I found an incredibly cool graph illustrating the anticipated future trend of computing, gaming, movies and artificial intelligence. They graph things between Best, Worst and Base Case scenarios, showing a range of just how pleasant or unpleasant things could become. Regardless, it is all inspiring from a technology perspective. Some truly great ideas are listed across the graph; things that I had not previously considered and that the industries affected may not have either. Virtual cinema attendance was one idea that struck me as obvious in retrospect, but predicting the last human produced film and game on such short notice (10 years from now?) is not something that ever occurred to me.

No matter who you are, there is bound to be a few things that spark your interest. I will be using the graph as a repeated inspirational exercise going forward; it's just that cool.

While some of us pine away for more pragmatic steampunk accessories, such as goggles, the team over at Weta has been building weapons. These are definitely not cheap, starting at just over $1k and going all the way up to $8k for the Unnatural Selector. Each comes in a designed case that further captures the steampunk essense quite nicely. Any one of these would be a great capstone to someone's steampunk collection.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for some adoring fan to gift something from the collection to me. There are a limited number of each weapon available, so it is not likely that you will get a second chance to pick one up, for yourself or for me!

Have you ever seen one of those little personal alarms that people sometimes carry with them when they travel? I was shown one several years ago and saw no need for it at the time. The device is a tiny little box with a pin in it attached to a lanyard. If you pull the pin out, it begins emitting a 100db alarm.

I am not sure how effective these are at personal defense, but I came up with an ingenious way to turn them into highly effective mischief makers. Think of them like sonic grenades: you pull the pin and throw. At $10 each, it is still less expensive than a real grenade, and not as likely to get you into big trouble.

The purpose of the exercise, in my mind, is to address noise pollution problems from a fight-fire-with-fire approach. However, instead of going the standard route of bass-volume competition, you can simply win the one-up-manship of annoying noise with an ear splitting scream from one of these.

Keep reading for some creative ways to deploy one!

Smartpen's have been around for a while, granted. While they still seem to be tied to specially designed paper for use, Livescribe has come up with a new feature that will really appeal to fellow gadget-philes. Their new Pulse pen includes audio recording and playback.

This may not sound like anything revolutionary, given the vast array of MP3 players/recorders available, but keep reading. The recording feature on the Pulse activates while you are writing with it. The intended use is for instances like during lectures when you may wish to record the lecture itself. With the Pulse, you can record the lecture while you take notes, and the Pulse software associates your notes with the audio recorded when they were written, like a new type of bookmarking.

The future of wearable computing, and, indeed, of fasion itself, will go to whomever can first make wearable computing trendy. In order to be trendy, however, a way must first be found to make it so that wearable computers do not need to be completely ubiquitous. There are a great number of styles and fashions in clothing and dress throughout history that we can borrow from in order to produce something acceptable to wear but that caters to integration with electronics.

Whatever forms that wearable computing eventually takes when it becomes accepted without comment in today's society, it will need to be confined within a range of locations that will not cause interference with normal range of motion and activity.