Test Drive - Subaru Crosstrek

Last weekend I went to test drive a 2016 Subaru Crosstrek. Since this is my first test drive review, I'll take the opportunity to tell you a bit about my driving history.

I have been driving for many years, mostly of family-oriented vehicles. I haven't driven that many in total, so I'll just list them all here.

Dodge Grand Caravan
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Camry
Cadillac SRX

I have driven some other cars, such as Mazda 3 and Honda Civic, but I don't include those because I drove them for only a short distance (less than 5km).

So with these cars in mind, I present to you my Crosstrek driving experience.

I did a lot of research on the Crosstrek prior to contacting the dealership to arrange the test drive. Overall it was a good car but there were a few recurring complaints about it.

1. Engine lacks power,
2. Transmission noise is annoying,
3. Road/wind noise is overpowering,
4. Oil consumption by the engine.

I think a lot of these reviews were influenced by previous year Crosstreks, which had poorer noise insulation. The 2016 Crosstrek is supposed to have remedied this by adding more insulation around the car.

I can address the first three points. Obviously I wouldn't be able to test oil consumption on a test drive, but reports are that Subaru has fixed this since last year or before.

Engine power

People that complained that the engine lacks power were probably coming from gigantic North American gas guzzlers or some sports car. The Grand Caravan that I drove had a pretty big engine that was adequate for the minivan. I think the feel of the engine power in the Grand Caravan is similar to that of the Crosstrek. The Corolla is definitely much weaker but I still have no problems driving it on the highway and, although sometimes it struggles to accelerate from third gear, it could drive just fine with a little planning ahead.

On the short test drive I had, there were no indications that it was lacking power. The engine and transmission responded well to my inputs. One thing I agree with is that it is a little punchy - it was quick to respond to my foot on the gas from idle. This was similar to the response I had with the Camry and Mazda. The was a short adjustment period to get used to the gas on these two, especially with the braking.

Braking power

Crosstrek braking is adequate. Again I think it compares to the minivan. The Corolla has very weak brakes and the Camry/Mazda have very touchy brakes. I have no worries stopping in the Corolla however, so the Crosstrek doesn't worry me either.

Ride

I found the ride to be good. The suspension was stiffer than most cars but did not cause the ride to be rough. I had the chance to drive over a railroad crossing to feel its stiffness. As reported by many drivers, the turns were well controlled. I took one turn faster than normal and did not feel the body roll any more than a small car would. Overall the car drives more like a small car rather than a truck.

Noises

People complaining about road and wind noise must have been driving luxury cars. The Crosstrek comes from the factory with light truck tires. I'm no expert on tires, but my understanding is that these tend to be more noisy. In comparison, the Corolla was a bit noisier as it's also an older car. Sometimes I do have trouble with talking over the noise or hearing the radio, but I would attribute that to the car's age rather than the build. I didn't have this problem in the Crosstrek. It is still new, however, so I might expect the noise level to increase with age like the Corolla.

Steering

The steering was very comfortable and smooth. The only car I have driven so far that has weak steering is the Corolla. All the other cars are comparable.

The steering wheel design is different from the other cars I remember driving so far. It has a 3-point connection to the column at 3, 6, and 9 o'clock while the other cars have 3, 4, 8, and 9. I thought I might have trouble getting used to it but driving normally I didn't not run into that connection point at the bottom. I can't comment on the convenience controls. I would like more time to learn them so I didn't fumble with them during the test drive and be distracted from the important things.

Other controls

All of the controls were well within reach. The only areas that might be bothersome are the parking brake and heated seat controls. Both of them are on the left side of the center console. They might be covered by a winter jacket while seated. However, this is very minor as I wouldn't normally need to access either control while driving. I didn't try the infotainment system either as there was nothing there that would make me hate the car. 

Overall

I enjoyed the ride. I'm not looking for anything with too many features or extras. Power is nice but I can live without the turbo. I could still be looking to upgrade in a few years but for now the Crosstrek is plenty enough for my purposes. The standard roof rails will hopefully allow me to take home some IKEA purchases that I couldn't before with the Corolla.

Maybe it's the ad blocker

I'm normally a very patient person when it comes to a lot of things. I don't mind ads very much except when they randomly hijack large portions of a page. I have unlimited data on my mobile phone so I'm not worried about exceeding data allotments or bandwidth and I have no issues with ads showing on my home computer.

At work, however, I don't like seeing ads at all because they can easily be inappropriate and they just get in the way. Unfortunately, tech sites often have very many ads, so I have an ad blocker installed.

In one situation however, we were looking at why a section of a site we are supporting was missing in all browsers except IE. Obviously the cause was the ad blocker plugin (this is the theme of the post).

We looked into the CSS and Chrome developer tools to see what might be causing it to be hidden. There was a large grayed out section of styling with the following:

display: none;
visibility: hidden;
orphan: 4321;

This block was added by the AdBlock plugin on Chrome. If you're missing some code from your project and you see this, try disabling your ad blocker.

Kicking off the new year!

I always think it's amazing that the new year is often used to start something new, that it's easier to start fresh even though it's just another day. However, there is no bad day to start something new even if it happens to be the start of a new year. I just saw a quote from a Lighthouse blog entry - "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now." Another thing about new years is the New Year's Resolution. I have never been a fan of them since I think they are often under-specified or too ambitious and ultimately never completed. I'm also not a role model for professional development planning but there are a few tricks I like to use and I like to try new ideas out from time to time.

For me, this year will be a change. I will be responsible for helping a few colleagues with their own development plans so I need to become better at picking my own manager's and senior colleagues' brains for ideas. I'm also doing some reading about how to approach one-on-one meetings. I was not a fan of one-on-one meetings as they are quite long and require actual planning to attend one. It will also be interesting for me as I am not a manager by role, so while there may be some limits on how much I can do for them it is also going to challenge me to make things happen (Empower Yourself is an "immutable" at my company).

As a starter I think I will take some ideas from http://jasonevanish.com/2014/05/29/101-questions-to-ask-in-1-on-1s/ and bring some beginning action items to the table. Some things that I will find out about are:

1. any existing career goals,
2. technical strengths and weaknesses,
3. ideas about personal/professional development.

Some actions that I might recommend:

1. technical reading (blogs, podcasts),
2. technical writing (blog about personal experiences or expertise),
3. prepare some medium term goals.

As a novice in this field I want to read about the experience from others but also don't want to rely too much on it. Like anything else hopefully I will get better at this through experience. Keep up with me on my own professional journey through this blog!

Year in review 2015

This year has been particularly exciting and challenging, which is why I've decided to write about it. So many things have happened and I've done so many new things that I just have to record it for myself and to share with everyone.

Without further ado, my year in review.

1. Got married

Many things are life changers but so far for me nothing has been as significant as getting married. Sure some people don't think about marriage but regardless everyone would have to agree that it is a major stage in life whether or not you consider it essential. Marriage is significant to me because I am now with my love until I can no longer count the days.

2. New roles and challenges

Before getting married there was the challenge of planning and setting up the the wedding. By far this was the toughest project I have undertaken. I have to say that it was very successful in the end but I would be lying if I said it was perfect. Luckily both my wife and I are flexible and didn't let small things ruin it. We learned many things along the way and it makes us stronger.

After the wedding I became the vacation planner. I'll admit that this wasn't nearly as difficult as the wedding but it's different to plan a trip for two people.

3. Campfire under the stars

For the first time in my life I was able to see the Milky Way. While I'm not a fanatical amateur astronomer I can appreciate what is out there.

4. Tough career year

When work gets tough it really gets you down. For most people work takes up a third of the day so it is a significant part of a life. I went from doing something I love to something I love a little bit less. For me the important part of this was that I was able to turn it into an advantage. I basically set myself up for a promotion, but more on this in the future.

The verdict

2015 has been great. Ups and downs are a part of life. While you have to accept the bad things that happen and reflect, you should also not let them adversely affect everything else. I've turned the downs into something more positive when I can and let ups stay as ups. I accept that I will always make mistakes and try to avoid the same mistakes but I'm lucky to have a wife and family that can see past the mistakes and get through things together.

So... what is DevOps?

In my last few posts I wrote about my experience in a DevOps role. It was not something to write home about, but it could definitely produce a few good diary entries, if that’s your sort of thing.

DevOps sounds like a great idea, just like Agile and NoSQL. There is no one thing that fits perfectly, if at all. That being said, they are great tools that are effective when used properly, just like any other tool. I’d like to list a few things that I think should be part of a defined DevOps job. I also don’t think DevOps should be a role on its own, which I’ll dive into after the list.

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That’s right, there is no list. I love the idea that there should be someone that handles both development and operations tasks, but in reality it just causes knowledge to be stuck in the few people. I believe that this blog post describes it best - it’s not just simply described, but it’s also not totally the wild west. To paraphrase the article, DevOps can be thought of as an extension to Agile. That is to say we should be considering operational issues as part of a sprint, so that we allocate time to the team to update servers, script things that need scripting, and update infrastructure if it needs to be done. Most importantly is that these tasks must be taken on as a team.

As with anything I’m sure there will be people that disagree with these points, so whatever works for you and your team is the best choice. Having a dedicated DevOps person was not the best choice for my particular project but it might be for yours.

Basic Maven project setup

A basic Maven project consists of a project name, project id, and version.

<project>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <artifactId>my-application</artifactId>
    <groupId>com.project.my-application</groupId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</project>

From here, the structure of the source folders depends on the Maven plugins used to build the code. In most cases this will be Java code and following a generic main/test structure. Simply put all your code into the src folder and run mvn clean install to compile the code and place your JAR into the Maven repository (we’ll take a look at what this means in a later article).

If you look at the groupId above, you’ll notice that it looks like a package name in Java. This can match the package name but it doesn’t have to. In most cases a Java project will have multiple package names but only one groupId. Pick a groupId that uniquely identifies your project name. Similarly, the applicationId should identify your application within your project. The modelVersion tag is required by Maven, and is always set to 4.0.0.

There you have it! This basic Maven project builds a Java Archive that can run under a JVM.

JavaScript runner on Android

One thing that I’ve been searching for is a way to run a JavaScript application on Android. There are many JS applications out there but they are mostly just fancy text editors. Recently I found out that the AIDE project released a web IDE. It lets you create a JavaScript console application and runs right in the IDE. This is everything I wanted. I’m still playing around with it so I have yet to experience its full potential.

Much of the AIDE functionality has become subscription based or paid modules, so hopefully this module stays free.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.web