An A2-sized rugged Tablet PC in the shower

November 15, 2006

I have lots of ideas in the shower. Perhaps it’s because I’m just waking up from sleeping on stuff, perhaps it’s because the water cleans impurities out of the air, meaning that my brain gets fed a better quality of oxygen (I’ve seriously heard this theory before). But whatever the reason, I often find myself having ideas when I’m in the shower.

The most annoying thing is when that idea is the repeat of a shower that I had a few days earlier. Then I’m kicking myself for not remembering it once the day was underway properly.

And that’s where I got an idea for having a whiteboard in the shower.

I used to scuba-dive. It’s lots of fun – but you try communicating with a fellow diver when you’re underwater… it can be a pain to say the least. To get around this, divers carry slates and pencils. Pencils can write underwater you know. Not on paper of course, but on slate it’s just fine.

So I figure that I should keep a few of these slates and a pencil in the shower, so that I can make a note of ideas.

But better still would be a whole whiteboard. Thinking standing up is good for all kinds of reasons – lots of people agree with me that when you’re thinking through a problem, standing next to a whiteboard really helps. But of course, a whiteboard marker doesn’t work in the shower, and besides, you’ve got the age-old problem of not being able to transfer your ideas off the whiteboard easily.

So that’s where a large Tablet PC would be great. It would have to be a rugged one (I saw a video ages ago about a Tablet PC that you could use underwater), and it would have to be firmly attached to the wall, and connected (wirelessly?) so that I could print my ideas, email them, check the stock-prices and weather, etc… But most importantly, I could get my ideas down when they occur, think through them, even collaborate with other people (that would seem wrong I’m sure), and really make good use of that time. Naturally (no pun intended until now that I read it back) there would have to be a timer on the shower so that water-conservation didn’t become too big an issue. But it would stop that ‘forgetting time’ that occurs between when I have the idea and when I have finished the ‘getting up’ process.

Obviously it wouldn’t have a webcam!

This Post Has 7 Comments

  1. otherrob

    you scare me rob – definetly no webcam please πŸ˜‰

    my only concern is that you live in the dryest state in the dryest continent on the planet – would having a tablet-pc in the shower contribute to saving water ? (hint – dont load civilisation on it …)

  2. Darren Gosbell

    My theory is that it is your sub-conscious taunting you. πŸ™‚

    It’s been working on these ideas all night and only shows them to you when it knows you can’t do anything about them. If you put a tablet PC in the shower the ideas wouldn’t come.

  3. em

    only problem with being able to do all that kinda stuff in the shower is that you’d stay in the shower for longer, and the rest of us would have harsher water restrictions!

    take the tablet pc out and connect it to your network to print stuff πŸ˜› As soon as you put it online, its all over πŸ˜‰

  4. robfarley

    I think Darren’s right… if I could write them down, the ideas wouldn’t come at all.

    Realistically, you’d want the machine for outside the shower too, which means that when you were in there, you’d have an idea, only to think “Oh, the whiteboard PC is in the office….”

    And I did mention that you’d need a timer on the shower…

  5. Geoff Orr

    Hey this is all bogus. You shower, aren’t you English.

  6. robfarley

    Yeah, every month – whether I need it or not. πŸ˜‰

  7. otherrob

    all the above is fine, but I still have this problem when someone comes up with an idea and I try to visualise it – because its Rob’s idea, its *him* that appears in my imagination, standing in the shower, soap on a rope around his neck, suds everywhere, sporting a rather large windows tablet edition waterproof showerputer … im sure Rob will look rather fetching in the magazine adverts if the product ever comes to fruition …

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