I say “minor” because I wasn’t in the truck; wasn’t harmed; saw what he was going to do, and the load of unsecured pipe and metal in the truck bed, and had slowed down enough to avoid the debris.

Somehow no one else was hit, and there was no pileup. The adults and small children in the car walked away from the crash, bloodied but surprisingly OK. (The wonderful thing about car seats and seat belts - they work even when you’re too young to appreciate them)

I’ll refrain from comment on the driver’s behavior before and afterwards. I’m immensely glad the kids are OK.

I pulled over immediately, and ran back to the truck. By the time I got there, several other drivers had already reached them and were helping everyone out of the truck.

Within two minutes, random passerby were already calming the children, pressing clothing to their cuts, because of course you’d do that.

A man stopped and brought water bottles from his trunk, for the kids, because it’s hot and shadeless and of course he would.

We all confirmed that one woman had called 911, and got out of her way as she checked the kids out per their instructions, because of course she would.

The rest of us decided at the same time to clear the worst of the shattered pipe, rebar, and sheet metal from the road. It needed to happen, we were there, so of course we did.

A nurse came running down the grass, from however far back she’d stopped. Because of course.

Fire Rescue, Sheriffs and Troopers arrived within 5 minutes, and we all gave our versions of events. Except for one man who couldn’t stick around, but left me his name and number to pass along. Of course.

Once we’d done that, and the professional and responsible folks had things in hand, we all got out of the way and left without further discussion.

Because we hadn’t done anything special; we were just the closest of many decent people in the area at that moment. That’s what choked me up, driving on afterwards - it was all so matter-of-fact. The awful exceptions make the news, and make better stories, but most people? When they see they can be of use?

Of course.

Right. Of course we do.

And we all follow that wisdom, always, without fail, right?

Right?

I mean, except for that throwaway password. You know the one. The same one you’ve been using for random I’ll-probably-never-be-here-again sites (and apps) for years and years. The one you never use for important things. I mean, who cares if anyone cracks that one? That’s why it’s OK that it’s short, and crackable, and re-used so often.

For “fun” this morning, I opened up 1Password and created a Smart Folder like so:

That blurry part there, is of course, my throwaway password of choice. That count is, indeed, 104 logins. 104 logins that were somehow trivial enough for a junk password, yet worthy of a “Save” click when I created them.

But hey, none of those are important sites, right? Nothing with financial implications or anything.

Oh, just:

• The site where I sell most of my music.
• The other site where I sell music through iTunes, etc.
• eBay.
• Kickstarter, where some of that music was funded.
• And so on.

I had planned to spend the rest of the morning doing my taxes; that sounds like more fun than what I ended up doing.

Changing 104 passwords takes a while, but at least I’m not doing it in a blind panic after one of those many sites had their database compromised.

Take a minute today to search your favorite password tool. You may be embarrassed by what you turn up, but console yourself this way: “At least I didn’t tell the whole internet about it like Paul did.”

You’re welcome.

You’re searching Google, looking for a link to email/blog/otherwise save. In this example, you’re looking for me, but you’re confused as to how my name is spelled.

Great, let’s grab that first link:

Paste that into your text editor, and you see… oh.

You can, of course, actually visit the link in question, then copy the URL from your address bar. Or you could edit the URL, turning %2F into / as you go. I’ve done both, thousands of times. So have you. Neither is particularly entertaining.

The Solution

I searched in vain for a TextExpander snippet to take care of this, but I didn’t turn one up. (OK, I didn’t search that hard; writing one is more fun)

Now, after copying the link, I type

;ungoogle

into my editor, and all the tracking cruft is removed, leaving me with:

Getting the Snippet

You’ll need to download and install the Ungoogle TextExpander Snippet, it will be preassigned an ;ungoogle shortcut. Feel free to change the shortcut as you see fit.

One prerequisite: the snippet is actually a Perl script, and you’ll need the URI::Query module installed. sudo cpan URI::Query will do the trick from the Terminal.

You can also just create a new “Shell Script” snippet of your own, and paste in the Perl:

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#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use URI;
use URI::Query;

my $googleUrl = `pbpaste`;

my $uri = URI->new($googleUrl);

if (($uri->authority =~ /google\.com/) && ($uri->path =~ /^\/url\b/) && ($uri->query =~ /\burl=/))
{
  my $q = URI::Query->new($uri->query);

  my %params = $q->hash();

  my $url = $params{'url'};

  print "$url\n";
}
else
{
  print $googleUrl;
}

If a more complex layout presents itself, people often reach for a grid framework. They assume grids are these super difficult things best left to super CSS nerds. That idea is perpetuated by the fact that a lot of the grid systems they reach for are very complicated.

I am a certified CSS nerd, but I’ve avoided rolling my own grids for just these reasons. To be fair, I reached that conclusion a few years ago when certain older browsers were still a non-fractional part of my sites’ visitors.

Life’s simpler in a post-IE7 world.

Take a lesson from quantum mechanics: an email isn’t definitively important until you see it. If you don’t see it, it’s not important. It remains in a dead-alive, important-unimportant superposition of states. And who cares about emails like that? Not me.

When I recorded Acrophobe, I funded it using Kickstarter. For my new digital single, “Full of Holes”, I’ve decided to go another route. A reverse Kickstarter.

Instead of paying in advance for something I plan to create, I went ahead and made the music. Now… and here’s where it gets weird… you get to buy it.

And? AND! Bonus Reward Levels! Also in reverse.

Here’s how it works.

• The thing already exists. It’s done, and available in the present (and the past).
• You pledge money, but that pledge is fulfilled right now.
• You get the music immediately. The funding goal is reached.

The minimum pledge (which we’ll call “the price”) is $1.00. You can pledge (or “pay”) more.

At higher reward levels, you’ll be able to choose something you already have, so you know you’ll be happy.

Reward Levels

$1.00: “I love you, man”

Receive “Full of Holes” in your favorite download format, and I’ll throw in a bonus track, “What I Just Said”, for free.

$2.00: “Whoa! Thanks!”

Everything above, plus that spare key you can’t find. It’ll turn up, watch.

$5.00: “Starbucks cash!”

Everything above, and your most-beloved object within reach at the moment of purchase. Like that red stapler? You’re welcome.

$10.00: “For reals?”

Everything above, and one or more of your favorite, comfy, well-fitting T-shirts.¹

$25.00: “Have you thought this through?”

Everything above, and… are you sure? You should perhaps consider spending less on this, and buying my CD. Oh, and tomorrow? Hit the snooze button one extra time, guilt-free. I know. I’m awesome.

$50.00: “Please don’t do this.”

Everything above, and – I presume – a refund, when you realize your mistake. Don’t drunk-pledge, kids!

Where do I sign up?

Glad you asked. Head right over to music.paulroub.com, choose your price, and download away.

You can also buy from the usual suspects (and the other usual suspects), but none of the bonus levels are available², and the free bonus song isn’t free. Your call.

This music. Please check it out; I’m really proud of this one. First time in forever I’ve done a “band” recording… “band” in quotes since it’s mostly me, but with Mark (thankfully) taking over the drums.

It’s still here, I’ve just forgotten to tell you about the last few updates. We’re at 1.5.1 now.

Nothing major has changed - mostly fixes to work in the latest Firefox pre-releases, as well as fixes to some minor bugs. If you’d disabled IE View because it didn’t work in far-flung pre-alpha releases, you should feel free to reinstall.

Grab the latest from addons-mozilla.org; your feedback is always appreciated - see the home page for details.

You’ll be tired in the morning, too. Tired and sleepy.

There’s always laundry.

You’re often more tired after running. At night, that’s a good thing; less so in the morning.

You like running, remember? You pay money and drive places to pin a number on your shirt and get excited and take pictures of starting lines.

The rice and beans and veggies and curry powder you put in the pot before you left smell amazing. All post-running food is the best food. Remember the bananas after the last race? Yes, you do.

If you’re reading this in the summer, remember that you get to jump in the pool afterwards. I suggest bringing a mango (see above re: food).

“Tired legs from running” is a much better feeling than “stiff neck from falling asleep on the couch.”

When else do you get to listen to music with no other distractions? How great is the new Craig Finn? (correct answer: pretty great)

That feeling after the first mile.

That feeling after the second mile.

That feeling with one mile to go.

That feeling right now.

In Summary: Shoes on, out the door, now.

To keep the noise level down just a bit, I decided to keep my twitter activity out of that list, and use Twitter’s Profile Widget instead. It’s in the sidebar on that page.

That was still noisier than I wanted, though. I didn’t need my @replies to others showing up there, but the configuration options didn’t offer a “don’t include replies” choice. A bit of Googling led me to this page, which noted the code needed to add a filter, without explicitly showing where. Reading the widget code cleared that up, but it may be less than obvious if you don’t spend your days wrangling JSON.

The widget code that Twitter provides you with includes a block that starts with:

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new TWTR.Widget({
  version: 2,
  ...

Look for the section below that which looks something like:

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features: {
  scrollbar: false,
  loop: false,
  live: true,
  behavior: 'all'
}

The exact contents will vary. Leave them as is, and add, right after the features: line, the following:

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filters: {
  negatives: /^@\w{1,20}\s/
},

The indentation doesn’t matter, but copy it verbatim otherwise. In the example above, we end up with:

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features: {
  filters: {
    negatives: /^@\w{1,20}\s/
  },
  scrollbar: false,
  loop: false,
  live: true,
  behavior: 'all'
}

We’re telling the widget to remove any lines that start with a @ followed by 1-20 “word” characters. That is, anything starting with someone’s Twitter handle – a reply.

That’s it. Feel free to view the source at roub.net to see it in place.

I’d been meaning to put strap locks on my Strat, which would leave me with a spare strap button or two.

So:

And then…

Safety first…

Et voilà.

It is at this point that I realize I don’t yet have a strap for this guitar.

So close…

It may look like my friend Brian is paying close attention, awaiting the moment when he’ll add some more harmonies. Actually, he’s looking past me, at my iPad, attached to a nearby stand.

It’s held there by an IK Multimedia iKlip mic stand mount. There are a number of products that do this job; this is the one I happen to own, and it does its one job very well.

So why is it there? I know folks who run GarageBand onstage this way, but in my case, it’s just lyric sheets and/or setlists. So when I need a memory jog on a new song, the occasional cover or (as sadly happened last night) when I blank on an older song of mine, it’s right there.

There’s any number of ways to get those lyrics on there, but like any good nerd, I lean toward plain text files. Something I can edit on any machine I own, view on my phone if need be, etc.

The app used for viewing the songs is GoodReader. I like that it will read almost anything I throw at it, but especially like the way it syncs with Dropbox. I have a “Lyrics” folder on my laptop:

and I’ve told GoodReader to sync that folder and its contents. If I add a new song to that folder, it will automatically be mirrored to GoodReader. Tap a song, and off I go:

If I’m feeling particularly grown-up and professional, I’ll “star” some of the songs ahead of time, and let GoodReader show me just those songs as something approaching a setlist:

That’s it. No more binder of lyrics for me, and I’m pretty happy about it. I do recommend putting the iPad in airplane mode before your set, to avoid the temptation to tweet mid-song.

“Disappear”

“One Man at Best”

“The Great Unknown”

“Mind of Its Own”

All four songs are from my album “Acrophobe”, available for purchase (CD or download) at music.paulroub.com.

Had the pleasure, last Saturday, of joining Michael Stock in studio on his Folk and Acoustic Music show. This is one of the songs performed therein.

And… uh… sorry about the sunburn. It didn’t look that bad on the radio.

“A Little Bit Wiser” is $0.89 at Amazon MP3 - proceeds will go towards sunscreen and common sense.

Have one of these in your backpack:

Bonus points: lend it to a Dad whose two Disneyed-out kids both want to watch videos on their run-down iPods. That guy bought me a coffee.

I picked up a Rocketfish Universal Adapter today, since one of the tips appeared, through the packaging, to be a match. Works like a charm, laptop is fully charged, and I have a bunch of other tips handy when something else dies.

You’ll want the MT32 tip (included), by the way.

From: Name Redacted <nredacted@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: The Domain: OpenMicNight.com

Using your ISP-given email? Always a good sign of a reliable business.

Paul,
Hello, my name is redacted. I am representing the owner of the web domain OpenMicNight.com and we are interested in selling the domain.

A web domain? How wonderful! Oh, but… what if I wanted email, too? Is this one only for the web? Is that why you’re using the SBC address?

In a keyword search for “Open Mic Night” on Google your website came up as a related listing,

I’d expect so. openmikes.org is generally the first hit for things like that. Good job finding it!

So I wanted to see if you had any interest in purchasing the domain?

So I could have the second slot, too? Also, that’s not a question. It’s more of an 80s movie SoCal kid making a statement, if you throw a few “likes” in there.

I am contacting many different parties that have an interest in the name, or spend money on marketing and ads for these specific keywords.

“Dear SEO Douchebags: …”

A response either way would be appreciated.

Wait, either way? What were my choices? Is this a way? I’m doing this one.

Thank you for your time,
Name Redacted

That was so nostalgic. Domain speculation. Because people type URLs into address bars these days. All the time. That would serve me better than years of content, trust, legitimate inbound links…

Oh, there’s more!

Name Redacted, Nredacted Web Development
Phone: 555-55B-R549 Email: nredacted@sbcglobal.net

Wow, no hesitation at all throwing around the temporary email. And no web site, I guess ‘cause you’re selling your only web domain.

Hey, for the kids, can we get some authentic, silly, psuedo-legal spewage?

This message may contain confidential and/or privileged information.

You don’t know? Dude. Read it over once before clicking Send.

If you are not the addressee or authorized to receive this for the addressee, you must not use, copy, disclose, or take any action based on this message or any information herein.

Can I delete it? Because that seems like taking an action. Is asking that taking action?

Also, how do I know if I’m authorized to receive this? What’s the chain of command? I’m pretty sure my boss won’t care, and the dog’s utterly ambivalent. I’ll ask Twitter in a minute, I think. Gestalt authorization.

If you have received this message in error, please advise the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this message. Thank you for your cooperation.

“Error” is slippery here. I certainly didn’t want to, or try to, receive it. And it doesn’t seem to have had the intended effect, but you got both my email and my first name right. “Whose error”? That’s what I’m trying to ask. Now I’m wondering if that should have been “who’s”. See what you’ve started?

P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

I like the heartfelt stammer of the doubled “P”. I did consider the environment. Turned off lights in the next room, in fact. And now, I guess, I have to print the email. You did say “p-please”.

I’ve had the same Peaches record crates since sometime in the early 90s.

They’re not exactly built of reinforced steel, and at this point I’m afraid they’ll cave in.

Do I have any scrap plywood that might be useful?

Yep.

A well-spent 10 minutes. I feel better. Now to alphabetize them…

The results have been amusingly… mixed. I may or may not release them into the wild.

A few of those involved actually chose songs they liked, rather than those that would make me regret my decision. My friend Michelle was extra-nice and asked for a Dylan tune, “Things Have Changed”. I threw it together in about an hour last week; the lead guitar in particular is just me warming up and deciding “yeah, that actually feels good. Done.” But people have said nice things about this, and I don’t have new originals in the pipeline just yet, so…

Here’s me, sitting at my desk, singing “Things Have Changed”:

Things Have Changed.

That was last week. 7 days later, this shows up:

I love that the guitar is recognizably mine. This just makes me happy.