h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Heh. This post has nothing to do with sporks. Just titled it that to get your attention. There are two things I would invent if I could. They both involve computers, so I will probably never actually invent them, but I have a friend who is a computer engineering major at georgia tech and I have pitched both ideas to him.

The first will be a peice of computer hardware that can be used for sculpting 3d images with ones hands. I was a computer animation major at the Art Institute of Atlanta for four years, and the big problem I had was using the computer programs to make my ideas a reality. I have thousands of ideas for animations and video games, but once I try to sit and make them a reality using 3D Studio Max or Maya, it all goes downhill. The ideas I get dont translate themselves into something that can be portrayed with flydown menues and pulling nurbs points and clicking here and running this filter. They do, however, translate well into impulses that make me want to sculpt with my hands. I always whined in class about how much easier it would be if I could just poke the sphere on the screen with my fingers instead of having to point and click to get the look I wanted. Im sure it has to be possible to make sort of a blob that connects to the end of a cable and goes into the compuer which I can use to translate my sculpting impulses into that nasty computer jargon. People have told me before that it can be done, but nobody has done it yet. Its pretty much the same concept as the WACOM tablet, which is the one thing that made the 2D end of computer animation tollerable for me. But it wont be flat and it wont be for drawing. I figure my invention would just solve the same problem except in 3D.

The second thing I would like to invent probably wouldnt be much use to anyone but me. I have a coordination problem in my fingers that has kept me from playing most musical instruments. It has also kept me from being able to type propperly. I dont even really know how to describe the way I type. In any case, I tried playing both the piano and guitar for many years in my young life. But in both cases I faced the problem that I cannot train my brain to tell each set of my fingers to do two different things at the same time. In the instance of the guitar, I ended up either strumming with both hands or picking with both hands, I couldnt make myself remember where each fret was, you know, all those things that are very important if you want to play the guitar propperly. I tried for almoast four years to no avail. Before that was the piano, for which I took lessons nearly six total years. You can imagine what went wrong there. You cant play the piano propperly by doing the same things with both sets of fingers. I could pick out tunes in my head and I could even figure out how to play them after hearing them just a few times. Plus, I learned to read music and interpret some basic music theory. But I couldnt play the bloody instrument no matter how hard I tried. Between four years of chorus, four years of guitar, and six years of piano, I understood everything but exactly how to perform. Until I discovered the Vibraphones. I connected with those. If you do not know what Vibraphones are, they are kind of like a Xylophone except they have long metal keys and are played with a soft mallet most of the time. They also have a long tube coming out of the bottom of each key with a spinning "resonator" near the top, and pedals that are opeprated with the feet and control the dampening of the metal keys. I dont exactly know if this would suffice as a decent description to someone who has no idea what they are, but if you need an image, go to
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Anyway, I had always loved their sound, but wasnt able to play a set until I joined the percussion section of the marching band my senior year in high school. It was then that my musical understanding was able to find an outlet. I could play for hours just off the top of my head because I was using my wrists instead of my fingers to punch the notes. It was pure infectious GLEE. But it only lasted a year. Once I graduated, I lost access to the school Vibes forever. So I decided to see if i could get my own set. Of course, I had to go and get attatched to an instrument that costs between three and five thousand dollars. Even if I sold my casio synthesizer and my acoustic guitar, i couldnt even come close. I havent had a musical outlet since. But i have an idea.

Ive got lots of friends who are wiggy synth-tech heads. They are great and wonderful people. The friend I mentioned above who goes to tech wants to design synthesizers. So I figured out a way that I could have a set of vibraphones with benefits. It would pretty much be a set of drum pads laid out exactly like a set of vibes with the pedal included for the resonating effect. It will be able to be hooked up to a sampler and I will be able to play any sound I want in the vibraphone format. I have pitched the idea to several people and hopefully one of them will help me with it someday.
~M