Nat Arem's Blog

I virtually never discuss politics or religion on this blog but given the state of things in the US, I feel compelled to say something. First off, I do not consider myself a member of either party because I am split on issues so neither party really represents a set of ideas that I would be happy with. I’m generally disgusted with multiple things that both parties have done. I think there are multiple media outlets with very biased reporting (although I think that the Fox News model is more biased than the mainstream liberal biased media, on a relative basis) and I find it to be unbalanced on both sides. Lastly, I don’t proclaim myself to be the most educated political follower. I don’t know all sorts of details like who voted for what, blah blah. All that being said, something really compells me to say something about one major issue that really really REALLY bothers me: KEEP RELIGION THE FUCK OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS AND TEACH SCIENCE. (excuse my language)

I know that conservatives are probably going to take offense to this. But the overwhelming number of violations of the above request are being committed by conservatives and, more specifically, Christian conservatives. It is simply disgusting to watch these violations of the separation of church and state. As a country, we deserve better. Our kids shouldn’t have to mention God in a pledge. Coaches shouldn’t be leading prayer circles before football games. Teachers should be immediately fired for bringing their religious or personal agenda that contradicts scientifically-proven curriculum (whatever it is) to their classrooms. Our kids should not be taught creationism in schools. Everyone who is reasonable and smart knows that evolution is well north of 99%+ likely to be correct (I only don’t say 100% because, frankly, almost nothing is 100%). I don’t care if Christian parents have to deal with children who don’t understand why their school is saying one thing and their church/synagogue/mosque says another. It’s their job to figure out how to deal with that. That’s like an overweight parent asking how to explain to their kid why the school teacher says that you should eat vegetables yet the parent hasn’t eaten a vegetable in 20 years. That’s not our problem as a society — that’s your problem. If you care, send your kid to a private school where religion and donuts reign supreme.

Here’s a Daily Show video that really made me think about this subject more but I have been thinking this for several years now:

There was an excellent comment in the reddit.com thread about that particular segment and the rather ignorant Fox News woman who appeared in it:

There’s a market in the US for comforting lies due to the way the baby boomer generation was raised. They’re leaving an era of “God and Country” and don’t want to join the era of “Secular Globalization” so they tune into people like her who remind them of a simpler time. They’re scared of the unknown and have the hardest time joining the rest of the world so they grab onto figureheads that tell them what they want to hear so they can live peacefully.

I think that quote has put the state of affairs in our country perfectly. People need to let go. On a sidenote, I’m glad there’s unrest in our country because we are not headed down a good road and it’s about time that people taken some action to try to put at least some aspect of our country back on track.

Just to circle back, this isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats for me. While I supported Obama in 2008, that was more about my intense distaste for Sarah Palin than about my preference for Obama. I don’t agree with Obamacare (as it stands at least). I don’t care for Obama’s inability to get anything productive done — although that is not totally his fault. This is not about Christianity versus Islam versus Athiesm versus whatever. I’m not attacking Christianity when it’s practiced in the private sector amongst people who want to participate. I recognize that people are free to teach their own kids what they wish. Go for it. That isn’t what this blog post is about.

This is also not about teaching Athiesm in the public sector. I’m not proposing classes titled “Why God Does Not Exist” or similar. With regards to publicly funded institutions of any kind, I propose ignoring the Bible, religion, God, prophets, people being swallowed by whales, resurrection, etc. That material should be a total nonfactor in every way although, of course, important science should still be taught even if it happens to conflict. We are not taught that wolves are capable of blowing down various houses that pigs are in (although clearly if a bird is angry enough and launched correctly, it can blow up houses that pigs are in). So why would we be taught that the world was created in six days?

This blog post about teaching science in the public sector. Anyone who ignores science is ignoring the MOST correct form of knowledge that we have about ourselves in today’s society. Is there zero doubt about scientific theories? No. But it is way more correct than anything else we know. Science is light years ahead of the Bible in terms of likelihood of correctness. If you don’t believe that, fine. You can believe what you wish. But it’s beyond irresponsible to push our whole country in an absurd direction and completely jeopardize our country as a world leader. We’re getting dumber. And yes, I think this is a major factor. Science and rational thought needs to be put on a pedestal as our method of thinking. People who are working against that: Please stop. For all of us.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the Apple iCloud service was released to the public in the last week or so. I think iCloud is not a killer app in the cloud storage and syncing marketplace. At least as far as being an application that could take serious market share from the likes of Dropbox and Backblaze. I’m not sure if iCloud isn’t trying to take on Dropbox or if it just failed in that effort — but either way, iCloud doesn’t even come close to competing. I’ve been playing around with it on my MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, iPad and iPhone (yes, I’m a sicko like that) and I just haven’t seen the usefulness for it. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t really use the iLife suite of applications. In fact, the only thing that I can see as being potentially useful in iCloud is the Photo Stream feature — but even for that, I need iPhoto or Aperture to get the images. The whole thing is really not user friendly at all.

So what is iCloud missing, in my opinion?

1. True online document management

This is where Dropbox excels. You can access your files on the web or on any computer. What about iCloud? First of all, I can’t see my pictures or documents on iCloud.com. In fact, I would go so far as to call iCloud.com completely useless on a daily basis. What’s the point of a cloud service that doesn’t allow me to access all of my stored items on the web? It totally defeats the purpose. I don’t know if the new “Purchases” feature on iTunes is considered to be part of iCloud but even that aspect is not user-friendly. While, yes, it does have all of my music purchase, it doesn’t allow me to stream them and play them from the cloud. That is one of the main things that I love about the Amazon Cloud Player. I don’t even need to use iTunes or bother keeping my music collection in sync because I just leave everything on Amazon Cloud Storage and I can play everything directly from Amazon Cloud Player. And I can use Rdio if I want music on my iPhone without any need to sync with a clunky program like iTunes.

2. No local file system integration

The former Apple product known as iDisk is pretty much what I’m referring to here. Or what Dropbox does with putting a “Dropbox” folder on every machine that it’s installed on. It isn’t clear if Apple is going to roll iDisk over to iCloud but if they get rid of it, I think that’s a major crippling effect. However, the beauty of Dropbox versus iDisk is that Dropbox actually downloads the entire content of the Dropbox folder onto your local disk. This enhances speed and performance significantly. On the other hand, while iDisk does some sort of caching, I never managed to get much performance out of it and I stopped using it. I really hope that Apple uses the iCloud infrastructure to upgrade the iDisk capability (or hopefully at least keep it).

3. Can’t use iCloud to sync any type of file

I don’t use Pages or any of those iLife programs so I can’t use iCloud to back up things like my work files (which often happen to be PHP scripts, PSD files, AI files, HTML files, etc). Dropbox works perfectly for that. And it’s bad enough that iCloud requires you to use various Apple applications to sync and backup documents. They’ve taken it even further and made it so you can’t back up most file types. As it stands currently, app developers need to integrate iCloud and for the most part, only the iLife stuff seems to be integrated. It would be immeasurably more user-friendly for Apple to provide an iCloud app that you can load any file into and have it sync to your other devices (or just a Finder-integrated folder, like Dropbox).

Overall, I think iCloud has big potential. I was actually kind of worried about it because my friend Mike Jackness owns the site Online Storage and that site would have been hurt badly if iCloud was actually a true Dropbox-style service. I don’t doubt that Apple has the ability to provide that sort of service but I’m just not even the least bit sold on iCloud as it currently stands.

About a year ago, my friend Eric joined a pretty cool car club. They have about 60 cars (I think) and a few hundred members. When you join, you get a certain number of points and those points can be redeemed to take out the club’s cars for anything from a few hours up to a week. The cars range from old classics from the 60s to modern exotic supercars like the Ferrari F430, Ferrari 458, Lamborghini Gallardo, Ford GT, Audi R8, Mercedes SLS, Aston Martin Vantage, etc. There are also a host of other fast cars that don’t really fall into the “exotic” category. Cars like the Audi RS4, Mercedes E55 AMG, Porsche 993 Turbo, BMW Z8, etc. Tons and tons of really fast cars and they are all manual (a few have SMG or F1 paddles) which is really awesome. Eric has taken out at least 10 of them over the last year, maybe more. And since maintenance, insurance, storage, etc are all included, it’s a great low risk way to try out a ton of awesome cars in a fairly economical manner.

So anyway, this past weekend was Eric’s turn with one of the club’s three Ferraris. In this case, the red 2005 Ferrari F430. It’s a 480 horsepower V-8 and it’s really REALLY fast. The F430 was the replacement for the well-known 360 Modena and it has recently been replaced by the 458 (the club has a 2011 Ferrari 458 Italia as well). But the F430 has been a really highly regarded car in the exotic car world for good reason — it’s absurdly fast, sounds great, looks amazing and is actually really comfortable to ride around in.

So first of all, here’s a video of me doing a walkaround the car, followed by Eric driving off. For obvious reasons, given that Eric doesn’t own the car, we couldn’t film and publish any really abusive revving of the engine or anything like that (of course we didn’t do that):

Also, Eric’s neighborhood is really bad for parking cars so he couldn’t stay at his house and park on some tightly packed street. And he didn’t feel safe about leaving the car in a random garage given the amount of attention that it would draw. So he decided to book a hotel room at the Four Seasons for Saturday and Sunday just to keep the car well looked after when it was parked. I actually thought it was a pretty reasonable decision given that it was $500 spent to keep the car out of harm’s way — plus a fun experience.

So here’s a gallery of pictures (click for a high res version):

I’m including a few pictures of other club cars just because I happened to have them on my phone.

Overall, driving around in a Ferrari was really interesting and cool. For one, a huge number of people go nuts when they see it. Tons of people stare at it, take pictures, honk, etc. The car constantly makes you feel like you’re the center of attention because, frankly, you are (as much as possible if you aren’t Justin Bieber). While many people didn’t even notice the car, the ones who do notice it go nuts for it. I was estimating that we were making something like 10 to 20% of peoples’ day when they saw the car. That was a pretty uncomfortable feeling to have people staring given that we drove all the way from New York to Philadelphia and then we drove around the Philadelphia area a bunch. If I ever get a Ferrari, I would probably get a silver one to try to minimize the staring. But I suppose anyone with a Ferrari or similar is pretty much asking for a lot of attention.

The other interesting thing is that you get used to the car amazingly quickly. Within about 50 miles, the car became pretty much any other car on the highway. Until you get on a road with a lot of turns and acceleration/deceleration, the car was normal. I know that’s how it’s supposed to be but I definitely had a different picture in my mind of what it would be like to ride around in the car. As Eric said, it wasn’t really euphoric like you might imagine. All that being said, the car really shined on curvy and hilly suburban backroads. And the engine sound was absolutely amazing.

My overall verdict after the weekend is that I think I’m significantly less likely to ever own a Ferrari. And, prior to this weekend, if I had enough money, I would have said I would be 100% to buy one. While I’m not going to say never, it would need to be a pretty compelling situation AND I would need to get pretty lucky and come across a lot of money for me to buy one. I think that cars in the $40k to $60k MSRP range are the sweet spot where you’re actually getting decent value for your additional money spent (as opposed to, say, a $20k MSRP car). Although I think you can usually spend less than that because I think it generally makes sense to buy cars that are something like two years old. It seems like cars above that $60k MRSP range tend to have VERY fast diminishing returns for every dollar spent. Obviously a $150k car is going to be nicer than a $50k car — but the returns for the extra $100k are a pretty inefficient way to spend $100k in most cases. And this weekend with the F430 definitely helped to convince me of that sweet spot for car cost. I still loved the experience though!

Like everyone else, I’m incredibly saddened by the death of Steve Jobs. In most cases, I think leaders get too much credit/blame for the successes and failures of large organizations (that’s not to say they aren’t important — they definitely are). I think this is the case in business, sports, government and more. In Steve Jobs’ case, I think he deserves all of the credit that he has received over the years. He had such an amazing way to foresee what people wanted and I feel like he gets a lot of credit for that. In my opinion, “coming up” with iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone and so on was not his crowning achievement. They were/are great but I think there are other people out there who can and did think of similar things.

Pardon the language, but I think what set him apart was that he just flat out knew how to get shit done. While I think there are a fair number of people and companies who sat around before 2007 picturing something like an iPhone, I think absolutely none of them knew how to do it. I can actually think of two key Apple products that I thought of before they were released. One was the iPod (which I think was fairly obvious and more of an engineering feat than anything) and the other was the idea of a metal unibody structure for a laptop (I thought of it when my plastic Sony laptop that I had in college felt unstable when I would pick it up from a corner).

But, so what? I’m sure a number of people thought of things like the Mac Mini, iPad, iPhone and so on. It doesn’t mean they or I could even come close to being on Steve Jobs’ level when it comes to actually being able to deliver products. Ideas aren’t worth anything unless you can ship them (ship in the Seth Godin sense). The fact of the matter is that Dell, Sony, HP, Toshiba and dozens of other laptop manufacturers still haven’t made case hardware that’s as good as the pre Unibody MacBook Pro. I actually think the old PowerBook G4 Titanium case is superior to the utter crap that you find in the PC section at a Best Buy — and that case came out almost 11 years ago! Why? They just have no clue to how “do” like Steve Jobs and Apple. I have no idea why that is but it is the truth.

And what about Android and Blackberry OS? I am have at least 15 good friends or family who have Android phones. EVERY single one of them complains about force close problems and tons of other bugs. I know a bunch of people with iPhones and the last bug I remember hearing about was the alarm clock thing (granted that was a bad one, but it was awhile ago). And you can’t blame it on apps because Apple has more apps than anyone else. Some people claim that Android instability is due to Google having to deal with dozens of hardware manufacturers and specs and it causes problems just like the problems Windows has on random combinations of hardware. Guess what? Whose fault is that? Apple didn’t just release software to the world, shrug and say “meh, we can’t do anything about random hardware” — they did what they had to do to deliver a great experience for the user and they controlled the whole process from design to engineering to software. Quite frankly, the rest of the major mobile software/hardware products out there are total crap compared to Apple (exception: I’ve never used Windows Phone, it might be good). And I think a lot of that is due to Steve Jobs’ unwavering vision to just f’ing make shit work. Bottom line.

Don’t even get me started on how slow Blackberry has been to react to the world of apps. Not to mention their total piece of crap browser. If you watch the first Steve Jobs iPhone keynote, he mentions the crippled internet on mobile phones — over four years ago. Blackberry internet experience is still crippled and that’s just ridiculous.

I could go on for a long time about how much better OS X, iPad, MacBook Air, Mac Mini and tons of other products are than anything else out there. But the point is that Steve Jobs actually shipped products that worked. For all the people out there with ideas, there are very few who can actually “do” and do well. For me, Steve Jobs’ lasting legacy will be that he was that special innovator who knew how to think, analyze, manage and, most importantly, execute and execute well. Nothing else matters if you can’t do that.

I don’t understand why it’s so freaking complicated but I am trying to find a way to get data service when I’m in France. I’m leaving in about a month and I can bring an unlocked GSM phone that will be compatible with the French cell networks. Everything I’ve found so far is either in French and not translated (or translatable by Google Translate) or it’s just a stupid phone plan. Who actually makes phone calls these days? I don’t need any voice time or SMS. I don’t even need a high data limit. I just plan on checking email and occasional other stuff. I have Verizon here in the US so I don’t think I can use my day-to-day phone over in France. Plus I’m sure the rates are beyond ridiculous.

Does anyone out there have any recommendations for a simple way to get a SIM card to use in the Paris area for a week? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Jeez it’s been awhile since I blogged. I guess I haven’t had anything too exciting to blog about the past few weeks. I’ve just been enjoying being home on the east coast. I’m still loving being in the Philly area.

This is one of my favorite times of the year because of football (college & NFL), epic baseball playoff games, the foliage in the northeast, the weather and, usually, NBA getting started (not this year, so far). The Eagles have been a disappointment and the Phillies managed to split their home games so they need a good start from Hamels in Game 3. I’d really like to see them do well as I’ve basically missed their good run the last several years. Actually, the playoff games over the weekend were the first time that I’ve been in the area for a Phillies playoff game since 1993. I moved away in 2006 and hadn’t been back at this time of year since (I am pretty sure about this). I didn’t manage to make it to one of the games but I will try if I get another chance.

Last night I went to an awesome concert at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA. I’d been to the Tower Theater at least once before to see Guster way back in May of 2001. I actually found a review of the Guster show here — not written by me obviously. I am pretty sure I’ve been back to the Tower Theater more recently than that but I can’t remember who I might’ve saw. Anywho, the concert last night was The Antlers as the opening band and Explosions in the Sky as the main attraction. I actually really like both groups although admittedly I didn’t know a ton about either one before going to the show. I only listened to a few tracks here and there. Well, they were fantastic — both groups. I’d go back and see one or both in a heartbeat. And actually, a recording of one of the Explosions in the Sky songs from the concert showed up on SoundCloud here. Give it a listen! They’re an instrumental post rock group and they’ve been featured in a lot of high profile spots such as the Friday Night Lights soundtrack.

Also, the other night, I went to a Wine & Whiskey bar called Cooperage at the Curtis Center which is a building on Washington Square in Philadelphia right by where I live. I was just hanging out, having a drink/bite, talking with my friend, etc. We had been joking around a bunch with the waitress and when some of her friends showed up, she sat them down at our table (I guess she thought we were friendly) so we were chatting with them when one of them said “hey, do you know that Chase Utley is sitting right behind you?”. I was like, uhh, no? I turned around and sure enough, Chase, his very pregnant wife and some of their friends (presumably) were sitting right next to us. I hadn’t noticed because I missed him when he walked in and I hadn’t turned around. I guess they went there to hang out for a little while after the Game 1 win over St Louis. After a little bit of online research/stalking, it turns out he’s pretty much my neighbor although his 4+ million dollar apt is slightly nicer than mine I’m sure. I would’ve liked to get a picture with him but I generally don’t both someone like that unless they clearly wouldn’t mind (ie, not sitting and talking with family/friends) or if they’re mostly in their official capacity (ie, when he’s on the field in uniform or when he’s going in and out of the stadium or something). So we left him alone. It’s a great bar though (and super close to me) so I will be back regardless of any Phillies hanging out there.

Lastly, while I’ve mainly been working on things related to WordPress themes these days, I am kind of derping along in my spare time on a personal project. It would have been done a LOT faster if I’d been working on it full-time but since I have a full-time job doing the stuff related to WordPress themes, things haven’t moved all that fast with my personal projects. The name of the project is hookgrip.com and it has a pretty basic placeholder page up on it right now. I don’t want to say the project concept quite yet but the site should be up within the next few weeks I would hope. In case you’re wondering about the name, the “hook grip” is a commonplace term in the weightlifting/powerlifting community. It refers to gripping a bar with your thumb under your fingers as opposed to a traditional grip where your thumb goes over your fingers. A hook grip is a significantly stronger grip and it’s a necessity to pick up anything heavy with a hook grip. Naming this site hookgrip is similar to someone in poker naming their site coinflip, flushdraw, checkraise or something like that. In other words, it’s a very well-known term in the industry but not all that well-known outside of the industry. I’m really excited about the project and I can’t wait to discuss the actual concept behind the site.