

Magnetic guitar frets

If the frets were sufficiently strong electromagnets, and the strings sufficiently (massive and?) close to the fretboard, magnetic frets could be like capos that you can move much more quickly. Even better would be to have six of them per fret; then you could ask (via some appropriate interface, likely via the feet) for things like like "fret the first two strings at the third fret, and leave the other strings (magnetically) unfretted".





The grid of overlapping stacks: A window manager idea

MotivationDon't you wish your window manager could answer questions like these?

"Show me the last instance of Google Chrome I used."

"Show me the last application instance (of any kind) I used for making dinner."

"Show me the last instance of Chrome I used for making dinner."

DefinitionAn application can have multiple "instances". Each instance potentially generates multiple windows.

The two* axes of the grid are application and goal. The values along the application axis are determined automatically.

The goals (plural!) of an application instance are assigned by the user. This is similar to how users of some operating systems can assign windows to desktops.

The Grid: (1) For each goal there is a stack of application instances. (2) For each application there is a recency-ordered stack of instances of it. (3) For each (application, goal) pair there is a recency-ordered stack of instances of the application. Graphically, (1) and (2) could be naturally represented as the borders of (3).

Access raises an instance to the top of the relevant stacks. For example, if I access an instance of Chrome from the stack indexed by the goal "learning botany", it rises to the top of that goal stack, the top of the Chrome application stack, and the top of the (Chrome, learning botany) stack.

*For someone running enough application instances, a third axis could be useful -- for example, object (the thing you're focused on, as opposed to what you're trying to achieve with it).