Footprint of Tournaments

Today I was watching Snooker Xi'an Grand Prix and the commentor mentioned that the player had to pay a large amount of money to alter his flight date because he had wined his previous game and progressed on the tournament. Snooker is an individual sports where the income is based on one's success on the tournaments. Most of these tournaments are organized in England and China. These two countries have quite distance between them. As a result, any flight from one country to the other costs really high. Most players don't earn that much money to compensate these travel cost. My proposition for World Snooker Tour is to form a tournament calendar to minimize the travel costs. At the moment, an Asian tournament is followed by a British one. At some extremes, like the one this week, a tournament at the heart of China is followed by Northern Ireland. Which requires at least three connecting flights to reach from one destination to the other.

My recommendation is to organize all Chinese tournaments one after the other followed by the ones at Thailand and then the ones at Arabic peninsula then England and its surroundings. As a result, a player can travel from one destination to the other with a single flight and at a lower cost. Funny thing at the moment, depending on the tournament stage, an unexpected win for a player would cost money because a flight change and extra stay at the hotel surpasses the amount earned.

My proposition is valid for other sports events as well. Unfortunately, latest sports events require more and more travelling. This contradicts with the latest global warming movement especially in Europe. All these sports federations are filled with European executives and they make such decisions.

Hybrid Bi-Amping

People like tube amplifiers because of their softer tones at higher frequencies. At lower frequencies this effect is less pronounced. More importantly, due to audio transformers used on tube amps, the lower frequencies are less amplified. The high-end Hi-Fi speakers usually support bi-amping. Therefore, high frequency section of the speaker can be driven independent of the mid to lower frequency section of the speaker. I would like to propose a hybrid bi-amp to create the lovely soft tones of a tube amp with a much efficient and economical way.

My design solves three major problems. First, the low frequencies would be better amplified using transistor amplifiers compared to tube counterparts which are less affected by the tube’s tonality. Second, high frequencies do not need high power amplifiers. Therefore, the tube amplifier can be designed with much less power output which reduces the cost. Third, output audio transformers of the tube amplifier can be optimized for a narrower frequency range to lower cost and improve tonality.

The input signal would be pre-amplified using tube amplifiers. Then the amplified signal would be split into high and low frequencies using a cross-over network. The lower frequencies would be power amplified by efficient push pull amplifiers without coupling capacitors or transformers to output even the lowest frequencies, 20 Hz. The highs would be power amplified using a single ended tube amplifier, e.g. by KT-88, to create the beautiful tones of a single ended amplifier. Coupled with highly efficient horn speakers, e.g. Klipsch horns, they would produce really powerful highs with minimal input.

Hybrid Media Player

After the Millennium, technological advancements virtualized many things. However, humans still have five senses. We need to touch, feel and see. That’s why in the age of digitalization the sales of vinyl have increased. At the moment only CD and Vinyl have new releases. I would like to propose a hybrid media player to satisfy contemporary users’ demand. It would be an all-in-one product. Bringing back the advancements of turntable of 80s, CD players of 90s and streaming music of the Millennium.

People buy vinyl to see the physical media while listening to their favorite music. That’s why I propose a vertical turntable. I got my inspiration from Sony PS-F9. This allows the specially designed vinyl surface to be visible by the listener. Additionally, the turntable will have dual needle to be able to play both sides of the vinyl without the need for user flipping them over. Additionally, high end linear turntables of 70s and 80s could identify the tracks on a vinyl. However, their old detection mechanism doesn’t work on clear vinyl. I propose the advanced optical mouse technology to be adapted for this task. Some optical mouses can even work on glass surfaces, so they can also identify the tracks of a clear vinyl. As a result, the turntable would work in a similar fashion like a CD player.

For the CD player section of the media player, I propose a DVD writer mechanism. This allows all audio disc formats to be read including DVD Audio. The choice of a writer allows much longer laser life and ability to read rewritable discs with a high success rate.

The front section of the player will have two rotatable RGB spot lights. This would expose the effects overlayed on the latest LP records. There would optional accessories such as big analog VU meters attached in front of the player.

The media player will have on board amplifiers. The vinyl section will utilize an analog amplifier and the digital section a digital amplifier. Most importantly, the player will have a proper computer on board to play all audio formats developed so far. Once you read all the content on a compact disk, decoding the content is just software. It is sad to see latest CD players that cannot read many advanced audio disk formats and even CD text. If there is a license for a format, that cost can be charged to the end user.

The player will have dual Bluetooth (one for remote controlling the player, one for Bluetooth Audio connection) and Wi-Fi connectivity (for streamed audio).

Short Range Electric Boat

I would like to propose an electric passenger boat that operates at short distances like the ones in Bosphorus. Since the Titanic tragedy, the passenger ships have double hull. My proposed ship will have its inner hull made of aluminum capacitors. I had previously proposed such a structure for the wind turbines. Aluminum plates separated by aluminum oxide insulator layers. This plywood-like structure is very strong and comparably easy to manufacture. The oxide layer would be adjusted to allow optimum voltage difference between the plates. These capacitor plates would be connected to one another via insulated frames and fuse-able connectors. Therefore, if one section shorts, the fuse would protect the remainder sections.

As a result, large structure of the boat is used as an energy storage medium which has a much longer life than chemical batteries. This setup would only provide limited power which would only work for short ranges. The boat would be charged at every dock. The capacitor storage would allow rapid charging and can be charged many times without degradation.

This idea can be extended to other vehicles as well which would operate at short distances and can be frequently recharged.

Details of International Underwater Station

A submarine hull has two major components, the superstructure and the pressure hull. The superstructure of a submarine is the outer non-watertight hull which provides a hydrodynamically efficient shape. The pressure hull is the inner hull of a submarine that resists sea pressure and maintains the submarine’s structural integrity at operating depth. I propose a double pressure hull design for the International Underwater Station (IUS) while it doesn't need to travel at high speeds. In order to increase the usable space and maintain buoyance, the hulls of the submarine will be made of concrete filled steel structures. Manufacturing big steel structures is a mature technology for ship building. This will allow low-cost building of a big submarine that can operate at considerably high depths. Concrete has a high compressive strength and can be easily used to fill the void between the steel double hull. A special composition of concrete should be used for this purpose. The concrete would also seal the leaks that may occur on the superstructure. With special composition, they would resist the corrosive sea water better than most metals. The additional weight of the concrete would also allow more hollow space inside. Heavy weight and larger dimensions would also increase the stability of the underwater research station.

IUS would have hatches to allow additional submarines to be attached to each other like in ISS. Each IUS section would have emergency rescue spheres that would take the occupants to the surface in case of an emergency. Additionally, any damaged section would be released from the rest to maintain the operation of the IUS.

IUS would accommodate small submarines for humans as well as tethered robots. This would allow detailed inspection of tight spaces. Samples gathered by these inspections would be analyzed at the onboard laboratories.

We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

International Space Station has reached its end of life and new space stations are planned. I would like to propose an International Underwater Station which would benefit humanity more than its space counterpart. An underwater habitat was described in Jules Verne's "Vingt Mille Lieues sous Les Mers" almost two centuries ago. However, we are still leagues behind creating such habitat even though we have the technology. We should start by creating an underwater research station. It would be made of specially designed submarines. These submarines would be cascaded like the space stations sections are attached to one another. As time goes by more sections would be added and the old ones would be removed.

International Underwater Station would make research on deep-sea habitat and would also clean the surrounding region as it explores. It would create underwater farms to feed its occupants like in Jules Verne's novel. With a nuclear reactor on board, it would be a self-sufficient habitat.

An autonomous ship above water would accommodate the submarine to assist in logistics and as a rescue boat in case of emergency. A smaller version of this underwater station would be deployed on Mediterranean Sea first, then a larger version on the oceans.

Hybrid Streaming

For some time, I have been watching YouTube videos on vintage audio video media. In those videos the YouTuber tries to show its audience the quality of these stored media and the players. However, the current audio video formats treat the media as one single piece. Once different things are combined into one video, the quality of the sections making up the video are transformed into a single format and the details are lost. YouTube's compression algorithms worsen the case further.

My proposition is a new media format which is simply a gapless playlist of different media. It has some similarities to MKV, but the major difference is that it is a playlist. The video and audio are played in order without a gab. The viewer watches the video as one long piece. However, some of the video and audio would be streamed in different format to enable proper experience. The streamer services would stream them as it is without converting them into other formats.

This technology would allow proper product reviews of media recorders and players as well as true to life reproduction of vintage media.