Exploits

The first six summaries are marked thus because they are associated with websites. Just click on the relevant picture. Following them are summaries of many of my other exploits, some of which will eventually be expanded upon and perhaps even get dedicated websites of their own.

Automatic Pool Cleaners. I have invented four revolutionary pool cleaners. Two models of these widely-patented inventions are manufactured in California and marketed in the United States and elsewhere. It is the modest royalty income I have received from these cleaners for nearly twenty years that has allowed me to be a full-time inventor and a mostly-unpublished writer. The royalties are still funding my deliberations on rotary engines, perhaps my most important and ultimately promising project. See the summary below.

Illustrated Limericks. I have written more than a thousand limericks, two of which were recently amongst the winning entries in the Washington Post’s annual limerick competition, perhaps the most important in the world. This website contains over two hundred of them. Although the collection includes verses that would shock your Granny, it also includes some that she might have read to you when you were a tousle-haired innocent. Record-breaking wordplay abounds. My Bishop Tutu limerick, for instance, is the first limerick ever written that successfully uses a single sound in each of the nine syllables of a single line. Almost all of my limericks have a discernible shape. They are not just the usual series of jagged lines. In my eccentric zeal for making challenges (whether artistic or intellectual or technological) as tricky as possible, I chose to add this infuriating complexity to an already difficult task. The controlled line lengths were achieved by word choice only - not by using typesetting adjustments.

Rotary Engines. I am now in the final stages of developing exciting new rotary engine geometry. Although many different categories of rotary motion are represented in my work, I have invested most of my efforts in a range of super-compact, hyper-speed rotary phase engines. They will have between only two and five moving parts, each spinning about its own axis, and will incorporate many mechanical and thermodynamic advantages over existing engines. The cost of patenting the huge number of new approaches that I have generated will be prohibitive, so I shall be seeking financial backing.

StableTable. I have invented the world’s only automatically stabilising four-legged restaurant-style table. However uneven the surface it stands on, the award-winning StableTable automatically and instantly makes the necessary adjustments. It enjoys international patent protection and a fully-developed production version is now being marketed successfully in South Africa. Although I am the registered inventor and gave the table its name, I receive no income from the South African operation. When StableTable eventually finds other international markets, I hope to get royalties.

Angle Trisection. For around 2,500 years mathematicians have been stymied by sundry problems in geometry, one of them being the division of an angle into three equal parts using only a compass and unmarked ruler. It is now known to be impossible - unless a little ingenious cheating is employed. The famous Archimedes of Syracuse cheated by using a marked ruler. Others have cheated by using special tools. On this site I describe my own rule-bending method of trisection by compass and unmarked ruler alone. The validity of my method has recently been acknowledged by the mathematical fraternity, and my paper describing it has been published in the March 2007 edition of The College Journal of Mathematics. Click here to see what Professor W. Kahan of the University of California and others have concluded about my new construction.

WordSpeare 2010. I have written many computer programs for my own use, including one that has enabled my clumsy typing fingers to reach nearly eighty words a minute on the Dvorak keyboard (which Windows can be set for, so it’s not necessary to buy any new hardware). WordSpeare is my first venture into commercial programming. It is a unique word-processor that enables writers, particularly those who write verse, to find just the right word. It has been a huge task, but is finally ready for release. A free evaluation version will soon be found at both WordSpeare.co.uk and WordSpeare.com. This link will be activated as soon as the site goes live in early May 2010. My typing software will probably also be offered before the end of the year. Watch this space!

Manpowered Aircraft. After being awarded Air Force wings, I was so taken with flying and aerodynamics that I started designing a manpowered aircraft. Only two or three had ever flown before and I knew nothing about them. I had seen only the ridiculous flapping efforts of the old newsreels. Three years later I had built an aircraft with a 95-foot wingspan weighing only 130 pounds. It took off on its very first outing. Lack of backing cost me the Kremer prize, which was finally won only many years after my beautiful machine had first lifted so gracefully into the air. This was my greatest failure - not of inventive or technological skill, but of resolve to see projects through to completion. I still have the same flaw. When I have solved one problem, I have time only for the next one. I have no time at all for wooing financial backers.

Children’s Verse. When I was twenty-one, I wrote a long book entirely in verse about a little boy who reluctantly spends a holiday with his eccentric grandfather. The pair, travelling in the old man’s shiny time machine, share remarkable adventures in the prehistoric and ancient worlds. Despite the enthusiasm of almost everyone else who read it, including many strangers who owed me no politeness, publishers saw things differently. Actually, I approached only two members of that fraternity because - as I have already indicated in the previous summary - I seldom have either the time or the inclination to push my work on the men with the money. I prefer to direct my energies to the next challenge, for there are always many more beckoning anxiously.

Ancient Technology. Faced with a choice of study for my first postgraduate dissertation, I decided to combine my education in Greek, Latin and ancient history with my passion for science and technology. The result was a dissertation in which I refuted the old contention that Greek and Roman technology were stagnant compared with other areas of classical achievement. As an inventor myself, I marvelled at the technological genius of my forebears. These days, my conclusion seems to be widely endorsed.

Physics Insights. I could say that in science and technology I am entirely self-taught. But this common phrase does not really reflect the truth. In reality, I am mostly ‘self-thought’. In my obsession to be original, I tackle all intellectual challenges with as much ignorance as possible, and do not communicate with others in the field. A negative consequence is that I sometimes make slow progress. A positive one is that my perspective is often unique. Much of the physics I use, including even many of the quantifying formulae, have been developed wholly independently of text books. Nothing gives me more of a buzz than thinking my way independently into an understanding or formula or design or invention, and only afterwards finding that it is indeed part of the existing body of knowledge. I have enjoyed this experience hundreds of times.

Flying Dangerously. I come from perhaps the world’s most prolific family of aviators. Starting with my great-uncle, a Royal Flying Corps pioneer and long distance air-race hero, over a dozen of our clan have earned their wings. DFC’s festooned sundry walls of my childhood. My own flying adventures include surviving an Air Force crash, flight-testing my own dangerous inventions, and almost flying my microlight into a convenient hospital ward.

Hovercraft Project. A wise decision to study mechanical engineering was undone by my bad habit of wanting to follow my own path rather than learn from others. I quickly dropped out of university the first time round to design and build a unique four-seater hovercraft with an old school-friend. Though a technical triumph, the project inevitably left us both penniless and unemployed and only marginally wiser. My friend did sensibly go on to become staid and conforming. I simply carried on indulging my endless creative urges at the expense of economic stability and societal approval.

Centrifugal Candles. This was my first  commercial success as an inventor. I developed a system of half-filling special molds with multi-coloured dollops of very hot wax, and then spinning them at 3,000 rpm. The resultant shells of beautifully marbled colours emerged in just minutes (compared with the many hours required in normal molds). The candles were sold in a few upmarket boutiques and department stores for many years.

Animals Antics. I have a deep affection for animals and have had remarkable experiences with them from early childhood. These stories are one of the many unwritten books that I still have inside me. When I eventually find time for the task, I shall be writing about such friends as Barry the bat and his wild mother who would alight on my chest to visit him; Dopey, the frisbee-chasing bad-tempered guinea fowl; and Monkey, the wild vervet who regularly arrived for tea at our garden table.

Pottery Kiln. At about the same time as the centrifugal candle manufacturing, I became interested in making pottery. The large kiln I had managed to buy required three-phase industrial current but my partner and I were working out of a suburban garage.  I developed a large quickly-collapsible portable kiln by pirating parts of the industrial one. It worked very well on normal household current and served me in three locations, including my bachelor flat.

Vegetarian Recipes. As a vegetarian since my early boarding school days, I have an understandable interest in food. Schoolboys and trainee pilots are always hungry, and when they are giving most of their protein to the current mascot (in both cases, a black cat) food weighs heavily on their minds. Over the years I have concocted many hearty dishes, most of them spicy, and have also developed a unique recipe format that provides strictly linear instructions for minds - mostly male - that function best that way.

Arrested In Delphi. A long time ago, two girlfriends and I were back-packing in Europe when we lingered in Delphi. I fell in love with Greece and with unspoiled Delphi in particular. At the same time, a group of American drama students from Berkeley were rehearsing their Greek tragedy in Delphi’s ancient amphitheatre. We grew tired of their onslaught on the sacred atmosphere, and unknowingly chose the night of their first performance before the great and the good to make our move. The bravest of the two girls floated into the amphitheatre in flowing white robes just as a stage baby was about to be dashed to the ground. She flung out her arms to deliver her address - but stage fright had robbed her of her witty words. ‘Friends, Romans and countrymen’, she intoned instead to outraged enemies, Greeks and foreigners. Fortunately, Guantanamo Bay was not yet available as a prison, so the Greeks were left to deal with us themselves.

Bumping into Gorbachev. On a semi-clandestine visit to the crumbling Soviet Union, I remembered the boast to my family that - just as I had successfully once vowed to see Bush senior in California - I would now see Gorbachev in Moscow. So I sneaked away from a compliant little group of strictly chaperoned visitors to the Kremlin, darted quickly down an alley to make my forbidden escape, and - yes, you guessed it - I bumped into Gorbachev more literally than his bodyguards appreciated.

Building Tree-Houses. I built my first proper tree-house when I was eight. My parents were impressed that it had piped drinking water, but what really dripped from its thin plastic pipes was sun-warmed orange squash. My final tree-house was built when I was sixteen. It spread its great load over three separate trees, had a thatched roof covering two stories, and a beautiful patio. The main trapdoor lowered and raised the hinged ladder. The ladder similarly activated the trapdoor. So substantial was this structure that it qualified as parentally-approved accommodation for all the adolescents present at our annual family Christmas gatherings. It was called Day’s Inn (after me), and had a beautiful hanging sign to prove it. Its more famous namesake had not yet started luring weary travellers to its marginally more comfortable beds.

Shorthand System. As an ostensibly full-time student  - but simultaneously trying to do many other things - I often wished I could write shorthand so that note-taking would be quicker and easier. So I developed a totally new system that was even briefer than Pitman’s and very much easier to learn. Remarkably, it recorded with no extra strokes the full vowel sound of each word’s stressed syllable. As usual, I did nothing to sell the idea.

Calico Aeroplane. Before their invention, I built a unique flying machine that could have been mistaken for the much later hang-glider. It was my first foray into aeronautical engineering. It ran on skids rather than wheels and required towing to get airborne. The driver appointed to this frightening towing duty was my RAF-squadron-leader stepfather. Because he loved my mother and valued her ongoing reciprocation, I never got higher than three feet from the ground because he slowed down every time he saw me leave it. I have little doubt that his frustrating caution saved my life.

Pizzas, Yoghurt and Tofu. As an inveterate problem-solver, I enjoy tackling technically-difficult culinary challenges. My first success was the development of a way to make high-quality pizzas in an ordinary domestic oven. Some years ago, I briefly advertised and sold my method in a Sunday newspaper. More recent successes have been my methods for consistently making perfect yoghurt and tofu. I shall publish these on the net in due course.

Living on Water. My wife and I, after being attacked by car-jackers (see below), decided to make some major life changes. The most dramatic of these was our decision to live on a boat. For six years we lived on a 70-foot narrowboat called Shakespeare and cruised the rivers and canals of England and Wales. Almost every night during the summer we enjoyed a new garden and new neighbours, including the Queen when we moored below Windsor Castle.

Racing and Blackjack. A fascination with the mathematics of probability inevitably led me to develop systems for betting profitably on blackjack and horses. Unlike almost all other fields of gambling, these two can, in fact, be conquered because the mathematical reality is not - as with most gambling - inevitably loaded against the punter. For a few months, thanks to a wealthy backer and my first computer, I bet the equivalent of about $50,000 a month on horses. Despite frequent large wins, we were still marginally down after losing a potential windfall of $100,000 to a thug’s laser gun. Alas, the backer got cold feet, and I again moved on to other things.

Writing Novels. When I was about twenty-one I showed a half-finished novel to a major publisher. To my surprise and delight, it was very well-received and I was encouraged to finish it. Strangely, I lost interest immediately, probably because the challenge of proving that I could write had gone. I never wrote another word of it. Since then I have written various books on various subjects. However, the task of finding and convincing publishers has never held much attraction for me. So, with one or two exceptions, including second place in a major international limerick competition, and my own Open Directory web-published limericks, I am a prolific writer largely without readers.

Killing Willie. One-seater aeroplanes present a problem for those who wish to fly them for the first time: hands-on instruction is impossible. So when my friend Willie asked me to teach him to fly my microlight, the best I could do was give him endless lessons in aerodynamics and over many months teach him to fly progressively higher along the runway - but never more than about five feet above it. Until the fateful day of his first true solo, that is. Willie then shot up almost vertically to over a hundred feet, forgetting everything I had ever taught him. He promptly stalled the little aeroplane and dropped vertically down just as quickly as he had shot up. He and the unyielding earth met on unfriendly terms. Willie survived, so I narrowly avoided the shame of creating a widow and three orphans. Willie no longer travels by air. He prefers the train.

Foiling Hijackers. I have a steely determination never to be a craven victim of thuggery. I will always fight back, even if it has to be at a later time and at a place of my own choosing. When four armed carjackers attacked me and my wife on a lonely country road, we managed to escape. I then quickly armed myself and immediately turned the tables on them. The sound of gunfire alerted nearby security forces, who soon overpowered three of the attackers. They were all given time in jail to reflect on the inadvisability of assuming that all victims are prepared to  roll  over meekly and do exactly as they are told. If you do give in too easily, you are partly to blame for the suffering of the next wretch violated by a thug emboldened by your spinelessness.

Billion Dollar Gold Scandal. I once found myself inadvertently at the heart of an attempt to unravel a billion-dollar crime syndicate that was preying on some of the world’s great mining houses. The vast scale of the criminality was made possible by corruption in very high places, including top law enforcement officials and cabinet ministers in various far-flung countries. My reluctant and somewhat dangerous function was to gather all the evidence from a witness (who had approached me for help) and present it directly to one of the mining houses. I overcame their initial reluctance to deal with him, and eventually negotiated a substantial reward on his behalf.

Skydiving Stupidity. I have admitted to being a jackass from time to time. One of my worst bouts of jackassery occurred when I made my second parachute jump. I was so enjoying the wonderful sensation of floating that I forgot to operate the toggles and steer towards a suitable landing area. Too late, I saw the sharp-bladed spinning windmill just beneath me. Well, not quite too late: I had just enough time to avoid being serially sliced by those vicious blades. I did not have enough time to save the parachute from a similar fate. I was soon rescued from my embarrassing suspension eight feet above the ground, and the shredded parachute and violated windmill were rescued from each other.

Speaking Dog Latin. I was educated to read and write five languages, but my favourite language is a sixth one that I was never taught to use. I speak fluent Dog Latin, an added-syllable family language. During my childhood, adults used it to guard their words from my inquisitive ears. To no avail. From the first time I heard it, I understood every word of it. When I was ten I translated ‘necrobioniopolyanthydrocthronanthropopothycology’ into Dog Latin. Or was it merely ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ or ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’? Perhaps I exaggerate by claiming that it was the first. What I am sure of is that my strangely precocious grasp of this crazy language was never again seen by adults in floccinaucinihilipilificatory terms. I hadn’t realised that my feat was particularly noteworthy until I noticed the slack-jawed gape of parental faces. For good measure, I promptly translated these exact preposterous words into it as well: ‘gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have arrived at the utmost state of deglutition consistent with dietetic sobriety’. This simply means ‘I am full’ in everyday English and was a postprandial (after dinner) conceit of my imperious Victorian great-grandmother. Adult conceit, where Dog Latin was concerned, had now taken such a battering that I was hard-pressed to find any grownup who would ever speak it again in my presence.

Other Topics. The summaries above do not by any means represent the full range of my activities and interests and experiences. There are many more topics that I could add, and probably shall from time to time. These will include my opinions on sundry subjects, such as the crucial importance of law and order. A gentle society can thrive only if those who refuse to be gentle are shown no tolerance - period. There is nothing civilised or noble about serially excusing the few who are vicious and cruel at the terrible expense of the many who are gentle and kind. On the contrary, it is careless cold-heartedness to unleash surrogate terror on innocent souls by adhering to smug liberal values that are often self-serving and deceitful. What would an advanced alien make of a brute still stalking our streets despite his seventy-two previous convictions? It is not a compassionate judge who grants him his seventy-third chance to inflict fear and misery on others. It is either a callous or deeply stupid one. The very obvious fact that we need to reform society to prevent the tragedy of so many young men growing up to be antisocial and nasty does not mean that we should, in the meantime, be left exposed to their nastiness after they have clearly demonstrated that it is an intrinsic part of their characters.