It’s taught me a couple of things.

1. You don’t really realise how much you’re braking until you consciously stay off the brake lever. Try this; but be careful about how you ride when you do, it could be dangerous.

   When you see the road ahead is clear of any traffic, tweak the throttle until you’ve got a nice cruising speed. Then let go the accelerator, and clamp down on the clutch. Coast until you’re going quite slow. It’s surprising how long a well maintained bike will maintain momentum.

   If you’re cruising down a scenic highway, this is a great tip.

2. It made me realise that I’m not using my motorbike to it’s maximum fuel-efficiency. I don’t need to be at 4,000 RPM all the time. I could let my engine idle at 1,000 RPM and still get where I want to get; though admittedly, it would be slower.
3. I usually get around 47Km to every litre of petrol when I ride in the city. Using this fuel saving technique, I can get up to 60Km per litre if I am not travelling in an area with a lot of traffic and gear shifting.
4. I’ve found that sometimes, I’ll be coasting along, and bikers around me slow down. They slow down while throttling their engines, and braking. I’ve found that coasting alongside them, knowing that they’re burning up more fuel than I am is a comforting thought.
5. It’s taught me the dangers of braking late in traffic. This could become seriously dangerous if you’re not an experienced bike rider. I discourage you from doing it. I, however, will continue to do so.
6. It’s taught me the advantages of braking late in traffic. Sometimes, when I’m moving relatively slowly, I avoid braking until I absolutely have to. This keeps me moving longer, and each second that I’m moving with my engine in idle is a little more petrol saved.

   In terms of plain biking skills, it’s taught me to gauge other driver’s possible actions, and ride based on that. It’s taught me how to be more alert, and to keep moving inspite of drivers ahead of me changing their lanes, directions and speeds.

7. It taught me that I also like to rev my engine and hit high speeds sometimes. And that riding a bike at slow speeds can get boring.

Feel free to mix up your bike-riding techniques from time to time. Try it out sometime, but remember, it may not be good for your bike’s engine. I’m no mechanic. Also, you’ve got to becareful if you try this in traffic. It could get dangerous.

WARNING: This could be dangerous to life and limb. Try it at your own risk, and even then, only if you have at-least two years of frequent bike-riding experience.

If you’re a big fan of Carnatic Music, this is a must-watch. Check it out when it is released in theatres on the 18th of December this year. Meanwhile, you can have a Preview of Margazhi Raagam in HD right here.

Do leave a comment to let me know what you think of the website.

Try Transmission, its a great software that is light, has a very low memory profile, is cross-platform compatible (Mac and GTK+), works perfectly, has no spyware or adware, and even has a web interface… Just like uTorrent.

Here you go:

Transmission Screenshots

Transmission Downloads

Custommerce India Chapter 5 is built around the ‘back to basics’ theme. Managing hype cycles, customer experience statistics, cutting edge technology, customer service differentiators, brand building, people and process investments, customer relationship management … name it and we’ve done it all. And yet, the customer still remains one unhappy person. To stay ahead in the race, we may have missed paying attention to the basics. In our eagerness to please customers by adopting best/next generation practices, we have destroyed our inherent ability to do the basic things.

They have a rather interesting line-up of speakers and agenda… Geet Sethi, V K Madhav Mohan, Sunny Rao, M. Mahadevan, C. K. Venkataraman, & Shiva Subramaniam. To top it off, they’re having it in the Leela Kempinski, Kovalam Beach, Kerala.

Now, my playlists have a number of songs that I play really often, and others that I play rarely, if at all… When I select a song that I like and press the Genius button, iTunes brings up a playlist that seems to based on the kind of song that was selected, similar in terms of genre of music, or artist, but varied in terms of BPM (Beats Per Minute), my rating of the song, and the number of times the songs have been played. I’ve beeing using this feature for a while now, and its only created playlists that have been interesting. So far, its never mixed up genres, or moods (and I have a varied set of music ranging from Classical to Pop to Classic Rock to Metal).

Genius does list out my music and upload it to Apple’s servers, but presumably this is in order to match the music together and to provide me with suggestions in the accompanying Genius bar on the side. However, when I log in to the Indian iTunes Store (which does not sell music), the bar helpfully suggests that it close itself, because there are no suggestions from my country’s store. I just wish that they start selling music on the Indian store, instead of just iPhone Apps.

Good going, Apple.

Download iTunes Here

Here’s a brand-new resource to learn about the visual communication course, profession, and professionals. Whether you’re a viscom student or professional, you’ll find information about the various streams of activity like Advertising, Television and Movies, Animation and 3D, Design and Photography. You’ll also find individual forums for Visual Communication and Visual Communication Jobs.

Sign up and start off in the discussions at forums.viscomonline.net. You can also put up tutorials on any of these topics, display your photography or your videos, and do more…

Recently though, 37Signals brought into question, the forthrightness of one of Apple’s ads.

Here’s a short video that compares Real-Life 3G performance and Apple’s advertising material.

Yes, I do get that “twice as fast” is in reference to non-3G wireless networks, but its still misleading.

And as a result, I’ve vowed never to stoop low enough to put in any extra code just to make IE6 work like it should have in the first place. That’s for my own sites… If my clients want bugs fixed in IE6, well, that’s a different story. They cant turn their clients away…

Now you know why I truly, truly, hate Internet Explorer 6.

(Sigh)

Here are some truly brilliant browsers, if you ever feel like using them (please do, they’re all free, much quicker and safer than Internet Explorer 6) :

• Firefox - My favourite for the security add-ons
• Opera - Brilliant option 2
• Safari -  From Apple
• Flock
• Camino

Use any of them… Just dont use Internet Explorer.

There are some issues though… According to Google:

• Event reminders/alarms don’t currently sync between Google Calendar and iCal. Event reminders will only function according to the calendar settings of the application in which they were originally created.
• When an event is created or modified in iCal, Google Calendar email and SMS notifications are not distributed at this time.
• This feature (iCal File > New To do) will either be unavailable for selection or you’ll receive an error when selected.
• It’s not possible to browse room availability or reserve conference rooms from within iCal. This feature is not supported by CalDAV.
• For a small percentage of Google Calendars, a certain iCal bug will prevent your events from appearing inside the iCal application. We’ve notified Apple of the issue, and hope that they’ll fix it soon.

Well, now that does not help our notification issues… but atleast you can see what your schedule is going to be like. Hopefully Google and iCal will get these two apps working well together. I for one will be really happy when they do.