Making stuff

I've been trying to think of ways to pick up some extra spending money around here. The first hare-brained scheme that I've come up with is a swing-set launcher. It will enable you to jump from a swing-set. Of course all swing-sets allow you to jump from them, but mine will utilize principles of specific non-Euclidean geometries to allow you to jump 10, 50, even 100 yards.

(A side note about English vs. Metric units of measure may be in order here. Now I'm certainly no holy-roller, and don't go about preaching, but if the good Lord had wanted us to use the Metric system there would have been ten Apostles, not twelve.)

I need to learn much more about the mechanics of actually making such a device. I've made note of various sources of documentation and technical training, and I'm sure that scattered about in these is all of the information I would need to construct my launcher. All it would take is a concerted effort to sift through the data, extract what I need, and come up with a good blueprint. This will never work. I'm a guy and I don't read the instructions first. When the mood to create finally strikes I'll probably just find a good sandbox somewhere and start getting my hands dirty. Of course writing about it here may lead to some hot-shot stealing my idea, but such is life.

In a previous life I had some limited success as a clothing designer, was even featured on a prominent web site. Clothing design is a very hard business to break into around here, though. What helped me before was identifying a specific product that was needed and grinding away until I was able to make it. I might start off by making a few simple things for myself and friends and see what, if anything, strikes me. If I can find a needed product in some niche market that I'm interested in I might do OK.