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Ideas

Hair Pomade

For years I used hairspray…. but one day I went to a real barbershop.  Before I would get my haircut wherever I could that would provide the least difficulties.

I didn’t want to schedule an appointment, I didn’t want to wait a long time, and I just wanted a quick decent haircut.  But I came across a new barbershop in town. It was run by young men with tattoos, slick hair, and a logo from the past.

Going to a barbershop like this made me realize the benefits.  How much nicer of a haircut I received, the extra pampering with a steaming hot towel, and being surrounded by a group of really cool guys.

The other thing that happened was I switched from using hairspray to pomade.

I loved the easy of styling my hair and how it kept it’s style but wasn’t harsh and felt more natural.

I of course thought to myself, what if I made my own pomade.  Can I make it smell a certain way?  Put it in my own cool packaging?

So I started looking into the wholesale bulk products that I would need to make my own.

https://essentialsbycatalina.com/hair-pomade-base

https://www.rainshadowlabs.com/Coconut-Oil-organic_p_1179.html

https://www.mansfieldking.com/why-mk/

 

No Code App Development

Because I like to create things, ever since the iPhone app store came out I was interested in having my own App.  I looked into ways to code and develop it myself.  I eventually did create a Napa Restaurant App, but with the help of a developer.  When the app stopped working, instead of hiring a developer to fix it again, I started looking into seeing if I could create the app myself.

No Code App Development does exist, but I haven’t found the solution that is right for me.  I didn’t want to pay a monthly subscription for the app, and I wanted it to be simple enough that I didn’t have to spend a lot of time learning how to create the app and get it working properly.

Through the years I have gone back and looked at different options and often keep track of possible solutions.

Here’s an article on some options that I found interesting. https://www.sitepoint.com/3-options-for-creating-mobile-apps-without-coding/

For a long time I have felt that ionic was the best solution.  https://ionicframework.com/ I’m just not sure that their free version offers enough features.

Here’s the beginning of an app I started creating with ionic. 

https://creator.ionic.io/share/html/fbdea944b2e1#/page1/page6

 

 

 

 

Fandango, Why are they the only one?

I never purchase tickets via fandango, but always use the fandango iPhone app to check for the latest showtimes.

I wonder why aren’t there other competitors in this space? It seems to me that if I were a movie theater I would want to build my own web page with showtimes, and a way to purchase tickets ahead of time. I’d also build a mobile app for people to check times and purchase tickets. Why outsource this to another vendor? If I were the theater company I wouldn’t even charge an additional fee for purchasing online. If anything this would save money, the line would be shorter, and I would only need one sales person at the ticket counter instead of two or three. Employees are expensive.

Ok, so it is an outsourced service. Why is there only one company providing this service? Why are their fees so high? Does Fandango have some exclusive contract with every movie theater company?

Why couldn’t another third party compete in this space, have lower fees, and even a more streamlined process for admittance into the theater once you arrive (? Barcode scan your phone like they do at the airport).

Hmmm

Trash door from kitchen to outside

My current home has a trash compactor built into the cabinets. This gets the garbage can out of the way, where typically it is on the floor of the kitchen.

A trash compactor is great, mostly because it compacts trash. Even with our family of four, I typically only take the garbage out once or twice a week.

But it is disgusting. After a few years of use you have to try and clean it up a bit, and this is a horrible job. Plus, areas that you can’t clean begin to smell.

It’s garbage, it belongs outside, and if you ask me, the kitchen garbage can belongs outside two.
I think our future homes will be built with small trap doors above the counter, either in the wall, or in the counter top, that allow you to dump your garbage outside of your kitchen into a garbage can that is located outside of your home. Most kitchens are built with an exterior wall to allow for a window, so I think the layout will work well.

Now this door would have to be insulated, provide a good seal with something like weather stripping, and have a latch or lock to keep it closed.

The garbage can outside would have to have some enclosure to keep animals and others from digging through your trash. And while I agree this enclosed space would also become disgusting and smelly; two things: One, it’s not in your house, its outside, and Two, because it’s outside you can have a hose and a drain and quickly clean it with very little work.

I think this application would also promote recycling and composting as well, as you could have separate doors for those items. I don’t like leaving the recycling in the house, and so we don’t have a designated basket to put it before it gets taken out. Throughout the day, or sometimes two, it builds up on our countertop, until I get the motivation to clear it out and take it outside. How great would it be to throw it out of your kitchen through a small door and be done with it instantly.

If I get the opportunity to build or rebuild a home, this is going to be a necessary option.

Idea for car makers

I was at the gas station filling up my car, when I realized I haven’t calculated miles per gallon in a long time. Granted the BMW I drive keeps it’s own calculation that can be viewed at any point in time while driving. This makes it a much more usable system, as opposed to waiting to fill up on gas to know what that magical number turns up to be.

But as I was watching the dial on the pump scroll through the number of gallons that were being poured into my car, I thought about the other number scrolling right next to the gallons, the dollars. The cost of gas in a given period may be just as important or more important to most people, than the number of gallons used for a distance of travel.

Perhaps if we new the cost of a trip, we’d be more conscience and therefore cautious of the extent of our travels. We might conserve our gas, because we would be conserving our money.

Now maybe this is something that has been thought of before, and maybe it even exists. The only reason I can see why it doesn’t exist is because it may cause oil companies to loose money as we are more aware of, and become more frugal of our costs.

I think vehicles could be equipped with a cost per mile function in their computers. Now granted gas costs change rapidly and thus would require the user to manually change the gas price in the cars computer system, but this could be done at the time of filling up. Better yet, cars could pick up a wireless signal from gas stations, which would import the current gas prices into the vehicles computer system.

The largest advantage to such a system, would be to enhance the trip meter that keeps tracks of the number of miles driven for a given period defined by the driver, by also tracking the cost of that trip.

You could see that driving to get coffee adds an additional cost on top of the cost of the coffee. Suddenly being aware of your expenses for driving might lead to trying to better conserve gas (read: your money).

You’ll decide if it is really worth making special trips for certain things now knowing your actual travel expenses.

Now we all know this is an easy thing to calculate and could be done by most people if they really wanted, but making it an automated feature as part of car computers will put the idea to actual use. Most people are too lazy to manually do this, just as most of us don’t routinely calculate our mpgs.