Although I haven’t unpacked everything she has available on her site (including a free newsletter and e-book called “How to Work When, Where, and How You Want”) it looks like she has a wealth of great information for people who want to escape working on someone else’s schedule and create her or his own. In the coming weeks I’ll be reading through her site and reviewing some of the resources, including the free e-book.

As long as you leave one behind as a courtesy — all these ideas are free to use, if they’re viable, that is. These folks are definitely RS/Scanner-types. You can create an account to comment on and rate the half-baked ideas or even leave a few yourself.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Flying Buttrest: fold-out seating that mounts on the wall to maximize floor space. I think there’s a patent pending out there for this.
• The Evil-Laugh-activated hair dryer: exactly what it says. Can you imagine laying in bed one morning when all of a sudden you hear your roommate/sister/significant other let out a Count vonCount cackle? Freaky.
• Custard-Filled Speed Bumps: intelligent speed bumps that solidify for those driving faster than the posted speed limit. Otherwise, they’re soft and won’t cause that awful bone-jarring bump when you drive over them.

The good news is that lately universities around the world have been opening up free on-line classes with real recorded lectures, lecture notes and class requirements (what’s the plural of syllabus?). So you can actually “attend” a lecture at MIT for Quantum Theory or Forms of Western Narrative.

Here’s a short list of a few universities offering on-line courses free of charge:

• MIT Open Courseware
• UC Berkeley
• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
• Stanford on iTunes U
• The Open University

Also, if you have iTunes, you can go to iTunesU and access lots of wonderful courses there.