Power Maxx Blog

It kinda failed. In all honesty, I got kinda bored coasting around everywhere, and I wanted to drive my car lol.

BUT at the point that I stopped, I was sitting at around 25 MPG, and 200km per 1/4 of a tank. To me, this definitely proves my theory that a much greater mileage can be achieved by simply using the inertia of the vehicle to coast when possible.

I’ll probably give it another go in a little while, but until then, I want to enjoy my car - apparently I like driving too much!!

Thats right - I said it.  94 Miles per gallon in a BMW M5.  How you might ask? Read on and find out!

As some of you may know, I currently drive a 2000 BMW M5.  As much fun as it is, it’s certainly a fuel hungry beast at best.  The other day, I went to fill up and as I drove off, I reset my fuel consumption indicator, which temporarily displayed my real time fuel mileage, and it was a shocking 94 miles per gallon!

I thought to myself how is this possible, is my computer broken? What’s up with this truly strange reading.

Then it occurred to me, I was in neutral, coasting towards a red light, and my engine was at idle.

So then I got this crazy idea in my head - what if I were to coast as much as possible in neutral - what would my mileage be?

Fortunately for me, the M5 is a big car, and once it gets moving, its got a lot of momentum, and it will take a long time for it to slow down.  This especially goes for large hills, and even on slight downhills the car is capable of maintaining a constant speed.  Pretty incredible if you ask me!

So anyways, as I coasted along, my mileage test started.  As an update, I’ve gone through all of Sunday, travelled 76 kilometers, barely used a 20th of my tank of gas, and my miles per gallon is just over 26 right now.  This is all city driving, with plenty of stop and go traffic.

My goal for the test is going to be to match the mileage of a Toyota Prius, at a whopping 50 miles per gallon.  My tank holds 18.5 gallons worth of fuel.  This means I could have a range of 924 miles, or a whopping 1479 kilometers!  Imagine that, a 50 MPG BMW M5!

I haven’t done anything else to my car by the way.  I haven’t even checked tire pressures!  So at the conclusion of this test, when I post my results, I will be performing a second test to try to optimize my car even further for maximum mileage.

I personally think the results of this test could be incredibly valuable, especially in a day and age where we are dealing with a recession, rising gas prices, and global warming.  I suppose some people might have a problem with putting their car into neutral and having to put it back into the correct gear.  Personally, it doesn’t bother me.  Whether or not I continue to use this method after I complete my tests we will see, but for now, its a whole bunch of fun to say the least!

Be sure to check back for my next update.  If anyone else is curious about trying this method of fuel saving, feel free to post your results in the comments of these posts.  Happy coasting!

I came across this in an email and I figured I would share it with you guys!!!

Here is the copy of the email:

You will not be able to know what’s ahead of you, until you have seen
at least 4 pictures and read the explanation of what they are, our
future is here ,incredible!! what an age we live in.

Look closely and guess what they could be…

Are they pens with cameras?

Any wild guesses? No clue yet?

Ladies and gentlemen… congratulations!
You’ve just looked into the future… yep that’s right!

You’ve just seen something that will replace your PC in the near future.

Here is how it works:

In the revolution of miniature computers, scientists have made great developments with Bluetooth technology…

This is the forthcoming computer you can carry in your pocket

This ‘pen sort of instrument’ produces both the monitor as well as the keyboard on any flat surface, from where you can carry out functions you would normally do on your desktop computer.

Can anyone say, ‘Good-bye laptops!’

Looks like our computers are out of date… again!!!

Makes you wonder what’s happening that we don’t know about !

So the other day I was on Twitter, checking my DM’s and JokezGuy aka Arfan (PS follow him) messages me asking me how I got so many followers in such a short time.

Using my method, I’ve gained over 2,800 legitimate followers in under a month. They follow me, I follow them - everyone wins. This isn’t a spam follow either - I will always keep following everyone that follows me! Afterall, I want to read what people are saying about the website, as well as take their input on how to improve.

I also want to build a relationship with my users - afterall - how many of you have talked to Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook? I know I haven’t! Heck I don’t even know how I would contact him if I wanted to. But that’s beside the point.

So I told Arfan that the secret was in the OnePoke.com ToolBox, and that I would actually revealing the answer through my blog in the form of a signup contest! As promised, here it is.
Click here to read more…

So OnePoke.com has officially been live beta for just over a month now.  Lots of new exciting things have happened in that time, and we just crossed the 200 users mark today - great success!

Some things worth mentioning that have happened lately:

- The OnePoke ToolBox was implemented - explore various tools for your social networks available in the OnePoke ToolBox
- Linked In and Youtube support almost done - should be done this week
- New site design this week - currently only displaying new login page
- 200 users - a big milestone!

So now, I’m asking you guys your thoughts on OnePoke.  If you could answer me the following questions, it would be much appreciated:

1) What do you think of the new login page?
2) What do you like about the site?
3) What do you dislike about the site?
4) What do you think we should implement in further development?

As you can see by all the YOUs, OnePoke is all about what our users want, and once we’ve finalized our initial design, any big changes moving forward will take into consideration what YOU the USERS have to say about them.

We will get your opinion for these changes and the options available through polls, which we will display once you log in.  OnePoke.com is all about the user experience, and we will make sure that we act according to what the majority of users want.

Also, I would like to give you guys a sneak peak of the new design we’re rolling out for OnePoke later this week.  Its a much cleaner and visually appealing design.

Here is the link to preview the beta 2 design.

So if you guys could answer the above 4 questions, and let me know what you think about the Beta 2 design as it compares to the current design, it would be much appreciated!!

So after just a month of beta testing, everything is going well!! We’ve got 140 members signed up, which is great considering we’re not 100% finished everything we need to add yet.

Full launch will likely be at the end of March now, as we want to be sure that we’ve included everything we wanted to from the get go.

While we fine tune, this leads to other creative ideas that we come up with, all of which add to the functionality of OnePoke.com. One of these ideas is what we are calling the OnePoke ToolBox.

I came up with this idea one day when I was fooling around with my Twitter account, and getting particularly frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t easily able to do certain things. Then I went searching for something to allow me to do this, and when I found it, I thought, why not present the user with these tools automatically when they add these accounts!
Click here to read more…

I was browsing one of my favourite forums, and I came across this article! Pretty crazy to think of how big the universe is - enjoy! Original Link

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US space agency’s Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said.

The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.

“Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts,” astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP.

“If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don’t stop for anything — they just bore through and that’s why we can see them from enormous distances,” Reddy said.

A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away.

The sun is eight light minutes from Earth, and Pluto is 12 light hours away.

Taking into account the huge distance from earth of the burst, scientists worked out that the blast was stronger than 9,000 supernovae — powerful explosions that occur at the end of a star’s lifetime — and that the gas jets emitting the initial gamma rays moved at nearly the speed of light.

“This burst’s tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date,” a statement issued by the US Department of Energy said.

Gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s most luminous explosions, which astronomers believe occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse.

Long bursts, which last more than two seconds, occur in massive stars that are undergoing collapse, while short bursts lasting less than two seconds occur in smaller stars.

In short gamma-ray bursts, stars simply explode and form supernovae, but in long bursts, the enormous bulk of the star leads its core to collapse and form a blackhole, into which the rest of the star falls.

As the star’s core collapses into the black hole, jets of material blast outward, boring through the collapsing star and continuing into space where they interact with gas previously shed by the star, generating bright afterglows that fade with time.
Click here to read more…

As we get closer and closer to full public launch, the time is approaching for OnePoke.com to start taking on advertisers. I am giving you, my loyal blog readers, first dibs on the advertising spots for the first three months the site is up and running.

Here is the way the advertising will work. The cost for three months will be $30, or $10 per month. Our goal is to have enough traffic at the end of that three month period, that we would raise the monthly fee up to $20 per month.

Here’s where it gets interesting. What happens if we don’t reach our traffic goal, or what happens if traffic explodes?? You might ask yourself, will I get ripped off, or will I get charged more for the extra traffic?

The answer to that question is: ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Click here to read more…

The time has come for another update on the progress of OnePoke.com. So far, beta is going very well - we have a total of 120 members signed up, and very few problems have been reported thus far.

We are in the process of implementing the central status updates system, so that you can update your status across all, or just a selection of your social networks with just the click of a button.

This will become increasingly useful as we add support for more and more sites.

We are still working on adding MySpace, and Linked In - those will be done within the next two weeks.

The site re-design is also progressing well, and will also be done within the next two weeks.

If you haven’t already signed up, be sure to do so!  We will be holding a signup contest after it is officially launched, and I’m going to give you, my loyal readers, a heads up as to what it will be about.

Basically, the first 100 people to refer 100 friends will win $100 each!  It will be a fairly simple process, although there will be a few rules, including the fact that both you and your friends must be active users, as well as adding at least 1 of the supported social networks to their accounts.

There will also be consolation prizes once the first 100 are awarded their winnings, so all is not lost if you’re not one of the first 100 to refer 100.

The first step is that you have to be a member yourself, so what are you waiting for! SIGN UP!!!

We are very excited about the response the site has received so far - and we love to hear your comments and critiques to help make OnePoke.com the best it can be!

Hey everyone!! Just wanted to give you all a progress update as to the beta testing stage of OnePoke.com!

So far we have a grand total of 94 users signed up!! This is much better than we expected during the beta stage by far.  Twitter has been a great source of traffic for OnePoke, and if you’re not already following me on Twitter, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/OnePoke.

We have added our OnePoke forums, with various categories from an Offtopic section, to various car and entertainment related forums, and a few love and dating forums as well.  There’s something for everyone!!

We have just recently added a second layer of encryption to the database, to make it extra secure - all of your information is now twice as safe as before, and we take security very seriously at OnePoke.com.

Support for Hi5.com has also been added to the social networks section, and the Twitter.com feed has also been upgraded, and now includes @replies, and displays your inbox.

The other feeds have also been refined - nothing that is obviously visible, just mainly streamlining code to prevent possible errors from occurring.  We are currently working on support for both Myspace.com, as well as Orkut.com.  After that comes Linkedin.com, and then our centralized status updates system!

Our web guy has finally had a chance to start working on the site, and we will have an all new design up by the end of the Beta stage, fresh for public launch!

If you haven’t already signed up, please do so at www.onepoke.com - even if you would prefer to wait until the beta stage is complete, you can simply sign up and we will email you with more information as soon as it is available.  ‘Till next time, happy blogging!