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.