species needs to be uniform. Large changes in the very genetic nature of the aliens would be required. Every species of sentient life form (and some non-sentient life forms) would need to be genetically modified so that it could breathe the same air as every other species, survive the same level of gravity as every other species (so as to not be crushed because of stronger gravity or accidentally destroy everything because of weaker gravity), and endure the starkly different levels of radiation than their home planet would usually have. Biotechnology would be able to help in some cases, but not in every case. Biogenetics and Biotechnology would also be used to make every species more adaptable to different climates, because there is no way that every planet would be the exact same.

In addition to modifying the body, the brain, or whatever passed as a brain for different aliens, would also have to be genetically changed. Vastly different species would surely speak in vastly different ways, and something would need to be done for aliens who don’t “speak” like “normal” aliens do, instead using various forms of communication from body language to physic thought. There would also need to be a huge change in the culture and way of thought for some species. With vastly different cultures would come vastly different ideas, and many cultures would be completely incompatible with a uniform galactic government, among other things, with some cultures whose sole focus would be warfare and other cultures which would have no concept of government.

And even after all that, I haven’t even started to talk about what it would mean to have a planet with an aquatic center, or why everyone knows English, or what a moon sized spaceship would be. Star Wars has suddenly become a lot more interesting to me 🙂

~ George

Change Log of August 12th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • Universal Solute came from a joke that I read about a universal solvent. If I have more time tomorrow I’ll add it to the post

Major Changes:

  • I’ve update How To Randomly Choose A Winner Using Only A Watch (previously “How to do a Coin Flip with a Watch”) so thoroughly that it might as well be a new post, but nonetheless it’s an update. Also, because of the large increase in polish-ness of the post, it has been upgraded to Idea Polish Level 2, being the first to be leveled up purely because I added more to it
  • I’m trying to work out the my Idea Polish Level system again, so I changed a few Polish levels: Funny Knights Names from 1  to 2, and Story Idea: Benedite from 4 to 3;

Minor Changes:

Of Special Note:

  • none

 

~ George