Primary French Learning Resources

I took some time (J’ai pris du temps), but I eventually have homed on to the following two resources for my daily French learning.
1) Coffee Break French - I listen to the podcasts (J'écoute les podcasts) as I drive up and down my work place in the mornings and the evenings. It helps me maintain my cool while driving (you need to drive in Bangalore to understand what I mean) and I drive slowly when I listen to my iPod.
2) Complete French (Teach Yourself series) – I spend (Je passe) about 45 minutes (quarante-cinq minutes) to 1 hour (une heure) working on each page diligently.
3) I make an attempt to read and understand something from www.francegazette.com.

The above resources may or may not work for you. There are many other really good resources out there. But there are a few things I have learnt in my attempts to self study French. These are:
a) There are too many resources out there. It is easy to get distracted. There are no perfect resources. So decide quickly which suits you the best and get on with it. Jumping from one resource to another does not help.
b) The most expensive course is not necessarily the best one.
c) It is difficult to depend on internet for information on which course suits you best. There are far too many affiliates trying to sell you the best course that is. Most of the times it is difficult to separate a genuine review from an affiliate sales pitch.
(By the way, all links on this blog are, and will be, non-affiliate ones, I promise you that)
d) Self-study needs discipline. You need to promise to yourself a fixed amount of time everyday dedicated to self study. Otherwise it is a waste of time.
e) Experiment with different styles of studying and determine which works best for you. I find I retain more when I write. The pages of my copy of Complete French are peppered with notes and comments. In addition, I will not proceed to the next page unless I know every word of the page I am working on then.
Bonne chance!