A Double-Sided Card Holder
Like many in London, I have my Freedom Pass or Oyster Card in a small plastic folder.
My Freedom Pass Folder
I used to keep one of my credit cards in the same folder, so I didn’t have to carry a full wallet. But now that the Oyster system can read credit cards, I don’t want to confuse the system and get charged as well. So now, I just have the Freedom Pass in the folder. But it is inconvenient, as I often have to get out my wallet to say pay in Waitrose.
What is needed is a folder which is say blue on one side and red on the other. With one colour face up you get the Freedom Pass or Oyster Card on the reader and the other way up, the credit card can be used on a swipe terminal.
It could even be embossed on both sides, so that the blind would get the right card on the reader.
Of course it would be in something better than cheap plastic, like leather.
I think, judging by the gossip I’ve heard, that Transport for London, are getting a bit of a problem, with the system charging an inadvertently swiped card, instead of the Oyster or Freedom Pass.
Velcro Wallpaper
I like photographs and I have small frames of them everywhere. Sometimes I put letters and newspaper clippings into frames and want to hang them on the wall. But getting them all in line is a pain and you end up bashing endless hooks in the wall or drilling a large number of holes.
I thought that an idea to handle this would be Velcro wallpaper. Perhaps, in it’s simplest form it would be a plain colour heavyweight paper, with say 10 mm. strips of the loop Velcro vertically every 50 mm. or so. Pictures could then be hung by just sticking the hook Velcro to the back of the frames. No nails or screws. I know I could just stick strips of Velcro to the wall, but then if they were on the wallpaper, I wouldn’t have to space them out. Removal would also be much simpler.
I’m not the first to think of this, although this lady on her blog envisages modified flock wallpaper. From her experiments it would appear that Velcro can support quite a weight.
I’m not sure I’d use it like she has proposed in her bathroom.
An Uplifting Idea
When you live alone as I do, you sometimes get up in a miserable mood. You wonder why you bother and perhaps a better idea would be to get another bottle of cyder, sink back under the duvet and listen to the radio. I don’t often, in that I have the responsibility of a basset hound, who has to be let out to do her business.
This morning wasn’t one of those mornings, but a friend pointed me to this item in the Daily Mail.
Ruth Amos was just 16, when she designed the StairSteady, a device to help the elderly and infirm get up the stairs more easily. It looks very good and I suspect it will do very well. Good luck to her!
I speak with grim experience. My late wife’s cancer meant that in her last days she couldn’t climb the stairs to bed. Her pride said she was going to sleep in her bed and she came down every day until the day before she died. But our house has innumerable short stair cases and installing a stair lift would have been impossibly expensive, as we’d have needed three short ones. But it would not have been difficult to install three of Ruth’s devices.
If you read the comments on the Daily Mail article, some are saying it is expensive. It is not, as I suspect most have to be individually made-to-measure and designed to be robust. For instance, if the person using the device stumbled, it would have to support the weight of the heaviest. Strength never comes cheap!
But, because it is cheaper and more adaptable than a stair-lift, I suspect that in many cases, it will be cost-effective to install the device in a house, to keep the user in their own home.
Ruth and her idea have really got my day off on a high!
I shall be watching the progress of the StairSteady.
Ideas – Control Through a Computer Network
I have a pretty extensive computer network in my house and the buildings. It’s all very standard stuff based on Cat5e cabling and a few switches.
I have a couple of cameras on the network to watch over the horses and these work well. Effectively they are cameras with an inbuilt web server that takes an address on the network. You type in that address and you see the pictures.
But there do not appear to be many other devices, that work in a similar way.
For instance, I would like a switch that could sit on the network and be used to switch exterior lights on and off at night. Or more likely when I think there is something suspicious happening. I would just click a small window on the computer screen.
There are other devices I would like to put on my network; speakers, weather sensors and level gauges for my gas tank.
I can’t find anything on the Internet, that you just plug in and start playing.
Go on! Make my day build one. I think you’ll sell lots!
The Anonymous Widower 