Kookybite Innovation #12

 

SeizeControl ® Covert Subtitle Activator & Volume Control

Are you fed up asking your remote-hogging partner for the subtitles to be turned on when watching tv, only to be told subtitles ruin everything? At the touch of a button, this nifty gadget transmits a signal to your tv remote and secretly turns the subtitles on without your viewing partner suspecting a thing. SeizeControl® is cunningly disguised as a half-used packet of hearing aid batteries, and since those things are all over the damn house, it blends in perfectly.

Sit back and enjoy the film, while your partner fiddles with the zapper in vain. Just as they’re about to ring Sky, you can turn the subtitles off just long enough to fool them into thinking it’s sorted, or if you’re feeling really aggrieved at their stubbornness, you can let them go right ahead and pay a £65 callout charge straight out of their own pocket.

Can also be used to control tv volume, to make it too loud or too quiet for your partner, depending on the situation.

Mwahahahaha!

Update Jan 2024: In a massive cultural shift, people apparently love subtitles now, according to this BBC article. The Spouse isn’t convinced…

Kookybite Innovation #11

I have noticed a disturbing phenomenon recently. At noisy social events, when people try to speak directly into my ear in the mistaken belief that I will hear them better, I instinctively turn my head to get a view of their lips instead of staring blankly into space like everyone else. This makes the speaker very uncomfortable both in terms of the unexpected eye contact at such close range, and the loss of proximity of the ear in relation to their mouth. It makes me very uncomfortable because my neck is now twisted painfully.

In response to my head twisting to see their lips, they then turn to follow the ear, I twist further to see their lips, they turn further to follow the ear…you get the drift. To the outside observer, it must give the impression of a slow motion version of an Exorcist-style 720º head rotation, or some sort of bizarre mating ritual. Help is at hand, however, and the Kookybite Aidcam is designed to prevent all that.

I am also working on a low-tech version, which is simply a hearing aid sticker that says “TALK TO THE FACE”

 

Update 7th May 2015: Well I never, ahead of my time yet again, check this out. Look me in the ear and tell me it’s for real…

More from the team involved here…

O ye of little faith, enter here  Update Jan 2018: Don’t bother, AOHL have deleted the link.

What Was That You Said?

“Has anyone got any comments on this piece of work that are actually audible?” said my sharp-eared colleague to the assembled group of students who were fading fast. Friday afternoon’s critique, and my listening capacity, were reaching their weary end.

My request for people to raise their hands before speaking, and speak up a bit, had worn off five mins after it was made, and now only those with naturally loud voices and visible mouth movements were audible. Everyone else seemed to be involved in some sort of silent lipspeaking conspiracy.

“You’re going to put a big what on the wall?” I asked a student who had at least managed to project 50% of the words in a sentence into range of the hearing aid circuitry. After a swift repetition, the reply from the group who had been tasked with coming up with a noise control solution for the studio was still elusive.

“Sorry?” I said, leaning forward and craning my neck uncomfortably to narrow the gap between me and the speaker to 30 feet.

“AN EAR! We’re going to put a big ear on the wall!” came the reply, this time from five people in unison.

As I groaned inwardly, my mind wandered to an abandoned Kookybite Innovation. The Mumble Eliminator is designed to flash a visible warning to the speaker, when the level of speech reaching my ears falls below 60 decibels.

Must get one made for the studio as a matter of urgency…

 

Kookybite Innovation #10

If you’ve ever begun a fire evacuation for 50 students in response to a car alarm going off in the street outside, or wondered why your alarm clock is still beeping after you’ve hit the OFF switch, this digital version of the traditional servants bell board could be for you.

The spouse can’t wait for someone to invent it for me.

 

Update 17th May 2014: it’s finally been invented, according to this article although, if I may say, the interface is not a patch on the stately home elegance of Bleepfinder…

Kookybite Innovation #9

When questioned about how my voice sounded within the carefully controlled conversational precincts of a soundproofed room three weeks ago, I managed to overlook a slight elephant man ‘schhhhhhh’ quality to my pre-palatal fricatives (any sound made with your teeth touching, to you and me). It was quite amusing the first few times I said ‘educational changes‘ at work, but it soon wears off…

Kookybite Innovation #8

Inspired by falling into a bunch of teasels at the weekend. Scratchits could have been so good, but as we all know, the more you scratch the more you itch. Especially when there’s a rubber stopper in your lughole.

 

Update 18th Oct 2015: Fans of fly fishing and fluffy domes may like these novel Eargo hearing aids

Can an NHS hearing aid ever be cute?

Yes…but  only if it’s inside this incredibly cute mouse hearing aid case, made by yours truly to protect the Siemens chroma S when it gets accidentally swiped off the top of the piano while the headphones are on. The insertion method does feel rather like giving a mouse a suppository, but we’ll gloss over that bit.

In the unlikely event that you should want to make your own, you can find the pattern it was adapted from here via Meg Benhase and Mostlyphotos. The head is stuffed with kapok and the body cavity is stiffened with funky foam.

Kookybite Innovation #7

There’s nothing like moving office to finally force you to clear out the darkest recesses of your desk drawers. Must find out where the nearest battery recycling point is…

Kookybite Innovation #6

My quest for the perfect hearing aid-free digital piano playing experience is being hampered by a combination of total ignorance of music software and hardware, combined with extreme impatience with technological matters. The sort of impatience that can lead to things getting smashed up.

I want to equalize the output of my Clavinova as I’m playing it, to fill in the cookie bite, but I don’t know what I’m doing.  Recent exposure to my mistakes is causing the spouse to run away in terror with his hands over his ears whenever he sees the laptop going anywhere near the piano.

Someone invent this plug-in thingy that does it all for me. Pleeeeeease.

 

Update 11 Sep 2015…come on, I’m still waiting

 

 

 

Kookybite Innovation #5

Oh dear, me and Katy Perry have just spent too many enforced train journeys together this week for my liking…