One of the most amazing aspects of being an entrepreneur is the absolute joy you get from being constantly forced to learn new things!

Enjoying the rewards, paying the costs

Honestly, what other type of non-job other then an entrepreneur can you be paid to do what you absolutely love to do and gamble, quite honestly, on all your past success to throw yourself into yet another higher level of possibility! The rewards of entrepreneurship as a lifestyle are as endless as it’s costs but the journey sure as hell is a fun one!

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - how it began

I started this site after many years of having this idea in the back of my head. I really love wood, I enjoy the flexibility that this material provides and its availability just about anywhere. Nothing beats the smell of pine or cedar… so, I decided, enough is enough… I am going to develop this site right now! That was back in October, at first, it was difficult developing an entire new level of standards and procedures, not to sound too technical but after years of producing industrial 3D animations, switching to wooden toys takes a little bit of work to pull-off correctly. For several years, I also really wanted to get into manufacturing, I have visited some amazing shop floors around North America and to be honest, I LOVE BIG MACHINES!

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - models from virtual to physical

So, back in October, I started essentially producing new virtual wood marvels on a weekly basis but about two months ago, my second dream was finally made available to me… manufacturing! I built all my wood marvels in my computer, they looked great and I got some great feedback from customers but being able to ship on-demand merchandise anywhere in the world is a whole other level of accomplishment. It took a few weeks but now I am as comfortable in the “manufacturing-on-demand” area as I am in the 3D one. I am not a professional in either by any stretch of the imagination, but I have developed enough knowledge of both industries to easily converse with engineers and other professionals on an even platform.

Just for the heck of it, you can see the evolution of the designs from one of the very first models I created to the second-to-last one (latest one is still rendering).

Shark (September 2007′ish)

Full Armor Gear Bull (June 2008′ish)

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - book from virtual to physical

Now, this is where things get really interesting, I am a few weeks away from having a book published encompassing 25 of my top models available print-on-demand through BookSurge.com (an Amazon affiliate). Things have gone full circle, the models are produced on-demand in the physical world and now, my guides and books as well! Isn’t this really cool! One of my goals in my life was to publish several books, this is my first, at the age of 32 and I really enjoyed the process and can’t wait to actually hold in both my hands what where once but virtual items inhabiting the deep recesses of my mind.

Where do you go from here?

WoodMarvels.com has been a tremendous success, it has opened several doors in my life and I look forward to developing that property well into the future. My other properties are slowly growing and I am sure they will open as many doors if not more then what I have just shared with you… which is still but a glimpse of things to come. The fact that I managed to do this while traveling around the world, visiting one of my dream places (Cape Tribulation in Australia) and climbing mountains in South Korea really make these successes all the more enjoyable! I already have two other non-WoodMarvels.com books stewing in my mind which I hope to release next year. My priority is to get the next huge goal I have had in my mind for several years now… LegendaryLife.com. I wish I honestly could live a thousand years because I have so much yet to accomplish and experience, trying to cram all of this in one lifetime while still being able to enjoy that life is a very tall task indeed!

The Bottom Line

Nothing beats a dose of entrepreneurship to introduce some vitality into your life!

Buzvia: BookSurge.com (on-demand publisher), Ponoko.com (on-demand manufacturer), WoodMarvels.com (on-demand happiness!)

We are all a product of a dream, whether realized or otherwise, they are among the most powerful mechanisms in our lives that help guide us, give us new ideas and play around with alternative realities!

Why develop Dreamclue.com?

Well, I originally began on this project a little over a year ago now after realizing that there was a huge amount of knowledge we are all acquiring but forgetting nightly! I wanted to create a system that not only makes sense of our dreams but more importantly, allows us to record them for prosperity. Our dreams are also a visual medium, so the site had to be chalk full of imagery to help guide you through the exploration of the dreamworld. The results? Well, launching with over two thousand dream symbols written by yours truly and a quarter of the entries with photographs also taken by me, I have big expectations for this site!

How does Dreamclue.com work?

Dreams are our own business, so it has to be built anonymously, as such, like myfoodcount.com before it, the system has no clue who you are and it’s drop dead easy interface for adding and learning about the dreamworld only helps to make the exploration that much easier!

Other cool Dreamclue.com features

The site features both text and image based navigation, in addition to interesting statistics not only about your very own dreams but all the dreams on the site as well. You can also read other peoples dreams (they are rendered anonymous by our system) and even comment on any interpretation on the site!

What’s next?

A lot, will let all our visitors know when the time is right

The Bottom Line

Passion is a dangerous thing as it can only bread more passion!

I have many passions in life one of which is to allow others to freely share the influenced they have earned online with others. Life is just like the web but unlike life, you can now share your influence with complete strangers… Karma at its best!

Why develop buzvia?

Well, I have had this concept in my mind for a very long time, I believe that humans are at their best when they freely share information and knowledge with one another, just like the original spirit of the web. What has changed over the past decade on the web? Well, walled gardens, people FEAR giving links to sites other then their own because they don’t want to loose traffic. I wanted to change this with a simple and straight forward system.

How does buzvia work?

Each link on the internet has a source page and referral page, what buzvia does is act like a middleman which tracks both source and referrals by simply adding http://buzvia.com/#url#… it couldn’t be any simpler! The information is captured and stats are collected by all those involved. The beauty of this system is two fold, you don’t need an account to participate and everybody knows how to make external links.

Other cool buzvia features

I have a lot of knowledge about the web, as such, I have also launched a blog to highlight trends, experiences and sites in order to help other with their SEO, SEM and whatever other acronym you can imagine. I also look forward to writing about the companies that decide, in all their great wisdom, to join the buzvia revolution and see how much they can truly benefit by breaking down their walled gardens and embracing change.

What’s next?

Ah well, that’s the million dollar questions isn’t it, don’t worry, if things go to plan, I will have something truly special to announce in about two months or three depending on how development goes. It won’t be LegendaryLife, that is still deep in production mode but it will be something I believe equally exciting for a particular demographic of our society I am very happy with how WoodMarvels.com is coming along and am looking forward with great glee to see how this year works out for professionally and personally. Life is amazing when your having fun and everyday is like a vacation! I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Bottom Line

Passion is a dangerous thing as it can only bread more passion!

Visit buzvia at http://buzvia.com

It can be said that we are all a product of one another’s expressed desires and fears, like a school of fish, each fish has it’s own mind and ways of doing things but the school behaves as if decisions are made by one collective mind.

What are or is a social construct(s)?

You don’t need to go far to see close to perfect social constructs, we are surrounded by them, breath them, feel them… they are as much a part of us as our very own flesh yet rarely do we actually stop and analyze the flawed foundations they originate from. With each interaction we make not only with our fellow human beings but nature itself, it shows it’s face ever so slightly, so vast our eyes cannot perceive them yet so narrow our mind pinpoints them with uncanny precision. Social constructs are the underlying foundation that our societies are based upon, they include culture, language, habits, food, religion… essentially anything that makes a group of individuals feel as it they are part of a collective. If I visited the North Pole, polar bears would think of me as food while, if I was a powerful polar bear myself, I would be accepted (challenged) as part of the polar bear collective. Like the school of fish, we tend to gravitate towards other with the same sense of being.

Social construct examples

Alright, you attend a business conference that is dedicated towards monetizing the internet, how many chiropractors will you see there? My bet is that unless you have several thousand people, the answer will be none. Why is that? Well, now I have set you on an interesting adventure that is a social construct… social constructs ask why things are in a particular way, analyzing patterns and systematics not only about why they came into being but what keeps them together.

Social constructs are fun to play with

When you begin to realize the power of social constructs, you can have fun playing with other peoples perceptions of them. I never joined the military but when I walk around in my military uniform, it causes civilians to “look” and “interact” with me quite differently then if I was wearing ragged cloths with a beard. Soldiers come up to me then they are puzzles, I look the part yet I have no badges, you see, soldiers know who is and isn’t part of their social construct based on certain identifiers that I don’t have on my uniform yet to civilians who don’t know any better, I can assume that persona with total acceptance. What changed? I am the same person, same mind, same desires… but my outward appearance has directly changed how people perceive my value to them to be within their own minds. I have morphed from being part of one social construct into another rather easily unless somebody looks at me closely.

Social constructs is serious business

Ironically, observations about social constructs are what people in the security business (police, army, intelligence… ) look for when assessing a threat level. People may be able to blend with others but what usually gives them away are their actions which don’t mix in with the crowd… it’s what makes them stand out. For instance, if you where a bus driver in Israel and a passenger was about to come on who was sweating profusely, had either an intense gaze or lack thereof, you best get the heck out of dodge ASAP. Knowing who is and isn’t part of a group, on an instinctual level is a skill that few people bother honing. If you want to really get to know somebody in a very quick fashion, ignore EVERYTHING they say and instead, look at their body movements. If somebody leans towards you when you speak, it means they are interested in what you have to say, if somebody is walking in a zig-zag pattern, it means they aren’t “all there” and the list goes on. What I am trying to say is that by analyzing why people of a particular group act a certain way towards one another, you learn how to differentiate those who belong vs those who do not. Body language is an essential part of this.

Benefits of social construct knowledge

Once you realize the mannerisms and patterns of people of a particular social construct, it becomes rather easy to morph to the point where you are accepted by them. Like I mentioned previously, most people are attracted by like minded people… they draw comfort from being around others whom they have shared similar experiences with. Back to my soldiers uniform, as I mentioned, those in the military saw me as kinda weird but not the public… why? Well, if you study enough social interactions in life you will realize one vital thing, most people pay very little attention to what they are actually doing or perceiving. If a civilian looked at my uniform, they would notice there is NO badges, no name tag, no country flag and the list goes on… but most simply accept the color scheme as being enough to quantify me into a particular group within their mind. What’s the benefit to all this? Easy, once you know what to do and when, you can learn to control your own social constructs. Mastering your own inherited social constructs allows you to be far more effective at communicating with crowds of all types… the more people can identify some of themselves within you, the more they will understand what you are telling them. This has proven invaluable to me in both the business world and social circumstances.

The Bottom Line

Study others so that you can learn to control and morph yourself.

I believe we do our entire planet wrong by not realizing how vast the sandbox we all reside in actually is. There is an entire universe, across endless dimensions that evolves at it’s own rhythm completely out of our control and most peoples thoughts. To the universe, our entire solar system has even less value then we place on the the bacteria that lives under our toe nails… harsh? Well, this is the reality that most of us ignore to acknowledge and accept.

The value of life in the universe

If you look at enough images from outer space, even looking up at the stars, you cannot help but be overwhelmed not only at the grand scale of things but at it’s mind boggling vastness. Can you even imagine how far the distance of 15 billion light years actually is or even how a million years is simply a blink in the eye of the universe? It’s absolutely incredible! The moon spins around the earth, the solar system around the sun and if you go large enough, our entire solar system, one of billions, simply rotates around an enormous black hole that is in the middle of our galaxy. All this happens everyday regardless of whether life exists or not. To the universe, a rock is has the same value as life, absolutely none. It doesn’t care, it has no consciousness nor reason for being, it simply is.

Astronomy pictures of the Day

NASA and JPL release a picture of the day on their site, illustrating the beauty of the universe we are lucky enough to inhabit and igniting the imagination as to what could be, here are a few great pictures to expand your mind.

A Beautiful Boomerang Nebula
Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, J. Biretta (STScI) et al., (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

This symmetric cloud dubbed the Boomerang Nebula was created by a high-speed wind of gas and dust blowing from an aging central star at speeds of nearly 600,000 kilometers per hour. The rapid expansion has cooled molecules in the nebular gas to about one degree above absolute zero - colder than even the cosmic background radiation - making it the coldest known region in the distant Universe. Shining with light from the central star reflected by dust, the frigid Boomerang Nebula is believed to be a star or stellar system evolving toward the planetary nebula phase. This Hubble image was recorded using polarizing filters (analogous to polaroid sunglasses) and color coded by the angle associated with the polarized light. The gorgeous result traces the small dust particles responsible for polarizing and scattering the light. The Boomerang Nebula spans about one light year and lies about 5,000 light years away toward the constellation Centaurus.

The Strange Trailing Side of Saturn’s Iapetus
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

What has happened to Saturn’s moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as ice. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon. Iapetus also has an unusual equatorial ridge that makes it appear like a walnut. To help better understand this mysterious moon, NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers just last month. Pictured above, from about 75,000 kilometers out, Cassini’s trajectory allowed unprecedented imaging of the hemisphere of Iapetus that is always trailing. A huge impact crater seen in the south spans a tremendous 450 kilometers and appears superposed on an older crater of similar size. The dark material is seen increasingly coating the easternmost part of Iapetus, darkening craters and highlands alike. Close inspection indicates that the dark coating typically faces the moon’s equator. Whether Iapetus’ colors are the result of unusual episodes of internal volcanism or external splattering remains unknown. This and other images from Cassini’s Iapetus flyby are being studied for even greater clues.

Sun Storm: A Coronal Mass Ejection
Credit: SOHO Consortium, ESA, NASA

What’s happening to our Sun? Another Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)! The Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft has imaged many erupting filaments lifting off the active solar surface and blasting enormous bubbles of magnetic plasma into space. Direct light from the sun is blocked in the inner part of the above image, taken in 2002, and replaced by a simultaneous image of the Sun in ultraviolet light. The field of view extends over two million kilometers from the solar surface. While hints of these explosive events, called coronal mass ejections or CMEs, were discovered by spacecraft in the early 70s, this dramatic image is part of a detailed record of this CME’s development from the presently operating SOHO spacecraft. Near the minimum of the solar activity cycle CMEs occur about once a week, but near solar maximum rates of two or more per day are typical. Strong CMEs may profoundly influence space weather. Those directed toward our planet can have serious effects.

Massive Stars in Open Cluster Pismis 24
Credit: NASA, ESA and J. M. Apellániz (IAA, Spain).

How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of our Sun, making it a record holder. This star is the brightest object located just to the right of the gas front in the above image. Close inspection of images taken recently with the Hubble Space Telescope, however, have shown that Pismis 24-1 derives its brilliant luminosity not from a single star but from three at least. Component stars would still remain near 100 solar masses, making them among the more massive stars currently on record. Toward the image left, stars are still forming in the associated emission nebula NGC 6357, including several that appear to be breaking out and illuminating a spectacular cocoon.

Earth at Night
Credit: C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth’s surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The above image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.

Z Machine Sets Unexpected Earth Temperature Record
Credit: Z Machine Collaboration, Sandia National Lab, Lockheed Martin, NNSA, DOE

Why is this plasma so hot? Physicists aren’t sure. What is known for sure is that the Z Machine running at Sandia National Laboratories created a plasma that was unexpectedly hot. The plasma reached a temperature in excess of two billion Kelvin, making it arguably the hottest human made thing ever in the history of the Earth and, for a brief time, hotter than the interiors of stars. The Z Machine experiment, pictured above, purposely creates high temperatures by focusing 20 million amps of electricity into a small region further confined by a magnetic field. Vertical wires give the Z Machine its name. During the unexpected powerful contained explosion, the Z machine released about 80 times the world’s entire electrical power usage for a brief fraction of a second. Experiments with the Z Machine are helping to explain the physics of Solar flares, design more efficient nuclear fusion plants, test materials under extreme heat, and gather data for the computer modeling of nuclear explosions.

Wisps Surrounding the Horsehead Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Star Shadows Remote Observatory

The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead’s pasture, amateur astronomers at the Star Shadow Remote Observatory in New Mexico, USA fixed a small telescope on the region for over seven hours filtering out all but a very specific color of red light emitted by hydrogen. They then added the image to a full color frame taken over three hours. The resulting spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion. Two stars from the Orion’s Belt can be found in the above image.

The Bottom Line

We are surrounded by beauty, from the smallest living things to the largest. The price of entry is simply opening your eyes and mind to the possibilities that exists around us.

Buzvia: NASA Picture of the Day