I came here a couple of days ago, had a bit of fun, read some posts. I got involved with some of the ideas, posted a few of my own. I have come to grips with what this place is all about, and I know what I miss in here.
I do not know about you guys, but I miss a Baked Shelf. As soon as someone figures an idea has been done before, no matter what the point of the idea is, no matter what new ideas can spring from it and no matter what knowledge the post holds, it is deleted.
I understand this concept; we want to keep the place purely half-baked. In the meantime, we are throwing away valuable sources of information and inspiration away. Someone had an idea; you wanted to hear a discussion on the topic before posting some idea of your connected to the one that was laid down.. and then someone says: already done, delete. Why? Why not just throw it into Baked Shelf? Have it continue a life of it's own and maybe inspire completely new things.
In my opinion, the improvement from this method would be two-fold:
1) Just by browsing through hb, you would be exposed to a lot of knowledge, tested and implemented. Why not? That is great, no matter what your motivation for being here is.
2) Reading something about some invention, you might just clear up that small detail that was bothering you in your own inventive project, or you may run into a new and exciting angle to regard a specific area of, well, basically anything.
With Baked Shelf we would have a base of inventions and concepts, our own personal toolbox, from which we could construct more advanced, better inventions.
Let's have a Baked Shelf :)-- Zus, Sep 18 2006 Baked! http://www.uspto.gov/ [Galbinus_Caeli, Sep 18 2006] > I have come to grips with what this place is all about
No, you haven't.
> As soon as someone figures an idea has been done before, no matter what the point of the idea is, no matter what new ideas can spring from it and no matter what knowledge the post holds, it is deleted.
No, it isn't.
Maybe you could find an existing gadget or technology blog (or, uh, homemade S&M blog, if that exists) and contribute to it, rather than trying to turn this site into yet another technology blog.
Uhm, has anyone seen a hydrant around here? I need to connect this hose to something.-- jutta, Sep 18 2006 I may be wrong but I think we play with wet, pliable clay rather than hard, dry porcelain - more like mud wrestling as opposed to an antiques market.
throws a clod at jutta and ducks...-- po, Sep 18 2006 //throws a clod at jutta and ducks// Hey, what did I do?-- fridge duck, Sep 18 2006 Is this where I line up for the mud wrestling event? (stands there in bikini briefs and goggles).-- normzone, Sep 18 2006 Wth this IS the baked shelf.. well, amongst other things. Cool..
I see jutta is as cheerful as ever, /wave
I don't know, po.. clay is cool, as long as you update yourself on who has baked what design, so that you don't reinvent pots.-- Zus, Sep 18 2006 But reinventing is part of the fun.
I've sometimes thought that I was on to something truly new, and later found that it was already done. Well, I had the pleasure of working it out on my own, and the ego boost of finding out that it was workable (without even getting my hands dirty), and once or twice found that NASA was conducting high-level work on "my" idea.
If it wasn't baked, I'd have endured negative it-won't-work comments from folks who hadn't read the idea all the way through. And even if it is already thought of here, I increase the chances that the next guy will find the concept when he searches. For instance, I just posted an idea that was not new, because I searched for the terms that I thought in, not the words used on the previous idea. I didn't delete my version of the idea, since it was different in some ways.
I learn a lot from the comments on the ideas here, and don't think that we delete ideas very much. Only if an idea is bad science, badly written or truly embarrassing do I advocate deletion. But not if some good annotations have been made.
Jutta has made rules to keep this place in line and on line. "Deletion for baked" is not a rule, especially if you made a good try and didn't know about something obscure. Copying something obscure and presenting it as your own is against the rules, BTW.-- baconbrain, Sep 18 2006 //a new and exciting angle// 36.3567 degrees - The most exciting and original angle of which I have ever thought, (to date)
!! WARNING!! more angles may follow.-- xenzag, Sep 18 2006 I've conducted an images search on mud+wrestling+goggles. It was fun, but there's no way I'm going to link to any of my findings.-- normzone, Sep 18 2006 I've conducted a phrase search for "this is baked" here in the Halfbakery, and found 489 instances. Half of them, at least, are not preceded by "if" or "I think". It doesn't look like folks are deleting for bakedness.-- baconbrain, Sep 18 2006 I've seen a lot of ideas deleted by their own authors after it was pointed out they were baked.
P.S. isn't Zus an Afrikaans swear word?-- DrCurry, Sep 19 2006 Zus is for Zeus, minus e, which is the only letter his name has in common with his wife's.
Hey, I see someone has a different take on finding out his idea was baked.. [baconbrain] ;)
I see how you can get a kick out of figuring someone has baked your idea, and that it actually works. But picture this: a very lucrative business in US is dog-walking service. That just tells me people are dumb enough to go for anything. For me, finding something I thought of baked out there, is no sign of approval.. Most stuff could work with our crazy species. However, it hits me every time that I did not do due diligence & found out that the idea was there, implemented and the works.-- Zus, Sep 19 2006 Hey, Zus.-- baconbrain, Sep 21 2006 It looks like "kind van je zus" is like a swear word in Dutch, but I have no idea why. (I think zus translates to sis(ter))-- Zimmy, Sep 21 2006 I resent that.-- Zus, Sep 22 2006 Don't feel too bad. There are worse things to be than [Zimmy]'s sister.
[Zimmy], for a start. ;)-- moomintroll, Sep 22 2006 [moom], That's true. I didn't really mean to offend [Zus], though & that translation is far better than the "Poes" in Afrikaans that DrC might have been thinking of. I was also thinking he might have heard something said in Afrikaans w/ the word "zus" in it and mistook it for a swear word. (I am not sure, but it kind of looks like Afrikaans might be a mixture of English, German, and Dutch).-- Zimmy, Sep 22 2006 shut the hell up, you are making my head hurt.-- Zus, Sep 24 2006 Ah. Extensive research suggests that the word I'm thinking of is "sies," as in "ag, sies" (although I remember the pronunciation as more like "och suss").
It was on "Ag Pleez Daddy," the B side of "Jo'Burg Talking Blues," and my father always flat out refused to translate the term.-- DrCurry, Sep 24 2006 random, halfbakery