The Hopp Stop

I’ve got some new articles to share from this month’s Esquire and GQ. First up, Chris and I were talking on Saturday about the potential for a massive volcano at Yosemite. What do you know, Esquire’s Answer Man responds to a reader question on the subject.

Also up are articles from my two favorite Esquire columnists, Ezra Dyer and Chuck Klosterman. Dyer has an article about guerrilla urban off-roading in Boston, which took me back to high school. Klosterman has a passable piece on stereotypes.

Moving on to GQ, I threw up in my mouth when I read that (1) Fred Durst is directing a movie, and (2) David Fincher is assisting him in his career change. Now, I know that Fincher came up as a music video director before Alien 3 and thus might feel some positive sentiments towards the music biz, but give me a break: Durst is a pig fucker of the highest order. I’m afraid this is going to color how much I enjoy Fincher films in the future (including Zodiac, the promising movie coming out this spring).

And…a Modest Mouse story that includes Isaac looking nice and plump. They’re all so slick and posed looking in this photo that I’m having fun imagining the pre-shot process, replete with Isaac sarcasm. Makes me think of that studio interview of the Mouse from before they hit it big, when the interviewer screwed something up and, IIRC, Isaac yelled out “Homework!” Borders, please confirm.

Finally, we have a GQ story on Barkley and the Inside the NBA crew. In reading Jack MacCallum’s book on the 2005-06 Phoenix Suns, it’s apparent that a lot of NBA coaches and some players think Barkley is full of it, despite the fawning nature of this article.

Random question: who thinks this site should be the Hopp Stopp instead of the Hopp Stop? Please advise in the comments. If Rob Thomas can share his thoughts, I’d really appreciate it.

Gay-Lynn points us to NME’s site for streaming access to the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible. Also, the NPR All Songs Considered podcast had a full Arcade Fire concert from NYC. This is a recent show and includes material from Neon Bible. I’ve embedded a Pando link below. Let me know if this doesn’t work–first time using it. [Update] Pando was hanging during the upload, so instead here’s the NPR download link to the file.

I was talking to a couple co-workers on Friday about good phones to get to access personal e-mail on the go. Rather than sending an e-mail to just them, I’ve posted my thoughts below.

The best personal e-mail program (non-Blackberry or Good) is Chatter, an e-mail program for Palm OS Treos that supports POP (regular old e-mail) and IMAP (newer e-mail tech that stores everything on a server to keep things in sync) accounts. (Google and Yahoo and Hotmail are webmail and Google and Yahoo also support POP access to the accounts.) The reason it rocks is that it has great IMAP support, such that you get full control and access to all your e-mail. E.g., say you read an e-mail on your Treo using Chatter and reply to it, the server is updated to reflect that so that if you then check your mail using a local client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) or via web access, that e-mail will be marked read, it will have the icon displayed to reflect that you replied to it, and your reply will appear in your sent items folder.

This is to be contrasted with a POP program, where if you download an e-mail from the server and read it, the message is either deleted from the server and only stored locally (in whatever client you are using, perhaps Chatter, perhaps Outlook) or left on the server. Basically, changes are a one-way street with POP; nothing you do to the e-mail after you download it from the server is reflected on the server.

Chatter also supports an advanced feature of IMAP, called IDLE, that provides for instantaneous notifications of new e-mail messages, much like Fenwick’s GoodLink setup does.

You need to have an e-mail provider that supports IMAP. I use Fastmail, which offers both free and for-pay accounts, depending on storage levels you want. You should be able to set up an existing account (like a personal Gmail account) to just forward to a new provider like Fastmail (that’s what I do for my personal address), so switching to an IMAP provider isn’t that big a deal–no need to change addresses.

Treos in general (Palm OS or Windows Mobile) also offer the advantage of having a real slick threaded texting program, such that texts appear as a conversation, much like how an IM conversation appears. It’s a huge upgrade over regular texting programs on phones. The Blackjack and the Q can also use TxtMan, a freeware program that provides threaded texting; I have that on my Blackjack.

The downside to Treos:
-Relative to a regular cell phone or a Blackjack, they are pocket bricks.
-The Treo 680 is reasonably priced relative to competition (in same price range as Blackjack), but the 700 models and the 750s are damn expensive.
-Treos historically have had lousy, lousy reliability and phone call quality compared to regular cell phones (I’ve had two, plus lots of discussion with Fenwickians who have had them). They switched to a new manufacturer for the 680 and 750 and phone quality has supposedly improved. Reliability is an open question.

My Blackjack is working well, biggest issue is the personal e-mail program. There is a potential Chatter equivalent for Windows Mobile called FlexMail, but that program has been in private beta for about 5 months, lots of false promises about when it will be publicly available. Until it is out and proven to be functional, I can’t recommend a Windows Mobile phone. (The default program on Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones, like the Treo 750, is supposedly more powerful with decent IMAP support, but those are all pocket bricks and expensive. And as I mentioned, the default program on Windows Mobile Smartphones, like my Blackjack, is crap. Nice nomenclature by Microsoft, by the way. Very consumer-friendly.)

The Blackberry Pearl is worth looking at, although their personal version of Blackberry may be POP-based; I’m not aware that it is as functional as Chatter. Also, the keyboard is not a full QWERTY version and thus uses predictive text input, which some people like and some hate. This would be a good one to test out using the 30-day return period that cell providers offer.

I bought several albums off of eMusic this weekend, haven’t had a chance to listen enough to form an opinion yet:

-Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder.

-Apostle of Hustle, Folkloric Feel, from 2004.

-The Walkmen, Pussy Cats (cover album).

-Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming (Wolf Parade-related).

Also, here’s a link to a PDF of Ezra Dyer’s latest amusing article for Automobile Magazine. Pretty wild how much tech the Gumball ralliers pack to evade John Q. Laws.

And finally, Chris read Absurdistan recently, thought it passable. I was going through my files and saw that I had saved an Esquire page with a strange counterpoint on the book.

I’m a big fan of the new Menomena album, Friend and Foe. I liked their previous effort, I Am The Fun Blame Monster, from maybe 2004–thanks Vanessa for introing me to them and Gaelen for the latest. The new album is just great, worth a listen by any indie rock fan.

Other quick album takes: new Bloc Party is boring, out of my rotation already; Of Montreal is solid, but still a bit more ornate (not sure how to describe it) than I like; Shins album is safe but catchy, I really dig some songs.

Now I think I’ll go open up the Mouse site again to hear Dashboard for the 100th time.

Tough to believe, but the pitchers and catchers have already reported to Florida and Arizona. As you might expect, there’s a lot of excitement at Joker-Marchant Stadium in Lakeland this year given the Tigers’ success last year. I’m really not sure what to expect. After so many years of horrible, horrible teams, I’m a little gun-shy on expecting continued success. That said, it looks like all the elements are in place assuming continued health of last year’s important players, the return of Maroth and the addition of Sheffield. I don’t think the Gambler will have as good a year, given his age, but who knows…In the end, Los Tigres could have a superb year where most things go right and still not make the playoffs due to the competition in the AL Central, which might now be the big’s best division. I’m fine with that, because I have faith in Dombrowski and his plan for long-term success.

If the Tigers are decent to good for a few years in a row, will parents in Michigan have to point to Millen’s Lions and say “This is how bad the Tigers were, but for about 15 years in a row”?

Before I get to some links, I’d encourage the readers to check on the comment # for recent posts, as A-Bo and my hard rockin’ friends have posted comments, but these comments don’t get flagged like a new post.

This isn’t related to baseball, but hallelujah! Michael Irvin won’t be back at ESPN! Not sure this is enough to get me to start watching their pre-game show (umm, Berman), but we’ll see. If you haven’t been paying attention, the former head honcho at ESPN, Mark Shapiro, can be blamed for much of the bullshit changes at ESPN to make it have a pop-culture focus rather than sports first. He left last year to run Six Flags amusement parks (not making that up) and a lot of his dreck has been thrown out the window: see, e.g., the revisions to the ESPN NBA announcing crews and (case #1) cancelling Stephen A. the Shouter’s show.

A couple Gambler stories: revisiting SmudgeGate, no real change, apparently just an AP reporter looking to beat a dead horse driven by a new MLB rule re: smudging (which I thought applied to position players, not pitchers–I think this story might be wrong). Feel-good Freep story on Rogers with some speculation as to his future past the 2007 season.

Early days has Andrew Miller looking good, but still a longshot to make the 12-man pitching staff. He’s only thrown six minor-league innings.