Steve Alvest

Creativity and Life

Half-baked Ideas

Ideas are a dime a dozen.

An unexecuted idea is worthless.

A well-executed idea can make you rich.

Every time I get an idea, I write it down. I’ve done this for over 25 years and have collected hundreds of ideas.

In this blog, I’m going to write about all the ideas that I’m NOT going to execute. They are either too big for me, outside my realm of expertise, or they simply don’t stir the passion inside of me to work on them.

Some of these ideas will be great, some bad, and some may even be impossible. But they are all free for the taking. You don’t have to credit me for anything, because after all, unexecuted ideas are worthless. Once you execute an idea, it becomes yours.

What Do We Do With POTS?

Half-baked Ideas

For over a century, we’ve relied on POTS, and it has served us well. However, we’re getting to a point in technology where POTS is becoming obsolete. And what is POTS, you might ask? It’s Plain Old Telephone Service. POTS uses copper wires that can transmit analog sound and electricity. Because it can transmit electricity, […]

The Internet, Reimagined

Half-baked Ideas

The Internet today is based on a metaphor of a library of linked documents. After all, it was originally designed for academics to share research papers. If I could recreate the Internet from the ground up, I would create it as a shadow of the real world. Each real-world location would have an internet address. […]

Immersive Domed Computers

Half-baked Ideas

Perhaps the reason why we haven’t advanced to a 3D-environment internet is because we’re stuck using outdated output devices. Besides getting thinner and higher resolution over the years, not much has changed in computer monitors. They are still flat screens sitting a foot or two from your eyes, and two-dimensional. They say that if the […]

Modular Computers

Half-baked Ideas

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before notebook computers, tablets, and smartphones dominated the market, most tech-savvy people built their own computers. It was a real pain. First you had to choose a motherboard and case, then all the parts that would connect to them. Sometimes you didn’t have the right connections for […]

Timed Encryption

Half-baked Ideas

There has been a lot of talk about how quantum computers may break all of our current encryption algorithms. But there are ways to develop encryption algorithms that can’t be easily cracked by quantum computers. I’m not going to pretend that I know much about encryption. I have undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics, […]

Making the Olympics Count

Half-baked Ideas

In 2003, Major League Baseball began an experiment that lasted over a decade. They gave home field advantage in the World Series to the side that won the All-Star Game. Up until 2002, the All-Star Game was played just for fun as an exhibition game and a treat for the fans. But in recent years, […]