$100 Ideas Part 12: Picture-Plain™ Boob Shirts

You know how it is, when boobed people put on a t-shirt with a design. There is warpage. I think there was even a joke about it in that movie "Stand By Me." Well, what if you custom-printed the design to correct for said warpage from an individual wearer, so that the design struck the eye as optically sitting in a straight picture plane? IMPOSSIBLE, you say? Well here's the real magic. You would send out a test t-shirt, that would just be plain white and have a grid printed on it. Then the wearer would take a photo wearing the grid T. Then I'm pretty sure you could make a computer analyze the photo and figure out like which squares of the grid got distorted and how, and adjust the image accordingly before printing it on a shirt of the same size and fit.

Don't tell me the science isn't there, people have been doing this kind of perspective thing since Leonardo, like this famous one with the anamorphic skull that only looks like a skull from way up close and to the right.

Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Ambassadors"

This also gives me some ideas about anamoprhic tattoos that would only look right from certain angles. What angles? Use your imagination.

Tiny Fractal Tuba: Science Fact or Science Fiction?

Hey, look, I'm not one of those dudes who's all into fractals as a Thing. I mean, you're not gonna see me hangin' around in like a fractal shirt and you're not gonna hear me talkin' about how if we could understand fractals we could like solve hunger and racism and probably travel to distant reaches of space besides.

Figure 12: I'm not this guy

But check it out: have you heard about fractal antennas*? It is so cool. They can make antennas with a ton of surface area but still tiny, because all the surface area is from all the little tiny details instead of in broad lines, you know? Shit, there's probably one in your cell phone! Believe it.

Figure 12: Believe it

Well anyhow I was thinking: why can't we use this technology to make a tiny tuba? It could have a pretty small tube, diameter-wise, but one that is just outrageously long, but you know, long from being all bent around into outlandish, somewhat psychedelic shapes that are produced from the same kind of self-similarity iteration type processes as those t-shirt patterns.

It would make such a low sound, but yet it would fit in the palm of your hand. (If your spine isn't tingling right now, either you don't care about the inconvenient size of the commercially available tubas of the day, or you maybe have some sort of neural problem you maybe should get checked out). I'm serious. This could change everything.

Scientists! Metallurgists! Help me! Now we make our millions! This is the dream that John Phillip Sousa never even knew he had!

Figure 12: Every Single Music Video in the History of the Genre was Leading Up to This Moment, But Still, Imagine it With Four Tiny Fractal Tubas

*I dare you to tell me I should say antennae. I fuckin' DARE you.

My new skills

Can you construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line?
Can you place a straight line equal to a given straight line with one end on a given point?
Can you cut off from the greater of two given straight lines a straight line equal to the lesser?
Can you bisect a given rectilinear angle? How about a given straight line?



I can. I can do all that shit, man. Just gimme a compass and a straightedge. No, not these kinds:

I guess I been meanin' to learn a little geometry.

I'm gonna go buy a compass and protractor and just go to town with Euclid's Elements. I feel like if you are a man, and you like geometry, you have to do that, at least once. You must do it alone. You can't take anything with you. Except your compass and protractor. And I suppose some paper, pencils, maybe some gatorade and beef jerky in case you get hungry. You have to just work through the whole thing in order, just work through it real slow and hand-draw out all the figures and proofs even when they seem obvious.

I don't know, I guess I just got excited reading about Reuleaux triangles and toruses and tetrahelixes and such, plus there is the matter of this beloved Achewood strip.

I will let you know how it goes. I will tell you how smart it makes me feel. I will tell you if it makes me lose weight and develop a healthy glow to the skin on my face and also my back.