DougT’s Blog

[sbox-CHINOOK_ARMEL: ~] > uname -a
Linux dougt-ubuntu 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 arm GNU/Linux
[sbox-CHINOOK_ARMEL: ~] > history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head
163 cd
99 make
67 ls
39 gcc
38 scp
14 pkg-config
8 history
7 vi
6 pushd
5 rm

for the emacs fanboys, I run emacs outside of scratchbox.

At my local market, Starbucks and Pete’s have the most shelf space. But, look what I found on the bottom shelf:

Mmmm.

Today is 3-21.  Happy World Down Syndrome Day. The goal of World Down Syndrome Day is to continue creating awareness about Down syndrome and promote acceptance of diversity.

Sadly, not 50 years ago in the US, people commonly threw they children away into institutions.  A heartfelt documentation about these institutions and about “the loss of a sister” is “Where’s Molly”.  Although, Molly didn’t not have Down syndrome, the point remains: for too long, many people with disabilities have been ostracized, demonized, and dehumanized.  Thankfully, things are very much different today, yet there is a ways to go.

Maria Shriver once said that the “Special Olympics is trying to do is break down stereotypes that still exist for people”.   Stares, terribly offensive language, and an educationally system setup for failure exists and stands in the way to total integration and acceptance. Through events like today, and events like the Buddy Walk, the hope is that we raise awareness regarding people with Down syndrome in our communities.

I also like to point out that there is a Lifetime movie coming out on April 12th based on the book A Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Same idea, don’t toss your children away.  Here is the Lifetime’s webpage about the program.  Not sure if it is going to be as good as the book.

My experience with children with disabilities is that they do teach us “typical folk” so much more than we can teach them.  So, next time you see someone with Down syndrome, say Hi.  You might just find a teacher.

Venky has uploaded some alternate designs for Mobile Firefox:

He is experimenting with the Firefox icon. In alternative designs the icon was translucent. He felt that this caused some confusion (e.g. you would see links behind the translucent firefox icon). Instead, a partially exposed Firefox icon sits at the bottom of the screen. When you press on the logo, we activate a menu:

What do you think?

Get involved today! Here is how:

1) Feel free to post your thoughts on what maters most to you. You can leave a comment here, or over on the wiki.
2) Take a look at our feature list. We are putting together a road map and prioritizing this list. Your input would be helpful.
3) You can upload mock ups to the wiki.
4) If you are a xul hacker, take a look at some of the XUL Runner mock ups. Specifically, take a look at this one.
5) Join our weekly meeting.

88.80.13.160

Taking the book out of the card catolog doesn’t make the book out of print.

So, last year I was working on a Mozilla Labs project named Joey. If you were interested in this sort thing, there are a couple Joey like services that you should check out.

First is something called ShifD, and as you can tell by the spelling, it is very much web 2.0. ShifD basically allows you to edit your content on their site, then they provide that content, in a easy-to-view format, on your phone. For example, suppose you want to remember a grocery list. Right now, you might email or SMS yourself. Using ShiftD, you simply go to the ShiftD site, login, and write yourself a note. Then, when you are at the store, you can browse to their site, and see this note. You can do similar things for links to webpages, as well as maps. The services is very simple and very clean looking. They provide a bookmarklet to allow easy upload of links. This is pretty cool for me since I skim lots of blogs and need something that allows me to mark a page as “remember to read this”.

WebClip2Go, lacks the hip web 2.0 name, but makes up for it with what it does. One of the most compelling pieces of Mozilla Joey was the ability for us to process microsummaries on the service side, and be able to “send your phone” just the content you are interested. This is exactly what WebClip2Go does. Users can create and share clipping of their favorite sites. For example, consider the NYTimes. Suppose I only cared about the most emailed stories of the day. I would have to load this entire page, then scroll to the bottom:

This is the WebClip for the New York Times “Most Emailed Article”:

Give them a try and let me know if they work for you.

Aleks, Brad, and I have been working together on getting the Mozilla 1.9 codebase working on Windows Mobile. Tonight, we managed to get something interesting enough to take a screenshots of:

So, WinEmbed is basically a testing application and is by no means a User Interface for the masses (really — don’t even look at it — just look at the pretty text and images).

Brad sent me this image of xulrunner working on Windows Mobile:

As all things Mozilla, we are doing all of this work in the open and, of course, under open source licensing. If you are interested in a browser for windows mobile, get involved! Join us on #mobile on irc.mozilla.org, or check out the code.

 I just pulled my iPhone simm out and stuck it in my HTC S730, and it worked!  voice and data.  Of course before I did this, I called AT&T to ask if this was possible (i knew it was), and if my usages of data would be billed correctly (which i knew it won’t be).  I asked the operator to add a note to my account explaining that I called as was told that my iPhone all-you-can-eat data plan can be used with any GSM phone.  I will let you know how it goes in a few weeks when I get my bill.

So, someone went out and bought this guy:

It is really cute, don’t you think? The cool thing about this guy is that he can fly across the room and make a loud screeching noise. A self contained furry screeching slingshot. What more can you really ask for?!

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just flying George above, but he brought all of his friends:

Turns out you can just apply a bit of pressure and they scream. Lined up all, it is very hard to just walk by without hitting each, setting off a wonderful piercing loud screech of dozens of screaming monkeys.

Today I am going to be massively unproductive. Today is the day I get to send my Mac Book Pro out for repair. The first problem is this:

Do you see how the slot for the DVD/CD is not straight? Yeah, that isn’t the camera…

The screen is also messed up, there is a horizontal line in the middle of the screen:

But what is nice, is my temporary replacement is already flared out!