How to Use Problems, Using Blogs and Wikipedia

To get ideas, how a problem could get solved or even to get  guidelines, how  to solve it,  blogs can be  an excellent information source.

Many engaged people are active on blogs and more than happy, to  help others with their know how, to solve  problems.

The main problem is, to find the right blogs, which is not always so easy, because there exist millions of them.

But for  that purpose search engines were developed,  which  search only in blogs;  but they search only in  the title of blogs  or at the title of posts in a blog.

Let us assume, that we want to solve a technical problem:

• the blog search engine Technorati is an excellent search engine.
• at first we open it at:  technorati  and we see, that there are about 37 000 blogs. It is of course almost impossible, to go through the total list and we must start, to use search terms.  The search field  is on the right side of the technorati logo at the top of  the website.
• now let's go  on with "proa", which we already used with  "YouTube".  No research result is shown, but a remark, that we shall refine our search.  It is almost unbelievable, that nobody should have mentioned  "proa" in so many blogs. Therefore lets start now with "sailing boat".  Only  3  posts are shown, what is quite peculiar. What is wrong ?  If we look at the search field, we see, that there are 2  search functions:   One for blogs and one for posts.  We had kept posts activated and now we will activate "Blogs" and repeat the search with "Sailing boat".  A list with many blogs about sailing boats is shown.

• we now repeat the search with "proa"   and indeed, we find 2 blogs:

        proa17ufrgs.blogspot.com
        proaufrgsb.blogspot.com

If we activate the shown web sites, then we see, that they are in Spanish and have nothing to do  with sailing boats.

Therefore we have to go back to use "sailing boats"   A list with 84 blogs are shown, which we can go through. But no blog shows up, which fits well.  So this search was not successful. We now could try other  search engines for blogs or we look at wikipedia, to find some good links there:

• http://www.wikipedia.org/
• We give in "proa" and find directly a special site  about it.

From that experience, we can learn, that it can be better, to start at first directly with wikipedia,  check the given links and if that is not enough, then use search engines or look at YouTube.

But we can use blogs, even if they are not specialised onto our topic:  We  can  ask the experts on the blogs for their support. Because it is very probable, that they know something also beyond   the special topic of the blog.

How to Use YouTube for Problem Solving

On YouTube  are many informative videos, which  show,  how problems can be solved.

Of  course,   a bit time is needed, to find the really good ones, for which we can apply a step by step procedure, like for instance:

• At first we have to open the website:  http://www.youtube.com

• then we give some search words into the search field at the top of the screen, right of   the YouTube logo

• lets  take a look at  sailing boats:   We give  in  "sailing boat"  and a list with many video titles is shown, which we  scroll down, to find out, what interests  us

• I find  a  "proa"  interesting and give  this term  into the search field, to get an overview, how many videos deal with proas.  Again, many videos are shown, but also videos, which have nothing to do with the sailing boat proa, but with some sport teams.

• Thereore I now give "sailing boat proa"  into the search field,  to find only the videos, in which I am intested

• again, many videos are shown, one of them is an outrigger canoe and because  I have a canoe, I want to get more information about it and  give in now  "sailing boat outrigger canoe" and I find the video " sailing canoe" interesting and open it,  but because this video shows a trimaran sailing canoe, I now give in "canoe proa"   and find  "Guam Chamorro Traditional Canoes ", which shoes the rebuild of a traditional proa and  we can see very well, how the sailing mast is fastend in an oblique angle and not as in modern types vertically, which is not as good, because the wind  forces  destabilize the boat much more.

We see, that this video was uploaded in 2009.   7800 people have seen it,  but only23 gave positive comments. I think, that this is a shame.  If we see an informative video, even if it is  not  perfectly done, then we should leave a positive comment.

Some other excellent videos, also about proas:

• Outrigger Marshall Island's-National Cup Race

• KiteMaran BaliWind   ( modern proa )

• and an interesting model boat:   Hydroptère RC à Casteljaloux 47

By the way; it is a good idea, to build at first a functional model, to study some of its features, before building a full scale boat. and here a real sailing boat, using this design:  Hobie TriFoiler Promotional Video
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If anybody is interested, to build a sailing boat himself, he will find many execellent information on YouTube, which will help him, to develop his own innovative ideas.

Of course, using the same search procedure, we will find many informations about almost any topic.

Free Flowchart Program yEdit

This is a free flowchart program with many useful features.

I especially like, that I can add text to arrows, which is  fixed at the arrows,  even  if  the objects with the arrows are moved around.

With this feature it is possible, to create concept maps with presentation quality.

Also morphological boxes can be constructed with it and many other useful structured graphical representations.

yEdit  is free of charge for dowload at:
http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

For other programs on this website  one has to pay.

Wisdom of Mankind: What can we Learn from it ?

Religions,  ideologies  and  also philosophy  have taught high ideals,  but in practice the organizations, which represented these ideals, have done  the most horrible crimes in the history of mankind.

Therefore  in the time of renaissance and later in the time of enlightenment, men have developed an attitude, to negate all the  teachings of them.

In the 19 th century Marxism and in 20 th Fascism and Leninism, Maoism etc. have done the most horrible crimes in the history of mankind.

Therefore many people follow now the ideology of atheism, which is nothing  else as also an ideology, because it pretends to know at least, that there does not exist something like a God, which is impossible to prove or disprove, as already the german philosopher Kant in the 18. century demonstrated.

Also natural science cannot teach us anything about this question, because  it cannot investigate it.

Therefore we should take a pragmatic attitude and differentiate between the organizations ( which are dominated by men ) and the teachings of wise women and men.

Perhaps we can learn something from them, which may help us, to lead a happy life.

Therefore I will now and then write about the wisdom of mankind, without making any difference, if it comes from ancient times of the Aborigines in Australia, the Indians in America, the Indian Hinduism, Buddhism etc.

Only the arguments count.

So lets start with a teaching  of Laotse, the wise teacher of  Taoism in ancient China:

One of his famous teachings was:

"The  soft will defeat the hard."

He has used several of those apparently unlogical teachings, to overcome our limited thinking, which is determined by prejudices.

And we must get aware of our prejudices and overcome them, so that we can really solve problems and get creative.

We know, that Laotse is right  in  at least   several cases:

1.   water can destroy the hardest rock
2.   one man, without any arms like Ghandi, could  defeat the British  Empire,  full with  military weapons

What have both cases in common ?

     Persistence.

Never give up, overcome any frustration and go on.

And that is the attitude, which every inventor and entrepreneur needs.

We will experience a lot of  frustration, but we have to overcome it, to get successful in the end.

Of course, we should  carefully analyse every defeat and learn from it and not just go on stubbornly. That could lead us into  the wrong direction.

We  must critically analyze our motivation and collect any needed information, so that we can make  rational decisions.

But then we should overcome our frustration and go on.

"The soft will defeat the hard".

Open Source Software: A Viewer for 3 dim Chemical Structures

Many chemicals, especially orgranic ones,  have a 3 dim structure, which is important to understand their performance, but  almost impossible to visualize without  suitable tools.

Jmol is an excellent open source software, which does a great job, to visualize complicated 3 dim molecular structures.

For instance it is quite easy, to create a 3 dim structure  of graphen.

To study organic chemistry or biochemistry,  it is a must, to use such a program, otherwise it is impossible, to understand the details of these complicated chemical structures.

Here is a  download link:
http://jmol.sourceforge.net/


Using  a  good meta search engine like mamma  (  http://www.mamma.com ), it is easy to find many informative sources about using this program.

Advanced Material for Solving Many Problems: Graphen

Graphen consists of  Carbon atoms, which form  a  plane network  of hexagonally arranged Carbon atoms.

This material, which has been developed  about 10 years ago and can now be bought  ( for instance at:  http://www.angstronmaterials.com/in-the-news/ ),  has several  outstanding features like:

•  4 times higher electrically conductivity than copper  ( 20 000 S/cm)

•  5 times higher thermal conductivity than copper  ( 5 300 W/(mK)

• extreme large surface  ot 2600  square meter per gram graphen

• 50  times higher strength than steel

These outstanding features will be the base for many future inventions, like:

• filters for water or separation   of  particles in liquids

• super batteries

• super capacitors

• similar devices like heat pipes, but probably much cheaper

• solar cells

• ropes

• paper like products

• semi permeable membranes ( separation of nitrogen and oxygen in the air ? )

At least it  is worth while for every technically oriented inventor, to have a look at this material.

How to Earn Money with Fish Farming Part 3: Tilapia

Tilapia  is fish, which   lives  only from vegetables and cereals and the fry do not pass a planktonic phase.  Therefore it is a very good choice for us. Also the taste of the fish meat is very good.

Detailed information is given at:  http://www.appropedia.org/Tilapia_Fish_Farming_Notions

The main draw back could be, that Tilapia  need warm water, for which energy may be needed, when we live in cold countries. But using  solar collectors, to heat up the water, especially fresh water in separate vessels, should help, to minimize the needed energy.All water tanks and the fish tanks should be insulated of course.

If  a heat exchanger is installed in the house, then  two benefits can be combined:

• Reduce the energy demand to heat  the house
•  use the exhaust air to heat up the water tanks. In the exhaust air  is still enough oxygen for the fishes.

How to Earn Money with Fish Farming Part 2: Aquaponics

What is needed  for intensive  aquaponics ?

• Plastic tanks are placed in green houses with hydroponic beds, in which oftenly herbs like parsley and basil are raised.
• water purification system; recommended is a combination of hydroponic horticulture and water treatment.
• What is the best fish for us ?  Salmon and trout need expensive food  and they need much oxygen in the water. 
• Much  less demanding  are Catfish and Clarias. Up to 10% of the water volume can be fishes.  That means, in  a vessel with 1 cubicmetre  there could be raised up to  100  kg  fish.
• The draw back of too high fish density is the danger of  infections and of course, the fishes should lead a good life. That means, they need enough free space to swim, good water quality and good food.

Integrated recycling systems look to be the best solution for us, because we need not an expensive water cleaning system. Nature works  for us and we can also raise vegetables. But we need a filter and and an air supply system into the water.

• We  can use the waste water in the garden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics

How to Earn Money with Fishfarming. Part 1 Basics

There exist many poor or unemployed people worldwide.   The best opportunity for them to earn their living,    to work  as a self employed person.

But also for self employed people it can be interesting, to find additional opportunities to earn money, because it is always safer to have  several  income sources.

We will therefore discuss several opportunities in the category:   How to earn money.   It is good to have a core business, but we  should also try, to learn enough about other businesses, so that we can start with a new business, if the core business runs into problems.

Here we discuss, how we could earn money with fish farming.

• Assuming, that not much money is available, we have to start small, but with the goal, to earn  our living in the future.
• How do we start, if we know  nothing about fish farming ?  The easiest way is, to search in the internet, starting   with   http://www.wikipedia.org  
• Using the search words     "fish farming" ,   we are directly  led to the main article  at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farm 

This article gives us a good first overview, so that we know enough, to focus on the topics of fish farming, which are of interest for us.

What do we learn from this article ?

• extensive fish farming is done in lakes or at sea  coasts. But it is not of interest for us, because we need large lakes to live from.
• The most common fishes raised are: salmon,carp,tilapia, catfish and cod.
•  intensive aquaculture:   With intensive aquaculture, we can raise a lot of fishes in  tanks, combined with the culture of vegetables and need  not much  footprint, to live from.

Therefore this will be our choice, to focus on  in part 2:   Aquaponics

How to Get the Needed Information to Solve a Problem

The steps to solve a problem are following:

1.    get aware that a problem exists

2.   analyse and structure the problem

• divide it into  smaller pieces
•  start to solve the easiest pieces

3.   collect the needed information, to solve the more difficulty pieces


Here I will focus only onto  point 3:


                     Where can we find the needed information ?

1.    ask  others
2.    read books, reports  and patents
3.    search in databases
4.    use the internet

• To ask others  is a good method. Even, if they don`t know the solution,  each discusssion with others helps, to understand the  problem and get new solution ideas.

• In a good library there should be many books or reports in journals, which deal with similar problems, from which we can learn and we get pieces of the needed information.

• There exist many databases worldwide about almost any subject, in which a huge amount of information is stored. Many are free, for others one has to pay.

Nowadays a very comfortable method to find information,  is of course the internet. Problem with it is, that it oftenly is difficulty to judge, how reliable the information is.

For searches in the internet not only the well known search engines should be used, but meta search engines. These are either specialised  to a subject or they  use many other search engines, so that they can give better results.

There are a lot of meta search engines available and the best is, to test them, searching about a topic, which is well known.

Here is a small collection only:

Meta  Search Engine
http://www.metasearchengine.com

Meta Crawler
http://www.metacrawler.com

Mamma
http://www.mamma.com/


Computational Knowledge Engine and  facts in technology and sciences
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

General Approach to Solve a Problem

Isaksen, Doval and Trefflinger have developed some general guidelines, how to solve a problem:


Understand the challenge

• look for opportunities

• collect all needed data

• structure the problem, using visual maps ( mindmaps, concept maps )

 Generate several ideas, how to solve the problem

• use brainstorming and similar heuristic methods

• use a  morphological box

 Prepare for Action

• Develop detailed solution plan

• convince others, so that they support you

Prepare project management plan

• define resources and responsibilities

• prepare a flowchart, how the problem can be solved step by step.

Literature:

• Treffinger, D. (2000). Practice Problems for Creative Problem Solving. ISBN-10: 1882664647

• Scott,Isaksen,Dorval: Creative Approaches to Problem Solving. ISBN 1412977738

How to Forecast the Life Cycle of Products

It is well known,  that the life cycle of a product can be calculated quite good with a sigmoid  curve. Such a  curve describes the growth of a population,  like bacteria for instance, over time  and  has  a  S-shape.

A simple sigmoid curve is the  logistic curve, which  is symmetric ( point-symmetry ); that means, that the beginning of the growth and the end of it, show the same, but opposite changes in time.

This is seldom the case in real world problems and therefore more general sigmoid curves like the Gomperz function should be used, to model  the growth in production of  a   product  for instance, for which the available resources are limited.

Assuming, that the total production can be sold,   one can forecast the life cycle of the product.

But in  general there are several competing products available  and one must develop a  more sophisticated mathematical model, to forecast the life-cycle of each product.

With  a set of mathematical equations,  such more general situation can also be modeled.

Most important for each decision maker is the understanding, that  the  production output will never only grow, but will reach a constant level and thereafter decrease.  Linear forecasting, based on past data  often forecasts completely wrong results for the future.

For the mathematical background look at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_curve