Skip to main content

Dont be dumb, Google it!

I once tried to automate a function in MS excel. A particularly messy data extraction and manipulation problem.

The first thing I did was search it in the help file, which was of no use. Then I asked people around me if they could do it or if there were any other tools that could be used. Nothing much again. Then started searching the web for any answers - nothing yet again. Then I searched the Excel related web-sites for any posts or queries to that effect.

I then zeroed in on one guy, who seemed to be particularly helpful to people with questions. I wrote him a mail, explaining him my problem and waited for his reply. A day later i checked his blog again. There was a new post, a rather small one. It said, something to this effect - Don't ask dumb questions - Google it.

This was the first time I heard Google being used as a verb.

Google till you find it. Wasn't internet created for researchers to share their knowledge.

I searched again, with the only difference that I lingered more at each site to check out what they have even if they are not related to my search. It was a start of couple of days of near-trance googling. Whilfing had turned real. I learnt lot of beautiful things along the way. Not just about excel but also about many tools that could be used to solve. I learnt to solve many problems, that I have been able to solve before it hit me.

I dint find what I was searching for, but it dint matter anymore. I had learnt a new way of learning.

And it all started from that blog. Thanks to him internet became a thriving throbbing ocean that I can dive into anytime and look for what I want.

Google has been my good friend for a long time since. Right from delving into the Gann to Reimann Zeta function to Nano-technology to M-theory to simple spell check, it has been useful to me.

Exploring internet is like Beastmaster exploring woods, everything is restricted by line of sight & know-how and Google is like a eagle high up in the sky giving you a big picture on these woods.

Googling is a fantastic way of getting started on any subject. Googling is indeed a way of living .

:) Falkor
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cognitive rules of business presentations

In his recent book, Clear and to the Point, Kosslyn explained that the four rules of PowerPoint are: The Goldilocks Rule, The Rudolph Rule, The Rule of Four, and the Birds of a Feather Rule. Here's how they work. The Goldilocks Rule refers to presenting the "just right" amount of data. Never include more information than your audience needs in a visual image. As an example, Kosslyn showed two graphs of real estate prices over time. One included ten different numbers, one for each year. The other included two numbers: a peak price, and the current price. For the purposes of a presentation about today's prices relative to peak price, those numbers were the only ones necessary. The Rudolph Rule refers to simple ways you can make information stand out and guide your audience to important details -- the way Rudolph the reindeer's red nose stood out from the other reindeers' and led them. If you're presenting a piece of relevant data in a list, why not mak...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value of dollar - Part 1

A Simple Perspective Will Do The date is 2000-05-28. Don't you get tired of all the bad news bears reminding you of all these instabilities, excesses, and 'potential' tensions in the global economy? After all, hasn't it always been like that? Yes it has, but not in money it hasn't. Increasingly, investors find it harder to know where to put their savings. What about Government Bonds? Wrong. Their recent record of capital losses have wiped out your guaranteed yields, probably because the stock market keeps crowding them out, and this even in a strong dollar and low inflation environment. Furthermore, there is no reliable liquidity and potentially poor quality debt in the corporate sector. Foreign assets? Wrong. Most of the world's economies are riskier, have been under performing, and also, there is this thing called currency risk. Like how is the average person gonna cope with currency...
Post a Comment
Read more

Depreciation of British Pound 1900-2000

When the Bank of England was formed the powers to create money was finally transferred to private hands. The creation of Fed in US, was just a part of this cycle. Though it is a common knowledge US Dollar has depreciated nearly 100% since the creation of Federal Reserve, the same is the case of all the currencies across the globe. For example, below is the UK Parliament data that highlights the depreciating value of Pound.
2 comments
Read more