I hate snow.

Having lived in Louisiana my whole life, I never got a chance to see real snow until this summer at the Firefox Summit in Canada. That’s why it was so unexpected for my routine 6-7 hour trip from Baton Rouge to San Jose to turn into a 20 hour ordeal because of snow delays in Houston.

I can’t bear to type out all of the details, but I was supposed to arrive in San Jose at 8:12pm on Wednesday and instead arrived in San Francisco at 6:30am on Thursday, after which I immediately had to attend Add-on-Con without sleeping.

A breakdown of the trip:

• Hours waiting in airport: 6.5
• Hours waiting in airplane on ground: 6.5
• Hours actually flying: 4.75
• Hours of sleep on the plane: 2

And to top it off, the same snow that made my trip miserable on Wednesday brought fun and joy to everyone back home in Baton Rouge.

I’m falling for Canada

This week I’m in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada for the Mozilla Firefox Summit - a gathering of 300-400 of the contributors to Firefox 3. Whistler is outside of Vancouver and the trip is about 3 hours on the Sea to Sky Highway, a winding mountain road with beautiful sites and lots of construction in preparation for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler.

Last night around 11:00pm there was a rockslide on this road that left boulders the size of houses that will have to be cleared by dynamite and will take days. The only other way out of Whistler, besides helicopter and floatplane, is a 6-8 hour trip the other way around the mountain. I leave at 11pm Friday night, so not sure what the plan is for getting 400 people out yet.

Having lots of fun and will post a more detailed update on that later.

Software Freedom Day

Friday, Mark Finkle and I participated in the Carolina Open Source Initiative’s Software Freedom Day celebration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was able to change flights late Wednesday night to avoid some potential problems getting there.

The event had a lot of traffic of people coming in and out throughout the day (especially when there was free pizza). The event leaders did a great job of promoting the event in the newspaper, signs, and word of mouth. Everyone we met seemed to already know about and love Firefox, but our main purpose in being there was getting more people involved in the community.

Mark and I were treated to a stormy surprise when leaving UNC and heading to the airport that resulted in me having wet pets for several hours and owning a UNC umbrella that I will never be able to use again (at least not in Baton Rouge… or Louisiana).

Recent Happenings

I haven’t blogged in awhile, so I’ll try to recap the things that have happened since mid-July that I remember.

On Saturday, July 21, most of the interns took a trip to San Francisco to tour Alcatraz Island, followed by dinner in Chinatown. Pictures.

July 24 - 27 I was in Portland, Oregon for the annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention, where Mozilla was a sponsor and had a very large presence. Anywhere I went, people would start talking to me about how much they love Firefox. I had a great time meeting so many people.

The Friday that I got back, a few of us went mini-golfing (it turns out “putt putt” is not used around here). Then that Sunday, we took a trip to San Francisco and walked along Haight Street and explored Buena Vista Park to the top. We then passed through Golden Gate Park to Union Square. After that, we stopped by Coit Tower, Aquarium of the Bay, and Pier 39 before heading home. Andrew got some pictures of the sights and us.

There’s a lot planned for this week - Tuesday is the intern BBQ; Wednesday is the going away party for several of the interns (which I will unfortunately miss due to previous plans to see Avenue Q that night); Thursday is the San Francisco Giants game that we’ll be attending; and it seems like there’s something on Friday and Saturday that I can’t remember.

Last week at work was a big one for me, but I’ll talk about that in my next post soon.

Hai (it’s Japanese, not lolcat)

The last few days I’ve been in Tokyo, Japan to take part in the Firefox Developer Conference today, along with Mike Shaver, Mark Finkle, and Dan Mills from the US and Canada. I gave a presentation on Mozilla Add-ons and the add-on submission process and then answered questions about the Future of AMO with the most appreciated assistance of shaver. If you’re interested, my presentation is available here.

Photos and video from the trip so far are up. I’ll be heading home tomorrow evening.

I’d like to give a huge thanks to the folks from Mozilla Japan who did an amazing job of organizing the event today with over 160 people attending and still managed to help us get around the city the last few days. I had a wonderful time and learned a lot about the Firefox and add-on community in this part of the world.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that there was someone that looks exactly like me roaming around today and that any pictures you see are probably of him, not me.

it has a purpose!

When I was at the San Jose airport on Friday to check in for my flight home, I arrived at a Continental kiosk and got out my e-ticket and prepared to enter the ticket number, when an attendant came by and said that if I had my “id”, I could swipe it and it would bring up the trip. I was skeptical that a Louisiana driver’s license would do anything at an airline kiosk in California, having never swiped it for anything ever. I tried it, and it immediately brought up the information. I was shocked.

Firefox Summit, Days 3 and 4

Continuing from the Day 2 entry, the Remora meeting Thursday tied up some loose ends on what we had decided the day before. It turns out we will be completely changing the way addons.mozilla.org works as far as getting your add-on on the site, but I’m not going into it now. The details make my brain hurt and we all concluded that what we decided on would literally be impossible to have come up with on IRC or on the phone.

After the Remora meeting, shaver drove sancus and I back to the hotel where I caught the bus for the 40 minute ride to Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. It was a pretty interesting experience. It was a stand-while-waiters-bring-trays-of-stuff-around-to-you type event. When they closed around 11pm, we went to another bar next door and when that one closed, I took the bus to the hotel but others went to still another bar.

Friday morning started at 10am with a bus ride to San Jose to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. It was my first James Bond movie, and I liked it. We rented out the theater. After that, we went to Gordon Biersch for lunch and then had a scavenger hunt in San Jose. It was surprisingly fun and took 2 hours and I learned far more about how to get around downtown San Jose that I’d ever wanted to know. I thought we did really well but we didn’t win.

After that, Mike Beltzner drove shaver and I back to MoCo where I snacked and watch shaver dissect his blackberry that fell into the fountain when he was looking for a 1971 penny. When the bus got there, we had an extremely short closing session and then beltzner drove sancus and I to pavlov’s house where others later joined us and we had an excellent dinner. We played Lego Star Wars on XBOX… it was so fun I think I’m actually going get it and add it to the list of things I don’t have time for.

Around 12:30am, shaver drove us back to the hotel. The car service is picking me up at 5:30am for my 7:00am flight. I should arrive in Baton Rouge around 4pm (and really tired, as I probably won’t sleep tonight).

Final photos added to the gallery.

Firefox Summit, Day 2

Leaving off from my last post, after the Places meeting we had a two hour Remora meeting in which we redefined the approval process that I’m currently working on. We have enough policy and flow topics to entertain us for days, so we’re having another meeting later today.

After that meeting, we went to a sports bar in Los Gatos for dinner and casino stuffs. Dinner was surprisingly good, and I met more people, including an interesting conversation with a Songbird developer. After a few hours there, we came back to the hotel.

Today (Thursday) I attended Automated Testing, Mozilla Labs, Building the Mozilla Community, and the Firefox 3 Planning sessions. (I’m still in Firefox 3 planning.) After this, we have another Remora meeting and then will be going to San Francisco for dinner at Foreign Cinema for the Firefox 2 gala dinner thing.

I added some more pictures to the gallery.

Firefox Summit, Day 1

Tuesday (yesterday) was the day volunteers were supposed to arrive at the Mozilla Firefox Summit in Mountain View, California. To make a long story short, my original flight from Baton Rouge was delayed and then canceled, so I had to take a different flight which caused me to have to take a different flight from Atlanta to San Francisco. But I made it, at last.

The car ride from SFO to Mozilla was very nice - it was a professional car service (like a limo but not a stretch limo). 30 minutes into the 40 minute ride, I freaked out and quickly text messaged shaver to ask how much people tip these guys. $5? $10? 15% of the cost unknown to me? “Give him a five, you’re a star!” I gave him TWO fives.

When I got to Mozilla, everyone was standing around in groups talking in a party-like atmosphere. This would normally be uncomfortable for me, but I felt at home because 75% of the people here are socially awkward geeks just like me. It was fun putting faces with names I’ve seen all over the Mozilla community on IRC and bugzilla and online. I quickly met up with the team I work with every day and hung around watching them get drunk. We went back to the hotel and I checked in at 11pm. I was too tired to attend any of the late night activities in and around the hotel.

This morning was the welcome session and lunch, followed by 3 break out sessions. All the sessions I attended were in Building S. First was Future of the Web Brainstorming, which was interesting and thought-provoking, but I’m not sure if anything will come of it. Next was Mozilla Web Site Integration of the three major communities - Mozilla Corp, Mozilla Japan, and Mozilla Europe. It’s very interesting listening to all of the different viewpoints and unique issues of each culture. Right now I’m in the Places meeting, which is the revamped bookmarks system in Firefox 3. I’m very surprised at how many ideas are being brought up here. People use bookmarks for so many different reasons and it will interesting to see how we account for all of these use-cases.

In a little while we have some free time but we’re having a Remora meeting and then going to a restaurant in Los Gatos for dinner. I posted a few photos of the hotel room here and will add more as the week progresses.

Startup Authenticator

Startup Authenticator

As you probably know, many places that offer wireless require you to login to an account as soon as you open your browser (such as LSU, OLOL, apartment complexes, etc.). This is slightly annoying, but has been tolerable. With the upcoming release of Firefox 2 and its new session restore feature, a more serious problem occurs. When restoring a previous session, all of my tabs will open up with that login page instead of the page it should be.

I’ve made a quick extension that will fix this problem. Every time you start your browser, it will attempt to log you into the designated sites (with your username and password saved in Firefox) before any pages load. You can also activate this by pressing F2 when the browser is already open (useful if you suspend your computer instead of turning it off). You can get the LSU version here. (It also includes Sterling University Apartments because I’m too lazy to make 2 separate extensions and I made this for me - but it doesn’t matter because if you don’t have a password saved for a site, it won’t try to login to it)

Note that as stated above, this requires that you have your login info saved in Firefox’s password manager for the login sites. I don’t really have time to expand the extension much right now, but if people like it, I will add some functionality in the future, such as visible signs that you are being logged in and support for XML imports/exports so if Person A lives at SuperApartments, he can easily integrate his own login requirements and share it with Person B.

Also, this was a quick extension that I put together and tested the basic functionality. If your password has been changed, the extension will obviously not work until you update the password stored in Firefox (which should be easy since you’ll be presented with the login screen). Also, security notices will still appear if you don’t have a certificate installed or if there’s a domain mismatch (there’s an extension available to “fix” that).

Firefox 2 Summit

I’ll be going to Mountain View, California for 5 days next month for the Firefox 2 Summit. I’m really excited about meeting all the people I’ve been working with on IRC and getting a firsthand look at all the planning going into Firefox 3, and of course the celebration of Firefox 2 and other fun outings planned in Silicon Valley.