Zack Rippy

This is terribly sad news.

The current front page of www.davematthewsband.com:

08/19/2008

We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.

One of many great Roi solos here.

In case you live under a rock, the RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America.

If you didn’t know, they like to sue people. A lot. In fact, that seems to be their favorite pastime these days.

Don’t get me wrong - I am a fan of copyright protections. I know they protect artists and the revenue allows them to create more music, etc. I understand that. I buy music that I really like. In fact, I just bought a CD from this band that is local to Baltimore called The Bridge. I highly recommend checking them out.

Anyways, back to the RIAA and their seemingly limitless ability to be completely lame and attack all things awesome.

Their latest victim is a great little site called muxtape.com. Muxtape.com allows(ed?) you to upload several mp3’s and then it would stream them back to visitors of your site. Nobody could download the files you uploaded, but it was a great way to create random mixes to share with friends. We all made mixtapes back in the day and muxtape.com is a sort of Web 2.0 (I hate that term) equivalent.

The RIAA apparently had a problem with the site. I don’t know what it is. Their page simply reads:

Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.

I assume the RIAA’s problem is something along the lines of: “People are enjoying music and we are not directly profiting nor did we give permission.”

See, the interesting thing is this - I found The Bridge through someone else’s Muxtape page. I bought their CD. I have recommended them to at least five different people since I bought their CD Saturday and I know for a fact that two of those people have also bought their latest CD. That is three CD sales as a direct result of muxtape.

You see, RIAA lawyers, your attacks on harmless sites like muxtape do nothing but prevent people from discovering new music or frustrate them into turning to piracy. Seriously.

I’d never recommend people illegally download music, but people do. All the time. Perhaps the RIAA should spend more time developing new and innovative ways of getting their music into the hands of music lovers and less time standing in the way of technological advances and suing people for finding creative ways to listen.

Music lovers will buy good music. Just don’t prevent us from enjoying it.

One of my favorite new features of Firefox 3 is the Smart Location Bar, which allows users to recall not only their typed URL history, but also their bookmarks and page titles. The behavior of the bar can be tweaked to suit your needs. First of all, let me say that one of the features I have heard requested the by more than one person is the ability to prevent the Smart Location Bar from searching Page Titles altogether, while retaining the rest of its functionality. While you can disable the Smart Location Bar completely, version 3.0.1 does not allow you to eliminate Page Titles alone from the search results. However, the newly-released alpha build of Firefox 3.1 does allow you to do this, so watch for that soon. Now, on to the tweaks.

All of these settings are accessed by going up to your Smart Location Bar and typing about:config. Tell it that “I’ll be careful, I promise!” and continue. Here are a few settings to play with:

• browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped - Changing this from false to true will cause the bar to only search URLs you have actually typed in - it will no longer search your bookmarks or links you have clicked.
• set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults - This defines the maximum number of search results the Smart Location Bar will display. The default is 12. Setting it to 0 will effectively disable the bar altogether.
• places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus - Setting this to 0 will exclude bookmarks you have not visited.
• places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus - Setting this to 0 will exclude bookmarks that you have visited. Setting this and the above option both to 0 effectively removes bookmarks from the search.
• places.frecency.unvisitedTypedBonus - This setting has three possible values and will greatly modify the search results. A value of 0 will give you results based on what you type being present anywhere in a URL, bookmark or history item to be searched, assuming you have not narrowed what is seatched using one of the above tweaks. A value of 1 will result with what you typed being displayed anywhere in a URL, bookmark or history item, followed by results that begin with what you typed. Finally, a value of 2 will show only results where what you have typed is present in the beginning of a URL, bookmark or history item.

Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 gives you many more options for tweaking the Smart Location Bar. If you want to check it out, you can get it here. Keep in mind it is an alpha build and is technically intended only for developers. I’ve had it installed for a couple days now though with no problems. You can see a list and examples of changes to the Smart Location Bar here.

The Smart Location Bar (Awesome Bar) is a fantastic new component to a terrific browser. If you aren’t a fan though or just want to change its behavior, hopefully this will help get you started.

Perhaps you are not aware, but people like pepperoni pizza.I know I do. As awesome as double banana pepper, bbq pork chicken probably is, people still like pepperoni.

Please consider occasionally having it on your buffet.

Seriously, how hard would it be?

Thank You.

Zack Rippy

One of my favorite songs is “You Never Know” by Dave Matthews Band. A verse in the song reads:

Funny when you’re small,
The moon follows the car.
Does no one but me see?
Hey, the moon is chasing me!

On the way home last night in the car, Taylor was staring at the crescent moon in the sky. After a few minutes, he very hesitantly said, “Daddy, I think the moon is following us.” As we turned into our neighborhood, he noticed it again and excitedly hollered, “Daddy, the moon is chasing our car!

Gotta love a glimpse into the mind of a child.

I thought about trying to explain it to him, but why spoil the fun? We proceeded to try to beat the moon to our house.

We lost.

Firefox 3 is a terrific web browser. The most useful new feature to me has got to be the Smart Location Bar.

It’s like a typical Address Bar on steroids. I can type in a word or part of a word and be greeted not only with URLs containing the text in question, but also links to sites in my history or bookmarks that have that text in the title. Typing “NBA” showed me two articles about the NBA referee scandal that I had read from Fox News.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things.

Just a few quick thoughts on Monday’s concert.

What a show! The band was on fire. Going into this tour, I wasn’t sure what to expect with the departure of long-term keyboardist Butch Taylor. The addition of guitarist extraordinaire Tim Reynolds certainly softened the blow. Wow. Drummer Carter Beauford, as always, was on the top of his game. Guest saxophonist Jeff Coffin was amazing filling in for the injured Leroi Moore.

They played many favorites, including Seek Up, Granny, Bartender, Cornbread, Tripping Billies, Too Much and Ants Marching.

It was an absolutely fantastic show from top to bottom. Even if you are not a huge fan of their work, if you love live music (or just good music), you owe it to yourself to check them out.

Heading to the Dave Matthews Band show in Atlanta tonight. We’ve seen them there the last two years and they have NOT disappointed.

Can’t wait!

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Link

Well, schools all over the country are eliminating competitive games (such as tag) from recess both for “safety” and to prevent damaging the delicate self-esteem of our children - not to mention the elimination of the honor roll and other constructions that pit students against one another.

It’s a wonder anyone ever made it through school. How did our fragile little minds ever survive?

Sometimes, a film just speaks to you. It moves you in ways you didn’t think a movie could move you.

Yesterday, it was:

I enjoy my job very much, but this movie perfectly summarizes various aspects of cubicle life.

Oh, and this is seriously one of the best comedic movie scenes ever: