Nerdlife

Yup, FF3 is here.  Go download it.  Seriously, it’s awesome.  How awesome is it?  It’s so awesome, it has a feature called the awesome bar.  It’s so awesome, there are hundreds of parties all over the world to celebrate it.  It’s so awesome, I use it :-P.

So yea, go downloads it.  Also, I promise not to make every post in the future about Firefox, but this week has been really big for Mozilla and the OSS community.

Update: We’re currently serving 14,000 downloads/minute.  That’s over 200 downloads per second.  Wow!

Update 2: The IE team sent us another cake, how sweet

They did this for Firefox 2 too, check out the remnants of that cake:

I’ve been told the last one was delicious, this one should be pretty good too.  Thanks IE Team!

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There are very few things at Mozilla that are kept private, one of which is (was) the launch date of Firefox 3, which had been rumored and approximated for a long time but just now became official.  So say goodbye to FF2, pledge to help, and get excited: Firefox 3 comes out June 17, 2008 at 10am PDT!

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When I find myself thinking about something often, something that bothers me, I have the strange habit of Googling it.

I just realized that I do it, because normally when I’m deep in thought I just happen to be sitting at a computer, and I just happen to type something into that oh-so-useful quicksearch bar (apparently I have the ability to surf the net as background noise, much like how people have a TV on in the background, not really listening, but still able to pick up some things).  These thoughts aren’t even necessarily technology-based, they can be about family, relationships, education, or a plethora of other topics.  I’ll dump out a stream of Google searches looking for something interesting, like I’ll find someone who’s already had a similar thought pattern and found the answer for me, or perhaps just for words that will inspire new directions for my thoughts.  Occasionally I find an article on some blog that’s close to what’s on my mind, and it does help clear my thoughts.  More importantly, it answers the question “am I crazy?”, where crazy is defined as being “a minority of one” (as 1984 so eloquently puts it).

This is an interesting connection.  I’ve been told many times that my thought process is different, and I’ve learned that often my train of thought makes no sense to other people (I don’t even try to replay elaborate thought processes anymore).  Finding someone who “gets me” is rare, and usually it will only apply to one particular field.  I find people who “get me” in terms of my views on relationships, family, sex, politics, or technology, but rarely everything or even a majority of things.  Realizing this is a very lonely feeling, especially when you can’t find anyone who understands your views on a particular topic, or can/wants to approach it from a particular angle.  Finding people with similar thoughts validate your own.  Group mentality I suppose…when people agree with you you avoid having to question your beliefs.  The internet has provided a means to find people with similar views, and a lot of the innovations on the web have been at least partially driven by this search.  Forums, search, social networks.  How often does one seek out the those with opposite views for discussions.  Do Firefox fans chat on IE forums?  Do Catholics post to Scientology mailing lists?  With the exception of trolling, I find the answer is overwhelmingly no.  It’s easy to find people who agree with you, and comforting.

So I guess I’ll wrap this up with a couple of questions:

1. Do you find yourself searching randomly for things that are on your mind? (Ironic how I’m trying to validate my method about how I validate ideas by seeking out others with the same views as me by seeking out others with the same method as me).
2. Do you ever seek out opposite views for reasons other than amusement or trolling?  Do you do this for things you feel very strongly about, or things you are on edge about?

Tags: internet | 1 Comment »

CMU has a mini-course on their west coast campus that I decided to take.  It’s a course about Silicon Valley programming methods and styles.  At the beginning of the course we were given this question:

You’re starting a new 10 person development team working on a new product.  What structure would you provide so that the team was most likely to succeed.

Here are some of our responses, which could all lead into long discussions about both whether or not the ideas have merit and why these ideas came to mind over others:

• Fire seven people
• Cool project name/t-shirts!
• Buy everyone big monitors and comfy chairs
• Find bar w/ happy hour
• Free booze & red bull

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Preparation for Firefox Download Day has begun!  Head on over to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord/ and pledge to download FF3 on launch day.  The map is awesome, and I love the idea.  Also, if you want to host or find a Download Day party head on over to http://www.mozillaparty.com.

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