Better Text To Speech For Word

Posted on September 24, 2021 by gemmell

The inbuilt Word TTS is terrible. At least on Mac. It should be simple to connect a Word Add-In to AWS Polly and have it do the reading.

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WE CARE DOCTORS SURGERY

Posted on September 9, 2021 by gemmell

I hate the medical system. It’s transactional. For $70 someone will listen and try and diagnose your problem in 15 minutes. I have never been to a doctor and come away with a response beyond “let’s get some basic blood tests done”. Which of course shows nothing.

Now contrast it with the We Care Doctors Surgery. When you come in and sit down, our receptionist comes to you and asks you if you are comfortable and whether you want some tea or coffee. You sip your tea in this lovely tranquil environment until someone calls you in. A nice lady sits you down for 30 minutes and just has a chat to you. She’s not trying to diagnose anything, she’s there to listen to your woes. She’s actually a trained metal health worker. She says things like “that must be tough” and “you must really be suffering”. You feel heard. She goes into the next room to have a word to the Doctor, giving them a run down.

Finally, you are shown into the Doctor’s office where she already has had a bit of a think about what to do and what is real and what is not. She can get down to the nitty gritty.

There are several advantages to this approach. People come early so they can have a cup of tea and put their feet up in a beautiful relaxing area. People look forward to going to the doctor. They come out of the place feeling like they’ve been heard and somebody really cares. And of course, it would get similar medical results, if not better.

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Krilling It

Posted on August 26, 2021 by gemmell

Land based krill aquaculture as a food base for a civilization that is destroying itself via over consumption. The logic is: Grow some simple, fast life cycle organisms that eat algae but contain enough nutrients to feed the biggest mammal on the planet. And you essentially have giant vats of them fed by algae and saline water (farming on an inland salt plain? Desalinates and all!). You grow them, drain the water, recycle through the system like a giant aquaponics system (the effluent of the krill is food for the algae), then dry or press the krill depending on what you’re trying to do.

Sell to the aquaculture industry as food, the vitamin supplement industry (krill is high in omega 3), and start experimenting with creating food supplements for humans using it. They are, after all, like tiny crustaceans.

Posted in Big Issues Discussion, Food, Whacko | Leave a comment

Face Masks for Facial Recognition

Posted on August 17, 2021 by gemmell

Phone doesn’t unlock because you’re wearing a mask? You need one of my masks that have your face printed on the outside. Or a see through one.

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Home Factories

Posted on August 16, 2021 by gemmell

These are garage/carport sized machines where you download a “pattern”, buy the raw materials required and place QR stickers on them, and then the machine does the rest. Can build everything from furniture to rocket ships.

This works in 3 parts. There’s the pattern provider, similar to 3d printing sites, there’s the raw materials, which might work by submitting your pattern to your local hardware store and having them deliver it, and the machine itself.

If you can sell each machine for $20k there is probably a payoff within 10 years. You move into a house, install one of these things, and then any furniture you want you can have it build.

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Bottoms Up Honeycomb Blinds

Posted on July 29, 2021 by gemmell

If you get tilt & turn double glazing your in-frame honeycomb blinds no longer work because the head of the blinds get in the way of the tilt. So instead you have blinds which open top down, and close bottom up. It works by simply having teeth at the siderails so that when you tilt the handle it clips it out of the side rails and you move it up or down and then it clips back in when you put it back to flat.

I know there are topdown/bottomup honeycomb blinds but they use a string and I imagine that would get in the way of it opening and closing.

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My Kindergarten Teacher VR

Posted on July 19, 2021 by gemmell

This is a VR simulation of you as a five year old. You look up and a lovely warm motherly character says “Ooh poor thing, let’s get a bandaid on that. Here, have a hug,” and is generally just a loving warm character for that litter hurt boy/girl. It’s deeply psychological for those and would potentially make people who feel unloved feel that little bit loved. Everyone’s been a child who wants to be loved.

Posted in Games, Mental Health, VR | Leave a comment

Mumometer

Posted on July 14, 2021 by gemmell

This is like a stepometer but for children, and listens to how many times they say “Mum” in a day. “Muum, muuum, where’s mum?”. They get a quote of 100 mum’s and it buzzes when they hit 50, 75, 80, 90, and shocks them if they hit 100. Trains them to go look for mum instead of just walking around bellowing.

Posted in Funny, Kids, Whacko | 1 Comment

Pre-greements

Posted on July 14, 2021 by gemmell

This is a platform for law firms to have pre-agreed on formats and positions for contracts. So you might have an Ashurst and Allen-Overy rep hash out a baseline contract for something, including various approved plays and adjustments, so that there is a commonly understood starting point for a negotiation. A client can then engage Ashurst to do a deal, who finds that A&O are on the other side, and get a first draft done in record time – it costs the client less and there’s less “rounds” of negotiation because there’s a pre-negotiated starting point.

Posted in Legal, Software, Technology | Leave a comment

Modmeats

Posted on June 2, 2021 by gemmell

Instead of spending bajilions creating fake meat, why not take a meat that’s considered not very paletable e.g. kangaroo, and use some food science to transform the taste to something more like beef?

This is based on a little article about how casein binds to things in fats that probably give it that gamey flavour and smell. So if this startup can use food science methods to essentially “transform” the taste you can end up with burgers that are ecologically sustainable (kangaroos are very green) but still mean based, but taste great.

It’s actually pretty crazy that we have to cull kangaroo’s so they don’t overpopulate. There’s no need to even farm them. They don’t emit methane. They’re ideal if we can make it a popular meat. But we haven’t been able to do that, so it’s time to transform kangaroo meat into something else.

Posted in Food | Leave a comment