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Seg-ouija
High tech pseudo-psychic tomfoolery | |
Ouija boards supposedly spell out messages from the beyond via microscopic pressures applied by the hands of the people participating.
A Segway HT decides which direction to move based on tiny changes in the balance of the person riding it.
Paint a giant version of a Ouija board on a flat surface
like a disused parking lot or basketball court. Build a modified Segway HT that is suitable for two to four people to stand on all at once.
The conflicting inputs of the several persons standing on the Segway cause it to move in random directions, spelling out messages from the beyond on the giant Ouija.
Might work better with more than two wheels, or perhaps even the ball-shaped mechanism of FarmerJohn's Orb-it (see link).
Orb-it
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Orb-it
[krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Segway applications page
http://web.archive....m/applications.html
A Segway owner experimenting with ususual uses for it. [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
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Best beware what spirits you conjure on a ouija board that big, after all "possession" is nine tenths of the law. |
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Too weird: I came up with the same idea a month later but didn't find it here, and so posted it, (now deleted for multiplicity). My prose: |
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It was Friday the 13th, and Landice McFinton, a beat reporter in both senses of the word, slumped into his water-cooled recliner to finally catch a breather. It had been a long and unfruitful day of chasing the local deputy around on yet another report of a hamster attack, now so frequent that they were relegated to page five. "Worthless waste of time," he thought. He needed a story that could justify his job in this otherwise sleepy town.
Landice thumbed through the raw AP newsfeed hardcopy he had picked up from the teletype on the way out. Most of it was the usual international muddle; some war sabre-rattling, the latest Segway spinoff idea, a blurb about civil rights in China, and the Lewes bid for the Olympics. Then something out of the ordinary on page 13 caught his eye. Midnight cult activites on the rise? "That's odd, he muttered, "I thought that stuff had pretty much gone out of popularity with the rise of the net. Could be something worth digging into to see if we have any local cranks of this sort." "Probably not cover page material, but good filler anyway," he decided aloud. |
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As a beat reporter, Landice prided himself on his objectity; the ability to scope out the truth from lies; facts from fiction; what witnesses actually saw and what they were dreaming up was a rare talent in his industry, and he had it. And despite being journalistically gifted in writing style, he never dreamt. Dreaming was for the other guy. Consequently, he usually slept like a rock. After a late-night snack on some french bread, the reporter turned in. Despite the pressures of the Sunday edition, he always slept in late on Saturdays. It was the one thing he'd been looking forward to since Wednesday. Crawling under the sheets, he could feel the sandman's spell working on every joint. The day's tensions would soon be simply forgotten. |
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But he would not sleep well this night. |
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He was endlessly falling, falling through a starless, pitch-black hole in the sky. At some point he stopped and was on the ground, with no felt change in inertia. Things were coming into view, slowly. Trees. The smells of a damp forest. He was in a forest; *the* forest, the one he knew as a kid. The same forest where he had accidently shot his father while hunting. It was there where he first met the local cop, and that nice reporter fellow who would later take him in. |
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Now there were shapes moving in the trees ahead. Shapes of men, with hoods. White hoods. They seemed to be chanting together, held in some far-away trance, swaying to some rythm that escaped him. A faint smell of burnt custard was present. Up ahead and to his left, he could see a clearing, and beyond that, a campfire, with more hooded men around it, and two of them riding something together in the clearing. Turning on his reporter's instinct, Landice crept behind the sage at the edge of the clearing and watched. |
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On both sides of the clearing, there were piles of fish, burning. The grass was painted with a linear string of large, bright orange letters in a random fashion, spelling out nothing in particular; and one end was 'Yes' and 'no.' And the two men appeared to be balancing on some sort of two-wheeled cart, riding back and forth over the letters. "A Segway," thought the beat reporter. One robed man, standing so near to where Landice was hiding that he was sure he'd been spotted, shouted loudly "Who Are You, Spirit?" |
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Neither seemed to be actually driving the cart, but both would just balance upon it, with the Segway making up its own mind as to which way it wanted to go, based upon their slight shifts of weight. As the wheels would stop over a letter, they would call it out. He took out his notepad. 'Segway ouija,' he wrote and scribbled as they called. "M!" ... "C!" ... "F!" ... "I!" ... "N!" ... "T!" |
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Landice jolted himself awake, covered in sweat. It was early morning. He had tossed and turned all night long. He hadn't had a nightmare since his childhood. Brushing it off to the long hours, he decided to go for a short jog to clear his mind. |
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And then he saw it: on the front porch step, were two crossed fishbones. He whirled around. Spraypainted in orange on his front door, were the letters O and N... |
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[RayfordSteele], you have too much free time.... |
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"R!" ... "A!" ... "Y!" ... "F!" ... "O!" ... "R!" |
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Water divining "springs" to mind also... |
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Sorry I beat you to it, Rayford. Cool story, I like it. I wish I could write like that. |
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Believe me, it's an acquired skill, not a natural one. Not so tough broken into pieces. Once you've got a basic frame for the story, (which is pretty easy here, introduce idea through the unveiling of it to some likeably descriptive character) then you just figure out how to make it flow from the character's / reader's perspective from point A to point B. Throw in a mini-climax. Look for clunky parts, edit as needed, and Bubba's yer uncle. |
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Ran across a web site set up by an owner of a Segway who is experimenting with unusual applications of it and so on. Some interesting ideas. See link. |
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