This blog highlights ingenuity and innovation in different walks of life, be it, Science, Festivals, Animation etc. This is a multi-faceted blog with topics catering to readers of all ages worldwide. The main aim is to provide good quality and well-researched posts on a diverse range of interesting and ingenious topics, which will draw the readers back to my blog and keep them guessing as to what the next blog post will be about!
Hello and Namashkar! The purpose of this post is to present some noteworthy quotes related to Innovation. Let us start right away! 1."Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." - Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary 2."The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes 3."I see no advantage in these new clocks.They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago." - Henry Ford 4."If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old." - Peter F. Drucker 5."Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth." - Peter F. Drucker 6."Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk 7."If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles Kettering 8."If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney 9."You can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level." - Albert Einstein 10."We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." - Thomas Edison
Genius is 99% Perspiration and 1% Inspiration - Thomas Alva Edison
Hello, Namashkar and Greetings! Most of us would have heard the title (quote)
of this post at some point or other! The title also makes it abundantly clear
that these were the words of an innovator!
Who is an innovator? An innovator is looked upon as a person who
introduces new methods, ideas or products. To innovate, means to bring in novelties,
make changes.
The action or process of innovating is Innovation. A look at the picture
above reveals that the innovator who is credited with the title quote is Thomas
Alva Edison. Famed worldwide as “The Wizard of Menlo
Park”, Edison can probably be looked upon, as the Innovator of the Millennium.
Edison - The Electrical Pioneer
It is time now to scrutinize the quote! This popular
aphorism is quite commonly used in connection with creativity and novelty, even
today.
From this quote, one may infer that the
gift of high intellect depends very less on being inspired and ninety nine
times more on working really hard and sweating it out. ‘Genius’ is chiefly understood as being the result of hard work, rather than an inspirited vision of
intuition. Have we, in some way, misinterpreted Edison, the coiner of this adage?
Interpreting the 'Genius' Quote:
Inspiration Versus Perspiration
The 'Genius' quote indicates that Edison was
definitely persistent in his experiments and worked very hard to give the world
some of the greatest innovations that have shaped the modern life. But innovation is driven by inspiration. An
idea may have popped up out of nowhere, may be, by the Will of God or Divinity,
in which case the term used is ‘Divine Inspiration’.
In simple terms, one needs to be inspired
to work on any project in any field. Only when one is motivated or passionate about
the work or job, will he/she start working on it and continue to work on it,
till suitable results are obtained. If one is not motivated from within or not
passionate about the project, then he or she is likely to quit halfway or most
likely, when the going gets tough. The motivation needs to come from within, at
the level of the spirit. It is at the spiritual level, that new ideas and
methods emerge in the human brain. So is the Inspiration part of it just 1%? On
the contrary, it is Inspiration which drives every innovation! Therefore, in my opinion, it could be more than 1%!
The lives of great innovators
indicate that inspiration served as something like a catalyst that kept them going, increasing the rate of innovation, without itself undergoing any permanent change in the process! It is said, 'Necessity is the mother of Invention'. Every necessity of man has inspired him towards working hard (Perspiration) and inventing new products (Innovation). In fact,
Inspiration drove the innovators to Perspiration, resulting in Historical Results! The
Great Innovators put in the long hours on their innovations, because they were
inspired in the first place!
If we were to view the 'Inspiration Versus Perspiration' diagram above as a Venn Diagram, then applying the concepts of a Venn Diagram, we find that in the region where 'Inspiration' and 'Perspiration' intersect each other or overlap each other, that is exactly where the 'Genius' is born! This means that both 'Inspiration' and 'Perspiration' are required for the blossoming of the human potential to what we call 'Genius'. As per the quote, 'Inspiration' and 'Perspiration' are necessary components, which together make a 'Genius'. That is how I interpret the 'Genius' quote! The right blend of the intuitive driving force ('Inspiration') and the external or physical human effort or hard work ('Perspiration') results in a great accomplishment ('Genius') !
Conclusion:
The Bulb Moment
It
is time to draw a conclusion to the 'Inspiration Versus Perspiration' argument. May
we conclude that hard work fed by an earnest motivation at the level of the
spirit drives innovation and creativity or in other words, Inspiration drives
Perspiration? Can this be a Light Bulb Instant on the Inventive Acumen of the
Wizard of Menlo Park? Think about it!
P.S: The main objective of this post is to interpret the ever popular 'Genius' quote by the great Inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. Any errors, misrepresentations and inaccuracies in any form are genuinely regretted.
Great to be blogging again! Does the title of this blog post
sound absurd? Well, it is not! In fact, I think that it is the perfect title
for my blog post and I hope, you, my readers will also shortly agree with me!
The latest
fad for some arguably, may be online shopping! But to me, it appears to be
‘Apps’! I personally had only heard
about Apps before, but now I know what they are and how one can use them! Thanks to the new Tablet mobile at home! To those of
my readers, who have probably just heard about them but do not really know what
they are, I am quoting its definition (as defined in computing) from the web,
“An app is a self-contained program or piece of software designed to
fulfil a particular purpose; an application, especially as downloaded by a user
to a mobile device”
It is
great fun to download an app from the google play store and install it on the mobile
and then just as easily, uninstall it from the mobile. The App space is an ever-growing space which
seems to be encompassing almost every aspect of the average person’s life.
There are apps for education, games, entertainment, social media, weather,
newspapers, food, travel and even apps for blogging. You name the space and there sure is an app
for it! Even as I write this post, I am
sure that there is an app developer some where out there, coming out with an
app in a hitherto unexplored area (by apps)!
Without much ado, I present to my readers my
favorite apps.
My
Favorite Apps:
My Favorite Apps
My Favorite Apps include:
Flashlight
(an App designed to work as a torch)
I really like this app since it feels like really holding a torch when
there is a power failure in my area.
Amazon Shopping App, Flipkart App and Myntra App
(Apps designed for Shopping)
The
Amazon Shopping App has a great user interface which provides a pleasant
shopping experience on the mobile.
The Flipkart App provides a
Voice facility wherein the user can actually speak out the criteria he wants to
enter for searching the products. Often additional offers are available on the
Flipkart App than on the Flipkart website online.
The
Myntra App provides a good selection of the latest in
fashion.
Amazon
Kindle App (an App designed for reading ebooks)
The
Amazon Kindle App makes reading a very convenient and
pleasurable activity
anywhere anytime.
Clean Master (an App designed to be an Android Optimizer,
Speed Booster, Battery Saver and Free
Anti-Virus)
The
Clean Master App makes the mobile faster, cleaner and a better
performing
gadget.
Other Notable Apps:
In addition to the above, there are other Apps like
Zomato (a Restaurant Finder App)
Twitter (an App to find the best of the social medium Twitter)
Facebook (an App to keep up with friends bringing the best of the social medium Facebook)
Google Maps (an App which makes navigating the world faster and easier by finding the best spots in town and the information needed to get there)
WhatsApp (a messaging App)
Blogger, Wordpress are apps designed for blogging
denotes the Blogger App
denotes the Wordpress App
I could go on and on with the list of apps
crowding the app stores.
It seems to be an endless list!
Apps have truly given a great boost to
programming for Mobiles, probably resulting in increased employment
opportunities for app developers. Apps are
probably an indicator of how ingenious the human brain can get. On the other hand, they also indicate the
increasing human dependency on external gadgets for various necessities.
I think that we are in the midst of a digital
revolution and the world is truly at our fingertips!
But, is
it time to pause and ponder that the world is becoming just a little too
saturated with
Apps?
Would
you not agree that it is indeed raining Apps?
Food for Thought: Are we being flooded with Apps or has the
human creative potential reached its zenith point with Apps? Think about it!
Another
Dimension:
Let us just look back a few decades when there
were no mobiles. We just had the telephones where we had to manually dial in
the numbers. While this may seem less advanced when compared to life today,
where we have tablets and iphones with manual dialing of numbers no longer
required, the telephone or the landline as it is now known, made us remember
the numbers that we had to dial each time, we wanted to reach another person.
Now we just store the number in our mobiles and forget about it! From this
perspective, we had better memories in the past. We were more self-reliant.
The technological advancements,
creativity and ingenuity of the human brain may have made life easier for the
modern man, but has it made him more dependent on gadgets?
In the past, Man used to rely on his brain,
now he relies on gadgets, one such gadget being the mobile loaded with Apps.
Are we heading in the right direction?
Apps are mostly being developed as part
of marketing brands. The brands become part of our daily lives. But do the
developers responsible for creating the apps get their due recognition?
Food for Thought: Technological
Advancement and Brand Marketing coupled with Human Values and Wisdom is the way to true progress.
Think about it!
Welcome back to my blog!
Does the date: 14 November ring a bell?
If the words ‘Children’s Day’ flashed through your mind or you were
flooded with pleasant childhood memories of ‘Bal Divas’ (as it is known in
Hindi), then you are on the right track! In my homeland India, we celebrate ‘Children’s
Day’ on 14 November every year to increase the awareness of people towards the
rights, care and education of children. The first Prime Minister of India,
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was born on this day 126 years back in the year 1889. It
is indeed AN AMAZING DATE!
Google greeted ‘Happy Children’s Day’ on
14-November-2015 with ‘Create Something for India’ Doodle 4 Google 2015 winning
entry (featured on its home page) below:
'Create Something for India' Doodle 4 Google 2015 Winning Entry
This
innovative doodle has been created by P Karthik from Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan,
Andhra Pradesh and shows a Plastic to Earth Machine. Karthik describes the
doodle as , “This mega
machine to recycle all the waste plastic from our country and make it into a
material which helps the growth of mother nature. This machine will turn the
most powerful evil plastic into green.”
Creative innovation of this kind is the way to
go for the budding generations! After
all,
“Children
of today are Citizens of Tomorrow”.
Now let
me post something amazing to celebrate this amazing date! Every child has been enamored of animated
characters. Television to most children
translates to Cartoons! As a child, my favorite hour was the cartoon hour on
Sundays on Doordarshan. My favorite shows were ‘He Man and The Masters of the
Universe’ and ‘Tom and Jerry’.
Children
connect with animals and even inanimate objects like dolls, toys etc.,. at a
much different level than adults do.
Hence, it is but natural that when life is put into animated characters
through great visual effects and advanced digital audio techniques, children
get transported to the funny fantasy world of cartoons!
Hence,
what better way to celebrate the amazing date of 14 November 2015 than an
effort to know more about our very dear and favorite, cartoon characters, some
of whom, we may have grown up watching and who continue to enthrall the current
generation as much as they used to rule the former!
I
therefore present to you 14 amazing facts and 14 amazing animations to
celebrate 1 amazing date: 14-November-2015.
Here we go,
Did you know?
1.Tom and Jerry* were initially Jasper and Jinx and
the series has won seven academy awards for Animated Short Film!
That is some achievement for an Animated Film!
In the following video 'Puss Gets The Boot', at 2:30 Tom is called 'Jasper'. Although Jerry is not named in the film, his name is 'Jinx'. This is their debut appearance.
Watch, Laugh and Have Fun!
* In this post, each series will be counted as one animation. For example, Tom and Jerry Series in this case,
2.Mickey Mouse has only four fingers. There are
two reasons behind it. The first was that Disney believed that five fingers
were too many for a mouse. The second was to save company money.
Watch this fun video where a 3 year old discovers that Mickey Mouse has only four fingers on each hand.
3.Donald Duck was created by Walt Disney when he
heard Clarence Nash doing his “duck” voice while reciting ‘Mary Had A Little
Lamb’ and his middle name is Fauntleroy (first revealed in the 1942 film Donald
Gets Drafted) , reportedly the only major Disney character with an official
middle name.
Here is a special appearance by the truly talented Clarence Nash at the 1984 Oscars.
4.Popeye, the Sailor made his comic strip
debut in January of 1929. Popeye was originally just one of many characters (an
extra) in a comic series drawn by Elzie Segar called Thimble Theater, which had
been around for about 10 years before Popeye showed up.The Popeye character quickly became so
popular, the strip was re-christenedThimble Theater Starring Popeyeand then later just calledPopeye,
the same title it carries to this day.
Presenting the first appearance of Popeye,The Sailor in a Betty Boop Cartoon! Enjoy!
5.Scooby Doo is really Scoobert “Scooby” Doo, named
after a nonsense vocal line in Frank Sinatra’s hit song “Strangers in the
Night”.
Here is the Scooby Doo! Where Are You Season1 Intro video! Sing and dance to the Intro!
6.The main
inspiration behind the appearance of the Disney character Aladdin was
originally Michael J Fox in Back to the Future, but later changed to Tom
Cruise.
Can you spot the resemblance below?
The Disney Character Aladdin is inspired from Tom Cruise
7.If
Nemo is one of your favorite characters,
then this one is for you !
Early
Sketch - Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
8. Native
American Actress Irene Bedard not only voiced the title character of Pocahontas
in the 1995 Disney Film, she also provided the major inspiration for the
heroine’s look and movement. Look at the
unmistakable resemblance below:
Disney Character Pocahontas is inspired from Native American Actress Irene Bedard
9.The American Film
Institute lists Walt Disney Pictures’ The Lion King as the fourth best animated
film of all time.
Watch the trailer now.
10.Hanna-Barbera
character Yogi Bear’s personality and mannerisms derived inspiration from Art
Carney’s Ed Norton character on The
Honeymooners , while his name resembled that of contemporary baseball star Yogi
Berra.
Yogi Bear, Boo Boo and Ranger Smith in Hanna-Barbera's Yogi Bear Series
11.Jennifer Lee is the
first female director of a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film (Frozen)
, the first writer at any major animation studio to become a director and the first female
director of a feature film that earned more than $1 billion in gross box office
revenue.
Catch Jennifer Lee on the success of Frozen in this video.
12. The longest running
primetime animated series is The Simpsons, which began in 1987.
The Simpsons
13. The word Pinocchio
originates fromItalian language
translating to ‘Pine Cone’. Watch the Original Walt Disney 1940 Trailer of Pinocchio now.
14.Walt Disney’s Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs won a special Honorary Academy Award . Academy President,Frank Capra came up with the idea of giving Disney a special Honorary Academy Award for
“significant screen innovation”. The award was one regular sized Oscar and
seven tiny ones. Here’s Shirley
Temple presenting the award:
That brings us to the end of the list.
In conclusion, here
is an amazing animation collage (prepared by me), a collage of pictures of the legendary animations, we just got to know better!
