Blake Noble

Another detail I notice when I stare beyond the camo: the dual port grille that most Chevy's have outside of the Camaro and Corvette is suspiciously absent. In fact, the grille appears to be something of a combination between the current Impala and the Camaro. I'm not surprised at all by that. It goes without saying '10 Taurus has been giving GM a little trouble sleeping at night.

You can tell the Taurus was the benchmark for the interior. It might just be me, but I think I kind of see the '68 Impala in what little bit of the styling treatment I could see.

Design-wise I'm seeing a few undertones of the GMT-400s and the new Colorado. Or maybe I'm just seeing what the camo wants me to see, it's hard to tell.

Yesterday morning, Dodge released a few more teasers of the 2013 Dodge Dart that's set to debut at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show next month. The teasers didn't reveal much other than what the Dart's center IP and gauge cluster would look like. Well, if Dodge's constant teasing is starting to bother you, there's some good news: you don't have to wait until next month to see the rest of the interior at least. Someone at Dodge saw fit to put up a rather revealing photo of the Dart's interior on their Facebook page late yesterday evening. What we can tell from the photograph is that the ambient lighting that surrounds the gauges and center IP looks interesting and a lot of the styling elements are borrowed from the Charger. The switchgear looks nice as well. Dodge also says the glovebox will be big enough to stow an iPad away in. As for what the outside is going to look like, well there's still about three weeks or so to go before we'll know the answer to that. View full article

You've given me a new angle to chew on. In fact, all of these posts in this thread since last night have given me something new to chew on. While I'm going to proceed with caution, that still means I'm still going to proceed as planned. For now. Regarding iTunes, though, and that strong opinion I have about about "pay-walls" and services like that ... I personally don't think piracy has shrunk that much because of them. Hell, there's a site out there now that's devoted to showing you just how much of a pirate you are (I can't remember the name of it, but I'll try to track down the url). When you work for money that's pretty much worthless in an economy on the verge of total meltdown, people are going to look at ways to cut corners and grab as much free and discounted crap as they can possibly get their hands on. Ninety-nine cents might buy you the hot new single from some crappy pop artist that crappy Hot 100 radio station is playing fifteen times a day, but ninety-nine cents will also buy you a Monterrey Ranch Crispy Chicken sandwich from Wendy's. People are going to spend that change on food versus spending it on iTunes, but I also know that they're going to get impatient waiting for that song to play on the radio for the billionth time. I'd also like to read those PDFs if you have the time to send them to me.

That list is mostly correct, but it's not without major faults. Faults that make me very angry. Oh, wow. Really? That's how they chose to start this list off? I think it goes without saying that it was the Solstice that saved Pontiac from the styling meltdown it was going through in the early '00s. To be fair, the Solstice did have a few minor faults, but the press didn't absolutely crucify the car for them the way Inside Line did here. They also conveniently forgot that the car was not about speed to begin with (that's why you opted for a GXP), nor was the roadster version really meant to travel cross country in (that's why you bought the Targa coupe). The shear gall of Inside Line trying to go against the grain listing anywhere on this list makes them appear desperate for readership. Nice job, dickheads. You screwed this one up before you even got started on it. They listed the Eagle Premier? Uh, news flash you ignorant assholes -- if it wasn't for the Premier, Chrysler as we know it today wouldn't exist. The basic engineering for that car was what gave birth to the LH cars that saved ChryCo from oblivion in the '90s. I also see the Ariel Atom and Saleen S7 are both on there in the bottom 10 as well. Dear God almighty, the stupidity is just too much for me to bear. ... Wait. Did I just see what I thought I saw at number 70? Holy f@#king hell! Just ... what the f@#king hell? Really? Really? Inside Line now not only looks desperate for readership, they also look as if they don't want to be taken seriously or with any credibility, possibly both. This one I actually ... agree with. I've always thought the Fuego was a terrible car because of it's terrible, bloated styling alone (it always reminded me of a clubbed baby seal or a beached whale). It was an ugly car, which was odd for a French car because the French are only second to the Italians when it comes making sensuous works of automotive art.* (*see what I partially did there?)

I can't respond to this one without opening up another can of worms: where can you find pure journalism? Pure journalism for the masses that the masses will actually read? What journalism that people mainly come in contact with anymore all seems so diluted and very little of it anymore adheres to any of the basic guidelines. It's all biased anymore to a degree, sometimes larger rather than smaller. It all has to reach out and rip the reader's nuts off so that they'll pay enough attention to what you've wrote to keep reading it and keep coming back to read it. Sometimes you have to do that by whatever means you can. The undiluted facts bore people to tears unless you find some angle, some sort of jive that you can use to spice them up with. That's why more idiots tune into Faux News than CSPAN. That's why people would rather hear something from Reuters or the Associated Press from a source other than Reuters or the AP. Honestly, what I see these "citizen-journalists" write over on Autoblog isn't much different than what I've seen actual journalists over at Car and Driver write, just as an example. The lines have all blurred. Then there's churnalism on top of all of that, which has become nearly unavoidable in the digital age. Declining readership also has to play a role. TL;DR - While I don't disagree with anything you wrote, I still have doubts and my head is still spinning. It's late, too, so maybe I can regroup and be more level headed in the morning after a night's rest.

Thinking in the parameters of major outlets (i.e. employers) for journalists outside of television, that's all I'm seeing. Perhaps I'm missing something. Is it radio, maybe? I have reasons to not be optimistic about radio. I must be missing something, or at least I hope. I can't argue that fact, but I wasn't trying to argue it in the first place. If I did, it was a byproduct of whatever the hell it was that I just wrote (a yellow musing?). That said, I will say this: journalists are needed, but who's going to hire them? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I've said it before, I don't want to graduate with a degree only to wind up flipping burgers. I'd rank that fear right up there with something like dying alone. I wouldn't count on pay-walls being all that successful. They're to news outlets what the iTunes store is to the music industry (I hate to keep making that comparison, but the parallels are too strong for me to ignore). Sure, you'll have people who will still buy it digitally given the option, but I think the number of people who will seek it out for free in comparison will still be larger.

I upgraded my 3GS yesterday to a new 4S. It's not revolutionary to me, but it's definitely evolutionary. Then again, the only thing that was revolutionary to me about the 3GS when I first got it was that I was consolidating my iPod touch and cellphone into one device. I was already familiar with iOS from the first iPod touch I had bought, so it was nothing new to me at all. Anyway, I snagged mine from Target for only $85 bucks with tax after trading in my 3GS (otherwise, it would've been $185). What shocked me was that they actually paid me about what I paid for the 3GS a year and a half ago with a contract. I bought mine with the latest update and my battery life has left me pretty disappointed, to be honest. When it was first booted up and turned on, the battery life meter indicated 67%. It was brought up to 100% last night while I transferred my contacts and settings from my old iPhone using it's latest backup file and transferred my essential artists over from my iTunes library. As of right now, I have 21% left. That's 24 hours standby and around 7 and a half hours of continuous usage. That only matches what the worn-out battery in the 3GS was capable of. I can remember my 3GS going for 48 hours on standby and twice as long for usage when I first got it. Maybe using that backup file from my 3GS is to blame. I highly doubt it, though. Maybe turning off iCloud would help, too, since I don't have any use for that particular service (Apple sort of forces you into it, which I also don't care for). Mine have been working fine so far. Maybe I have less apps than you do ... Haven't ran into that issue yet. Going from Edge to 3G is pretty non-dramatic. Mine multitasks better than my 3GS did. Siri cooperates with what degree of twang I have. I can't chew gum and talk to it at the same time, though. I might as well have my mouth packed full of sludge. I do wish I could've dropped AT&T for Verizon, though. Unlike you I had no real reason to stick with AT&T other than the bill was a few bucks cheaper than what it would be on Verizon and Sprint (I have the cheap ass $15 a month data plan for my iPhone; Verizon and Sprint's plans are more expensive and I need to pinch every penny I can). Fourteen hours for preorder? Holy hell ... You know, I was thinking of a Droid but then the whole Carrier IQ $h! came to light. At least on the 4S it doesn't keep an extensive record of what the hell you're doing and you can turn that $h! off.

Chances are you don't keep tabs on the financial shape of the newspaper industry. Newspapers have literally been around for centuries so it's only sort of natural to assume that they'll never go away, that if you're somehow left as the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust in the year 2061 you'll easily find a paper copy of the New York Times laying around amidst all of the cockroaches and Volkswagen Beetles. Since the newspaper is somehow the most resilient form of media, there's no need to really worry about it going anywhere and therefore no one should give a damn about what shape the newspaper industry is in financially. I personally have a reason to give a damn since I recently decided to try for a degree in journalism. It seems, though, that I might be giving a damn just a little too late and going for this degree at exactly the wrong time. Before I go any further let me say that I do understand that the digital and internet age is sparking a revolutionary change to come about in the news industry as whole, not just with the newspaper industry. I actually became aware of some form of change coming about not from an interest in journalism, but from my short time studying Graphic Design (because, let's face it, journalists typically don't care what layouts or fonts are used to print what they write). Regarding what would come about, I was personally thinking that someone within the newspaper industry would adapt and cook up a bold, new business model that would somehow fully integrate traditional, possibly purchased print media with the various internet channels we have today. The industry would remain secure and true journalism would continue on and I could find a honest career doing something I like. Well, I'm starting to think was wrong. Dead friggin' wrong. Dead friggin' wrong about everything. I'm also wondering if I've somehow been living under a huge ass rock as well. Why the sudden pessimism? Reuters wrote up and handed out an article yesterday that printed media giant Lee Enterprises (owners of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after racking up a billion bucks in debt. This news is also coming right on the heels of the news that The Tribune Company (owners of the LA Times) filed for bankruptcy only six days ago. Hear that? That's the sound of my goddamn head repeatedly bouncing off of a brick wall. While that might almost be the coup-de-grace of me working towards a journalism degree, I also recently discovered that no one really wants to advertise in a newspaper and, as a result, there's an increased likelihood that a newspaper will have to cut a journalist's pay -- even a journalist's job -- to make up for it's lack in liquid funds. That last article is from September, too. How big was that rock again and why do my eyes hurt from the light? The more I've educated myself about this industry, the more I've learned that it and, ostensibly, the field of journalism are actually both afraid of change and reluctant to at least accept it. Instead, everyone has been running around with their fingers shoved in their ears to the point where they could almost tickle their own brains, disregarding the various internet and digital news channels as nothing more than fads. It's the same f@#king malaise the music industry has been gorging itself on for over a decade now. And it's screwing me out of making a living at something I'm actually decent at doing, actually making me feel ashamed I wanted to have anything to do with it. I think I feel my forehead bleeding, but I don't think I'm going to stop. "What about magazines?" you might ask. "That industry is probably still doing okay and journalists can still get jobs there, right?" Nope. It's just more of the same since, of course, newspapers and magazines are pretty much tied to one another. As with a newspaper, a magazine is printed media. You have to buy a magazine the same way you have to buy a newspaper: with money. And no one's going to pay for it when it's online for free and it offers no major or instantaneous benefits over its digital counterpart. This is also not to mention that digital sources of news are always far more current and up-to-date on what's going in the world. Magazines are only good for a weekly to monthly span of time. Newspapers are usually good only for the day you bought them and are always a day behind on current events. After that it's clutter, only good enough to burn in your fireplace. Forget about a hard copy of anything as a source of backup. So, no, there's little chance the newspaper industry is going to revolutionize itself with enough time to get out of the fire. Classified ads have been replaced by Craigslist. The Local Times is being replaced with blog after blog after blog. The industry and profession refused to change and now it's paying the price, literally. The coming year will only bring about more bad news for journalists and aspiring journalists alike. Expect more bankruptcies for the main course with big lay-offs for the side dish. It's only a matter of time before the 6 o'clock news is replaced with a YouTube channel.

You know what? I don't care for a keyless ignition system. Remember the episode of Top Gear where Clarkson moved Hammond's Challenger while Hammond was still sitting in that diner? Who's to say two dudes who run a chop shop with a flatbed truck couldn't just roll up and swipe your unlocked car while you're chewing on a Porterhouse steak, blissfully unaware? I'm surprised I haven't heard stories about car thieves doing that. If anything, the NHTSA should be setting a standard (and limited) range for these systems to work within.

Whoa, I had forgotten all about that sketch. What a creepy similarity. Now I gotta find a lawyer ...

Something that just crossed my mind ... where in the hell would you put that thing, provided you felt like proving your stupidity by blowing $20k on a Behringer product? It's about the size of a really nice dresser.

The new blood has been rejected! All kidding aside, welcome aboard!

Old '80s S10s and S10 Blazers (and ostensibly, the S-15/Sonoma and Jimmy as well) will run forever. Even with a cracked head and the bottom of the motor full of metal-infused sludge, the Cherokee I had ran surprisingly smooth. ChryCo should build a true successor to that motor.

Actually, if a Volt owner demanded they be given a ZR1 as a loner, GM would have done it. "Theoretically if you wanted to get into a Corvette, the customer's Volt Advisor will work to get them into one," said GM spokesperson and part-time genie in a bottle, Greg Martin. "Obviously the intent of this program is not to provide a long-term Corvette test drive, but our priority is to make sure the customer is satisfied." Source.

If it's like any of the Pro Audio stuff (subs, mixers, etc.) Behringer makes, it will break within six months. If someone does what Mushfap suggested, it'll be more like six hours.

Thanks. It was heading in that direction a long time ago, though. I need to find a car I can keep awhile (I have the same issue with guitars and amps, too, it seems). Some extended monogamy sounds okay for right now.

Just that one additional photo, huh? I can think of some other poses that I'd like to see.

If that estimate is to be believed, the Subaru is quite a deal considering what sort of car it is and how much content comes standard. I personally was expecting an entry price of $27,000.

I can hear banjos. Why do I hear banjos? On another note, is it weird I find momma kinda hot? Aside from the haircut, I don't think she looks that bad considering she's had two kids.

After the Challenger's parking lot mishap, I can certainly relate. That's just one (huge) dent and that was enough for me to want to put someone's ass in a sling. Sure, the guy driving the Evo may have overreacted, but I can't say what he did isn't understandable, at least from where I'm sitting. When you have a car that a.) isn't cheap and b.) you put a lot of effort into maintaining and taking care of, someone's blatant disregard for your personal property is very infuriating. I wish I had reported what happened to my car as a hit and run, in hindsight. I'm also still having issues finding someone in my area who is competent enough to fix that dent properly. It's one factor that prevents me from letting the car go.

Copied that. i didn't mean to stress you out or anything, though ... :/

It's 8PM now ...