Ever since I got my Palm Pilot back in 98, I’ve always had delusions of doing digital sketches on the go. Now with an amazing home-brew app for the Nintendo DS I finally have my digital sketch book. I came across Colors! from a Lifehacker article not too long ago. They link to a Wired article on how to get it set up. I’m guessing that Colors works with most DS home-brew cards, it loads on my M3 Lite without any special settings (aside from applying the obligatory DLDI patch).

Colors! has three different brush controls: Size, Transparency and of course Color. It may not seem like a lot, but we’re not retouching photos here and I found myself not needing anything else. The painting is very smooth and accurate. The colors mix well using the transparency feature. You can even use pressure sensitivity (a feature I didn’t know the DS had) to control width and/or transparency. The only thing that might be a nice addition is an undo button.

Painting alone is great, but the way Colors! manages your drawings is essential. All of your artwork is done native in png format. If you save a sketch and load your memory card into a computer you’ll have a png sitting right there. This pakes it perfect as the starting point for a drawing that will be later refined in Photoshop. Also, even though you’re painting on a 320×240 screen, your image is saved at 512×384 resolution. As icing on the cake, Colors has a built in email feature that lets you mail your image to yourself. However, I found this feature to be limiting due to the painfully slow data-rates theDS wifi is capable of.

One thing that really hit home while trying this software was that years of computer design and programming have really killed my freehand skills. Most of my drawings were not even close to some of the example’s I’ve seen out there. I did manage to pull off my trademark Green Zeta shown above. That image came directly from Colors!, click to see the full size version.

Well, the results are in. Driving an average of 7mph slower for an entire week did show and increase in fuel efficiency from 36.2 to 37.5 mpg. In fact in the year and a half I have tracked my car it has never reached 37 mpg. So what does that translate to in cents per gallon? My math may be a little rusty but I came to 13 cents. Not quite the 20 cents mentioned in the previous post but still not bad. 13 cents per gallon translates to 1/3 of a gallon less per week, or a dollar less per fill up. Put that way it doesn’t sound drastic, but I know people who will drive out of their way for a station that charges 2 cents a gallon less.

This experiment also taught me a few unexpected things about the mentality of drivers in my area. For one, a driver literally sandwiched his car between 2 semi-trailer trucks just to get around and exit exactly 20 feet in front of me. Another driver seemed to think that driving at the speed limit in the slow lane is inappropriate, and signaled me to move out of his way. Having grown up on Long Island I am used to such things, however I do tend to expect better from the semi-rural setting I live in now. I’ve heard rumors of a return to the federal speed maximum of 55 used during the 70’s gas crisis. This past week has made me doubt such a law is possible today.

I’m going to continue my hypermiling experiment. The next step is to shift into neutral when stopping or going down hill. That’s about the most I can do with an automatic transmission. They also say you should turn off your car if you will idle for more than 30 seconds, this includes going downhill. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that. However I have set a goal, to reach the 40 mpg advertised on the sticker when I bought my car. If that happens I will post it here.

I watched an episode of Systm the other day where the topic was hypermiling. Patric Norton, the host, said a line that really piqued my interest:

“Every 5 miles per hour you go over 60 is like paying an extra 20 cents per gallon.”

I’ve heard that driving faster reduces your miles per gallon but that sounded a bit extreme. So, being the nerd that I am, I decided to set up an experiment.

I have already tracked fuel efficiency over a year with MyMileMarker.com. My 2002 Civic has been averaging a solid 33.4 mpg over that entire time, fluctuating anywhere between 30 and 36 as the seasons change. Since last week was a pretty normal spring week, and prospects of this week being the same, I decided that now was as good a time as any to try my experiment.

The Control:

• Fuel Efficiency for the week of 5/12: 36.07 mpg

The Rules:

• At no time will I ever accelerate with the gas past 65mph, coasting over 65 is allowed.
• Keep the engine under 2000 rpms on the streets as much as possible.
• Use A/C as little as possible ( which I do normally )

It’s hard to tell looking at the gas guage but the needle does seem to be higher than normal. I will report back next week with the hard numbers.

I’ve been a big fan of Scott Sigler ever since I heard the podcast of his first book Earthcore. Sigler’s style is simple, pure entertainment through ultra violent sci-fi. That alone is enough to interest me, but what makes Sigler unique is his approach in the industry. Sigler releases each of his books as a free podcast audio book. Earthcore, the worlds first podcast-only novel, quickly gained popularity driving over 10,000 subscriptions by the end. Sigler continued to grow his fan base as he released new novels, Ancestor, Infection, The Rookie, and Nocturnal which is still in progress.

The podcast model of releasing a few chapters a week as episodes, leaving the listener on constant cliffhangers. Sigler’s tag line summed it up best: “You can’t peek at the end”. As the Earthcore podcast was well underway fans, began calling it Earthcrack citing their need for more. Sigler responded by referring to his fans as “Junkies”, a term of endearment he uses to this day.

This hard core fan base has been the driving force of Sigler’s popularity. It’s rare today for people to become infatuated with authors. Many people compare Sigler to Stephen King for that reason. But there’s something different amongst Sigler junkies, there’s a community. That’s something you don’t see out of the mass publishing industry.

The best example of this community at work happened just last year, on April first. Sigler requested that all of his fans buy his new book, Ancestor, from Amazon.com on the same day. The idea was to drive Ancestor to the top of the Amazon charts, if only for that day. Not only did it work amazingly well (he was number 1 in sci-fi and horror for days and number 7 overall), but it lead to his first deal with a major publisher.

The power of instant fan feedback has shaped Siglers style, and is shaping the industry as well. Infection, the podcast, was released in 2006 as a complete story. When Sigler signed with Crown Publishing to print Infection he rewrote large portions of the book, working directly from fan feedback. The final work, now named Infected, is in many ways a different story. This kind of living novel I believe is the future of written storytelling.

So I was a good Junkie and I went to the Borders on April first to buy Infected. I’m looking forward to seeing what changes were made. I might even read this time, even though Sigler is releasing the revised story as a podcast as well. I must warn you, this book is not for the squeamish. I won’t ruin it for you, but let’s just say the phrase “Save Perry’s Balls” will haunt me forever. You’ll have to read/listen to see what I’m talking about.