Do you have an idea which has fallen through the cracks with only a few clever puns in the annos? Do you have an idea that has more technical substance than humor and would like it reviewed seriously?
Simply add the word [marked-for-engineering] to the annos or body of the idea and await a bored engineer to search for the tag.
The tag should be removed after your questions have been answered so as to not flood the search.
*edit* NOTE: if the tag is added to the body of the idea, the idea is not bumped to the front page.
*edit 2* changed from boingbchakbchak to engineeringhelpneeded
*edit 3* engineeringhelpneeded changed to [marked-for-engineering] :)-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 here's one that is more humor than engineering Alien_20Exploder[marked-for-engineering] or not [dentworth, Sep 25 2007] A view of all [marked-for-engineering] ideas http://www.halfbake...-for-engineering_5dnot in the halfbakery category. [bleh, Sep 25 2007] *snorts*
--- dentworth, Sep 25 2007 Just a snort? No explanation? What's the rub?-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 Although I appreciate some ideas on the HB can be solid technical solutions, I tend to like the ideas that follow in the spirit of the help file:"The halfbakery is a communal database of poorly thought-out ideas for inventions."
Doesn't have to have any puns in it. In fact, I've gone off puns these days. They don't replace any real ingenuity in the ideas.
However, I am a bored engineer and I would (maybe) chip in my 2 cents to an idea that needed help...-- Jinbish, Sep 25 2007 I like it. It identifies ideas that you felt could do with further discussion whilst not shoving them back in to peoples faces. Ain't nothing wrong with that. [+]
However, with the ever increasing in-jokes and oddities we have here it won't be long before a gurp a gurp gurp.
Shpoik!-- theleopard, Sep 25 2007 // I tend to like the ideas that follow in the spirit of the help file: "The halfbakery is a communal database of poorly thought-out ideas for inventions."//
I agree, to a certain extent, but part of the reason I love this place is that there is a larger per capita intelligence here than most other places I have ventured. I enjoy a forum where nearly everyone is open minded and receptive to an idea without immedately flaming a bad idea (unless of course it involves perpetual motion or other bad science, but even then they usually explain the problem rather than flame). There have been many cases where an author genuinely believes in an idea he has had without knowing of an obscure physical law (or an application of a well known one), or without knowing where to obtain the formulae to run the maths.
There are several of you out there who have a much larger depth of knowledge in may areas than the rest of us, and we may have a larger depth than you. I long for the days of yore when a high school graduate had a complete grasp of the most advanced technology of the age. Now, the case is more that you get out of high school and pick a specialty and,the rest of your educational life is spent narrowing your experience. It used to be a mile wide and an inch deep, now its quite the opposite. Sure, there are things outside your specialty which you must understand in order to fully apply your knowledge, but Shirey, the average Textile Engineer has little knowledge of Evolutionary Biology and vice versa.-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 [bleh] that day hasn't existed since someone decided to get out of the flint chipping business and start twisting grass into useful shapes. Specialization is what human culture is all about.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Sep 25 2007 Why the nonsense word? Wouldn't "engineering help needed" do as well, and be easier to remember / type?-- csea, Sep 25 2007 The nonsense word makes sure the search will only bring up ideas that have specifically asked for help. Searching for "engineering help needed" could easily bring up others...
EDIT - although it doesn't in this case. But it might!-- theleopard, Sep 25 2007 //Specialization is what human culture is all about.//
That's true, which makes my point even more valid. Specialization often necessitates collaboration.-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 csea's making my point: // Why the nonsense word? Wouldn't "engineering help needed" do as well, and be easier to remember / type?
If you're using a nonsense word, you're creating a little whirl of confusion in its wake. Sometimes that's what you want (e.g., it helps you distinguish the people who know the culture from those who don't, avoids accidental mix-up, etc.); but here, in the context of helping people, I'd forgo color in favor of clarity.-- jutta, Sep 25 2007 Good points about the nonsense word. if you don't use the boolean operators the search for engineering help needed returns *several* results. However if we collapse it into one word 'engineeringhelpneeded' that could work. Though that means theleopard and I will have to change our tags.-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 Damn it!-- theleopard, Sep 25 2007 Searching for "engineering help needed" - with quotes - would work, too. Boolean operators? What boolean operators?-- jutta, Sep 25 2007 so you'd prefer the boolean " " to collapsing it to one word?-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 Why not [marked-for-engineering] ?-- theleopard, Sep 25 2007 That's the first time I've heard "" referred to as boolean operators. Boolean operators are AND, NOT, OR, and sometimes EXOR - they operate on yes/no values - but not quote marks (who do something more complicated having to do with text next to one another in a certain order).
[marked-for-engineering] -- hm! It's legible, and it says "I'm something special, not just text", and we can have a help section on it that encourages people to put that in if they want help.-- jutta, Sep 25 2007 //the ever increasing in-jokes and oddities we have here it won't be long before a gurp a gurp gurp//
hasn't slowed you down any! maybe someday this entire site will be one big in-joke. and we will laugh and laugh every time we come here. *shudder*-- k_sra, Sep 25 2007 I think he is mixing up booleans with regular expressions. The former often result from the latter, but they are not synonymous.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Sep 25 2007 Gurp.-- theleopard, Sep 25 2007 //I think he is mixing up booleans with regular expressions.// I think he is too :)
[marked-for-engineering] seems best. Why didn't you just come out and say it to begin with theloepard? Now I'll have to change my tags a third time.-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 * snorts *
just allergies.-- bungston, Sep 25 2007 Nice. Can we also have a [marked-for-translation] for those that don't speak Treon?-- RayfordSteele, Sep 25 2007 Since when did refrigerants have languages?-- shapu, Sep 25 2007 snorts is how I laughed. now I am thinking this is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately I'll have to remove the M-F-E tag from my "Alien Exploder" ,*sniffle* (sadness)-- dentworth, Sep 25 2007 I didn't see one on your idea's page, only on the link here, which doesn't show up on the view I created since it falls in the halfbakery category.-- bleh, Sep 25 2007 ok fine, I leave it now. *snorts and leaves*-- dentworth, Sep 25 2007 I feel a bit embarrassed about the whole nonsense word thing - but always found interesting the methods used across different disciplines for creating and applying markers. For example, in assembly, where a limited number of tokens (alphabet-things) are displayable (0-9,A-F) people might add arbitrary "words" like DEADBEEF or similar in order to add searchable bookmarks for areas of memory that were special, or needed to be revisited in some way. Similarly, a search in google-code for the string "be dragons" (from the famous Lenox Globe's "hic sunt dracones" map annotations) shows up all sorts of worrisome uncharted code. People meeting in train stations might wear coloured roses, fezes (plural of fez anyone?), carry umbrellas, or affect funny walks - it's all the same kind of thing. Anti-markers also exist - I remember looking at some of my Dad's building drawings (back in the day when you did these things with ink and all sorts of exciting rulers) and seeing an ink-blot, which had been meticulously labelled as a "Blob" so as to avoid the site crew accidentally spending a day casting an irregular shape in concrete. Anyway, I think it's helpful for the poster to be able to gently signal whether they're looking for some (semi) serious analysis - though whether they should always trust it is another matter entirely (gravity IS caused by spinning)-- zen_tom, Sep 25 2007 Engineer this +-- zeno, Sep 26 2007 (added to view list)
Now to find time to actually help (or just add to the puns).-- Worldgineer, Sep 27 2007 I appreciate the support for this guys, its good to know I'm not alone.-- bleh, Sep 27 2007 Can I also suggest [marked-for-illustration] if you think, perhaps, an image would greatly assist the explanation of an idea or just be appropriate/funny etc? There are plenty of us here who would not profess to being an engineer, but I'm sure we have plenty of artists among us, of one form or another. Just send the artwork to the poster's email and if they like it they can upload it to an image site and link it.
Alas, I would like to have been a baker in the days of [Bristolz], I found a veritable smörgåsbord of her drawings recently and loved them all. Especially one of a plank of wood with a nail in it, which made me laugh no end. However, as a collective I'm sure we can produce artwork of a similar quality, which always brings some sparkle to an idea.-- theleopard, Oct 09 2007 I'm in favor of that as well, I like illustrations, but rarely have the time or talent to pull one off. I'll use that if all your illustrations have arrows pointing to things that say "science".-- bleh, Oct 09 2007 random, halfbakery