silky / ideas

various ideas

(in the spirit of https://github.com/samsquire/ideas.)

various ideas and projects

these are ideas i'd like to work on, or just things i'd like to see done. if you complete one of these things, or know some similar software, feel free to fork and update and issue a pull request!

incomplete

see issues list

complete

see issues list

1. laptop whiteboard

a whiteboard attached to your laptop.

you require only melamine, or some similar material, and velcro dots. pictured is some transparency paper stuck on a piece of corregated plastic. i've found the melamine purchased from a shop tends to not clean as nicely as the whiteboards you find at universities; i'm not sure why. recommend using these with the thin-tipped whiteboard markers.

1. australian budget tracker

somehow find out how the tax money is spent in australia, and do some sort of modelling on it.

basically exists, but probably needs a bit more work:

• http://infoaus.net/budget/budget_home.php

1. what-now

looks at your timetable, and tells you what you should be doing now. will need to configure a timetable in some trivial json format.

basically exists:

• http://taskwarrior.org

(that is, I now use taskwarrior for this purpose.)

1. this file upsets me

you can upload the sha256 hash of a file, and then the system counts that file as upsetting n+1 people. list the topmost upsetting file hashes. never reveal the actual file contents.

might change this to be 'how i feel about this file', and you can love it, or have it upset you.

done:

• http://this-file-me.meteor.com

1. git console dashboard

at a glance i'd like to see the status of all my repos; the outgoing/incoming changes from various upstream sources, etc; then i could issue system-wide updates and so on.

there appear to be a few things like this, but are gui-based.

done:

• Some tools for working with Github upstream repos

ideas's Issues

running scenery

with google glass or similar, have scenery that you can change, and run to, and it would incorporate the real life obstacles it sees.

encryptoboard

a USB device that sits inbetween the keyboard and the computer that outputs everything pressed on the keyboard passed through some encryption function. Could be a OTP, or something where there are keys involved.

stay up to date with specific authors

There are a couple of things to do this already.

• scirate
• google scholar alerts

I also wrote arxiv-checker (since gone.). I'm not sure if any of these is perfect, though. arxiv-checker is limited in only checking arxiv, and also in the number of people and at the moment only does a month back in time. google scholar occasionally gets it wrong (i get sent alerts when the author didn't actually publish the paper), and scirate requires you see the paper pop up.

console chat

have a box on a personal website where it says if you're online or not (where "online" means "recently used the linux terminal on some computer"). if so, people can type a short message to you, which appears as say a notify-send. you can then respond to them.)

have a bedroom as a standalone bed set into a wall inside the main bedroom, or something.

inspiration:

(from my the movie Seksmisja)

programmers keyboard

there are many ideas like this, but i'm not sure which one i like best. a custom key layout? an actual physical keyboard? a supplemental keyboard to the typical one? a modal keyboard?

one idea is to add a new row of keys. This new row would feature specific keys for characters such as: ! ? * < > ( ) { } . " : + & | .

This list could possible be configured for different languages, as some wouldn't require those characters, and may want different ones (for example Python, or some form of assembly).

But at least it may save us from constantly pressing shift, and it may be interesting to see if it can lead to other possible benefits; i.e. what other buttons could be implemented and considered. It may be interesting to consider a 'build' button, or attach some macros to 'programmable' buttons. It is already known that programmable keyboards exist, so maybe they are the answer; but they are very expensive.

maybe this can all be solved by vim configurations, though (as with many of lifes problems).

a computer proof system that explains WHY things are true

in a human-readable way.

some machine learning thing for paper discovery in scirate

maybe drafatable are already doing this? if not, consider it.

mathematical property browser

suppose you have some object; you'd like to find out what you can do with it. for example, you might have a 'simple function'. then it could be measureable, say, in the context of measure theory, and so on.

can generalise to finding various theorems (and lemmas, etc) that could be used in certain scenarios. should be easy to use; not at the level of proof assistants.

things like this:

• http://slugmath.ucsc.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
• http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/dke.html
  • http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html

a reusable printing system

i want to be able to print pdfs and so on on paper. but i'd also like to re-use that paper. naive idea: imagine if we could print in "pencil" instead of ink. then i could just rub it out and print again. suppose this erasing was handled by the printer though.

are there ideas like this out there? can i build this myself? review and comment.

show py.test unit test numbers next to output of tree

would prefer to do this with appropriate usage of awk, but i don't know it will enough to do that.

futuristic restaurant

futuristic-themed restaurant, instead of a classic one.

interactive thesis

write it in a mathematica notebook or an IPython thing; then I can read and interact wtih it. I might do this for part of Belovs thesis, say.

this, of course, could also be applied to 'interactive papers' at large. maybe just as a supplement to any actual paper.

http://authorea.com/ - is doing something like this.

lift reading/writing

all lifts could contain fixed whiteboard markers; then you could write on them if you wanted.

tested-by

finds the unit tests that a given file is tested by. can be used to run the tests automatically when the file changes.

browser plugin to save/load current open pages to json

or some other plain text file format, so it can be pasted somewhere.

rotated vim screen based on head position

it could adjust text heights to make it appear as if you were always staring at it head-on.

movie plot characterisation by graphs

this could tell you how complicated the plot is by how many nodes in the graph, and so on.

invalid premise detector

imagine if it were possible to look at natural language statements and determine an incorrect premise, and have it pointed out. currently it's not feasible least-of-all because it isn't possible to programmatically review all statements.

but suppose it were (whether or not this is a good idea, it's becoming more feasible), then it would be possible to consider the existence of such a program.

it would look at each statement, and decide whether or not it is justified. for example:

s1: "it doesn't hurt to let people know about standard thing when something new comes along"

could be analysed as invalid, because perhaps it is bad, if say the standard things are bad, or similar. i.e. the above statement is only valid with certain assumptions.

perhaps alternatively this project could be something like 'assumptions identifier'; and for each statement it is able to work out the assumptions under which it is valid.

may bean of interest

a coffee shop where you get given a link to something you might find interesting, when you buy the coffee. for example, you would ask for a cappuccino and 'haskell', and then you'd get a link to a github repo for some haskell project.

related to - #6

meeting/discussion emulator

a system into which you could place people, and list their standard opinions and responses, and then model how they will interact with another group of people. it could be used to emulate meetings. supposing it emulates meetings well, it could then be used to randomly replace meetings in a given company, thus allowing more time for whatever people normally do.

a robot whose goal is to be happy and have fun

instead of doing something "useful" it could just aim to have the most fun possible.

• see for example dancing japanese robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms
• keepon beatbots: http://beatbots.net/

agree-o-tron

plugin for skype calls, or similar, that instead of videos just captures "agreement", and indicates as much with a pointer. it determines agreement by processing video, locally, and then sending only what it infers as nodding or disagreeing over the server.

would need to be a program that runs independently, perhaps, of skype on the local machine. then sets itself up as a server for the video stream that it is watching; then other people could browse that to get a general idea of the "agreement" in that room.

day-script

have a script that you write before your day starts. say only these things for the entire day. see what happens; will you be able to get through the day following only the script? you can only use the phrases you wrote down, the number of times you wrote them down. let's be generous and say that the order doesn't matter.

programming art workshopy thing

a place where you can go and sit and program or do art or whatever. like a library. would be a large open space.

this is related to hahayes/hahayes-projects#9

open art/programming cafe space?

art gallery-themed, but a cafe where you can sit and mingle amongst the art, and maybe incorporate the programming space idea?

hahayes/hahayes-projects#9

rich hickey talk generator

find words used in programming, define them, note disparity with common usage, comment.

• value of values
• simple made easy

post-quantum-cryptography in idris

see http://pqcrypto.org/.

do-calculus in networkx

implement Judea Pearls do-calculus in networkx.

pull request exercises

similar to my old test-driven gym - https://github.com/silky/tdg - maybe a service like travis, or an extension, which comments on failed pull reqs with exercises.

program to generate dance moves

further to the above; could display them to the public and let them vote, etc.

calculate number of mistakes one can make

none is bad. two is also a bit arbitrary. it's probably a function of the 'class' of mistake, and whether or not you claim to know how to not make that mistake again, etc. try and calculate what this is.

ambient sound interpreter

takes input from the local radio waves, converts them into sound via some pattern matching radom strategy. it should be possible to modify, based on mood, but it should also sound sufficiently unique as to be interesting.

categorise researchers by their scirate profiles

i.e. infer what fields they are interested in, who they are likely to work with, other researchers they may be similar to, etc.

the inequaliser

takes some given equation and considers all the possible inequalities they could be used on it.

a program that splits any given file into ones and zeroes*

and you can send them seperately, then recreate the original file this way.

a reasoning layer

for programming languages. in reference to being able to deduce how computers decided on a particular course of action. in python this could be implemented with decorations on functions which categorise the function, and then take this coarse-grained categorisations and map them into functional sections somehow. i.e. group them in some meaningful way. output as a graph or something.

author hash function

calculate a useful hash function that can be queried for closeness when related authors publish stuff together. If it funtions like f(A+B) = f(B+A) then first-authorship no-longer matters.

a suggestion is a hash function on a metric space that is also a metric. then the idea is to look at the p-adic's and some homomorphism.

programming hype man

comes into your office, and spends the day just playing music and yelling "test, test", and other programming related things.

a nice local bibtex browser/editor

to say replace my current usage of JabRef with. what I'm missing is: - ???

note from self

a thing which reads your comments for 'note to self' and then randomly tells you about these things.

by 'comments' i mean any comment anywhere. for example, this app could exist as a skype bot, that joins in on your skype conversations; or alternatively it might go through all your source code, or wherever you write these things.

i think it might be best if it responds back in a few ways; i was thinking that it could randomly send a message to your terminal, or again with the skype thing, it could randomly send you a message.

ipython interoperator

let any cell be in any backend language. (say haskell python or r). then make it so that you can share variables between the languages; perhaps with out[k] a-la mathematica.

can we learn from sage here? has it done this kind of thing for math packages?

programming gallery

like an art gallery; but would have particularly nice code examples in it.

quadmule

suppose you have something to take somewhere but don't want to carry it. you could use a qaudcopter to fly it along with you. for example, i want to run home but don't want to carry my bag. i guess a robot would also work, but you'd have to walk with it. the quadcopter could just follow you in the air.

creative idea generator

it should be possible to have a program that generates creative ideas on a given topic. as a first pass it should be able to generate other 'random-combination' based ideas that i've thought of; much like the 'lift reading/writing' above.

LaTeX typo finder

try and find mistakes and whatnot in LaTeX documents by showing only one paragraph or sentence at a time. could work with the idea of trying to find definitions for all terms, etc.

encouragement bot

every time you press enter in your terminal there could be a small chance that encouragement bot would say something encouraging.

programming language heatmap

a plugin for vim/emacs that tracks the time spent programming in particular languages. could match this to physical location (gps?) and then generate a heatmap that way. maybe some of this information is already on github.

some sort of self-organised university thing

where you could declare a set of subjects you will run, and layout some course plan, and then teach yourself those things. the idea would be to just have some structure and way of remembering what you should be doing, and accountability.

for some reason it seems fun to perhaps use gitit for this.

a file-system rpg

it should lay out a particular directory structure as a big rpg land that you must explore. files that you want to delete become enemies.