And the winner of the invention contest is…
A few weeks ago I ran a little creative contest on inventions people would like to see. The best of the bunch, although there were many was from Carlos:
Ctrl+Zetit: an invention to undo things in life that just happened to you. Broke an expensive jar at your inlaws’s house? No problem… just Ctrl+Zetit!
Not a big fan of the name, but I sure would love this. I remember back at CMU, after an all nighter working on a programming project, going into the elevator, hiting the wrong floor and looking for the undo command. Carlos’ idea made me think of that moment, and a signed copy of Making things happen is on its way to him.
Thanks for all the great ideas – made my day!
I know the problem of overwork leading to odd behaviour. When I was an undergrad I had spent all right writing up a project. I had to attend a class the next day. As I sat in the lecture room, writing notes, I suddenly noticed that I had come to a halt at the end of a line. After a few moments I realised that I was waiting for the word to automatically jump to the next line, on my paper, so that I could carry on writing.
I decided not to use my word processor for a few days after that!
Scott,
Thanks for running the little creative thinking contest. I am sure fellow participants enjoyed the challenge as much as I did. Please consider running similar events in the future.
Cheers,
Carlos Rizo
Toronto
A few name options for the ‘invention’ may be:
* youLUB: Your Life’s Undo Button;
* ELAS-buton: Erase Last Action, Stupid;
* Phew-button: Preventing Huge Embarrassments, Wholeheartedly-button
* FGBK-button: #$%%& GO BacK-button
* OGBOMA-button: Oh, Go Back One Minute Ago-button
Regardless of the name, I’d like to own one myself. Meanwhile, I’ll avoid multitasking and do one thing at a time.
Reg “going into the elevator, hiting the wrong floor and looking for the undo command”.. In Singapore, there are some elevators which have an undo option.. Press the number again! No kidding:-)
The first time I ran across this was in 1997, and I laughed so hard! My friend Laurie had dropped a glass of orange juice on the kitchen floor and reflexively yelled, “Control-Z!!!” I immediately adopted the phrase, not that it does much good.