here goes:

What experience has most shaped you and why?

my mother’s putting everyone else’s needs in front of hers. she was an amazing woman, and did everything for us. in the end, it killed her, and she’s missed so many things we would have liked to have had her around for. it’s taught me that it’s ok to be selfish, and that you have to look out for yourself, but that it doesn’t have to come at the expense of others. there’s a balance there, and you need to figure it out.

If you had a whole day with no commitments what would you do?

I’d make coffee, read the paper, watch or read the news, and then spend the day with that girl (and hopefully some friends) eating, drinking, laughing, and playing. I get to do this every so often, and it’s wonderful. alternatively I’d play with my pinball machines; but only if there was no one around.

What food or drink could you never give up?

I don’t think there’s anything I could never give up. I also think that’s a good thing, because it’s not exactly something I can control in a lot of cases. I’d have a very hard time giving up coffee – in any of its forms – completely, and it’d also be tough to dispense with eggs and bacon. those are my favourite foods; I’m a morning kind of person.

If you could travel anywhere, where would that be and why?

Southeast Asia. There’s something incredibly compelling about Asian culture. I live in a place that has very little history and/or sense of self, and I love visiting places where you can feel the years in the surroundings. I’d love to grab a backpack and go for six months or so, and just travel through the rural/non-touristy areas of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other locales in the area. There’s tremendous upheaval in all of those places as a millennium or two of history and tradition clashes with today, and I’d like to experience it first-hand.

Who do you have a crush on?

I have no crushes, really, these days. I’m honestly quite happy where I am, and I want for nothing. No, really.

Past crushes have included:

- Linda Fiorentino. Her voice kills me, still. It all started with Vision Quest (god, what a horrible movie)
- An HR rep at the company in NY I worked for. That crush was crushed when I realized she was a smoker. Oh well.
- Audrey Hepburn. As in the young Audrey Hepburn. Her eyes were amazing.
- Sharon, one of the receptionists at the office from the early nineties.
- Matt Damon. Yes, I’m kidding.

If you were the leader of your country, what would you do?

Hold the privatized entities that were once public accountable to serving the people that depend on them. The public invested an unbelievable amount into infrastructure that was sold for a song to organizations like Bell, Canadian National, and energy companies. It was incredibly short-sighted, and their privatization should have had some incentives in place to ensure those investments weren’t held against us after the fact.

Focus on program delivery versus program administration. Our government and health care systems are ridiculously large, and continue to grow in size and spending every year. I’m a proponent of small government doing big things, and believe that the amount of administrative overhead in place is unsane, especially considering that most of the shenanigans that occur are at the exec level and higher. Government continues to claw more and more money away from the people it serves, and always threatens those it represents with program – not administration – cuts. Healthcare continues to take away its coverage while continuing to increase the workload of the people delivering through over-administration. Fuck that. I don’t pay taxes just to employ a bunch of people. I pay taxes to employ people who will deliver for me.

Re-focus on self-sufficiency. I like the benefits globalization can bring, but I worry we’ve gone too far to the offshoring side. We have precious little manufacturing capability, and we’re so co-dependant on other states to function we’d be kind of screwed if there was ever any kind of meltdown. I’m not saying go nationalistic and protective, but I do think we should make a concerted effort to re-ignite manufacturing in this country, and to work on ways that are non-exploitative and cost-effective.

What am I reading right now?

The Drunkard’s Walk – Leonard Mlodinow
What the Dog Saw – Malcolm Gladwell
The Passage – Justin Cronin
Why We Run: A Natural History – B. Heinrich

What recent event has made you sad?

Letting that girl down, and realizing how a little thing can have a big impact. I’m still learning. :)

What recent event has made you angry?

Anything Dalton McGuinty. The tax grab in the HST and spin-doctory that it’s not and is good for us; the sekrit legislation to broaden police powers, and subsequent denial of responsibility; the failed promises; the weaseling; the continuation of doing nothing substantive to prevent the province’s continued slide. It’s not just Dalton, but he’s a pretty good representation of what’s wrong with our “leaders” who no longer lead.

Ok, I’m done. Must get back to my preso.

those additional features allow distribution creators to hide their builds from public searches, add non-default search plugins, and define bookmark folders in the bookmarks menu and toolbar that can hold up to 10 items. we’ve also reorganized things a little in the config wizard so that all addons are in one section. david rolnitzky is also helping us out with getting messaging together, and as we roll closer to 1.0 we’ll be talking a little more about BYOB and why we’re doing it.

moving forward we’ll be focusing on streamlining the registration system, re-developing the site’s look and feel (and copy), adding support for some additional add-ons, and integrating the app and build components into a little more scalable infra. I’ll be bringing the project page up to date over the next week or so, and in the interim invite you to have a peek at the changes we’ve made.

if you have questions or comments, feel free to join us in IRC in the #byob channel at irc.mozilla.org, or via the contact form on the BYOB site.

huge thanks again to les, neil, tomcat, and david for their work over the past several months. byob is an idea we’ve been kicking around for almost three years, and it’s nice to see it fast becoming a reality.

Search behaviours have changed, and there are a number of new – and sometimes even different – search service providers out there. Unfortunately, our users don’t always realize how many options are available to them through Firefox, the websites they visit, and search-related add-ons. Our users today are using search to find other people, stuff that’s close to them, what everyone’s talking about right now, and a host of other things, and we should be making that as easy as possible for them.

Aside from the great UI work being considered, like moving the search bar into the location bar, I think there’s considerably more we need to do across a number of domains. I’d like for us to start exploring how we improve the use and utility of search in Mozilla’s products and services, particularly:

1. What kind of information are our users searching for, and who is best-positioned to provide the most relevant information for those searches?

The web has matured in the last five years, and people are using different search services for specific tasks. We should categorize the search services that are available in Firefox, and ensure they’re relevant to the task at hand for the people who use them. The Fennec team has developed its search interface with this in mind, providing search services for different tasks that our user base performs on a regular basis, and I think this is something we should build on.

2. Are we doing a good job meeting the needs of the users in each locale we support?

Every locale we support starts with the default list of providers we offer in the US English version of Firefox. Our amazing localization teams have created these lists to add search services that are more relevant to their locales and the users in them, and they do a great job. I’d like to ensure we all have a better understanding of who those providers are, and what, if any, alternatives there are per locale. From there we can build on the categorization process, and provide a truly global list of search services for our users.

3. How can we help our users discover and use the options available to them?

There are several search features in the browser, along with search options other than what we provide by default in our search bar. We need to make it easy for users to add to the list of search engines to the list of defaults we provide, to discover that there are add-ons that enhance search utility, and that they can change things like the default search provider(s). The mechanics behind these features could be improved considerably, and we should make changes to both to make them more usable by our publishers and users alike.

4. What does our search wish list look like?

We should think hard about what we’d like to change in Firefox to make search better, as well as where we should incorporate search services and which services should be offered. We don’t need to constrain ourselves to how we’ve done things thus far, and should consider including anything and everything that will help. If we could get things just by asking, would they include things like:

• add-on searches and discovery
• suggestions on error pages
• better user control of search preferences
• context-sensitive searches by website
• searches from within new tabs
• insert your idea here (and in the comments!)

The net result of this process should be a list of new services and features we can incorporate into the Mozilla project and its individual products, and would encompass all of the information assembled. The idea is to get people thinking, and come up with a public plan for improving search across the board to keep our products relevant and useful.

None of these ideas are new, and have been considered at different times by individual groups or people. They touch the user, the product, our content providers, localization and add-on communities, and almost every functional organization at Mozilla, and requires the input of same. As such, they’ll always be considered individually unless we shift from a tactical mode of thinking to something a little more strategic. I’d like to kick things off so we can start driving towards that.

The sky should be the limit, and we shouldn’t constrain ourselves to any particular mindset.

So, how do you think search should work?

I think things have settled to the point where I can sit, breathe, plan, and use something more than 140 characters to express thoughts and share info. To that end, I’ll be blogging a little more often, focusing on work, but with the odd life update thrown in. There’s a lot I want to talk about, and a lot of things I’m working on, but it’s been hard to find sixty minutes on a regular basis to get thoughts to paper. I think I’m past that now, and I’m looking forward to talking a little more about things I’m working on and thinking about, and ideally getting feedback on it.

We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to try treating posting a little more as a required thing, and plan on using the time I normally use getting annoyed by blam and jesus diaz over at Gizmodo for something useful, instead. Wish me luck.

- I met a nice girl
- who has nice kids
- and a dog
- who now pretty much lives with me (the dog. actually, the girl too)
- and likes to chase frisbees (just the dog)
- so I go to the park again
- I’ve been to the left coast ten times
- I’ve been to Toronto six times
- I missed going to NYC at Xmas for the first time in a decade
- I completed my 365
- I filed my first patch (very, very minor)
- I turned 41
- and I feel significantly younger
- so I’ve started running again
- and have dropped 15 lbs
- and it’ll keep on dropping
- I celebrated Canada Day with Walt and Lee and company
- who also brought a dog
- I also bought a house
- I move in less than two weeks
- to a place that is not Ottawa
- but is as close (time-wise) to YOW as I am now
- and is closer to a lot of other things, like my brother (now that he’s returned from Kirkland Lake)
- it’s been crazy
- I get overwhelmed every so often
- but it’s great,

That’s life in a nutshell. There’s a bunch more, but those are the more important bits.

See? I’m not dead, after all.

Partner Repacks are versions of Firefox that are customized for a specific distribution partner. These customizations can include modified preferences and/or bundled add-ons, and are used by both Mozilla and third-party distribution providers. We call them repacks because all of the customizations are made by adding files to the default installer we use in the general release. There are no changes to any of the original files included in the general release, and all changes are additive in nature.

With the inclusion of Partner Repacks page in the 3.0.7 release, there were a few questions from the community regarding the repacks, and we realized there should be more information about them available. To that end, starting with the release of Firefox 3.0.9, we’re publishing information about all of the partner repacks we release on the Mozilla wiki.

From the Status page you’ll be able to see what repacks we’re generating, the customizations we’ve made to them, and where in the release process they are. Repacks will also be tracked by release, with information that will include which repacks are generated for a specific release, along with tracking bugs, QA results, and any changes that are made to a repack between releases.

There’s still a fair bit of work to do to better document the process, and over the next few weeks I’ll be adding additional information about repacks, how they’re created, and the guidelines we apply to those customizations. I’ll post more later, but wanted people to be aware that we’ve started publishing this information, and we’ll continue to build on it.

If you have specific questions on the repacks, or are interested in finding out more about distributing customized versions of Firefox, please see the Partnerships section of mozilla.com. Please note that distribution of a customized version of Firefox requires Mozilla approval, and additional information about distribution of the official installers as well as customized versions can be found in the Mozilla Trademarks Policy document.

the mozilla labs team released version 1.0 of the personas extension today. personas adds lightweight skinning to firefox, and the labs team has lined up a bunch of people and organizations (including livestrong, pictured here) who have submitted designs. have a look-see, or submit your own.

<joe> i was thinking more along the lines of
<joe> "selecting for things that nature has no interest in"
<kev> "see: joe"
<joe> otoh nature selects OH FUCK YOU KEV

from Bell’s site, for reals. I’m betting someone put it in as a joke, and it stayed in the final copy.

in Canada, mobile carriers (and other comm services companies) charge a "system access fee", which is generally $6.95 a month. it’s on top of any plan charges, and is purportedly to improve the network. it’s basically a cash grab that adds $80/yr in revenue per subscriber.

I have never seen it explained quite so nicely. “just one more reason to choose Bell” indeed.

"System Access Fees are charged by all wireless companies to help pay for the network and the ongoing software, technology and other upgrades to that network. Generally, the higher the fee, the greater the opportunity to invest in network quality to enhance your experience. Just one more reason to choose Bell."

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above)
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. (see below)
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

The Things

• I have been lucky enough to have visited every provincial capital in my country. I have every intention of visiting the two – of three -territory capitals I haven’t been to yet. every Canadian should do it. (I haven’t visited many state capitals, but I have visited more than two-thirds of the states in the US)
• the first time I met shaver, he ate half my dinner. a friend was trying to convince me to come work for her company, and brought shaver along as an example of the amazing people who were getting into this whole internet thing. I was doing more talking than eating, and he was still hungry. how could I say no? that was in 1994, and I’m happy I accepted the offer, and even more happy that shaver and I are still friends. he claims I’m a responsible adult, but I remain unconvinced.
• my dream job is owning and running a real neighbourhood local. quality beers, wines, a menu that is both made on-premise and highlights local product, and a ridiculous whiskey selection in a comfortable environment would be the offering. it’d be an insane amount of work, but holy crap it’d be fun.
• I have been an avid gamer since I was old enough to put a dime (and, later, quarters) in the slot. my first gaming system was a Lloyd’s TV Sports console (think pong with a light gun). my favorite gaming system is still the Sega Genesis, in large part because I played NHL ’9x for cash against my roommates and never had to pay for my beer in university. I suck at most of the current gen console games, but love to play anyways. my true gaming love is pinball, however, and I have two machines at home (ST:TNG and The Getaway). I’ll happily play you those for cash, too.
• despite bouncing for close to seven years, I have been in exactly one fist fight in my life. it was in grade seven (1979, for the historical archive), and it was against Chris Coghill. I have no idea why we fought, but we just kind of looked at each other funny, and next thing we knew we were clocking each other. I had got my braces on that morning, and the inside of my mouth was a disaster afterwords. important life lesson: talking works a hell of a lot better than fists, although submission holds are very, very useful.
• I’ve moved twenty-two times so far. there are two places I swore I’d never move to: New York City and California. I kind of failed on NYC, but am glad I did. I loved it, and occasionally wish I had never left. California’s nice, but I’m still holding out on that one :)
• I like shooting things; people and kids when they’re not expecting it, in particular. I don’t spend nearly enough time on it, but am generally pleased with the results. it’s something I could see myself getting a little more serious about someday.

The Seven People I Am Tagging

• Von, because he probably won’t do this, but occasionally surprises
• Mr. Forbz, because he needs something to do besides snowboarding (bastard!)
• Jen, because she needs more reasons to dislike me, and also needs to post more
• Rachel, because she hasn’t posted in far too long
• jhawke, because I’m curious to see what she’d post
• Moggy, because she’ll do this.
• j, because then there will be three people whose name starts with j that I’ve tagged

I like toys, and this one surprised me. I got a Ford Escape Hybrid, which is the first Ford product I’ve ever had to drive that I didn’t loathe. I wouldn’t buy one, mind you, but it’s the first Ford I’ve driven that didn’t feel like a Ford, and had an interior that was even decent.

the part I do want is the stereo. specifically Microsoft’s Sync product. I plugged my iPod Touch into the USB port, which is hooked up to the stereo. Sync detected the iPod, indexed all the content (about 20GB worth), and "prepared the voice commands" (whatever that means; most likely indexing the metadata it indexed for vr) in about three minutes. that was it for setup, no displays required, and the voice prompts were more than enough to take me through the process.

the voice recognition was pretty much flawless, and the only time it didn’t interpret my voice command properly was when I stuttered or paused because I couldn’t remember the name of the track. it works whether you’re standing still (like here; safety first, kids!), or driving 85 on the 101 (I tested both). if I spoke the name of the artist, track, genre, whatever properly, it got it right every time.

you can use the metadata of the tracks to play by genre, artist, album, or track, as well as play similar music (not sure if it uses genius info or not, but it was cool). there’s also drill down capabilities and query refining, all done by voice command. there are also abbreviated prompts (double-tap the voice command button) so you don’t have to wait for it to finish talking before giving it a command.

it’s some pretty sweet tech. simple. useful. want.

p.s. – apologies for cricking your neck with the portrait video. I’ll get it right the next time.

it’s been 2.5 months since I was in Nevis?

it’s November?

ack.

effecting repairs, more sooner rather than later because, well, jeebus. (especially since right before I went to Nevis I said I’d post more. FAIL.)

having a wonderful time. can’t believe it’s saturday already.

I’ll be trying to break out of that again, and will be posting as little more regularly about life, along with mixing in a bunch of work crap. there’s a lot of changes coming with what we do with working with other organizations in spreading Firefox, and I think it’ll be really important to explain why. I also want to start writing bits up which help folks understand how to customize Firefox to make it truly theirs, and to navigate the fun that is a first time experience with AMO. high time I get on that.

the site will undergo a few more tweaks in the next week or so. I really like the depo theme, but think it could use some rearranging here and there to make it a little more legible. it could also use a couple more bits of data from other corners of the weeb I lurk in, so I’ll be trying to integrate those without hosing the general look and feel.

currently, I’m sitting in Nevis, of St. Kitts and Nevis, so won’t be writing a tonne until next week. I just had an opportunity to sit this morning and upgrade WP and think a little about what I wanted to do with it. today will be spent looking at an old sugar plantation, walking a beach or two, sweating off five pounds or so, and hanging out with `jen. that’s a pretty darn good way to spend the day. I think.

more later, happy friday!