5 words that influence your live without letting you know it

I know. Mark Twain said:"Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do." I tend to use some of these words, because I love them. And they influence everybodys life. How?

Serendipity
...is when you find something you were not looking for. It is nearly Zen, but don't we all find most of the things when we don't look for them? Interestingly the act of finding is called searching as long as it is not successful.

Coandă effect
...is defined as the tendency of a fluid to be attracted to a nearby surface. Just think of your tea or coffee running down the teapot or of milk you try to pour...  Now the thing has a name and now you can blame it. But you should also know, that there are some real world applications. So when you blame the effect, always be thankful when you see an aeroplane. Especially when you see it from the inside.

Mnemonics
I cannot remember what this word was all about. There was this rhyme which helped me remembering what that word means. I better look it up in the Wikipedia.

Onomatopoeia
...is a word that sounds or describes the thing it stands for. It is simple. When we are small, people point at pigs and say oink. I love the german expression "Lautmalerei", which literally means painting with sounds. So simple.

Simplicity
...is when you know the words above and you can use them if you have to. Often the 5 Dollar word makes a good shortcut or hints that you will need to know how to solve differential equations, but if you really have to say something, take out your purse open it and use these rusty 50 cents...

On the new Google Instant and serendipity or why serendipity will save the bat

Serendipity is the discovery of something when looking for something completely different - it's the prototype of a fortunate discovery. Think 1492, Post-It, the little blue pills and similar. When the new Google instant was first announced I thought that it might add another tool in the toolbox of serendipity.

Cars in the pedestrian zone

But it will be different. Google tries to guess what you are looking for. So the probability for discovering something you were not looking for is declining. Only leaves you with the possibility of hours of browsing the wikipedia.

The strange thing is that while we are trying to eliminate serendipity in our daily life, there are people out there who live of serendipity: People whose work involves creativity. And I am not only talking about artists alone.

I talk about all of us.

Serendipity has a function in society. It makes people have a pool of ideas you can stumble upon, it helps to maintain the diversity of thoughts. It fights the monoculture of mind. It makes you learn something and develop new things. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but serendipity will save the bat.

Learning to program Android (part 0 of Googolplex)

Now I own a book and I already read it until the part where the fun kicks in. I managed to install all the SDK, ADsomethings and downloaded a copy of Eclipse (nice). I had a look at some examples and I think that I will really start learning tomorrow.

I will try to solve a problem for Aditya at http://www.radbox.me . No Android supported so far. Iphone only. But radbox offers the possibility to have your favourite videos in one place. Have a look.

Why I decided to keep the name of this blog - how to remember Pi

Thank you  for your mails and the comment ;-)
I admit that I thought of changing to tumblr. There are no more rememberable subdomains left at blogspot. But  then I decided to keep the name as it is. Why?
My thought was the following:

1. When I have a genius idea I can switch. Then it will be a full domain.
2. People come to my blog because they search in google, click a link or simply because they follow my tweets.
3. People come again because they follow my tweets, have a bookmark or simply remember Pi.

You want know how to remember the first few digits of Pi?

The Greek letter pi (source: Wikipedia)

3,1415 is sufficient for most calculations Pi, starts with three (rhyme) and continues with some addititions:

3 + 1 = 4 ...+ 1 = 5 and now you can remember my blog stst31415.blogspot.com

Do you want one digit more? Just add up the digits. The last sum which is below ten is the next digit 

3+1+4+1 = 9 the next one would be to "start again": 3

Try this at home.

_____

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

My Girlfriend wants to have a decision about the wedding

I wrote about decisions earlier. Knowing or realizing things does not mean that you do them. So here I sit after a conversation with my girl. I realized I cannot go to the wedding. She does not know either if she wants to do it without me.

Man hates changes!

Did you think this post was on my wedding? Sorry, no wedding. It is again on decisions. Why do we hate decisions? Do we hate decisions because they imply changes? One might remember πάντα ῥεῖ (Everything flows) by Heraklit from school. I do not know what Heraklit thought when he coined this sentence. But he is right. We are already in a constant flow of changes.

Maybe this is why we hate changes.
Let's assume that the brain is efficient. If it is efficient the brain would be against all actions which lead to workload. So resisting against change could be kind of a loadbalancing functionality. It takes a bigger perspective to see that the change might bring improvements.

And then there is the rule of thumb: Never change a running system.

If you are interested in reading about Western philosophy I recommend the book by Bertrand Russell. It gives a brief history of the western world and philosophy, also describing social and technological changes.

A short affair with tumblr

I have to admit: Tumblr is nice, very nice. And I was really thinking of switching...   ...for 314 milliseconds. It was a simple decision. I played with tumblr for an hour. Two thirds of the time I played with the design and when I was at the point, that I wanted to actually fill in content. I was realizing, that I loved to play with the design.

But I do this already with this blog. I lose time, because I love to play with the colors and the layout. Well I have a new rule: No changing the design of this blog until October. So I can concentrate on the content.

At the end of the day this is the return of the concept: Separate form and content. The form is often realized using a template and the content is edited separetly. You see it realized in content management systems, LaTeX or the wedding of CSS and HTML. The idea is also half realized in wordprocessing software. If you ever worked with naked HTML or LaTeX you know what happens when the flow kicks in, because you have do not have to think on the form.

What are your favourite Ingredients to kick off learning?

Those of you who read my last posts remember that I wanted to learn programming Android. Did you ever ask yourself what has to happen to start a learning process? So here is my theory of the ingredients to a tasty learning experience:

1. Commitment
2. Clear picture of what you want to learn
3. A plan
4. The steps to your target are small enough you can make them.
5. Cool tools (mental and hitech)

These points are obvious, maybe they are not even a complete list, but do you see the parallels to project management? You can only succeed in learning if you keep to your plan, if you know where you are and where you are going to and how you are going to do that.

But there is one thing which is always true: Do something. If there is no action, there is no change. Even the decision not to learn something is an action. Then you do not have to worry about this point on your list - if you have a list.

BTW: I went to a bookstore nearby and bought a book on Android programming. This is my new side project. Tomorrow I am going to work out a plan with my milestones.

One thing is missing in my list - on purpose. Repetition: What are your favourite ingredients to learning?