that’s whacked

Office rodent infestation

Friday, Dec 18. 2009  –  Category: Photos, Songbird

Sorry, I know I said we’d have Songbird 1.4.1 out this week – but we’re pushing it back to Monday due to:

• A few bugs caught by awesome Songbird users found in the beta release we pushed on Wednesday
• An office mouse infestation Ali discovered

Mice! Oh my!

Songbird 1.4.1 add-on update guides

Sunday, Dec 13. 2009  –  Category: Songbird

Heads up Songbird developers!   (Non-developer Songbird users, feel free to move along… nothing to see here, etc. etc.)

We’re planning to push our next public release of Songbird (1.4.1) next week, and wanted to give you a quick rundown of what’s new for the release and what changes you’ll need to make in order to bring your extensions and Feathers up to date for 1.4.1.  The major change is a brand new Feather called Purple Rain.  One of the consistent pieces of feedback we had regarding Gonzo was that there was a lot of confusion between the concepts of collapsing/expanding (using the splitter/grippy) a display pane vs. showing/hiding (using the buttons).  We’ve done away with the concept of showing/hiding, and moved to large more obvious splitters.  Users were also having trouble with the small display pane header buttons/tabs (used in Album Art, mashTape, etc.) so we’ve changed that functionality as well.

For extension developers, this means if you’ve previously utilised the display pane header navigation elements, you’ll need to change to our new model which uses sub-menus available via the display pane add-on picker/drop-down menu.  The good news is it’s fairly straightforward, and is super extensible to allow your extension to create entirely unlimited sub-menus/menuitems.  We’ve got this all detailed in our Extension Update Guide for Songbird 1.4.1 available on the developer wiki.

For Featherers, things are somewhat more involved.  We listened to a lot of the usability feedback we got from our users.. so on the plus side, we think the Feather is much more straight-forward and obvious to use for new users.  The downside is it’s a fairly major update to get your Feather working.  You’ll want to take a look at our Feathers Update Guide for Songbird 1.4.1 to get all the salient details.  The easiest thing to do is to startup the Feathers Creation wizard and create a new Purple Rain based Feather to get all the layout and widget changes, and then pull any existing images.  If you’re trying to migrate a Gonzo based Feather, keep in mind a lot of dimension sizes have changed, so your graphics probably won’t drop in one for one.  It may be possible (though untested) to keep your Gonzo based Feather, and just update the CSS with the changes done in Purple Rain, and then create new images for the new elements (such as the new Media Views and display pane images).  If you’re having trouble with updating Feathers, please drop by our songbird-dev Google Group for more info and some help!

(many many thanks to Michael Purses, one of Songbird GetSatisfaction champs for pitching in this weekend to help put together the Feathers Update Guide)

Translate. Songbird. Go!

Friday, Dec 11. 2009  –  Category: Songbird

We’re getting ready to ship Kanye, KoЯn, Songbird 1.4.1.  (so tempted to call it Kandy-Koated Kanye Korn after one of kreeger’s favourite candies)… due to some mishaps with the translate webapp, we weren’t able to get the new strings showing up on the site until yesterday.  Thankfully there aren’t many (<30), so we’re hoping our localisation community out there can dig in and help us plow through the remaining untranslated strings so we’ll have a multi-lingual bird ready for next week’s release.

Apologies for getting it resolved so late, we would definitely have liked to have had more time for localisers to finish working on the strings… but we really do appreciate everyone’s time and effort they put into these localisations for us.

If you’re interested in localising, and aren’t already on the songbird-l10n Google Group, go sign up!  It’s what we use for help and coordination among localisers.

KoЯn->Kanye (Songbird1.4) merge

Thursday, Dec 10. 2009  –  Category: Songbird

Just a heads up for any brave Songbird users who have been running on the KoЯn branch lately… in preparation for the release, we finished merging it over to the Songbird1.4 branch last night.

What does this mean? If you’re looking to pull and build your own, make sure you pull the Songbird1.4 branch. If you’re just looking for nightlies, make sure you grab them from the Songbird1.4 branch as well.

Photos from MozCamp EU 2009

Tuesday, Oct 27. 2009  –  Category: OpenSource, Photos, Songbird

Finally got around to uploading my photos from MozCamp EU 2009 in Prague

Again, just want to say thanks and a huge shout-out to the Mozilla Europe gang.  They put on a great event.  One of the most socially inviting and warm conferences I’ve been to.

MozCamp EU 2009 (Prague)

Friday, Oct 9. 2009  –  Category: OpenSource

many thanks to the fine folks at Mozilla Europe for hosting a brilliant MozCamp EU 2009 conference. most people on PMO have summed up things already, but here are my few fleeting thoughts

• logistically, the conference went beautifully.  from the transit tickets upon arrival, to the boat trip cruise, to the transit ticket back to the airport thoughtfully tucked into the conference bag with directions on how to get back to the airport.  nice touch!
• i thought of this more as a “social” conference rather than an “educational” conference.  to be honest, most of what was presented was stuff i knew about already (JetPack, Thunderbird, etc.) but i was occasionally pleasantly surprised (Stratified Javascript <drooool>).
• i’d hoped for some more hands-on type talks in the Developer track, and indeed, i modeled my Songbird demo/talk on that presumption.  turns out i was wrong.  i hope folks who came to my Songbird talk at least found it useful.
• i loved loved loved LOVED getting to meet Mozilla and Songbird community folks i’d not yet met face to face before.  getting to meet our localiser-extraordinares Nukeador and Goofy was brilliant, and getting to meet AlfredKayser (one of our most prolific Featherers) was just great!
• generally just seeing old friends, and making new ones was a helluva lotta fun.  Prague is a great city to socialise in, and made for a great conference venue.

climbing castle crags

Saturday, Sep 5. 2009  –  Category: Outdoors

last weekend wendy, keisuke, alisa and i headed up to Castle Crags to climb Six Toe Crack (the same route i climbed last year with jaime & zac). as with last year, it was fantastic. the weather was beautiful, the sky was clear of any clouds and a deep blue, and we had a great time.

i took some photos from the whole weekend, including hanging out at the awesome little B&B the night before, the climbing, and of the drive home.

alisa put some photos up on her Tumblr too.

First official ride on the Schwinn

Wednesday, Sep 2. 2009  –  Category: Outdoors

Chucked the too-long brakes, salvaged one of the original ones, replaced it with the new brake cable + lever + pads, finangled it back onto the frame (front brake only!) and did what any sensible rider wouldn’t do:

rode it into work.

And it rode! The seat angle was too steep, the brake required me to manhandle it with two hands for quick stopping, but it sure rode. Was a trippy sensation riding a single-speed… I kept reaching for some gear shifters and not finding any. I ordered some new brake calipers that should be arriving soon. I also got the new crankset (Pake 46T-165mm) and chain today. Looking at all the tools needed to get the bottom bracket and crankset on though, I’m inclined to just take it to Wheels of Justice or Tip Top Bikes and have them install those.

Next up: powdercoating the frame. Found a place in South San Francisco called West Coast Powdercoating that’ll do frame + fork for $120. I’m going to take it over there next week and get this baby done up right… so time to strip the frame back down again!

New Schwinn parts arrived

Tuesday, Sep 1. 2009  –  Category: Outdoors

Got a whole bunch of new parts for the Schwinn yesterday… the seatpost (Wald 13/16″) and rail clamp, the saddle (Brooks B17 leather narrow), brakes (Tektro RX 4.1), brake calipers (Pyramid), and bottom bracket (Shimano UN54).

Sadly the brake calipers have way too long a reach… apparently they are 61-94mm. I’m guessing I need about a 50-55mm on the rear and maybe as short as a 40-45 on the front. Gonna have to take measurements tonight and see.

Rebuilding a Schwinn Varsity

Monday, Aug 24. 2009  –  Category: Musings

Ever since getting a 2009 Schwinn Fastback roadbike for a new recreational hobby, I’ve been wanting to learn more about the mechanics of bikes.. mostly so I can learn how to work on one myself to better do some of my own maintenance.

Working with software for so long made me forget the joy of simple pleasures like turning a wrench and getting your hands dirty.

Anyway, rather than destroy my brand new bike, I decided to destroy and old bike instead… a neighbour of mine had an old 1971 Schwinn Varsity sitting out (who knows for how long) who was kind enough to donate it to the cause.

Originally this came as a Kool Lemon 10 speed. I took a bunch of before photos. All the components on it were stock.. and rusty.

In the weeks since I’ve stripped everything off its frame.. with the goal of rebuilding it into a single-speed commute bike to ride to work on. (Mostly because I don’t want to deal with the complexity of a geared bike as my first rebuild). I bought new wheels, tires, tubes, hub, crankset, bottom bracket, chain, pedals, toeclips, saddle, seatpost, stem, bars, and brakes…in other words, every thing except the frame, fork and headset.

I picked up some random no name black race wheels off of eBay, with tires, tubes, and a flip/flop single-speed/fixed hub and cog set. This past weekend I threw the old one piece crank on (stripped down to just the original inner 39t chainring), with the original chain but with the new wheels to see how it rode as a single speed (albeit with no brakes, which made things…. interesting).

Here’s some photos of how it looks as a single-speed with the new rims.

Finding new parts for this has been an interesting challenge. Many of the sizes/specs used by Schwinn 38 years ago are different now. Also, the bike originally was a 37 pound beast. I’ve been attempting to strip and replace many of the heavier parts.

Finding a quill stem has been the most difficult. The original was a 21.1mm steel monstrosity that’s heavy enough to do some serious damage as a weapon. I ended up finding an equally old (mid-70′s) Schwinn Continental stem which had the exact same diameter, and dive angle – but made of aluminum for some considerable weight savings.

Taking off the kickstand saved 1.1 pounds. !!! Seriously.

The cranks + bottom bracket was also interesting… the bike originally had an old BMX style bottom bracket size with an old school one piece crank. I had a helluva time finding a bottom bracket adapter to convert it to the new Euro style 68mm bottom bracket, but ended up finding one after about a week and a half of searching. It’s awaiting a new Pake 44t + 165m crankset slated to arrive next week.

The rest of the components should be arriving this week or next week, I’m really looking forward to getting it all together and riding it for its first real ride. My test ride yesterday worked well, but stopping with no brakes on a hill involved me running into my empty garbage cans which worked but isn’t really a scalable solution..

Can’t wait to get this puppy all together..