Creative Apparel and my new Obsession with Tamil Cinema

Tamil Cinema has always had a crazy and almost fanatical following throughout its history. The fact that several Tamil actors and actresses have turned politicians and administered the state for the last 40+ years is a testament to this fact.

What intrigues me is how seamlessly, cinema integrates into our everyday lives. A wedding? You bet there'll be film music playing. A cricket match? Of course, there'll be film stars gracing the audience with their presence. Film references are everywhere around us. Something that's not been really popular, but is definitely gaining traction is film references on apparel.

The days of screen printing are far behind and Direct to Garment (DTG) printing rules the roost now. This has enabled creative designers like us to use garments like T-Shirts and ladies' tops as plain canvases. A whole new world has now opened up and I believe, Tamil Cinema's role is going to be huge. After all, who wouldn't love to wear a cheeky reference to one of the best comedy scenes from Tamil Cinema like this.

I know, hilarious right? These types of T-Shirts definitely lighten the atmosphere and helps people loosen up. Wearing this, would project you as a fun-loving person and actually create that 'cool dude' first impression if you're meeting new people at a social gathering. What more could you ask for from a garment :D

This fascination prompted me to compile a nice list of some super awesome Kollywood T Shirts in the blog section of my website. It not only includes Kollywood quirks but also ones that spread a good social message. For example, the following one from my sub-section of Bharathiyar T Shirts propagates an important social message about avoiding discrimination.

You can head over to our Tamil T Shirts page to check out the entire collection. Cheers!

Staying Safe on your Bike

Cycling can seem dangerous since the rider is completely exposed and looks helpless against motorised vehicles. However, we have to keep in mind that these brawny cars and trucks are, at the end of the day, being driven by people like you and me. They are not out there looking to run over helpless cyclists.

That being said, there are just a few things that we do on our bicycle rides to help our fellow users of the roads navigate around us safely without getting confused by our intentions.

When riding on highways, we know that other drivers don’t anticipate two-wheelers and therefore cyclists to swerve suddenly. Other drivers drive around us with the assumption that we’ll ride in a straight line. So the very first thing we learn is to ride in a straight line. We used to and still do practice by staying on the white line at the side of the road for several kilometers. No swerving whatsoever! We follow it religiously. It’s second nature to us to keep going straight irrespective of what we may be doing on the bike - we do a lot of stuff :D more on that below.

We are very aware that we don’t have indicators or horns or any of the fancy stuff that you find in automobiles these days. Therefore we know how to use our hands, mouth and ears as substitutes for these gadgets - after all the objective of all these gadgets is to communicate to other road users right? We know that most accidents happen when people assume something. For example, a car driver waiting at the road junction could assume that he would be able to cross the road before I pass. Often this assumption goes terribly wrong when I am much faster than what the driver expects, as is the case with most modern bicycle riders - they are much much faster than the classic ones that everyone is used to.

Therefore we get rid of all kinds of assumptions that others might have by clearly communicating our intentions. I generally use my hand to make a stop symbol while smiling and making sure they understand that it is a polite request to wait and not a moronic order to stop. We definitely know how to and are very comfortable riding with one hand and using the other to signal.

Oh and when doing all this, we definitely don’t forget to ride in a straight line. One hand, no hand, looking front, looking back, talking to a fellow cyclist, racing at breakneck speeds trying to beat the other riders to the line, sipping water, eating a chocolate bar, eating bananas, pouring water on our heads(It gets really hot in India), whatever we do while riding we never swerve!

If you remember, I did mention mouths and ears as well above. As a rule, we never listen to music when riding out in the open roads. Sitting on top of a bicycle in an open motor highway is not the best place to enjoy your new playlist. Trust me when I say this. You only have to keep your ears open, you’ll know what vehicle is coming from behind and how fast it is coming (Thankfully there aren’t any of those silent Teslas on our roads yet :D ). As for our mouths, we have no problems in shouting “Whoa!” or rather “WHOOOOOOOA!!!” to make that distracted pedestrian or driver look up, pay attention and not crash into us.

Another important thing to have and be sure about is equipment and accessories. We make sure our brakes work, chain doesn’t slip, our lights, blinkers and reflectors are working (when riding at night) and our helmet is of Good Quality before heading out to ride or race. We also use good quality puncture resistant tyres (there are Kevlar Coated tyres available in the market nowadays) to be sure that we don’t have a tyre burst when descending a hill at 60kmph.

There’s one last thing that I would rate as equally important as any of the above - Confidence. Most of us have it ingrained in our minds that smaller vehicles should give way to the bigger vehicles. As a result, when on a bicycle, the smallest of all vehicles, I’ve seen most people are really nervous and the instant they hear a truck horn they go out of the road and ride in the mud. Give up that nervousness. Use your ears and ride confidently on the side of the road towards the edge of the last lane.

Learn the important skills I mentioned (swerving - don’t do it! eating a banana - not really necessary, but yeah you can give it a try :D ), ride out confidently and enjoy the experience.

Note: Images from Google. For representational purposes only.

In spite of all this, I’ve personally had a very bad crash once. Not because of other vehicles, but because I slept on the bike :D Yes, you read that right! You can read about it in the link below :)

Team Armur - Race Crash Redemption

10279 xp, Promoted to Level: Software Samurai and How a Successful Career is Child’s Play

User “NipplesandToes43“(err… name changed for privacy reasons) has been on Steam, the gaming platform, since 2012. Till now, the user has clocked 22438.1 hours of playtime. That’s 2.5 years of constantly playing, or in other words, 13.4 hours of gaming a day, every single day till now!

Staggering? Not really. One look at the steam worldwide leader board reveals that this is but an average, if not less than average number. Now, if so many people are spending so much time playing computer games, then there ought to be something we can learn from these games; something fundamental about our human nature.

Well, to understand this, we need to understand who we are as a species and how we’ve evolved or rather not evolved over the centuries. You see, we humans had been hunter gatherers for several thousands of years. Back then, survival was the only thing that mattered and that meant living to see another day was imperative. Over those several thousand years, our bodies evolved a nice chemical,  Dopamine — the answer to life, universe and everything that, upon its release, gave an immense feeling of satisfaction to us. When did our brains release this liquid gold? When we achieved something, like successfully hunting an animal or managing to pluck a ripe fruit from the top of a tree, of course. Our brain’s very own reward mechanism, to keep us motivated to stay alive and live to see another day. We survived day in and day out, in anticipation of that awesome shot of dopamine that was coming our way tomorrow.

So coming back to our present day, we no longer need to wield a spear or climb that tall tree for our food. Today, we think in terms of life goals, Quarter targets, Olympic medals, PhDs and Jennifer Aniston (Whoops, let’s not get there for now). What does our good old body say? “No Dopamine for you!!”. But why? Surely, a PhD is better than climbing a tree or killing a goose. Too bad our primitive bodies don’t understand that; meaning we lose our motivation (no Dopamine = no fun) in a few days and let Jennifer Aniston… err no, that PhD become a distant dream that never gets fulfilled.

That being said, how was NipplesandToes43 able to stay motivated, slogging without a holiday in front of the computer, joystick in hand for 5 long years? Allora (Italian for Well…), the answer lies in the game design! Games, at their very core are designed in such a way, that they break a huge task/mission into small levels, objectives, etc. and suitably reward each and every small achievement with points, bonuses and level ups! In addition, most games also incorporate an element of survival, by giving the character lives, hearts and so on. All of this is perfectly in sync with our body’s idea of achievement and living to see another day. What does it do? It gives you shot after shot of dopamine for all those small little achievements and level ups. The mere anticipation of more dopamine, keeps the person eager to log in and start killing those monsters, waging wars against evil empires and shooting down terrorists for days, months and years on end.

Now, what is it that we can learn from NipplesandToes43’s behavior? For starters, playing games is far more rewarding than pursuing that PhD. But hold on, that doesn’t mean we have to bin all our dreams and ambitions. It just means, we need to make games out of anything we want to achieve. Yes folks, this is the era of Gamification! That PhD we were talking about; break it down into small activities each day, upon completion of which, you earn a sleek green tick in your calendar and a +1 on your streak number. All you have to do is finish your daily activity, earn that green tick, improve your streak number and get your nice shot of dopamine. What happens when you miss a day? An ugly-looking red/black cross on your calendar and streak number back to a big ZERO. Alternatively, you may lose a heart or lose a few points or level down. You set the rules. However, make sure you let someone else (ruthless and evil friend you’re thinking about now) do the scoring for you. They’d be the ones who’ll give you the ugliest cross with a sly smirk on their face. Trust me, once the streak number starts going into double digits, the fall back to zero will be painful. So you’d just sit up and do the task to just keep the streak going.

Michael Phelps says he didn’t train with the 6 or 7 gold medals in mind. That was years away and didn’t seem relevant at all. All he wanted was to train for the day and keep his streak going. He was so into his streak that he didn’t miss a single training day for 5 years!! The result? Oh you know the result of course!

That’s fine on a personal level, but what about the workplace? What about the quarter targets, mentoring and motivating your team to perform, etc., when your body shrugs off without giving you any dopamine? This is where it gets even more fun. Multiplayer gaming, of course! Develop KPIs, incorporate them into a nice scoring system and start playing. You can have team score, Player of the week, weekly rolling trophy, a Champions league, a Hall of Fame, Yellow jersey, Orange cap, Champagne celebrations… the list is endless. The dopamine just keeps flowing like water and your business will soon be the best! Oh and you can get rid of the treacherous performance review and all such stuff. Just look at a man’s score to see how he’s doing.

That just about brings me ever so close to my green tick for the day. I do have another article on ‘Simple Gamification strategies for the Workplace’, in my to-publish plan for next week. So until then, Ciao and happy gaming.

PS: Google NipplesandToes43(err, 23 works fine as well) and do watch the show where it comes. You can thank me for the recommendation when you finish binge watching the series and end up with a huge grin on your face.

Ode to Magritte the Magician

Those '90s Games

I was recently hired to create an intro clip for a YouTube gamer. Doing intros is pretty usual stuff that a lot of people want, but what was unique about this gig, was that the guy wanted it to look and behave exactly like it was the early ‘90s. The age of NES! (We used to call it just TV Video Games)

You see, he’s a Minecraft player and absolutely loved the retro games. This meant I had to figure out what made those games look and sound and feel the way they used to, which in turn meant – Game Time! :D

For those of you who didn’t know, you can still play all the games that you used to, as a kid. There are emulators and Virtual ROMs(Links at the bottom of the post) available, that let you load up any NES game from any of the  ’99 in one’, ’21 in one’ or what used to be me and my brother’s favourite – ’76 in one’, that you used to own. Remember these? We used to call them cassettes :D

We now call those games 8-bit games, because those Nintendo systems had an 8-bit graphics processor. 8 bit, in terms of colour depth, is just 256 colours that could be displayed on screen. The creators had to make games containing visuals and audio, that could be processed by these processors to be rendered on screen. The result was that the visuals would be very low resolution and the music would be just beeps and clicks, varying in tone and tempo.

But, this did not hold them back one bit. Boy oh boy, they created some of the best games ever. It was so engrossing that I remember my parents used to hide the gaming system up in the loft and let us play only during the holidays. We had a Chinese Replica NES like the one in the picture below – I don’t think the actual NES was available in India then. The best part was, everyone had it and when cousins used to visit during the holidays, they brought their cassettes with them and we would sit and play these new games for hours on end. The system was powered by a 9V adapter and we usually kept running out of adapters, because the coils inside got burnt from being used too much. So another rule imposed by my mom came into effect at our house – switch off as soon as the adapter got heated up :D Like King Robert says, “Those were the days!”

Coming back to my gig, I figured out ways to create and bring pixel art (Artwork that is pixelated :D) to life. I put it all together and found that it looked like the retro games all right, but it definitely didn’t feel like it. Not being able to figure out what was wrong, I asked the gamer if he saw what was wrong with it. He saw it a couple of times and kind of blurted out that it was too smooth. Of course! Having strived to achieve smooth motion when animating things, I had bluntly done the same thing on this video as well. But again, the processors of the day, permitted only about 6-8 frames per second, which was way less than the animation standard of 12 frames per second that made Tom and Jerry and other Hannah Barbera cartoons super smooth. So back I went to make the video more choppy (Never have I ever done that before :D ).

Below are a couple of wonderful sites I discovered while roaming the internet, looking for 8 bit music to use with my video:

Make your own 8 bit Music - Link

An MIT Scratch project that lets you create your own 8 bit music.

An amazing YouTube channel that puts out 8 bit remixes of popular songs. Absolutely loved it. Here's the Link.

Also, here are the links to download the NES Emulator and the Roms. Enjoy reliving the 90s!

Virtual NES - Link 

ROMS - Link

Armur Animates

August 15th has always been a special day for me personally. I think it started when I wore a lot of makeup and played the role of a Terrorist in an Independence Day skit at school. That was when I learnt to let go of my inhibitions and started moving out of my comfort zone. I guess that taught me the valuable lesson that all good things lie outside your comfort zone and it is up to you to go seek it. Since then, I have done all sorts of crazy things on August 15th, including walking the ramp in a Fashion Show :)
Last year, it was another crazy leap, when I bumped up my personal goals and ambitions in cycling, from that of an endurance rider to that of a racer. How did I do that? I went ahead and got myself a shiny racing road bike - the Fuji Roubaix 1.3 :D Crazy investment, but one that has paid off in ways that I had not even imagined.That brings us to this year and my announcement! Not something crazy and spontaneous, but something I've been working on for several months now. I'm launching "ARMUR ANIMATES" - my own animation studio, offering Character Animation, Motion Graphics, Animated Intros, and Whiteboard Animation services.
From wondering "How the hell did they make that cartoon?", after re-watching every single Tom and Jerry Cartoon, (I bought the DVD set as a gift for a kid to enjoy, ended up watching it all first before gifting it :)) to actually understanding the process and making the characters actually do stuff, I've completely enjoyed the experience so far. Launching this studio and offering my professional services to others is taking it to the next level - which is beyond my comfort zone. Hence, perfect for Independence Day :D
Here's the intro video I've put together for the launch of Armur Animates:

Why is Cycling so Interesting?

Well, I recently came across this wonderful video put together by Eurosport, explaining the technical side of sprinting and how sprint trains work. It was a very well made video with colourful graphics and catchy sound effects. Having followed the sport since the days of Armstrong and being actually involved in it at an amateur level for over a year now, these technical aspects are kind of ingrained into almost every training ride I do and so I did not give the video a second thought. However, what surprised me was people’s reaction to it! It was shared millions of times and several of my friends shared it and tagged me on Facebook.

It was then that I realized what was so special about it. It explained the science behind the sport and implicitly explained why it is so interesting! Cycling is a Hi-tech sport like Formula 1, with new technologies and advanced bicycles coming up every season. There’s one big difference though. The engines powering the machines are you and me. This simple fact, adds an entire dimension to the sport, making it the fine art of balancing the science of aerodynamics, rolling resistance, pedaling efficiency and the likes with the intricacies of Human Physiology!

The human body is like no other engine. We all know about the basic nutrients like carbohydrates, fats and proteins. I knew about it too. It was stuff I had learned in school and picked up from a conversation here and there – something along the lines of “Fats are bad”, “Milk is good, it has proteins”, “Parle G - G for Genius!”, Blah blah blah.  So when I started riding really long distances on my bicycle a year and a half back, I had only these hear-tell things to guide me and guess what happened - I failed miserably. So I scoured the internet just like always, to actually understand what the hell was actually happening inside me! Well, it turns out that the body uses all three nutrients to produce energy that we then use to do stuff. In fact, it produces energy from all three different fuel sources, all the time, all at the same time!

Protein is what makes up the muscles, organs and all the other crazy stuff that’s inside you. Let’s just skip that part here. Carbs is something the body cannot store a lot of. HOWEVER, the body can store all the fat that we eat. It just dumps it under the skin as {BIOLOGY ALERT} adipose tissue {BIOLOGY ALERT ENDS}. Oh yeah, I’m talking about the flabs on your belly, you’re guiltily looking down at now. That’s kind of like our biggest fuel tank and, turns out… surprise surprise, it’s also the best type of fuel! That explains why our body preserves it like it’s its gold or something.

So when you are cycling, or for that matter doing any activity like running or swimming, the body tries to make maximum use of its best fuel. BUT.. Yeah, just like all good things, there’s a catch here too :( - it is a slow process. It is fine when you are riding along slowly, but when you need to run like Usain Bolt or sprint like Mark Cavendish – it just doesn’t work. So what does the body’s command center order? Just like the Mad King, it says, “BURN THEM ALL !!!!”. Whoops. No, that’s not right. Sorry about that Game Of Thrones hangover. It says, “Burn more Carbs !!!”.

That gets you going like this:

BUT (Damn it!!!), it leaves behind this:

Well, not quite smoke, but {BIOLOGY ALERT} lactate ions {BIOLOGY ALERT ENDS} in your muscles. Oh, that’s just something that makes you feel like this:

And if you still keep going at the Road Runner’s pace, this is what will happen:

Ah yeah, I guess that’s one too many ‘The Road Runner Show’ reference. But that’s almost exactly what happens. You burn out or hit the wall. You’ll come to a crawl.

So that brings us back to me and my long long rides. How do I keep going for days on end? Simple - “Don’t go fast!” Let the body use a lot of the highly efficient Fats and less of the Carbs, drink a lot of water and when you feel like you are going to run out of carbs (You feel hungry), eat High Carb foods. Follow this and you can practically keep going on and on. There’s just one other thing that could come in your way though. Sleep. You keep going long enough; Jamie from your own Kingsguard will stab you in the back! Err, excuse the hangover. Basically, your body knocks you down and as a result, you may even fall asleep on your bike (Ahem ahem, yeah I know you’re looking at me)(in case you are wondering why, read this).  Oh and ‘one more thing’ (Gosh, now I feel like Steve Jobs), fatigue starts setting in after a bunch of hours. It manifests itself in different forms – your butt might start to hurt (ouch!), you might get headache, leg pain or something like that. That’s when mental toughness comes into the picture. TAT TA DA! Just keep this in mind, “the only thing worse than all that pain is the guilt you feel when you quit”. So keep chugging along.

If, “that’s all fine, but I want to go faster as well! It’s the speed that thrills me” is what you are saying (like I’ve been saying for a while now), keep reading.

Remember when the Command center orders “Burn more Carbs !!!”? That point is called the {BIOLOGY ALERT} Lactate Threshold {BIOLOGY ALERT ENDS}. Below that point, you are like the beloved Hero (Honda) Splendor – normal speed and awesome mileage; above it you are like the Rut tut tut ing 2 Stroke Yamaha RD350 – great speed and acceleration but lots of gunky smoke and poor mileage. That’s not the end of the story though, because like I said, the body is like no other engine. It can adapt over time!

All you have to do is to keep telling it that you need to go faster. Tell it? No not like talking to yourself or something like that. You go fast and take it beyond the lactate threshold for a while and return back below it, before you burn out. What does that do? It sends pain signals (ever heard cyclists boast proudly about suffering? This is it) straight to the command center. You keep doing this often and regularly for a period of time, the command center gets super pissed off at you for making it suffer. THEN, just to make itself comfortable, it goes back in time through the Weirwood, assumes the name Brandon the Builder and raises a magic wall. Wait NO, that’s not it. It just does some cool biological stuff to be able to use the super fuel – fats, even at the higher speeds! The result? Speed of RD350 with the mileage of Splendor AND no gunky smoke! Woot!

Simply put, this is what training is. You just keep playing this game with the command center again and again until you are like this:

Damn, I can’t get enough of Chuck Jones. But I guess that’s enough Biology and GOT for the day.

That's all folks! {PHYSICS ALERT} May the wind always be at your back {PHYSICS ALERT ENDS}