Business Week lists the Top 10 Hardtop Convertibles for 2007.

Here’s a summary for the impatient:

1. Mazda MX-5: $24,945
2. Volkswagen EOS: $27,990
3. Pontiac G6 Convertible: $29,330
4. Volvo C70: $39,090
5. BMW 328i Convertible: $43,975
6. Mercedes-Benz SLK280: $44,125
7. Lexus SC 430: $65,455
8. Cadillac XLR: $78,920
9. Mercedes-Benz SL550: $95,575
10. Chrysler Sebring Convertible: Not yet available

Hypermiling, which stands for deriving the maximum mileage from your vehicle is a term invented by Wayne Gerdes. I read a few articles on hypermiling, and here are few safe, conservative tips. Tips like tailing trailers really close to “draft” behind them are excluded since your life is more valuable that the gas, or money, you save.

1. Maintain your car properly, keep up with oil weights and oil levels, and changing air- and oil-filters
2. Avoid accelerating up slopes, decelerate a little and then let the downward slope pick up speed for you
3. Use Cruise Control when you can, except on upward slopes where you want to keep the accelerator, and not your speed, constant
4. Cars don’t need warming up, so do not start your car up in the morning and idle before taking off
5. Cars don’t need to move forward first before moving in reverse. If you need to back out, start backing out. I have had a few friends who believed it is best for the engine to actually put the car in “D” before putting it in “R”
6. Drive a manual (stikc-shift) instead of an automatic car
7. When accelerating, the car should be at peak torque - avoid sudden jackrabbit starts, and avoid accelerating way too slowly
8. Anticipate stops and reduce braking. A good rule-of-thumb is to stop accelerating as soon as you can see the lights turn yellow from afar.
9. Drive as close to 55 mph as possible on highways.
10. Clean your car, removing all pillows, towels, oil cans and junk from everywhere including the trunk
11. Fill your tank to half-full, or less, if there is a gas station not too off from the route you drive everyday
12. Check your tire pressure, and if you usually drive alone, know that a pound or two less than the recommended lbs per square inch might be what you want.
13. Turn off the AC as much as you can, or atleast try cycling the AC on and off - on downhill and off uphill will work. Always keep the AC at “max ac” or whatever setting recycles air inside the car

Some of the articles I compiled these from include this excellent study on factors affecting fuel efficiency, complete with graphs, Mr. Boffin’s guide, and the following sites/forums: GreenHybrid.com, CleanMPG.com, and PriusChat.com

I am a big fan of lists, both online, and offline. Lists free my mind, and are the nitro boost for my work. Without lists, I would stop functioning efficiently. When I look around and I see all the people who don’t use lists, I wonder how they do without it. Start using lists and you too will wonder how others do without it.

The human brain, it is said, cannot process more than 7 things parallelly. Of course, I read this and forgot about it, until I started using lists, when I realized this is true.

Create lists, lots of lists. Create lists of lists, lists of lists to create, lists of lists to process. Create a list for every idea you have that relates to you work.

Here’s how you start using lists:

1. Keep a list book, a small one that can be on or around you at all times.
2. To start, just use the book to write down thoughts, one per page, as and when they occur to you, that you want to think more about. Don’t worry about organizing the ideas just yet - don’t let that stop you - go on, keep nothing down things as they occur.
3. After you write down the idea, in the same page, write down all related thoughts as a list
4. If you don’t have time to flesh out that thought, create a list of un-fleshed-out thoughts
5. When you start a writing task, or a programming task — any work related task — create a list of lists of things you think of as you are doing the task.
6. After you are done doing what you started to do, go back to the list, and pick the first item, and complete it
7. Iteratively you will complete them all
8. If you did not complete them all, don’t worry — your brain decided that the idea was not worth it - that’s perfectly normal. Writing down an idea and then rejecting it is better than not considering the idea and having a weight on your mind that worries, after you are done with the task, that thinks, “Have I forgotten or overlooked something?”
9. Some list items might deserve a life of their own, and will become lists themselves - encourage this
10. Don’t lose your book of lists, ever!

Writing ideas down like this frees you mind phenomenally. You are free of

1. The nagging suspicion that you overlooked something
2. The pressure to remember to do X, and then Y, and then Z and then …
3. The possibility of losing ideas that might have borne fruit if only you had given it some gestation time
4. The overhead of organizing information without visual feedback
5. The overhead of brain-space to store temporary data while processing the task at hand

In doing what I suggest, the one question you should constantly ask yourself — the talisman if you will — to answer your questions about how, or whether to do something, is, “Will doing this reduce the load on my brain?“. Answer that and you will evolve to a system of lists that is rewarding.

I am sick of reading list after list of the N deadly sins of blogging. So here’s a list of the 10 Cardinal Virtues of Blogging. All other virtues derive from these:

1. Use a simple, readable, uncluttered design or theme
2. Focus on the readers
3. Be honest - never steal content. Always reproduce content with attribution
4. Provide easily accessed content in the form of feeds
5. Organize your posts - use tags, categories, list of best posts, or whatever else suits your style
6. Provide a easy to use search function
7. Follow web standards, create pages that validate as much as possible
8. Write in simple language sans errors
9. Use link anchors that make sense - don’t ever use “link” as the text for a link anchor
10. Put generating value above generating revenue - and then you won’t splash ads all over nonsensical content

In keeping with virtue #2, reader’s comments on these are welcome. Unlike the ten commandments these are subject to change. If Blogging were a religion, it sure would be a democratic religion!

Reel pop’s top 10 dystopic movies list made me want to renew my Netflix Subscription. For when I do, I wanted a list of the top 10, and some other dystopic movies. Why stop at 10? The following is a list of good dystopic movies, for later. I leave the commentary to others.

1. The Children of Men
2. The Running Man
3. La Jetée
4. Brazil
5. Alphaville
6. Logan’s Run
7. Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior
8. Akira
9. Blade Runner
10. THX 1138
11. Gattaca
12. A Clockwork Orange
13. Fahrenheit 451
14. Soylent Green
15. Planet of the Apes
16. The Postman
17. Nineteen Eighty-Four
18. Brave New World
19. Conan - The Boy in the Future
20. Weekend
21. Silent Running
22. The Island

So that’s it for now, folks. Is anyone even reading this new blog of mine?