A hot one

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

Musical evils abound

Why the iTunes Music Store is evil:

Because Candlebox's 1993 smash hit "Far Behind" is only a few clicks away.

Memo to Candlebox. A chorus pedal is like makeup: it's only good when you can't tell it's there. (But you still rokk.)

On ditching ESPN.com

I made a decision yesterday. I changed my go-to source for sports news online from ESPN.com to Yahoo! Sports. It made me a little sad to say good-bye to such a great name in sports coverage, but in fact, I have pondered making this change for a long time. Why would I quit the Worldwide Leader, you ask?

It's a matter of practicality. Simply put, ESPN.com does not offer enough unique content to justify the poor user experience required to browse it.

What many people do not realize is that when you visit ESPN.com, every recap of every game comes from the Associated Press. The text of the story will be exactly the same in every newspaper in the country, and on virtually every sports website in the world. (If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself. Here is the AP recap for yesterday's Game 7 of the Cavs-Pistons series, packaged by ESPN.com and by Yahoo! Sports.) This is fine, and of course it is not limited to sports. The AP supplies "hard" news stories as well, which is one of many reasons why the local newspaper is not worth subscribing to. Most of the unique content on ESPN.com is tucked away behind their annoying for-pay "Insider" service, where I will never see it, because I refuse to pay forty bucks to read about sports online.

But that brings me to the real reason for my switch away from ESPN.com: it's really a lousy website to use. It is so bloated with content that its load time is far longer than is acceptable for a user on a broadband connection. Some of that content includes auto-playing video, which is just plain rude. Even worse are the Flash-based ads, which dance around and/or drop down from the top, pushing real content below the viewing threshold. There is so much crap going on that it is not unusual for my PowerBook's fan to kick in after I load the page. Sure, I've got other stuff running, but no news-based website should ever cause a significant load on the CPU.

And don't get me started on design. I'm far from a design professional, but I know a thing or two about the basic rules, and ESPN.com violates at least a couple significant ones. First of all, there is virtually no white space. Designers use "white space," blank areas within the layout where no content exists, to allow the eyes to rest and focus more easily on the places where there is important content. On ESPN.com, there is way too much content all at once. This is very hard on the eyes, and as a practical matter, it nearly impossible to know what to click.

Perhaps the most infuriating trait of ESPN.com came along with their most recent redesign. Just below the main story is a section called "Spotlight," which cycles content from several categories on a timer. Fine idea in theory, but in practice, it makes me want to throw myself against a concrete wall. Invariably, I see something interesting that disappears about two seconds before I decide to click on it. The worst part about this "feature" is that it contains the only redeeming content on the site, the writing that is actually unique to ESPN but is not tagged as "Insider" content.

There are a few writers at ESPN.com whose material I enjoy. Marc Stein and Bill Pasquarelli write well about the NBA and the NFL, respectively. Bill Simmons is usually very entertaining. Thankfully, with the advent of RSS, I don't need to visit ESPN.com to check for new content from these writers. I can just sit back and wait until they pop up in my RSS bookmarks, and then click through directly to the articles.

I bet you want some screenshots. You're in luck!

Here is a shot of the ESPN.com homepage, taken this morning (click to enlarge):



Note that more than one-third of the vertical page is taken up by advertising and the ESPN banner. This is not desirable; I want content! It's fair to expect a banner ad at the top of the page, and I do have a small screen, but I find it excessive, especially since I had the window fully maximized, Windows-user style. Normally my browser is narrower and shorter than it was in that screenshot.

Note also that there is a large gray strip obscuring the most important content on the page. While in this case I find this advantageous since the photo is of Barry Bonds, I am almost always annoyed when that "curtain" of options drops down, because all it requires is a mouse-over to activate it. Since that strip of sub-categories runs horizontally across the entire page, it is very difficult to avoid it, no matter where you want to point your cursor. There are no fewer than seventeen different options along that strip. I can't even name seventeen sports, let alone ones whose main page I want to see. And if you look almost all the way to the right along that strip, you'll see the word "more" with a plus sign, indicating that you can click it to see, well, more. More? Are you serious? There are more categories? This is eerily reminiscent of using a piece of Microsoft software, but I won't go down that road.

Here is a shot of the Yahoo! Sports main page, taken at the same time (again, click to enlarge):



See how your body just automatically unclenched itself? A simple headline, a small photograph, some scores, some categories, and some headlines. Plenty of white space to make the page very easy on the eyes. It contains all the same recaps in much simpler, easier to access design. And that's why I made the switch.

New phone

Last week I received a letter from Verizon informing me that I was nearing the end of my two-year contract. I've been looking forward to this, not because I want to switch carriers--I drop calls with Verizon about as often as I experience system crashes with Mac OS X, which is to say almost never--but because Verizon has a program that gives you a $100 credit toward a new cell phone when you renew your contract. If you've shopped for cell phones, you know that $100 will get you a very nice phone, and probably two very nice phones because they're always on a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free!" plan.

Since Apple had just released their sweet new consumer notebook, I decided it was time to take a trip to the Eastview Mall, where I could ogle the MacBook and pick up some new phones all in one place.

I ended up getting the Motorola E815, which is highly rated by consumers and has the advantage of being compatible with Apple's iSync. It's a pretty sweet feature: the laptop and the phone connect wirelessly via Bluetooth (more on Bluetooth here if you are interested), and iSync reconciles the address books, adding the most recent changes to each. If I added a number to the phone's address book while on the road, it shows up on my computer. When I want to update details at home, I do it on the laptop, then sync the phone with it, and the data has transferred. No mashing my thumbs trying to peck out a name and number on the phone keypad!



And speaking of Bluetooth, I also picked up the HS850 headset to go with my phone. I should admit right now that Tracey thinks less of me as a person for owning a Bluetooth headset adapter, but she just doesn't understand how cool it is! I can talk through the headset while the phone is in the next room! I can use it in the car without having my seatbelt yank it out of my ear when I get out! Tracey says, "Yeah, and you can also look like a complete tool walking around with it in your ear!" But that's the thing: I don't do that. I keep it in my shirt pocket until I need to make or answer a call. No one is the wiser.



I've been using the phone and headset for about a week now, and I am very happy with it. I'd definitely recommend the E815 for any Mac user with Bluetooth. You may have read that you have to hack the firmware on this phone to get it to transfer address book information, but it worked perfectly right out of the box for me. And I'd also highly recommend the HS850 headset for anyone who wants great functionality at the price of looking cool in your wife's eyes--and I figure I'm gonna go bald soon anyway, so I might as well not worry about it and enjoy the gadget.

Who wants cake?

Priceless

I found this at Jon Gruber's Daring Fireball.

Fare Comment!:

He is the BBC's latest star - the cab driver who a leading presenter believed was a world expert on the internet music business.

The man stepped unwittingly into the national spotlight when he was interviewed by mistake on the corporation's News 24 channel.

With the seconds ticking down to a studio discussion about a court case involving Apple Computer and The Beatles' record label, a floor manager had run to reception and grabbed the man, thinking he was Guy Kewney, editor of Newswireless.net, a specialist internet publication. Actually, he was a minicab driver who had been waiting to drive Mr Kewney home.

You have to click through to the story and watch the video. The guy's expression when he hears the interviewer introduce him is priceless.

Posthumous Johnny Cash release

Johnny Cash's American V: A Hundred Highways will be released this summer on July 4.

From the Lost Highway Records press release:

The songs that comprise "American V: A Hundred Highways" are as eclectic an assortment as any on the previous albums in the American series: "Help Me," a poignant plea to God, the hauntingly beautiful ballad "If You Could Read My Mind," "God's Gonna Cut You Down," a traditional spiritual, the touching "Love's Been Good To Me," the heartrending "On The Evening Train," and "Further On (Up the Road)" are among the tracks on the new album. Songwriters for the tracks run the gamut from Hank Williams to Rod McKuen to Bruce Springsteen.

In addition, two original Cash compositions are featured, "Like the 309" and "I Came to Believe." "Like the 309" is the last song Cash wrote...."I Came to Believe" is a song he wrote and originally recorded earlier in his career, and addresses the pain of addiction and connecting to a higher power.

The process of recording the tracks was very interesting, since Cash was in poor health during his final days following the death of his wife, June Carter. More from the press release:

Cash and [producer Rick] Rubin began recording the songs that would find their way onto "American V: A Hundred Highways" in 2002, specifically on the day after they finished "American IV: The Man Comes Around" which was released that November. Johnny feared that "American IV" might be his last release, so Rubin suggested that he immediately begin writing and recording new material. Over the next eight months, songs were cut at Rubin's Los Angeles studio and in Nashville at Johnny's main home and at his fabled cabin located across the road. Due to Cash's frail health, Rubin arranged for an engineer and guitar players to always be on call for the days that Cash felt strong enough to work.

"He always wanted to work," said Rubin. "Every morning when he'd wake up, he would call the engineer and tell him if he was physically up to working that day. Our main concern was to get a great vocal performance. Johnny would record a song, send it to me and I would build a new track up under it. In the past, at the end of this process, he'd come to L.A. And we'd go through everything together, he would re-record any vocal bits that needed re-recording. But this time, we didn't have that opportunity."

Last year, Rubin began going through these final recordings. He admitted, "I kind of dreaded doing it, after Johnny passed, going back and listening to it...it was difficult.

"With all of the albums Johnny and I made together, our goal was for each one to be the best it could possibly be, and that remained the case with 'AmericanV,'" Rick explained. Eventually, Cash's long-time engineer David "Fergie" Ferguson, Heartbreakers Mike Campbell (guitars) and Benmont Tench (keyboards), and Smokey Hormel (guitars), all of whom had worked on previous albums in the American series, along with Matt Sweeney (guitars) and Johnny Polonsky (guitars) went into the studio.

"We felt Johnny's presence during the whole process through to the end," said Rubin. "It felt like he was directing the proceedings, and I know that the musicians all felt that as well. Almost all of the songs were cut solely to Johnny's original vocal tracks, the musicians all keyed off his voice and were playing to him, supporting the emotion of his performance. More than once, Fergie and I would look at each other and say 'Johnny would love this,' because it was so good and so different from anything we'd done before, we knew he would be excited by what was happening."

Sounds good to me. I'm looking forward to July 4.

Politics and faith

The talk about the 2008 presidential race has heated up recently, with a lot of attention being given to John McCain's trip to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University tomorrow to deliver the commencement address. Six years ago, McCain described Falwell as an "agent of intolerance" and on the "outer reaches of American politics." And he was absolutely right.

So why the change of heart? The answer is fairly obvious: McCain clearly believes he needs primary votes from religious conservatives in order to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, and he thinks associating himself with the likes of Jerry Falwell will earn him those votes.

I'm not so sure he's right. I describe myself as center-right politically, and I am a pastor in an evangelical denomination. (Though you might call me a "Post-Evangelical" or one of the "Younger Evangelicals," and I sure hope my mind is not scandalized.) But I am now less likely, not more likely, to vote for John McCain in a primary. He just shook off one of his most compelling traits as a politician, his desire to separate himself from the embarrassing drivel that the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world tend to spew.

In today's "Taste Page" at OpinionJournal.com, Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote an interesting analysis of the potential evangelical reaction to McCain's gambit. "Mr. McCain may feel he has to go to Liberty because he has criticized Mr. Falwell in the past," Ms. Riley writes, "but it's hard not to wonder whether the senator is just digging himself in deeper." Amen, sister.

We Christians make an enormous mistake when we succumb to any political party's attempt to segment the population into easily managed voting blocs. Don't get me wrong; I wholeheartedly believe that we must use the political process to effect change. But the fact is, Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to support views that contradict Jesus' message of the kingdom of heaven. I have friends whose common faith leads them to opposite ends of the political spectrum. Personally, as I understand and grow in faith, I find it harder to choose a candidate who represents my views, not easier.

Thankfully, it's very early to be worried about the 2008 presidential race. But in Lynchburg (nice touch), Virginia tomorrow, the picture will grow a little bleaker.

Argh

Just when I thought I might be too bored with my blog ever to write another entry, I got irritated this morning. Nothing like irritation to rouse the heart of a blogger.

Attention, auto shop workers: if I find which one of you puts my oil filter on with a torque wrench, there will be repercussions.

The instructions on the side of the filter are clear: turn 3/4 to 1 turn after the filter contacts the base. Some people like to call this "hand tight." I like to call it "the best way to avoid Scott pouring dirty motor oil in your face while you sleep."

Like all real men, I change my own oil, except for when the weather is too cold to do it in my driveway. It seems every spring, I go through this with the first oil change of the warm season. Whatever $7/hour wrench-slinger put the filter on during the winter change in the shop severely overtightened it, and I have to jam a screwdriver through it just to get some leverage so I can unscrew it. I find this very irritating. That is all.