by admin in Blog, Informative, Technical Tags: Cleaning, iRobot, Robot, Science-Fiction on October 27, 2010
We’ve all seen the robots in science-fiction series and movies that do household tasks for their owners. Some of us, might have even dreamed about how great it would be to one day have one of those robots. Apparently, now, iRobot is bringing that dream a little closer to reality.
Have a closer look at these two creations:
– The iRobot Roomba: the robot that vacuums automatically
– The iRobot Scooba: the robot that cleans your floor.
Personally, I like them because they’re small and cute and I can already see them running around in our living room 
. These seem like they’re very nice gadgets and that they clean the house while they’re at it, is just a wonderful bonus to me!
by admin in Blog, Informative Tags: Action, Article, Bottom, Introduction, never-ending, Reaction, Reading, Reading habits, Top, Weird on August 20, 2010
“Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else.”
- Alison Boulter -
A while ago, I admitted to my girlfriend that I often read articles from the bottom up. Apparently and to my surprise, that was a little weird. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’m not the only one who enjoys this reverse experience.
I do usually start at the beginning of an article. What happens is, that after a few paragraphs, I decide to skip everything in the middle and go straight to the last paragraph. From there, I read my way up again until I reach the paragraphs on top were I stopped reading earlier.
Of course, I don’t always use this method. When the author has me hanging on his lips from the start or when the article is rather short, I do continue reading from the top down. It’s in all those other cases, where I’m on the fence whether the article is interesting enough to dedicate a part of my life to or so boring that I’d rather watch our mini sunflowers grow.
These are some of the reasons why I end up on that fence:
- Too long introduction: sometimes a good article starts of with one of those dreaded long introduction paragraphs.
- The never-ending lane: I start reading and even though it is rather interesting, it just doesn’t seem to ever come to an end. There are still so many pages left and it feels like it’s going to take forever to get through them.
- Action-reaction obviousness: every action asks for a reaction, yet these reactions are rarely very surprising. Yet, when you read about the reaction first, it makes you a lot more curious about what the action could’ve been.
- Pure text: people should learn to use enough white spaces, images or other things to give their articles some breathing space. Pure text, all cramped together, isn’t very inviting to read. Reading this from the bottom up makes it, for some reason, go down a lot easier.
So, in stead of wrestling myself through the article or giving up on it altogether, I just skip everything and start reading the last paragraph. If that one re-grasps my attention, then I just read the one on top of that one next and so on and so on …
Go ahead, give it a try yourself! It can’t (physically) hurt
by admin in Blog, Informative Tags: Albert Einstein, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Challenge, Effective, Effectiveness, KISS Principle, Laziness, Lazy, Leonardo Da Vinci, Occam's Razor, Pareto Principle, Simplicity, The Worse is Better on August 19, 2010
Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
- Robert A. Heinlein -
In my opinion, laziness is misunderstood by those who do not feel it. When people are doing nothing, it’s often labelled as being lazy. Yet, this statement doesn’t automatically make the opposite true. Being lazy isn’t about doing nothing, it’s about doing everything you want to do in the most effective way possible. There’s a sort of challenge in finding the simplest way to do a task, finding new ways, broadening your horizons and in the end discovering the least time consuming, simplest and most effective vision.
This challenge hasn’t gone unnoticed by others either:
- Occam’s Razor: this principle says that entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Meaning that the explanation with the fewest assumptions, is usually the correct one. Don’t assume too much, the simplest solution is most likely the one you’re after.
- KISS Principle, which stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. Not implying that people might be stupid, but to remember that when you break down a problem correctly, simple solutions can probably fix it and anyone (even the average) would be able to maintain it, should something go wrong. Unnecessary complexity only leads to clutter and should, at all times, be avoided.
- Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule. This principle states that, for most cases, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So, by just focusing on the most important 20% of the causes, you can handle 80% of the issues. This will save a lot of time and in some cases money.
- The Worse is Better Principle: the idea behind it is that quality does not necessarily increase with functionality. At some point less functionality (worse) is the better option in terms of practicality and usability. Try to only implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you might-one-day-could need them.
- Similar concepts can be found in Albert Einstein‘s “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”, Leonardo Da Vinci‘s “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” or Antoine de Saint Exupéry‘s “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.
We are trying too hard. We always want more and better things and for some reason we have ourselves convinced that these two go hand in hand. As a result, we tend to over complicate problems and lose too much time on things that were never important to begin with. Simplicity leads to effectiveness, effectiveness leads to saving time and effort and saving time and effort leads to laziness. “Be lazy” … if you can’t say it, you can’t be it 
.
Do yourself (and everyone else) a favor and be lazy, go for the simplest solution!
