Summary
A list of projects that are currently underway, as well as project ideas.
by Eric Armstrong
Eric Armstrong is an accomplished author and software designer who dreams of producing his inventions and of one day owning an orchard. His Professional Biography contains a lengthy narrative that describes his technical activities over the years, while his Publications List gives a complete accounting of his published works. (For a shorter description of his recent work history, see his Resume.)
Those pages describe his past. This page describes his possible futures. If every idea on this page comes to fruition, it will be because he has had one heck of a lot of help. There is more here than any one person can accomplish in a lifetime. But there are ideas here of exceeding merit. Many of them deserve to see the light of day.
This writeup, therefore, describes projects that are in various stages of completion. Some are close to finished. Others are merely concepts. The writeups are contained in the following sections:
Eric Armstrong holds a black belt in martial arts awarded by Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim, founder of the art of Jung Su Won. The focus on inner power training and core muscles of the body led him to develop of variety of training aids:
Isometric Abdominal Exerciser: A unit that will flatten the stomach and build abdominal strength.
Abdominal Bench: A unit that builds power and strength in the body's muscular core.
G.I. Jane Bench: A unit for doing those great abdominal exercises featured in the movie. I built one prototype and eventually donated it to the martial arts studio I was training at.
Core Twisting Bench: I built a prototype out of old rowing machine parts. (It needs to be part of the abdominal bench to be really effective.)
Upper Back Exerciser: Use gravity and your body weight to build the upper back muscles so important to posture--and develop your core musculature, at the same time.
Wind-Resistance Trainer: A unit that provides a wide variety of aerobic exercises, duplicating outdoor and sports activities. It allows you to build coordinated strength for specific activities.
Mandolin-controlled synthesizer. (Concept only) Mandolin provides an easily fingered, easily played musical interface--but the short sustain and high-pitched timbre can give it a "plinky" sound. String-instrument controllers exist for Midi synthesizers, so a string instrument can be used to control the synth, rather than a keyboard. Why not package a solid-body mandolin with a synth that gives it the sustain/decay and tonal characteristics of a guitar? A note would be decay at the rate of a guitar strintg, until a new input was received on the same string.
Eric Armstrong has been investigating nutrition since he was high school, and has been an active participant in sports since graduation college. He publishes articles on health, nutrition, and fitness at treelight.com/health, and articles on health and politics at citizensAdvisory.org.
Guide to Trail Running: A short eBook that tells people how to take to the trails in style. Nearly complete.
Building a Powerful Core for Looks and Performance: A book on abdominal exercise that was based on the abdominal bench idea. Basically complete.
Creating a Flat Stomach: A shorter book the explains the daily forces that work against a flat stomach and explain how to flatten it again, focusing on isometric exercises. Basically complete.
Power Training: Principles of heavy resistance weight training, why you want it, and what exercises to do. Mostly complete.
Guide to Flexing and Stretching. Currently exists as a large collection of notes. Needs to be written up, with about 200 photos.
Guide to Internal Cleansing. Thorough house cleaning for your temple--without an enema.
Healthy Eating for People Who Don't Cook (without eating raw): Based in part on articles published at treelight.com/health, this book focuses on showing people how to eat healthy when they have little time or interest in cooking. Much of this book has been written. It could be completed in 2 or 3 months.
The Poisoning of America: A subset of the politics and health book below that shows people the substances they must avoid in the American food supply, if they want to stay healthy (and thin)--and which places the blame for the corruption of the food supply squarely on the shoulders of the major food-producing corporations. This is a shorter book that could be completed in 2 to 4 months.
Politics and Health: A systems-theoretic look at the way our political systems, corporations, and financial systems have been interacting, with the result that America now has the fatest children on earth, and is facing the most severe health crisis in history. After five months of research, the book is about halfway written. It will take another 7 months to complete.
This section describes the contents of a commercial web site that is currently under construction.
Products and explanatory articles: Short articles like "Why You Want a Rebounder" that accompany a rebounding unit that is offered for sale (drop shipped by the manufacturer).
Other products I recommend: Kettlebell, clubbells, water distiller, more...
eBooks: The titles in the previous section.
As a trained software designer, Eric Armstrong has been building software programs since he graduated college, in the dawn of pre-history (pre-PC history, anyway).
Intelligent Spellchecker/Styleguide. Now that books and other documents are starting to be maintained in XML, the time is truly ripe for an intelligent spellchecker. It's primary focus: different dictionaries for different fonts. In technical manuals, courier font is generally used for code examples. They have completely different spell checking rules than regular text. When an error is found when comparing to one dictionary, the alternative dictionary needs to be checked as well. If it's found, the error-correction dialog should get an additional option: Change Font. Similarly, the code-only dictionary could be applied to names that are all capitals, begin with a capital in the middle of a sentence, have capitals mixed in, or have a mixture of letters and numbers, The program can be pattern-based and rule-driven, so writers can check their work against the company style guide. (For example, "allows...to => lets ...", so "allows you to" or "allows them to" becomes "lets you", etc.) Such rules are terrific when a company changes its product name--you add the name change to the rules, and you know that every document you edit from then on will have that name checked--it's one less thing you have to remember.
Music Teaching Software: Based in part on articles published at treelight.com/music, this program makes it easy for a person to break a tune down into smaller parts, and play them at a comfortable speed. It even includes graphics to show the fingering on a variety of instruments. (The core pieces are written. Several months work remain to complete the program, however.)
Music Teaching CDs (production software): As baby boomers retire, they're looking for fun and educational ways to spend their time--especially in efforts that help to create a sense of community. Playing traditional music achieves all of those goals--but it's hard to learn, especially given the lack of really good tutorials. CDs that break a tune down into pieces can make the tunes much more accessible. CDs can break things down into really fine units for beginners (one tune per CD), into medium size units for intermediate players (two tunes per CD), or keep things at a higher level for advanced players (a three tune set per CD). The tracks for the CDs can be organized on disk, and a software program can eventually be created to produce the desired kind of CD. (Until then, the process can be manual.)
Backup Utility: There is still a need for a really good backup utility that will intelligently synchronize stored data to a backup disk. (This program exists only as a concept and a design.)
Scheduling Utility: A utility that makes it easy to add yearly, monthly, and weekly tasks and anniversaries, so you can check and print your calendar. (This program exists only as a concept and a design.)
Budgeting Utility: Make it easy to plan upcoming exenses, and subdivide checking and savings accounts into sub-accounts for different purposes (for example, saving for taxes or for a car). Make it easy to see how much of any given income amount is allocated, and how much is "left over" (available for spending). Use round numbers for future income and expenses, convert to fixed decimal amounts when the expense is incurred or income received, so that future plans automatically become a record of the past. (This program exists only as a concept and a design.)
Voting Advice: Based on the article, Taking the Money Out of Politics, published at citizensAdvisory.org, this server-side software makes it possible for a person to identify groups and individuals they trust and get their recommendations when it's time to vote. Tracking the numbers of people who give their trust makes it possible to measure the amount of influence that a group or organization has, in ways that make coalition-building a feasible reality. Further, since groups that have been around the longest will have the most traction, recently-formed groups with great names like "Democratic Citizens for a Democratic Democracy" will tend to have little impact--especially when they're a front for those with less-than-altrusitic goals in mind. In other words, money spent on advertising to influence elections will come to count for less than the recommendations of respected advisors. (Exists in concept form only.)
Movie/Book Advice: Based in part on the Voting Advice concept, this server software makes it possible to find books and movies that others who match your profile also like. In other words, you're recommendations will be from people who tend to like the same things you do. The service is free to users, with the money being made when people purchase books, DVDs, music CDs, and movie tickets through the site. (Exists in concept form only.)
Dating Advice: Based on the Movie/Book Advice concept, the idea is to find a date for a movie who is likely to enjoy it as much as you do, whose list of movies seen and books read is similar to yours. So not only are going out with someone you have something in common with, you also get a list of movies, books, and musical groups you can talk about.
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