Tag: deliberate practice

The Best Camera

The best camera is the one with you when you need it! The camera phone & an editing app combo can produce some artsy social media worthy pictures ?

This picture was taken on one of my early morning sprints with Tigris. This was taken just before sunrise, in low light conditions. Yet the picture taken on the mobile phone is gorgeous – captured quite a bit of details & color, both in the foreground & the background.

Mobile phone cameras can easily replace the point & shoot (P&S) cameras nowadays. For anyone considering buying a P&S camera today, I would suggest they instead invest in a more recent mobile phone model with a good camera.

  • The phone goes wherever you go … no need to worry about forgetting it
  • You can capture a moment wherever / whenever you encounter a picture worthy one
  • It’s compact & light… no lugging around a burden
  • You can do the editing (if needed) right on the phone with any of the plethora of powerful editing apps available
  • You can also share pictures right away .. no more waiting to get to a PC / laptop

There are awesome photographers on Instagram who use mobile phones only. Check a few of them for inspiration –

  • https://www.instagram.com/dcim.ru/
  • https://www.instagram.com/brahmino/
  • https://www.instagram.com/cocu_liu/

Let’s get clicking!

ABC = Fn (A, B)

(via Instagram https://ift.tt/2xnLZ99)

Your Adventure Biking Capability (ABC) is a function of your Ability (A) & the Bike (B) you ride.

ABC = Fn (A, B)

Accordingly, you can improve your ABC by either..

  1. Increasing Your Ability – picking up new skills, practicing the skills & thus building experience (muscle memory) in using the skills
  2. Using a Better Bike – a more purpose built bike, or adding any of the large number of accessories that will incrementally improve your bike – custom foot pegs, tires, etc.

The latter is the easy option – requires less effort & no practice. You just have to buy into the marketing stories of the product. I’m not saying they will not help at all. It does, incrementally.

Increasing your ability on the other hand involves learning, practicing & sweating it out building the muscle memory. But the impact this has on your ABC is multifold higher (3x – 5x). Also, ability is easily transferable to any bike you ride.

For most people, increasing our abilities should be the default strategy to improving our Adventure Riding Capability. Our investment of effort & resources will yield better overall results wrt to us becoming better riders. That’s exactly what I’m seen doing in the picture above with @bret.tkacs & @topgunindia.

Lunch With TED

There are many days at work, where I lunch at my desk. I might have a small window of lunch time. Or I am trying to head home early. Or I just play feel like it.

A very long time ago, I discovered that a TED Talk fits nicely into my lunch slots – 18 min deadlines are useful! And the presenters & their ideas are not bad company at all. Continue reading “Lunch With TED” →

Effective Practice

Effective_Practice(click on image for larger version)

I came across this TED-Ed video about Effective Practice this morning. The concept seems very similar to deliberate practice .. and as useful, if you are a continuous learner. My take aways from the video are documented in the mind map above.