Curious Inventions of the Green Mind

Clean up your desk!

2008-01-03T04:41:00.000-08:00

Well, the following invention is NOT mine. But I am very enthusiastic about it! I was looking for a solution of my messy desk for a long time. I mean, piles of paper, books and so on is a natural occurance and I never attempted to give it a thought. But all these wires and electronic gudgests - that what drove me nuts!

Until I discovered this internet site:
http://www.decluttered.com/

Here is the output of the desk clean up:

This picture is also taken from decluttered.com. Isn't it amazing?! Perfect solution for all those wires! And it's beneath your table!

Now I only have to apply it to my own desk. *Sigh*

World Wide Disease Database (WWDD)

2007-12-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

What's WWDD, you ask. That's one of my HUGEST inventions, I guess. It is ingenious in its simplicity. I am sure that I am re-inventing it, since I can not believe than nobody though of it earlier! It's so trivial and useful!

But let start from the story behind my idea. For those who have no patience and want actually to know what my ingenious idea actually is, please look deeper (down) in this post.

The background to my invention.

So here it goes. As usual, one evening I went to the swimming pool. Happy and gay after 10 swimming rounds in the pool, I went to the shower to wash myself from chlorine. I took off my swimming suite - and - oh my God! What do I see?! My whole body is covered by violet little oval spots all over! Have never seen anything of this kind!

"Don't panic", I said to myself. I wrapped myself into a towel, dried a bit, put on my clothes and ran home. At home I examined the spots closer. When the skin got dry and warm, the spots turned into pinkish. That was PLANTY of them!

I started to search the web on what the hell could that be. It took me around half an hour of trial and error till I have established several possibilities - one of them was Pityriasis Rosea The very next morning I rushed to a doctor, who confirmed my educated guess. Actually from surfing the web I already understood that there is no cure against it - you simply wait 3-4 months and the spots disappear, but yet I hoped that the doctor will give me some lotion or anything to make it disappear faster. But no, he just smiled and said to wait. Not to make any sweating sports, not to swim for a while, and it will go away.

My main concern was that it will move towards my face and hands. Well, finally it did not, but yet, I was rather depressed. During this period I scanned internet for more cases, and here I found a story from a guy which actually completely calmed me down. And here I read a nice educated article on Pityriasis Rosea. So now as of time of writing, after around 2 months, it is slowly disappearing from my body.

But...

(Here comes the WWDD explanation for those who opted to skip the background above):

The internet search and the stuff that I learned about this disease (for instance, that people have no idea where this Pityriasis Rosea is coming from and where it is going), made me think...

Somebody (well, not me... I am a bit too busy even for writing this blog... So somebody else) should create a (free!) World Wide Disease Database (WWDD). But not only a WWDD which includes the disease description, history and treatment possibilities. This we can find in Wikipedia without any special WWDD. The WWDD should be a data-bank with a statistical input from the diseased people.

For example, you go to your doctor and the doctor says that you have a Pityriasis Rosea. You come back home, open the database, and fill in the questionnaire in the WWDD which includes thousands of related and seemingly unrelated questions.

Some statisticians (and I am sure that there will be a lot of those, for example, hired by pharmaceutical companies) will do some work on that data and may be eventually the CAUSES and the TREATMENT will be clarified! Good for me, good for you, good for the human kind.

So this is what I, as a freshly (almost) cured Pityriasis Rosea survivor, will suggest as the possible questionnaire questions for this specific disease:

1. Time of the year that you got the disease
2. Temperatures outside (well not everywhere in the world January means snow. If you live in Australia I guess it would be rather hot...)
3. Your age.
4. Your country (that will help to establish the frequency of certain diseases around the world! - However, provided that THE SAME questionnaire is translated equally to all of the languages. And provided that in different countries the internet access of the people is equal. I mean, one should take into account that in some countries every 100th family has an internet access, while in some others, every family has at least one computer per family member :)
4. Is that the first time that you got this disease?
5. Have you been under stress lately (school/university examinations, divorce, etc - may be even I would let a specific field for the options).
6. Have you been doing sports lately? If yes, which ones?
7. Have you been visiting public swimming pools, public saunas, or other public places where you could suspect being infected (this question is important even if it is presently NOT believed that the disease can be transported by skin contact/air). Please specify.
8. Did you have Chickenpox earlier in your life?
(There must be more questions of this type, with different diseases, in order to make relations to different diseases/viruses that might be silent in your body for a long time but activate themselves suddenly in various ways)
9. Do you have any lip herpes on your lips from time to time?
10. What is your blood type? (Well, I have no idea about mine, but may be it also could help?)
11. Have you been using new type of skin lotions lately? If yes, which? (There should be also a general question on lotions and body cosmetics that might have been used lately).
12. Did you infect so far people who are living with you (your kids, your sex partner, so on)...

Well, there are many more questions that one may be interested in. There should be a possibility of the diseased people to suggest their own new questions, which they believe might be relevant. This should be a dynamic data base, accessible to all the people from the globe.

Here are several rules and concerns regarding the WWDD:

A. Every new data input should be automatically translated to all of the languages, so that an update will be simultaneous for the database statisticians. Likewise, every new questionnaire entry, every new form field, should be translated immediately so that the diseased people will be able to fill that entry in.
B. There should be a severe personal data protection, and a full anonymity of the person who fills in his data.
C. Because of B, it would be hard to detect the spammers. But I guess that the importance of such knowledge should be clear to everybody. Sooner or later, we all get the same diseases all around us. We all want to know the cure. Or at least where the disease is coming from, so that we could protect ourselves.
D. The statistic data should be available to any statistician in the world, be it an amateur or a professional one. There should be a public forum where they can discuss and share their thoughts about the data.
E. The doctors over the world should be aware of the WWDD and should recommend their patients to fill in the forms as soon as they find it appropriate.
F. There should be a possibility of a diseased person to update his own data. For instance, if in the beginning the patient says that his kids were not infected, but after a year the patient's kid gets the same disease, the earlier diseased parent should be able to update his/her entry from one-year ago (or earlier) in suspicion that he/she might have transferred the disease nonetheless.
G. The problem may arise when several entries/names exist for the same disease. To prevent it, every person should be asked to clarify his physician's opinion and to receive from the physician the latin name for the disease. Likewise, the patient should receive the most common names in his/her language, and fill in the certain fields in the form accordingly. Also, the statisticians who are doing the work with the data should be aware of multiple naming and proceed accordingly.

The question may arise: Why not to let an interviewing doctor to fill in such a form professionally? Well, that's because I do not want my doctor to know everything about me. I might be more frank filling my data on my own rather than sharing with the doctor some input which might seem irrelevant to myself (which would be the case of some questions in the form, of cause!)

Well, that's it so far regarding the WWDD! That's much more to it, but I will leave it for executive people - whoever will volunteer. I am just sharing my ideas here :)

Homo caecus

2007-11-21T12:59:00.002-08:00

Yes, here I come, wet and angry, out of the city swimming pool. The swimming pool is OK, even very nice so to say - taking into account that after 20:00 in the evening the price reduces to 2.50 Euro.

Then why am I so angry?! Because my brand-new Speedo goggles ("Cyclone", Female active, UV protection + antifog) turned out to be neither water-proof nor do they have any antifog effect.

And here comes the unavoidable question: why use goggles at all? Swim natural!
Well, that would be a good solution against the fog. And I am anyway wet inside my goggles. But... I need them since I wear contact lenses! I'm blind without them!

For us, blind people, lens came out to be a lifebuoy in our sport lives. Diving? - no problem, put on your mask and dive with your contacts! Enjoy the view of the marine life! - Swimming? - today's goggles are supposed to be water-proof ... Volleyball, basketball? - no more glasses flying around the field. Very easy, and natural!

But unlike sports under normal atmospheric conditions, the water sports are tricky. Take, for example, diving. The sad reality is that somebody's fins will inevitably appear in front of your face and will remove your mask! Hard to believe? Try it! Also the fog problems can arise. However, a good spit on my mask in the beginning of my dives always provides a fantastic solution to the fog problem!

However, I did not dare to spit on my new Speedo goggles. I did not ribe them, or touch the glasses with my fingers. The very first swimming was excellent: dry and non-foggy. But the second time, everything changed! Foggy. And wet. Having no choice, I put my goggles into the water to remove the fog. But it kept forming on my glasses. Well, being blind made me tough - I ignored the fog. Let say, seeing is not so important as long as you do not bump onto other swimmers. But it got leaky, endangering the contacts. In addition, the band around the head got loose - every time I needed to adjust it again and again and again. Two rounds of swimming - stopping and re-adjusting, removing water from the goggles, clearing the fog. No fun at all!

I would not mind so much if I had not payed 20 Euros for these goggles. But this is what it costs today to see fog and to get your eyes wet (endangering the contacts!)

And now to the topic of my blog - curious inventions, or improvement of the world. I currently do not have any idea of how but I have a very good idea of what to improve. Good swimming goggles, water proof, fog-free, would be a GREAT idea for contact lens users.

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The picture above was composed from fragments downloaded from the following websites:
monocle-man
harry potter
harp musician

Curious Inventions of the Green Mind hits the road!

2007-11-02T10:53:00.001-07:00

Had it ever occured to you - you are sitting in a train, or lying in your bed, trying to get some sleep. Or just listening to a lecture - not necesserely a boring one - at the school or at the university. Your mind starts drifting in an unknown direction... One thing leads to another and - boom! a very interesting idea crosses your mind, which you would like to share with everybody?

For example, of how to get rid of email spammers in this world.
Or how to convert solar energy into electricity.
Or how to find space on this earth for people and for animals, at once.

In this blog, I will write these ideas down. Just for free :) No need in patents. If something useful pops out, I will be glad to share!

Also, I will write here my observations of this world.

For example, what do I think on patent system.
Or on being home-schooled.
Or on eating carrots half past nine in the evening.

Well, here it comes - my very own, shiny new bloggy! Let's see how persistent can I be with this new occupation :)