I realize this announcement might be premature, but it might be of some interest to people (including the WHATWG contributors, some of whom are violently opposed to MathML in its current form). W3C Launches Math Working Group for MathML 3.0
I think this is excellent news: a chance for us to fix some of the issues with MathML. It's too bad I'm not working for a W3C member, and have no corporate justification to be involved... just a personal obsession with mathematics and computers that's lasted all my life... :-)
About a month ago, I bought a bicycle and trailer. I loved the pair - they went together like peanut butter and jelly. I didn't use the trailer much - I bought it to move my laundry from home to the laundromat and back. So often I'd leave it at my place while I took the bike to work.
Last Thursday, that trailer was stolen from my motel in Santa Cruz, CA.
It cost me $150.00. I'm really bummed out about it, because it was such a useful tool. The lesson for me is to keep little things like that locked up.
To the thief: I don't know who you are, or why you took it, but I hope you would return it. I've notified the Santa Cruz Police Department, and I've notified the bike shop that it came from (they say it's the only one they've ever sold, and that no other bike shop in Santa Cruz carries that line of trailers). I've even put in a prayer on your behalf. It was a nice little black trailer, and I do need it. If you have a heart (and you still have the trailer or can get it back), I'd really appreciate having it back, even anonymously - but preferably in good working order.
Also, for those of you familiar with the Bible: I do forgive, but I do press charges if it's not returned by the thief.
XUL Widgets installation instructions
By this, I mean XUL Widgets now packages its chrome to be easily dropped into an existing XULRunner application. It's a beginning step (possibly incorrect, but simple) for building a chrome package for a larger app. I'll be porting the code used to make this chrome package over to jslib and xpistubs shortly.
UPDATE: JSLib and xpistubs now have code checked in to support XULRunner as well! No new packages generated for jslib yet; I leave that up to the mozdev team.
If you have a xpistubs-based project, drop me a line. I may be able to help you apply the patch to your own project.
I've had a request from my supervisor to see who might be able to assist with plug-in development for Mozilla-based browsers. This specific case is about "Celestia".
Right now, this is just exploratory, no solid commitments as yet. We have a small budget for the right person to research what we'd need to do to implement Celestia as a plug-in for Firefox.
Please reply by comment to this blog - no resumes just yet - if you're able to help. E-mail addresses will be required, as we will probably be sending you a little more detail by e-mail later. If you don't want the e-mail address posted publicly, please note so in your comment; I read all the comments and will pass the e-mails on to my supervisor.
I rarely blog about non-technical issues here, and even more rarely about non-mozilla.org stuff. I have to say something, though, about the film Al Gore has recently starred in, "An Inconvenient Truth".
I liked the film - it's raising a challenge for all of us. Personally, there's not much more I feel I can do directly to reduce my impact (I ride a bike, walk, and take the bus just about everywhere except when I'm visiting my parents - I don't own a car and don't want one, thank you very much). About the only idea I have would be to start putting holes in paper bags again, so I can stick them on my bike's handles the same way I do for plastic bags. But that becomes a problem for businesses, convincing them that it's a Good Idea to carry special paper bags.
Now, if only tickets to the film were tax-deductible. (Hey, it's Al Gore, right?) :-)
I'm asleep with music playing in the background from Music Choice's "Soundscapes" channel (New Age music, very relaxing). I hear a song that's so good and so unusual I find it impossible to ignore. (Kevin Wood, "Harmonic Oasis", on his "Scenic Listening" album.) Songs like this are why I bought Blue Man Group's two CD's when I first had the chance. (For them, it was "Synaesthetic", which I first heard on a Pure Moods album.)
So I decide to pay Music Choice's website a visit.
Imagine the fun I had in reading this famous paragraph from Firefox 1.5.0.4 in Linux:
Our service is not currently supported by this browser. For best viewing, use Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Okay, so somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of their market doesn't matter to them. They want me to use a browser that has been declared too dangerous to use, two years ago. We've had Firefox for a while now. (I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but wait: it gets better.)
So I have to go back to Windows, and fire up IE. Please have mercy on my poor vulnerable computer, I beg. No such luck. When I get to their webpage, I get an interface that isn't very user-friendly. But at least there's a tab for "Get Music". All right. I click on it.
There are eight entries. Nothing even close to what I'm interested in. No indication of a scroll bar, search functionality, or anything that suggests I might like to pick the CD I want to buy.
I won't even try to go into detail about the video interviews that are playing that I didn't ask to see.
This one rates as one of many "Web Pages That Suck" in my opinion. It was so bad that I just had to look up the URL for Vincent Flanders (and write this blog rant, I suppose).
In short, I took my business to Amazon.com, and bought two CD's from Amazon that I would have just as easily bought from Music Choice... if I could.
</rant>
(Off topic: Remember Tiananmen Square, 1989. It happened today.)