Author: syw784

A Claim to the Meaning of Engineer, and Invention

Before empathy, let me tell a story first: Currently I am working on writing a script that will let my computer to play a game. The mechanics are simple: look for a coffee cup, if it exists then click on a building. How long do we identify a coffee cup? Probably in 2 seconds. For a computer, I have to specify the correct coordinates on the screen, the color of that coffee cup that that location, then let the computer to compare those two. Now I wonder, how can I find the coffee cup so fast but a computer can’t? It’s hard to explain since it happens in less than 1 second, but: First I “learn” the sample I am looking for. It color, size, location. The next time I look at it, I will look at a broader scale, determine if that fits coffee cup in my memory. Thanks to this exercise, I had an idea of “teaching” computer empathy: what if I start from the smallest thing possible? Letting the computer auto-program himself to fit new situations? Not only could to play the game, but it will also succeed on logical thinking process. Simply put your way of thinking into digitalized orders.

Anyway, back to the topic. This book, A Whole New Mind, is nothing but a “How to successfully sell your products to people who don’t need those crap” book. It’s not for an engineer, because their job is to design the product; it’s not for CEOs, because they only need to make the decisions and keep other leaders work for them; it is rather to tell you, AS PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE RECEIVING HIGHER EDUCATION, WE SHOULD TURN OURSELVES INTO SALESMEN TO MAKE THEM WORK FOR US, THEN SELL THE CRAP THEY MADE TO THEM. I won’t question the purpose right now, but seriously. This is an engineer college. 80% of the students will become engineers of some kind. YOU ARE TELLING THEM, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK TO SELL YOUR STUFF? Have you ever seen an aerospace engineer from NASA to sell a company their airships? IT’S NOT THEIR JOB. Its’ like back to the question of, WHY DOES A STORY WRITER NEED TO LEARN CALCULUS? THEY WON’T NEED THAT SKILL EVER IN HIS/HER LIFE AFTER THEY FINISHED THE COURSE. What’s the point of teaching engineers to sell their stuff? Make them suffer? They should be more focused on SOLVING THE PROBLEM, not FINDING CUSTUMERS’ PROBLEMS FOR THEM. Engineers should write technical documents, fully explain the problem, how you will solve it, the mechanics, algorithms, prototype, test output, and end product analysis. Note that the key is HOW YOU WILL SOLVE IT. If you give me the full technical document of Windows, MacOS, or whatever large programs you can ever think of, within several days of typing codes I can reproduce those for you, but THAT’S NOT AN ENGINEER’S JOB. Rather, if you stated “Umm. Global warming is a problem. How should we solve that?” Then how to solve that it’s an engineer’s job. YOU DON’T GO TO 4 YEARS OF SCHOOL JUST TO LEARN YOU CAN GOOGLE “HOW TO SHOW DESKTOP IN JAVA,” but rather “HOW DO I CHANGE DESKTOP WALLPAPER IN JAVA,” then you will list the mechanics of doing it. We are, at least I am, learning the process of solving problems. The process of invention is a technical paper. If you don’t know what those papers contain, let me tell you once again: analyzing problem, how to solve the problem, your prototype, your mechanics, test output, and end product analysis. DO I CARE WHO IS USING MY PRODUCT? THAT’S NOT WHAT I SHOULD WORRY ABOUT. IF MY PRODUCT CORRECTLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM I/OTHERS STATED, THEN I AM A SUCCESSFUL ENGINEER. SELLING THEM? TALK TO MARKET PROMOTORS. WHY SHOULD I CONVINCE YOU TO USE MY STUFF? IF YOU NEED IT, THEN YOU PROBABLY WANT TO USE IT. ELSE, SALESMEN WILL CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU NEED IT. THAT’S THE CYCLE OF BUSINESS. EVERYONE HAS HIS/HER JOB. A RENAISSANCE MAN? YES THERE ARE, BUT A FEW. WHY FORD INVENTED THE ASSEMBLY LINE? BECAUSE HE SENSED NOT EVERYONE CAN DO ALL THINGS TOGETHER. HOW DID HE SOLVE THIS? MAKE EVERYONE FOCUS ON HIS/HER JOB!

People buy why you do, not what you did? What a pity. If I am the customer, I will call myself stupid. What’s the point of people buying stuff that they don’t need? It’s just a way salesmen used to fool people to buy craps they failed to find a market on. Again, I don’t care what you said, I won’t buy a laptop without a touchpad/right click button BECAUSE I NEED THE RIGHT CLICK BUTTON, I NEED A CONVIENT WAY TO USE MY LAPTOP.

I’m very excited to talk about codes I just wrote last week; but 80% of people will see them as crap. A PhD just talked about his robotic running/walking experiment during my health class, all the moving graphs, force/wave lines, etc. I heard him for 50 minutes and still didn’t understand what he was talking about. Things have different values in different people’s eyes; if we are in Japan then my project will probably not be ignored like this. What’s wrong if your problem is small? Bell Gates did not make Windows in one night; your Steve Jobs did not just think overnight and decide, oh, we probably should make a phone where people can program stuff on it, even though android is just like this, but we are still doing it to steal their market. Also, make them expensive as HELL so people can buy them and think that they are MORE ADVANCED/INTELLEGENT PEOPLE. DOS once was just a data organizer; Mac was an advanced painting tool 30 years ago. They improved as time moved on, because people found out more and more problems, and then the engineers were making their products better and better.

WHY SHOULD PEOPLE HIRE ME, NOT SOME SMART GUY FROM CHINA OR INDIA? BY LEARNING RIGHT-BRAIN THINKING SKILLS? YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE DUMMER THAN CHINESE OR INDIANS, SO YOU HAVE TO LEARN THOSE OTHER SKILLS AND　HOPE THAT THEY DON’T HAVE? No. Face the truth, close combat with them in problem solving. If I can solve this problem, they can’t, I get hired. That’s why I go to college, to learn the skills. I once went to an anime company, mainly for my own interest, but I learned some company management skills there: they stated “company needs you to solve problems. If company doesn’t have any problems, then you are fired.” If you are the problem solving guy, what in the world will get you fired if the company still needs you to solve problems? DON’T COMPLAIN PEOPLE ARE TAKING YOUR JOBS. THEY STUDIED HARDER THAN YOU. THEY PUT IN MORE WORK. WHERE ARE YOU WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STUDY? THEN LOSING YOUR JOB IS A DIRECT RESULT.

Don’t use humanity as a reason that this class completely ignores the value of engineering: if that so, then engineers do not need such humanity. Teach this to MBA, Harvard, Yale or Cornel kids to make them CEOs, hire us, and then use us to make big money.

BTW: wordpress failed when I have to bookmark the page of making new post.


Meaning of Life

If someday you found out, you have some random treasures that you do not need to do anything to earn your living, will you still do anything else? This actually brings the argument that Daniel Pink made before in his Ted Talk, “extra income will not increase the performance of right-brain work.” So, as he was saying, if you are easily pleased with cash, goods, or some other form of things that can support you earn your living easier, you are more likely to do nothing when you are in the scenario described several sentences above. Else, you are doing the right brain work. You are superior. You learned the actual meaning of life.

Well I’ll say not true to that. First one must understand we are all controlled in a organized form, called “government.” Whatever you are doing, you are doing it for somebody else. Secondly, all things have causes. I do not do a thing without a reason. Especially engineers – they make stuff that people can use. No one made something then wondered,”umm. what I’ve built for?” Often times, these are related with “money,” or I referred as “earning your living.” That’s why everything is measured with money these days, Daniel Pink – research funds, business incomes, store salaries, book prices, musics, etc. Do you think making music is a right-brain work? It sure is to me, how creative one must be to make those sounds organized that we felt comfortable listening to, but is there any songs that ABSOLUTELY MAKE NO PROFITS? Absolutely, means no donations, no sales on itunes music, no purpose for business ads, no anything. Why do you think, those Hollywood stars earn so much money? why those film makers can afford large houses? If they are doing the RIGHT-BRAIN work, then they shouldn’t care about profits, RIGHT? The fact is, they make a lot more money than my family, probably your family too.Why do you think people go to college, they just want to waste their parents’ money and their time so much? We are all working to earn a life, Pink, by going to college I can earn my life easier. You can only discover the meaning of life after you earned it. Sorry, I have not reached it yet.

If I can do whatever I want all day while still enjoys the same life as I work 8h per day, WHO WILL WORK? If my life does not need to be earned, WHO WILL TRY THAT HARD WHAT SO EVER? If you said you


Story vs engineer

Now I understand what Daniel Pink is talking about in his book, how to sell stuff better with your right brain in his book, it’s not a great book for invention, but rather a management/selling guide for people who are stuck in downtime. Although I am not in engineer major and have not taken any engineer classes, but I know if you want to invent stuff, i.e. build stuff, you can’t tell yourself a story, convince and fool you that, this is needed. No. Unless it is an order, you are developing something for needs. I built the download software because I need it, and I am using it right now. If even you are not using your product, who will? Story comes in where you think it is useful but others don’t. Then, you need to convince others that, this is useful.

One last quote on “people don’t buy what you do, but why you do.” If you tell me what ever fabulous stories trying to make me buy a mac, sorry, I won’t no matter what. Because I don’t need a laptop that DOESN’T EVEN HAVE RIGHT CLICK BUTTON ON ITS TOUCHPAD. You made a laptop without a right click button, then I won’t buy it. I don’t care how hard you get through to think about this design, how tough it is to make it so thin and light, how the keyboard is like, etc. If this thing does not meet my need, then I won’t spend a dime on it. Focus on what you do. Why do I even care about your stories about mac? It’s the quality that makes me want to spend money, not your background stories and all such.


introducing 51lrc downloader…v0.2

This is an update to the previous downloader!

download address is the following: you should see “51lrc.jar” in the list, click to download.

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=f6382d5763733e25&sc=documents&nl=1&uc=1&id=F6382D5763733E25%21144#

Functions: monitor clipboard, auto download lrc files, auto generate mp3 download link in 51lrc.com site

How to USE:

0. put this program in folder where you want your mp3s to be in

1. open this program

2. open 51lrc.com

3. find a song you like

4. right click on the headset icon, i.e. preview, click copy link location (See test video on my previous blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

5. wait for it…

6. a window should pop up asking where do you want to save the mp3 to. Navigate to the program containing folder, press ctrl+v to paste file name, save

7. repeat

n. you should find the mp3 has the correct name & links to its lyric file. Enjoy!

Program is tested on my WINDOWS7 system. It is programmed in java. It is NOT designed to be cross-platform. Java is required if you don’t have one.

problem1: on English-based windows system, all Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. characters will not display correctly. It looks like junk. But, if you are using ipod/walkman/microsoft’s ipod/samsung’s ipod/any mp3 player brought in USA, then it doesn’t matter because the player doesnot support it anyway.

problem2： the program will open a new tab in your browser. press ctrl-w to quickly close it.

Final notes to those who bother to see my source code: 51lrc.com has protected its lrc download link, it required a referer page to correctly download the link. Also, the mp3 link is protected in a way that java cannot find the file using the link; however this is compromised by using your browser to open it. I tried change the user-agent but it did not work. But, this way allows multi-thread downloading mp3 files. Pro>con.

Source code is pasted here. I know my programming style is horrible, don’t point that out in the comments.

//Project:51lrc Downloader
//author:Shengyuan Wang
import java.awt.Frame;
import javax.swing.JTextPane;

import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable;
import java.awt.datatransfer.StringSelection;
import java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;
import java.awt.datatransfer.UnsupportedFlavorException;
import java.awt.*;
//import javax.swing.*;
//import java.awt.event.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
//我不たね
public class lrcdownloader extends Frame {

//    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
private JTextPane jTextPane = null;
/**
* This is the default constructor
*/
public lrcdownloader() {
super();
initialize();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
new lrcdownloader().show();
}
/**
* This method initializes this
*
* @return void
*/
private void initialize() {
this.setLayout(null);
this.setSize(300, 200);
this.setTitle(“51lrc Downloader”);
this.add(getJTextPane(), null);
this.addWindowListener(new java.awt.event.WindowAdapter() {
public void windowClosing(java.awt.event.WindowEvent e) {
System.exit(0);
}
});
update thread = new update();
thread.start();
}

public class update extends Thread{
private String clipboard = getClipboard();
private String oldclipboard = “”;
private String url = “”;
//thread.start();
public update() {
super();
System.out.println(clipboard);
}
public void run(){
while (true){
if(clipboard.equalsIgnoreCase(getClipboard())==false){
clipboard = getClipboard();
}
if(isValid(clipboard)&&!clipboard.equalsIgnoreCase(oldclipboard)){
oldclipboard=clipboard;
clipboard = ConvertUrl(clipboard);
//http://www.51lrcgc.com/asp/lrc.asp?id=20111021AdZTXB          processing .lrc URL
url = “http://www.51lrcgc.com/asp/lrc.asp?id=”+clipboard;
try {
URLConnection connect = new URL(url).openConnection();
connect.setRequestProperty(“Referer”, “http://www.51lrcgc.com/asp/showlyrics.asp?id=”+clipboard);
connect.connect();
InputStream stream = connect.getInputStream();
//String file =
BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(stream);
FileOutputStream file = new FileOutputStream(“1.lrc”);
BufferedOutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(file);
int i;
while ((i = in.read()) != -1) {
out.write(i);
}
out.flush();
in.close();
out.close();

RandomAccessFile reader = new RandomAccessFile(“1.lrc”, “r”);
String upsongname = reader.readLine();
String songname = “”;
for (int ii=4; ii<upsongname.length()-1;ii++){
songname=songname+upsongname.charAt(ii);
}
String upartist=reader.readLine();
String artist = “”;
for (int ii=4; ii<upartist.length()-1;ii++){
artist = artist+upartist.charAt(ii);
}
reader.close();
String name = artist+” – ” +songname;
jTextPane.setText(name+” file downloaded!”);
File lrcfile = new File(“1.lrc”);
if (!lrcfile.renameTo(new File(name+”.lrc”))) {
jTextPane.setText(“Error renaming lrc file; probably means you have already downloaded the song.”);
}
else{
//http://www.51lrcgc.com/mp3/201110/21/20111021AdZTXB.mp3
//20100429dZKf8d
url = “http://www.51lrcgc.com/mp3/”+clipboard.charAt(0)+clipboard.charAt(1)
+clipboard.charAt(2)+clipboard.charAt(3)+clipboard.charAt(4)
+clipboard.charAt(5)+”/”+clipboard.charAt(6)+clipboard.charAt(7)
+”/”+clipboard+”.mp3″; //processing mp3 URL
setClipboard(name);
try {
Desktop.getDesktop().browse(new URL(url).toURI());//use default browser to open URL
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
} catch (URISyntaxException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
}
}
try {Thread.sleep(1500);}
catch (InterruptedException e){}
}
}
public String getclip(){
return clipboard;
}
public void setclip(String clop){
clipboard = clop;
}
public boolean isValid(String url){
return url.startsWith(“javascript:WebPlayer”);
}
public String ConvertUrl(String url){//split and delete useless information in clipboard
//javascript:WebPlayer(’20100429dZKf8d’)
String temp = “”;
for (int i=0;i<url.length()-2;i++){
if(url.charAt(i)==’(‘){
i++;
i++;
while(i<url.length()-2){//avoid ‘)
temp = temp + url.charAt(i);
i++;
}
}
}
return temp;
}
//    public boolean mp3download(String url) throws MalformedURLException, IOException{
//        URLConnection connect = new URL(url).openConnection();
//        connect.connect();
//        InputStream stream = connect.getInputStream();
//        BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(stream);
//        FileOutputStream file = new FileOutputStream(“1.mp3″);
//        BufferedOutputStream out = new BufferedOutputStream(file);
//        int i;
//        while ((i = in.read()) != -1) {
//            out.write(i);
//        }
//        out.flush();
//        in.close();
//        out.close();
//        return new File(“1.mp3″).exists();
//    }
public String getClipboard() {
Transferable t = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard().getContents(null);

try {
if (t != null && t.isDataFlavorSupported(DataFlavor.stringFlavor)) {
String text = (String)t.getTransferData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
return text;
}
} catch (UnsupportedFlavorException e) {
} catch (IOException e) {
}
return null;
}
public void setClipboard(String str) {
StringSelection ss = new StringSelection(str);
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard().setContents(ss, null);
}
}
/**
* This method initializes jTextPane
*
* @return javax.swing.JTextPane
*/
private JTextPane getJTextPane() {
if (jTextPane == null) {
jTextPane = new JTextPane();
jTextPane.setBounds(new Rectangle(22, 39, 228, 142));
jTextPane.setText(“Hi! From now on, if you go to 51lrc.com, try to download a song, just right click on the preview icon, go \”copy link location\”, this little program will automatically download it for you!                                                      Program by DevilG”);
jTextPane.setEditable(false);
}
return jTextPane;
}

}  //  @jve:decl-index=0:visual-constraint=”230,56″


Introducing 51lrc downloader

Hi there! Before I introduce my program, I want to know how many people actually know 51lrc.com?

51lrc.com is a Chinese music website, originally built for adding lyrics to songs, allowing people to view the lyrics while they are listening to the song. However, the website gets larger, and the website allows people to download songs. This website is good because there are a lot of weird songs available that normally you won’t find in stores unless you are in Japan, S.Korea or somewhere else in the world. Since about 5 years ago, they restricted download period of a song from unlimited to 8 hours, that means, users can only download a song 8 hours after the song has put on the website, after that, the download icon became grey, thus it will not be activated by clicking. However, the songs are not deleted in the server, it’s the direct downloading function that is being blocked. If one uses old song download link and apply proper attributes, one can still download the song. But that means more work for the user, or me, and I want a machine to do the work for me. Thus I created this little program, it will monitor the clipboard, if information in clipboard is qualified as a link from 51lrc.com, then the program will open the mp3 download link in your browser. Basically it is an example of monitoring clipboard, process, and opening url in java applications. Maybe I will give it some updates in the future, but I am in great short of time right now, thus I will call it done. By the way, its name is 51lrc downloader if you did not see the title.

The source code and the program are available, but it will be little of use for those of you who are not Chinese, since the whole website is all Chinese except the logo on the left said 51lrc.com. If you are interested, please send me an email, I will reply you with the packed program/source code if you want. Tested on my win7 system with firefox, java is needed if you don’t have one. If you are a java developer and wish to discuss something with me (p.s. don’t expect too much on me, my skills are probably even poorer than those who are in CS1301), I will be happy to do so.

Test video:

Recorded with blueberry flashback recorder, if you are ever interested.


Chemists that are in my textbook

Even though they might not be the “greatest” chemists of all time, but their efforts are important enough to be included in a textbook. In other words, some modern chemistry concepts are developed by them. If people helped define chemistry is not important, no one else will be.

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto, Italian chemist. he does not only have a long name, but also found out the concept of mole. If you ever took chemistry, can you imagine what you will do if you are not allowed to use moles? The whole subject is built upon this standard! Thanks to his research, people finally knew equal mass does not mean equal amount of molecules.

Fritz Haber

This guy invented a way to make ammonia, NH3 that is still using today. What’s ammonia? It can be used as house cleaners, or fertilizers, to provide plants with nitrogen. How important is nitrogen to plant growth? If you have ever heard of planting beans before other crops to make them grow faster and make the soil fertile, the process is simply putting nitrogen under ground. Ammonia is produced 146.5m tones in 2006. that’s huge! Without him, we will pay extra 50% energy bills to cover costs of producing ammonia.

Seriously, you don’t know ammonia? You’ve never used it before?

Gilbert Newton Lewis

He is written in chemistry textbooks. We all know substances are combinations of atoms, sometimes just one element, like pure gold Au; however, most of the time, matters we see everyday are many elements combined. So how do they arrange? Lewis gave the solution by drawing the Lewis electron diagram.


Professional Aspiration

My dad’s major in college is the study of Chinese characters. Now he works for government, dealing international matters, mainly on technology. My mom’s major in college is English. She is a college professor in comparative literature for over 10 years. My major is chemistry, but I am ready to learn some computer science before I graduate. Think about it, I just learned some economy knowledge from a BBS. Oh, by the way, 20 minutes ago I thought about Ramsey theory for a while, found out mathematics logical thinking was pretty fun. Thanks to Internet, I can get information so fast: stuff I used to have to search in library for 3 hours now can be delivered in a second. Also why Internet, why do you have to give me so many choices to choose? If it was 20 years earlier, when I graduated, I was most likely going to be a chemist, just like my major. But now, I am overwhelmed by ways and ways my future can be. How your future is determined when you can even change your major? Who said programmers are not right-brainers, thus they have no creativity and are discarded by the wheel of time? Without them, you won’t have windows, iOS, Linux or whatever operation system you are using now to view this blog! And, I love to think about complex logic problem for 2 hours and find out I am totally wrong. It is a waste of time, but it trains your logical thinking. Why humans can be this multifunctional? Can I just know one thing and I can spend all my life working on it? Unfortunately, the answer is no, or else a computer will just take my place, because even that is multifunctional. So now I have to face the world, take as many classes as I can, try to find something interesting the worth my time spending on. In short, I have no idea what I am doing in the future.


Our Project

Even though we started the project a little bit late, that gave us more time to plan and prepare. We had met some difficulties getting every member of the group to meet together and discuss our plans, but in the end we got the materials and were ready to establish our project. Inviting people to contribute to our project is a bit tricky; usually we had to ask them if they want to spend 30 seconds to add a piece to our project. If we could use a table and hang a poster to advertise our project, we might be more successful. However, we still finished within 2 hours.  While analyzing I found out a few flaws in our plan; one is that our “product” is too messy. We should end it about half time, because now it looks like a giant black paper with few white pieces. And perhaps if we set up on Saturdays or Sundays, people walking by the student center won’t all be going for classes, thus we can get more people to contribute. Talking about contribution, we should prepare our project to have a larger scale, right now our “product” is not enough. Also an interesting point is, even though we did not ask anyone to paste pieces “outside of the box,” no one did so. I am very looking forward to conclusions we draw; hopefully we can get a good point of what GT people is like.


?=A*B*C*D=!

Computers are powerful tools that can solve many everyday problems. I wanted a to-do list program that can keep track of what things have to be done, what date are they due, how many days left to complete those things, and I wanted them to show in a list form. Such thing does not exist in the internet, so I programmed one.

This is an example of me applying one powerful solution to my personal problems. Such a connection is easy to make: I have some programming knowledge. I want a todo list. Combining those, I got a todo list program. That explains the existence of many other programs we are using, like word and powerpoint. Thinking about other programs/mini games I created, I have never intended to create them from beginning. I never knew I was going to make a shooter game when I learned python, but I did. I did not learn java to make a todo list. Thinking about my creation process, I believe left brain is just as important as the right brain. Connections and relationships must be established, but first one must become familiar with things he/she is connecting. I cannot make a program without knowing what java is. Also, an invention process must be led by a problem. Invention is not like science where we don’t know what we discovered now can, or cannot be used in the future. One need a logic brain to process what is the problem, and maybe he/she can connect something to it, hopefully problem will be solved. Even if things are connected, those still have to be managed logically to propose a proper solution. I need to point out that, even now with global connections is so advanced, we can hire foreign workers to minimize operation costs, the leader still must have his/her left brain working all the time, if he/she does not even know what can his/her workers do, it’s impossible to give out business plans or designs. Studying is still important.

The idea of connection is not new. Hundreds of years ago, there were business owners. Before that there were slave owners, governors, kings. Or, thousands of years ago there were tribe leaders. They were all leaders. In my opinion a leader’s job is to connect people who follow him/her to make something that is beneficial to someone, or some people. A leader has to know what can his/her people do, and what his /her goal is, either fulfill his/her greed or make public goods. This process is very similar to invention process mentioned in the book. Honestly I don’t think the “right brain” concept is a new idea. It is just old stuff we used to do, and now we give it a new name. Maybe we are using our right brain all the time, but we just don’t know it is our right brain doing all that.

Also I would like to argue that many inventions come from small things.  If I was sitting in a room, thinking about how to end global warming, probably in 10 years I won’t have any idea. But, when I was on my computer doing my homework, tracking all the exam dates, homework due dates and felt so tired of doing that, I will probably create a software that will do all that things for me. That’s the birth of my todo list.

In the end I would say opportunities do not come in a daily basis. Do not expect one can solve global warming in one day. Not really possible. Maybe one day you will solve global warming by seeing your air-conditioner and applying that in a larger scale. That’s the nature of inventing, first applying randomness on set, logic things, then try to make it have logic sense.


From paperplanes to invention

Quite interestingly, most of people in our group had something made of paper – two paper planes and one paper birds. Talking about those paper-made objects, how those planes and birds fly in the sky, suddenly we came up an idea of researching how those paper planes can fly further. Looking at two paper planes that have two different styles, we considered what is the component that make a paper plane fly further, higher, or longer in the air. Also from another item, tie-dye shirt, we thought about tie-dye using paper. So we planned on making a video on a new design of paper planes that will fly further and/or higher. Then from there we talked about picturing, changed our subject to how to shoot photos. We had explored a lot of ideas such as building a real model of plane, make a plane game and others. From this I think the invention process/discovery process should be as follows:

first, a group of people/a person come up, talking/thinking about one specific things that all of the people have an idea about. We rarely make something out of nowhere; we often have to have something based on to create something new.

second, there must be a goal to reach/a problem need to be solved. For example, our paper planes are meant to be played, maybe used to compete whose can fly furthest. It might sound childish but it is a goal. Then we can improve our skills in making a paper plane, finally invent a new style for it to fly further/higher.

Also I believe interest is an important factor. That could be a factor companies with goal, sometimes not. Say I accidentally made a paper plane in a different way than the one I used to make. Then I found it flies shorter but higher. Could be without a goal, this subject is researched and hopefully something new is coming out from it.

Then the invention cycle repeats. However I would say interest would affect discovery more rather than invention, when it comes to invention a problem is likely to be solved. Will we solve our problem? We shall find out.