As 2011 comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at my favorite albums released this year. I listened to a lot of music. With great services like Spotify and iTunes Match recently released, I found myself listening to music constantly. I continued to explore new genres and, as a result, new artists. Many of the artists in my Top 50 are new to my music library this year. It’s been an exciting year of music discovery for me and I can’t wait for 2012!

Top 50 Albums of 2011

1. Florence + the Machine – Ceremonials
2. Nero – Welcome Reality
3. CunninLynguists - Oneirology
4. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
5. Washed Out – Within and Without
6. Wynter Gordon – With The Music I Die
7. Holy Ghost! – Holy Ghost!
8. Rise Against – Endgame
9. Kill The Noise – Kill Kill Kill
10. Joker – The Vision
11. Moving Mountains – Waves
12. Drake – Take Care
13. Rival Schools – Pedals
14. Kanye West & Jay-Z – Watch the Throne
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong
16. The Strokes – Angles
17. PANTyRAiD – Superior EP
18. Britney Spears – Femme Fatale
19. Surkin – USA
20. Phantogram – Nightlife EP
21. Neon Indian – Era Extrana
22. Rustie – Glass Swords
23. Digitalism – I Love You, Dude
24. Zomboy – Game Time EP
25. Knife Party – 100% No Modern Talking
26. Gotye – Making Mirrors
27. Toro Y Moi – Freaking Out EP
28. Explosions in the Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
29. In Flames – Sounds of a Playground Fading
30. The Weeknd – House of Balloons
31. Bassnectar – Divergent Spectrum
32. Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
33. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
34. Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
35. Gladkill – LoveLost EP
36. Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
37. Above & Beyond – Group Therapy
38. Blue Sky Black Death – Noir
39. Destroyer – Kaputt
40. Mount Kimbie – Carbonated EP
41. LIGHTS – Siberia
42. Eisley – The Valley
43. Com Truise – Galactic Melt
44. Cut Copy – Zonoscope
45. Bibio – Mind Bokeh
46. Asking Alexandria – Reckless & Relentless
47. Sleeping with Sirens – Let’s Cheers to This
48. Mimosa – 58 Degrees EP
49. Porter Robinson – Spitfire EP
50. I See Stars – The End Of The World Party

I decided to break the list down into a few sections. I created mini-lists to group the albums by genre. This should make it easier to find the best albums in your favorite genre. I hope these lists will encourage you to explore some new music.

Best Dubstep/Glitch-Hop Albums

• Welcome Reality by Nero
• Kill Kill Kill by Kill The Noise
• The Vision by Joker
• Superior EP by PANTyRAiD
• Game Time EP by Zomboy
• 100% No Modern Talking by Knife Party

Best Hip-Hop/R&B Albums

• Take Care by Drake
• Oneirology by CunninLynguists
• Watch the Throne by Kanye West & Jay-Z
• House of Balloons by The Weeknd

Best Pop Albums

• Ceremonials by Florence + the Machine
• With The Music I Die by Wynter Gordon
• Femme Fatale by Britney Spears
• Mylo Xyloto by Coldplay

Best Dance/Electronic Albums

• Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming by M83
• Within and Without by Washed Out
• Holy Ghost! by Holy Ghost!
• USA by Surkin
• I Love You, Dude by Digitalism
• Era Extrana by Neon Indian

Best Rock Albums

• Pedals by Rival Schools
• Belong by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
• Angles by The Strokes
• Endgame by Rise Against
• Waves by Moving Mountains
• Take Care, Take Care, Take Care by Explosions in the Sky

Most Surprising Album

Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale was probably the most surprising album for me this year. I’ve never been a huge fan of Britney, even though I do listen to a decent amount of pop music. I’d assumed her career was basically over, so you can imagine my surprise when I first heard this album. While the lyrical content is rubbish, I love the overall dance and electronic vibe of the album. I found myself listening to this album a lot more than I’m willing to admit.

If you enjoyed this post, you should check out my music blog, Album of the Week.

I’ve always been a huge fan of action sports films. There’s just something magical about watching some of the best athletes in the world travel to incredible places, ski/bike/ride ridiculous lines, and hit enormous jumps. It’s exciting to me because I can relate to the emotions they must be feeling, and I can appreciate the difficulty of the tricks they are doing. In most cases, they are getting to experience things that I’ll never be able to do. It’s like I’m living vicariously through them in some sort of dream world. It’s disappointing when you try to share this excitement with friends or family who are not particularly interested in the activity. They never seem to get it. They’re lacking that passion for the sport that many of us “core” fans have.

Many film companies have attempted to solve this problem. They strive to create films that can appeal to both passionate fans and a mainstream audience alike. It’s an extremely difficult task, but I think the guys at Red Bull Media House and Brain Farm Digital Cinema may have done just that. Legendary snowboarder Travis Rice and director Curt Morgan of Brain Farm have teamed up to create a documentary that has been 2 years in the making. The film follows Travis Rice and other top snowboarders across the globe while they ride pretty much anything that can be accessed by a helicopter. The documentary covers aspects of travel and filming that you don’t usually get to see in snowboard movies. There’s a distinct “behind the scenes” feel to the film that makes it one of the most engaging action sports films I’ve ever seen.

It’s widely assumed that this film had one of the biggest budgets ever in action sports. The hype surrounding this movie was massive. Billboards, featured trailers and ads during the VMAs, and a serious social media push really helped to reel in the mainstream audience. Red Bull was one of the biggest promotors of the film and continued to prove their dedication to action sports. One of the main reasons I wanted to see the film was because of the sheer production quality that was going into it. The film was shot on the Phantom Flex high-speed camera which can shoot 2,750 frames-per-second at 1080p! In addition to the Phantom, the Cineflex V14 HD stabilizer camera was used on many of the shoots to provide ridiculously smooth aerial footage. This camera was used in Planet Earth! To top it off, they teamed up with Dolby Digital for the audio mastering which happened at George Lucas’ Skywalker ranch. The Blu-ray will feature Dolby TrueHD 7.1 surround sound.

Speaking of the music, The Art of FLIGHT featured a fantastic soundtrack. Curt Morgan collaborated with Anthony Gonzalez of the electronic music group M83 to score some of the songs and create original tracks for the film and trailer. The soundtrack also features songs from Deadmau5, Nero, and a track by The Naked and Famous called “Young Blood”, which was one of my favorites. Every scene in the film seems to match the soundtrack perfectly. It’s beautiful.

The film can be purchased on iTunes in HD for $9.99. You can also order the Blu-ray edition on Amazon. If you haven’t figured it out already, I would highly recommend you put this film on the list. Even if you aren’t into snowboarding, the production value along is worth the cash.

Check out some of the gorgeous footage below:

Watch the trailer and read more about the film at: www.artofflightmovie.com.

As the popularity of P90X continues to grow, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the workout from curious friends and family. People always ask me if I follow the nutrition plan (I don’t) or which workout I think is the hardest. Of course I also get a bunch of people asking if they should start the program. Many of my friends have tried it, and a few have completed it at least once. I’ve been meaning to write about it for the past year, so this seems like the perfect way to celebrate!

My Daily Workout

First, I have a confession. I do not follow any of the workout schedules. As many of you know, I am an avid mountain biker and the thought of spending 6 nights a week in front of my TV didn’t sit well. For about 10 months out of the year, I substitute a good mountain bike ride for 2-3 days of P90X. I try my hardest to work out 7 days a week. In the winter, this is a bit harder since the weather is not as nice and it gets dark early. I’d say that I’ve probably worked out at least 350 days this past year. I’m at the point now where I actually feel guilty if I have to skip a workout. This usually only happens if I’m traveling or somewhere where it’s just not possible to get a good workout in.

Since I don’t follow any of the recommended schedules, I keep my own schedule. I do at least 2 strength training P90X workouts each week. I rotate 4 of the P90X workouts: Chest & Back, Back & Biceps, Shoulders & Arms, Chest Shoulders & Triceps. Each of these workouts includes Ab Ripper X at the end, which is a quick 20 minute ab workout. I always do abs after the strength days. In between strength days, I try to get in a good cardio/leg workout. Usually this is a 10 mile mountain bike ride. If it’s raining and the trails are closed, I usually like to throw in the Plyometics workout. Fridays are generally my “open” day. Occasionally I will go for a bike ride if the weather is nice, but usually I like to do the Core Synergistics workout. On the weekends, I usually opt for 2 long bike rides or some other type of exercise. I’ve found that mixing a super fun workout like mountain biking in with my P90X workouts has been critical to staying with the program for so long.

I noticed myself progressing a lot during the first few months. I was getting much stronger and I was definitely noticing some muscle growth. However, I was always sore. Really sore. I spent the first few months using exercise bands for the strength workout. These are really good for when you are just starting out and don’t feel like spending a lot of money on dumbbells. They are also perfect for traveling. Eventually, I decided that the bands were not doing it for me anymore and I got a nice set of dumbbells. I think this brought me to the next level and I’m still seeing progression, albeit slower, with the strength workouts. If you are already pretty fit, I would suggest going straight for the dumbbells.

As a quick side note, I recently tried another workout called Bob Harper: Pure Burn Super Strength. This is a single, hour-long workout that somehow manages to hit everything. Every two weeks I try to fit this workout into my routine and it’s brutal. I’d venture to say that this is probably more difficult than any single P90X workout. So, if you have already done P90X and are looking for something new and challenging, check it out!

Exercise vs. Dieting

I mentioned that one of the questions I get a lot is about the P90X Nutrition plan. The program includes a fairly comprehensive guide for eating right. I’ve never been a big fan of structured diets, so I can’t say that I really know anything about this guide. I guess I have a problem with structured diets because they just don’t seem sustainable to me. I love eating and I do try to make healthy choices. However, I’ve discovered that I would much rather do a tough 1 hour workout each day and not have to worry about what I eat. If you’re always just worrying about what you eat and you never exercise, you’re missing many of the other benefits you get from exercise. Sure, it takes more time, but think of the physical and mental health benefits you get from a good workout. Counting calories can’t do that! Also, considering I spend a very large part of my day sitting in front of a computer, it’s really nice to be able to spend some time exercising.

Why not just go to the Gym?

During high school and college I used to spend a lot of time at the gym. Towards the end of college, I did not spend nearly as much time at the gym as I would have liked. If you have a good workout partner and enough time, the gym can be very good. However, if you don’t have a good workout partner… I find that I don’t push myself as hard when I’m alone at the gym. The P90X workout dude, Tony Horton, is an amazing motivator. The guy is nearly 50 years old and he’s ripped! I’m a lot more comfortable pushing myself to complete exhaustion when I’m at home.

Originally when I started the workout, my plan was to do P90X until I got bored or annoyed with it. At that point I would get a gym membership and continue where I left off. Well, it’s been 2 years so far and I’m still not sick of P90X. I’m a bit shocked, to be honest. I love the convenience of being able to come home from work and start working out immediately. I don’t need to change clothes, drive to the gym, wait for equipment, etc. I just push play on my Playstation and I’m good to go. I’m able to eliminate a lot of the extra time that is padded onto a normal gym workout since I can cut out travel and all of that other stuff.

Is P90X right for me?

This is the ultimate question. The P90X program is marketed towards people who are already “in pretty good shape”. This is a very intense workout and it’s not recommended for people who’ve spend the last few years sitting on the couch. Sure you’re welcome to try it out, but the likelihood of you finishing the program is much smaller. I was in decent shape when I started thanks to mountain biking. The first few weeks of P90X were seriously brutal.

Another major issue is the time commitment. You should plan on allocating 90 minutes every day. For many people, their schedule just can’t support this type of program. I’ve gotten into the habit of coming home every day after work and working out before dinner. This means that we don’t usually eat dinner until 7:30-8pm. Obviously if you have kids or a very demanding job, this probably wouldn’t work for you.

Motivation is another huge factor. Anyone who has completed the program will tell you that it takes a lot of willpower and self-motivation. You need to seriously want it if you are going to succeed. Since it’s a home workout, it can be very tempting to come home from work exhausted and opt for the couch instead of your workout. I’m a very driven person so I generally don’t have a problem with this. Usually once a week I won’t want to workout but I just force myself to push play and do it anyway.

Finally, everyone is different. P90X offers 3 different routines based on your fitness level. There’s a lean version with more cardio, the Classic version, and even a Double workout. Some people will love the program and complete it many times over. Others will hate it and might be looking for something totally different. I can safely say that I LOVE it and I’m hoping to knock out a few more years.

Sorry, no pics. ;)

Dave hitting the big drop at the top of Snowshoe.

Saturday morning was a little bit sketchier than normal since it rained a lot on Friday. This meant slippery roots and rocks and lots of mud. The first few runs were pretty crazy for me and we all had our fair share of crashes on the slippery wood. As the day went on, the trails dried out and things were a bit more sane in the afternoon. We had fantastic weather all weekend as it was in the mid-70s, sunny, and breezy. I couldn’t imagine wearing all of that gear if it was much hotter than that.

The Boat House – Our lunch spot for the weekend.

All of us made it through Saturday without any major injuries and slept well that night. Sunday we got up to the mountain early and kicked off the morning with the important Starbucks Doubleshot. Riding on Sunday was a lot better since we were more comfortable with the (dry) trails and our bikes. Dave had a couple bad crashes and decided to take it easy in the afternoon and filmed some runs. I put together an edit of our trip. Check it out:

I also uploaded an unedited version of my favorite trail “Powerline”. Make sure to watch the videos in HD!

Starbucks Espresso Blend

A great cup of coffee starts with the beans. I’ve been learning a lot over the past few weeks about coffee roasting and the importance of freshly roasted beans. One of the best ways to ensure the beans are fresh is to purchase directly from a roaster. There are a few big name coffee roasters that are pretty popular around the web. Those would be Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia Coffee. I purchased a bag of Hairbender, Stumptown’s most popular blend,  earlier this month and it was quite delicious. The only downside is that the cost of the coffee adds up pretty quickly once you pay for shipping. But, I guess it’s a small price to pay for coffee that was roasted 2 days before it arrived at my door! In addition to these roasters, there are a few other local places that I’m hoping to check out very soon. I’ve heard excellent things about Counter Culture Coffee out of Durham, NC. Finally, I really enjoy some of the Starbucks beans. They might not be as freshly roasted but they are convenient and affordable!

Today I opened a new bag of Starbucks Espresso Blend. As you can see from the above photo, the beans are shiny and there is a lot of oil remaining on them. That’s typically a good sign that the beans are very fresh. In addition to the shiny look, they smell absolutely incredible! In order to keep them fresh, it’s best to use them within a week or two of opening and to store the beans in an air tight container. Never store the beans in the refrigerator, as they can absorb odors from other foods in the fridge.

Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder

The next step in the process is to grind the beans. Today I just received my new Capresso Infinity Burr Grinder! I did a lot of research and found it to be the best conical burr grinder available for under $100. You can easily pay over $400 for some fancy grinders! When shopping for a grinder, look for a conical burr grinder instead of a traditional blade grinder. The conical burr grinder can grind at a slower speed, reducing friction which can be harmful to the taste of the grinds. These grinders are also quieter and produce a much more consistent grind. This is very important if you are using a french press where a consistent, coarse grind is recommended. Make sure to grind immediately before you’re ready to use the grinds and only grind what you need.

The last step in the process is the french press. I’m using the Bodum Chambord French Press that I got as a Christmas gift. The french press is a very simple device that lets you brew rich and strong coffee in just 4 minutes! The ideal water temperature for brewing is right around 200 degrees F. Most regular drip coffee makers are unable to brew anywhere near the ideal temperature, which is one of the reasons the french press coffee tastes superior. Another reason is that the paper filters used in many drip coffee makers actually absorb a lot of the oils and flavor of the coffee and trap it from reaching the resulting coffee. The french press avoids this problem.

Bodum French Press. 4 more minutes!

Once you get the hang of it, making coffee with the french press requires only a little more work than the drip coffee maker. The first step is to bring some water to boil on the stove. Then measure and grind the beans. Once the water is boiling, take it off the stove and put a little water into the french press to heat up the glass. Now add the grounds and pour the rest of the water into the french press over the coffee grounds. I like to stir the top of the mixture quickly to prevent any clogging. Set a timer for 4 minutes and wait while the coffee brews. Once it’s done, slowly press the grinds to the bottom and pour. Make sure you don’t let the coffee brew past 4 minutes; that’s when it will begin to taste bitter.

Bodum Pavina Thermo Glasses - 9 ounces. (Need bigger ones!)

I’m still very new to all of this, so please feel free to correct me in the comments if anything is incorrect! Now it’s time to brew some more coffee!

P.S. I’m back!! (Maybe…)

The new homepage of the Penn State Snowboard Club.

Let’s start with the new design. For those familiar with the old site (photo below), you will notice some drastic changes. I set out to bring more color into the new site and I wanted to emphasize photos since they are often the best way to liven up a site. I decided to go with a custom designed header photo for each of the main pages. Each menu item has a unique header (and color) associated with it. I think this has made a difference in the user’s first impression upon visiting the site.  In addition to these changes, I also changed the primary link color from a maroon to a vibrant light blue color. I’ve been a fan of the light blue and black color schemes lately and I think it works great on this site. Finally, you’ll notice that I dropped the boxes around the elements on the right sidebar. Instead, I used a slight variation in the background color to differentiate these items from the blog entries in the center.

This is the homepage of the old PSSC website. It's very boxy.

Officers page with new header image and the green color scheme.

In addition to these design changes, I made some other improvements to the sidebars on the homepage. The left sidebar is now displayed on each and every page of the site, instead of just the homepage. This will allow users to see who’s online while they’re browsing the forum or calendar and not just on the homepage. Big thanks to Ben Birk who provided the gorgeous photo for the left sidebar background. On the right sidebar, you’ll notice a new Upcoming Events section and a Recent Tweets section. The goal of the new Upcoming Events section is to present a clear and straight-to-the-point view for seeing what’s happening in the club. Previously, there was just a calendar with highlighted dates that you had to click on before seeing what the event was about. The new design explicitly shouts at you “This event is TODAY”. The Recent Tweets section is a way to get some of the new members familiar with Twitter if they aren’t already. Many of the most active club members are actively using Twitter.

Upcoming Events and Recent Tweets sidebar items.

Another huge feature that I rolled out with this release is a completely revamped Inbox/Messaging page. The old site allowed a very simple way for members to send Private Messages (PMs) to each other. If you had a message waiting for you, a notification in the sidebar allowed you to open a pop-up with that message. There was no central place to view your messages. To compose a message, you had to find that user’s profile page. Well, with the new site I’ve built a GMail-like Inbox page. This page is 100% JavaScript and allows the user to navigate their Inbox, Sent Messages, and even compose a message to other members. This was quite a task, but I think it turned out extremely well!

Brand new Inbox design to view your PMs.

I also spent some time working with the Video page. This page previously displayed a thumbnail (added manually) of each video and linked directly to that video which was hosted on the server. In actual use, this was very clunky. The team members were simply hosting their videos on Vimeo or YouTube and posting links in the forum or on the homepage blog. I wanted to create a dead simple way to add a video. I came up with a simple form where the team member or officer could simply post a link to the video hosted on Vimeo or YouTube and the code does the rest. For each of these links, I used the video site’s APIs to fetch all of the relevant metadata about the video (including the thumbnail) and then I display it on the video page. This allows the page to be completely dynamic and saves the user the hassle of entering all the information twice. To help speed things up, I used memcached to keep the video metadata in memory so I can quickly load the page without waiting on these APIs.

The new Video page.

Finally, I made a lot of performance enhancements under the covers which should drastically improve the performance of the site and keep the code looking modern. I started by moving the site over to my brand new server hosted by Linode in Newark, NJ. This server flies in comparision to the shared server where was previously hosting the site. I also made heavy use of memcached to cache a lot of the data on the site that changes infrequently. This allows me to make less queries to the database and in turn, I’ve seen an incredible improvement in speed. Speaking of less database queries, I introduced a brand new database class which should greatly enhance security against SQL Injections and similar attacks. Overall, these improvements have made a very noticeable difference in site performance.

As you can see, I’ve been very busy. I couldn’t have done it all without the help of my buddy and former PSSC officer, Kenny. He has provided hours and hours of his time to help me test out these changes and get the site ready to go live. His attention to detail and high standards have greatly affected the outcome of the site and the club members are going to benefit greatly. (Thanks Kenny!) I hope you enjoyed this little tour and feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments. I’d love to get some more feedback. Also, if you want to check out the site for yourself, it’s easy to browse it without creating an account. I’ll leave you with one last photo, and a link.

Here is the Forum. This is the most popular section of the site.

Penn State Snowboard Club – http://www.thepssc.com

Note: All of these screenshots were taken from my ADMIN account on the site. None of the New/Edit/Delete icons will appear for regular club members.

College students love Facebook. Actually, it seems like everyone loves Facebook…at least until they start changing (“improving”) things. At Penn State there was an endless stream of parties, sporting events, meetings, and other things to keep track of. Facebook is great for inviting friends to things, or finding out what’s going on tonight. It’s also a great place to share photos and keep in touch with friends. I’m stating the obvious here, I know. The problem with Facebook is, it quickly becomes cluttered with people that you barely even know. Maybe you met the person once 2 years ago, or they are a friend of a friend…but regardless, you’re going to be getting constant updates on their life pushed into your stream. Sure you can choose to “Hide” that user from your stream, but you’re still going to get mass messages, event invites, application requests, etc. The easiest solution is to just unfriend them. This usually works, but there are always a few pesky stalkers who don’t get the message and keep trying to request you as a friend again. Facebook quickly turned into a game of cat-and-mouse where I tried to block out all of the clutter and keep up with the constant nagging of people that I don’t care about.

I believe that my core gripe with Facebook boils down to a single design decision. A design decision that Twitter nailed perfectly: one-sided friendships. Twitter allows me to “follow” other users but does not require that they follow me back. Even better than this, I can allow other Twitter users to follow my tweets without having to burden myself with their content if I’m not interested. This is critical. There are plenty of users who I am extremely interested in (popular tech bloggers, professional athletes, etc) who couldn’t care less what I did last weekend. Twitter makes it easy for each user to self-select the people they follow in order to get the most out of the service without having to waste time and effort sifting through all the baggage their “friends” bring.

So, to put it bluntly… I realized last month that the only time I visited Facebook was because I had to. I clicked a link from a friend, logged in, and then had to decline/ignore/hide 10 useless requests. It’s annoying, and I’m done with it. Will I quit Facebook forever? Maybe not. I could see some value in the service if I go through and remove a large portion of my friends. Other friends of mine take the approach of simply ignoring all invites/requests/etc. and just letting them build up. I guess that works, but it’s still a broken approach. For now I plan to continue living in the peaceful stream that is Twitter.

Ben's new photography site.

Ben wanted a simple design so the photos were the main focus. We decided to go with a plain white page with a simple header and menu. The site is entirely JavaScript and is fun to interact with. The photos are loaded on-demand via AJAX calls to back-end PHP resources. For many of the photos, Ben also has them uploaded to his Flickr page. His website knows about these photos and provides a handy “see this on Flickr” link to provide more details about the photo and help spark discussion. I used the Flickr API and created a tool which allows Ben to upload a photo to the site and have it automatically uploaded to Flickr as well. In fact, I used the PHP GD library to dynamically add copyright information onto the Flickr photos before uploading! It turned into quite a task.

The gallery I used is called JqGalScroll which was created by Benjamin Sterling and based on jQuery. I heavily modified the gallery to speed things up and allow for multiple galleries to live on the same page. I fell in love with the simple animations of the gallery and as a result I decided to write the rest of the site using jQuery as well. It was my first time working with jQuery and I really like it so far. I definitely plan to use it for future projects if possible.

Ben and I are both extremely happy with the way his site turned out. I’m still working on some tweaks to speed up load times and some other usability improvements. The project was a fun one for me and a great learning experience. Please head over to Ben’s site and experience it for yourself.

Ben Birk Photography – http://benbirk.com

How many of you have wondered the same things?

Pontiac G6

So we got to the Avis place to pick up our car. The lady at the desk says “I’ve got 2 options for your car class. Either a PT Crusier or a Chevy H…” I interrupted her. “I’ll take the Chevy.” I didn’t know what the Chevy car was, but I knew it had to be better than a PT Cruiser…or so I thought. Look at how ugly the PT is!

PT Cruiser

So she told me the car was at spot “G6″ (Ironic isn’t it?). We found our mystery car in the parking lot and to our disappointment, it looked like this:

Chevrolet HHR (our actual car)

I think this might actually be WORSE than a PT Cruiser!! It’s quite possibly one of the ugliest cars I’ve ever seen. Not only is it ugly, but it has all sorts of weird engineering quirks that left us puzzled. No wonder GM is bankrupt.