I came up with a fantastic idea for an iPhone app last night.  The main problem is, I suspect people would want to use it in the car -- in fact, I would say it's most fun in the car.

I am fairly confident that if I were to write and sell this application, people would sure get themselves killed by trying to play it while driving their cars.

So should I make the app or not?  It is quite the ethical dilemma.  On the one hand, some might say I'm indirectly responsible for the death of those that played my app while driving (just writing this blog post puts me more at risk of litigation).  On the other hand, one would assume that people can take of themselves and they should know when and when not to play a game on your iPhone (here's a hint, not while you're driving).

I always get stucks with thoughts and questions of what causes what.  There are some answers I know, some I have to look up, some I have to test and research myself, and some things that I don't think have a clear answer.  Air conditioning and heating has been an interest of mine, but not in the sense of becoming a mechanical engineer studying HVAC in buildings.  Though I could see the research into the effects and efficiency of HVAC systems being cool (literally), but the design and implementation/installation of HVAC systems strikes me as boring.

I'm more interested in the climate control of my own house.  I really, really want to know what affects what.  How much improvement does keeping the windows open do?  Was it worth it to sweat for a few extra days with the windows open rather than turn on the air conditioner?  What rooms are the least efficient in my house?  What change would I see in changing certain variables in the house?  I'm getting excited just thinking about answering any of these questions.

One question that I can't answer now that I wish I could, is how much difference are my new windows making?  I replaced 14 windows for about $3800.  The old windows were total crap, but how much different do the new windows make?

My grand scheme is that I want to purchase many wireless temperature sensors, and then put them all around my house.  At least one in every room, but hopefully several in each room (within fiscal means, of course), and then they all report back to some module or something.  The data can run either to my HTPC or preferably to my low-power backup server.

So I want to monitor the temperature everywhere inside and outside my house, and also monitor when the AC/heater is on, what the thermastat is set to, if my temperature-controller, attic vent fan is running or if the roof attic turbine is spinning.  I would love to have sensors on all of the windows and doors to tell if they're open or not (maybe that could even be a sort of house monitoring system?).

I'll finally be able to see exactly the effect of opening a window, walking out the front door, changing the thermastat by a degree, etc...

I could probably make a machine learning agent (neural network, hidden markov model, etc...) that could determine the best time to turn on my air condition dependent on all of the other factors of the house.  If it could also control the vents and everything too... <pleasure center overload>