Mozilla Service Week - Toronto Event

Yesterday I dropped off posters at the Parkdale Library for our Mozilla Service Week event which will take place on Monday September 14th from 2 - 6pm. The Parkdale Library is a really lively branch, with about 10 computer stations that the neighbourhood folks use constantly. Parkdale is the oldest Toronto neighbourhood and though it has a reputation for being a "bad" neighbourhood, it's been heavily gentrified in the past 6 years or so. There's still a lot of people here who live below the poverty line though, and for whom the digital gap is a very real thing. It's also a neighbourhood full of recent immigrants who depend on the library for connections to learning english, finding work, accessing resources for new Canadians, and keeping in touch with family and friends in their home countries.

When I first moved to Parkdale in early 2001, I relied heavily on access to their computers for my internet needs since I didn't have a computer. It was always a stampede to get in the door and sign up for a time slot when the library opened its doors in the morning. They've recently undergone some renovations and now have added wireless as well as a few more stations. The Parkdale librarians are super friendly and encouraging of community (and noise, in a library!) and the building itself is used often for local activities and grassroots festivals. I'm excited that 8 years since arriving here, I'm in a position to give something back to this vibrant place.

Our event involves a table set up near the computers - "Ask a Geek" - where we can field questions about anything that will help improve their interactions with the web. I believe there will be lots of people interested in picking our brains. Of course, I'm also bringing lots of Mozilla swag to draw people over to the table and to use as ice-breakers :)

Anyone in Toronto who wants to participate - please come on by.

Details about this and other Toronto events HERE

Adding choices to Try Server web interface

Just put in my patches on bug 473184 which will allow folks who submit patches through the try server web interface to select if they want a build or unittest run and what platforms it should be run on.

Looks like this:


I've tested it successfully in the staging environment and I hope to get this rolled out in production before the end of the quarter.

New Branch Timeline: Electrolysis

Now, a week or so later - we are setting up a new project branch. Here's the break down:

2009-06-26 11:55 PDT

• Bug requesting the branch [500755] was created
  

2009/07/09 11:13:41 PDT

• Created a tinderbox page for the branch to report to [Tinderbox Page]
  

2009-07-14 17:44:27 PDT

• Patches to add Electrolysis branch to buildbot are written and put up on staging-master. There are several compile fails.
  
  

2009-07-22 06:12:49 PDT

• After testing and scheduling downtime, the config files are checked in and P-M is reconfigured - last minute patch to turn on debug builds is added as well when we realize that is not in the default template for turning on a new branch.
  

2009-07-22 13:31:59 PDT

• Need graph server machine table updated for new branch - we did a bunch all at once in [504435]
  

2009-07-23 06:25:18 PDT

• Add Nagios monitoring support file is checked in and bug filed requesting IT turn it on. [505986]
  
  

What remains is to check in the debug builds patch, this should happen in a downtime next week at which point the project branch request bug will be closed.

New Branch Timeline: Places

A brief rundown of what was involved setting up the Places project branch. This is based on the time since the branch request was given the go-ahead, not when the bug was filed since that happened quite a bit earlier.

2009-04-29 17:17:43 PDT

• Bug requesting the branch [459269] was re-opened
  

2009-05-18 16:31:46 PDT

• Created a tinderbox page for the branch to report to [Tinderbox Page]
  

2009-05-19 09:16 PDT

• A separate bug was filed requesting a repo [493745]
  
  

2009-05-26 16:32:18 PDT

• Repo is created and [493745] is closed as FIXED
  

2009-06-24 10:22 PDT

• Patches submitted to update config files for Staging-Master and Production-Master
  

2009-06-30 12:51 PDT

• After testing and patch updates, the config files are checked in and P-M is reconfigured
  
  

2009-07-01 08:49 PDT

• Add Nagios monitoring support by filing a bug with IT [501710]
  

2009-07-08 08:04:40 PDT

• [493740] is fixed to deal with the scheduler not picking up the new Places poller after a reconfig, only after a stop/start
  

2009-07-09 14:36 PDT - 2009-07-10 12:50 PDT

• Patches submitted to turn on talos and graph server support for the new builds. The first set were not patches to Talos-Pool so a second set was required.
  
  
• New row in graph server added for branch (bug 459269. IT (justdave) ran the INSERT statement against the production database)
  

2009-07-13 11:18 PDT

• Patches submitted to turn on leak testing debug builds. This was checked-in and P-M was reconfigured the same day.
  

2009-07-13 14:57 PDT

• Bug closed - project branch is up and running on P-M
  

Celebrating Firefox 3.5 with sparkly accessories...

A month or so ago when the Firefox 3.5 was close to launching I got in touch with some artist friends of mine who have a small jewellery making business to create some custom accessories for me in celebration. They have been making these awesome belt buckles, cuff links, magnets and many other items for years and I have several of their pieces including a custom "fancy deluxe" belt buckle with my hound dog on it surrounded by shiny Swarovski crystals. They did a great job with the Firefox logo and I am now the proud owner of

A belt buckle:

And cuff links (though I only have one shirt that uses them):


I'm looking forward to wearing them about town and spreading the word about Firefox 3.5. Many of my pals outside of tech circles have been excited about the new Firefox because they see how excited I am about it. For anyone else looking for a custom buckle or accessory of their own get in touch with the folks at Barbie's Basement Jewelry. I hope you enjoy flashing the Firefox logo around in new and fashionable ways - it's always a conversation starter.

Mozilla Service Week - making a difference in your community

Mozilla just announced Mozilla Service Week which will be held September 14 - 21, 2009. This week is a push to connect people who can help make the web work better for someone in the community with people and organization who need that help.

Coming from the non-profit arts sector prior to my job at Mozilla, I will be spreading the word with many arts organizations in Toronto who would be wise to sign up for help from such a talented pool of volunteers. Of course I will also donate my time that week even though it's the kind of work I do all the time already. I can't even count the amount of time I've spent setting up routers and networks for less technical folks in my life, or helping them set up their new computers and teaching them basic skills (all teaching sessions include installing and setting up the latest Firefox of course).

The best part of this week, in my opinion, is that it's an opportunity to get hands-on with local users in the community. The library is a great place to start. It wasn't that long ago (around 2003) when I was using the library computers as my primary access to the internet. I'd love to go in now and make sure that their computers are up to date, and write up how-to manuals and helpful hints for beginners. Even better, get some folks to translate those manuals or tip sheets. At my local library I'm certain that there are many folks who would appreciate localized information sheets.

Two areas that are of particular interest to me with regards to the organizations I know in Toronto:

1. Bring their websites over to an open-source CMS like Drupal. Many of the sites are hand-coded php (or god forbid Dreamweaver-created sites) with no administrative back-end and keeping the site's information up to date is a difficult/dangerous task for non-technical staff.


2. Take their FileMaker Pro databases over to MySQL or PostgreSQL so that they are no longer locked in to expensive, proprietary database software that requires additional hosting costs. Three organizations I have worked with are on three different versions of FMP and none of them the latest. Upgrading is painful for them and their hosting costs are ridiculous (especially the ones who are on older versions).

If you're technically inclined, go to the site and sign up. If you've got an organization in mind, tell them to sign up. Let's make this event a success so it will inspire more weeks like this in the future.

iPhone tethering - how to restore after updating to 3.0b5 and iTunes8.2b10(13)

Breaking my extended blog silence (I've been busy, you know, starting my full time job at Mozilla!) to tell you about the quagmire I went into when I tried to set up tethering on my iPhone.

So here's the story - with links that will help you avoid what happened to me.

I purchased and ADC membership so I could download and install the iPhone 3.0 SDK and OS. When Beta 5 came out I eagerly updated since my phone had been crashing regularly and went into restore mode. As soon as the 3.0b5 update went live on my phone, iTunes said it needed 8.2 to work so I downloaded the most recent version from ADC. This turned out to be 8.2b10(13) which disables the ability to change carrier settings and thus, to enable tethering if you didn't already do it before the update.

So - after many (failed!) attempts to go back to 3.0b3 and 3.0b4 so that I could use iTunes 8.1 - I did eventually (10 hours and many blog tips later) work out my tethering issues with this extremely simple set of steps:

Simple Steps to restoring tethering:
Download: http://www.adammcnamara.com/CanadianCarriersTetheringPatch.zip
Download: iTunes 8.2b7(10) http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4874487/

* Delete iTunes 8.2b10(13) from your computer, install the older version - as the torrent description points out, it says that it installs as an 8.1.1 but it is in fact 8.2.

* When you connect your phone in iTunes, Option-click the “Check for Updates” and pick the.ipcc file for your carrier (from the carriers patch you downloaded). It will update the carrier settings.

* Reboot (NOT RESPRING) the phone. You can now tether over USB or BlueTooth (unless you have a new Mac Unibody Mac where apparently the Bluetooth stack is broken and so you're relegated to only sharing via USB).

To activate tethering, go to “Settings->General->Network->Internet Tethering”. The first time you do so it may say “Contact Rogers to enable this feature”, but a few second later it should allow you to enable it. If not, restart the phone again.

Thanks to many blogs out there but more specifically to Adam Mcnamara where the bulk of the steps are from.