Some of the talks that were presented were (slides linked):

• Christian Heilmann: “The Web is the platform“
• Jeremie Pattonnier: “Contributing to MDN”
• Robert Nyman: “JavaScript APIs: the web is the platform“
• Rob Hawkes: “Open Web games“

At the end of the day, I presented an extension that would calculate the Readability scores of text that was selected within the browser. This “Text Readability Scorer” Firefox extension was something that I already had in mind, but which was languishing and waiting to be completed using the latest Addons SDK. The hacking started post lunch and I managed to do complete something that could be presented at the end of the day. While this add-on didnt use any of the cool HTML5(and friends) stuff that was presented earlier that day, I still managed to get a working Extension for Firefox 11 and presented it in the end.

A more complete write-up of the event can be read at the hacks.mozilla.org site, with the extension I presented getting a mention under the “Here come the hacks” section.

Below are a few screenshots of the Readability extension in action, The source code can be found on GitHub.

Add-ons screen showing the Readability Extension

Context-sensitive Right-Click menu showing the "Calculate Readability" menu option

Final result screen shown in a "Panel" with the Readability results.

There is still a lot of work that has to be done, such as calculating the number of syllables more accurately etc. Lets see where this goes, I might be submitting it to the Add-ons’ site once it has some more complete functionality. Thank you for reading!

The SGML fan says “We must convince the theater management to hire an expert to write a DTD for emergency-announcements, and sell them an expensive application for archiving announcements, and get them to hire a team to convert all their old announcements to SGML!”

The XML fan says, “There’s no time for that! We must train all the audience members to recognise XML, and then start a committee to investigate the possibility of starting negotiations to form a working group to write a paper on the future evolution of emergency-announcement semantics!”

Meanwhile, the HTML fan takes out his wireless PDA and types in:

<h1><blink><font color=”red”>FIRE!</font></blink></h1>

which he quickly hacks the digital projection system to display, saving the lives of everyone in the theater.

Via http://molly.com/joke.php

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.”

~ Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

The Adventures of a Cardboard Box from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

The main reason I bought this over the iPhone was because this supported flash and surfing the internet on the move is my primary requirements. Some of my friends argued that for most purposes, common sites had their corresponding apps on the iPhone. But it would be stupid to keep swapping between apps, so I bought the Inspire over the iPhone(albeit bought it in a hurry without doing any research both costing the same on a two year contract).

But, I was in for a surprise! The default android browser keeps refreshing on its own for most sites like crazy without any user intervention! And you can’t use Firefox for android, because it doesn’t come with flash! What?? Drat.. Yes, you could use the Dolphin HD browser, but on the whole it wasn’t a nice experience.

Do your research before buying it. I had been a happy camper on the Nokia side for the past decade, but they seriously let me down with maemo and then with meego, and my Nokia N900 feels like an antique with no future ahead. :-/

Posted to flickr after a long hiatus

A Bad Nightmare - Ace 2006 Documents

Sketched awkwardly on the Nokia N900 using the stylus

For the uninitiated, I have been doing a MS degree that is partially managed by IBM and due to “administrative challenges” there is a huge backlog in issuing mark sheets even though its 4 and a half years since the course started. Taking a dig at that.

After thinking about it for a while and coming across the same in the extension development documentation – I decided to write about it here..

In short, all extensions are also Add-ons, But “Add-ons” is an umbrella term for extensions, themes, plugins and language-packs.

Extensions

Extensions enable the user to alter the existing functionality of the browser or to add completely new functionality. Eg: Firebug, YSlow, etc.

Plugins

Plugins are libraries which are used by the browser to display/render stuff that it cannot do natively, Eg: Flash, Java, PDF etc.

Themes

Themes allow you to change the look and feel of the browser, allowing you to customize it to your liking. There are hundreds of free themes for download.

Now, If you were wondering what the difference was between a Firefox theme and a Persona, Personas are a special kind of theme which lets you change the look and feel without altering other components of the UI such as the navigations buttons, etc. It also lets you try and install new “personas” without having to restart your browser to apply the changes.

If you had this question lingering in your head, hope you found it useful!

We planned to start at 5:30 AM, but due to usual delays which included my rear brakes getting dismantled(god knows why, it was ok yesterday) We started at 6:15 AM from Bilekahalli(near IIM-B) on our two MTBs. Touched Hosur road and then it is dead straight (it is called Hosur Road remember ) Going was relatively easy.We stopped at Chandapura at the 16.5 km mark for about ten minutes to refresh ourselves, and then restarted cycling. We reached Hosur around 8:15AM for a total time of 2 hours.

Me, Standing next to the Hosur Road Flyover

After whiling away quite a lot of time there, and searching for a cycle shop to refill air, we started the return journey.

The return was a real killer, If I was a cat, I must have lost 3 of my nine lives. There was a strong headwind, really bright sunshine and huge inclines(from a n00b point of view). I reached Chandapura again and made my first stop. I realized then that my fitness levels were in the “unacceptable” category

Drank some more gatorade and restarted cycling again, But the heat was getting me and my energy levels were sapping. At hosur, we originally had just Gatorade and one of those oats munch bars. I believe that was the first mistake we made(correct me if I am wrong) in not refuelling the “engine” Neither did we have breakfast, only a Nilgiris Cream bun.

I found moving on very difficult, and stopped near electronic city for a good twenty minutes under a shade of a fly-over going across the road above me, near the Elevated Highway toll-gate.

Then I restarted cycling and even the slightest inclines seemed to go at me. I felt really drained out and felt the need to drink something to get some energy, stopped at a small shop and had a cold Pepsi. It made me feel a little better and the hot feeling around my head reduced. Then I slowly trudged along,  albeit grudgingly just wanting to finish the whole thing and honestly, thinking why on earth did I do this in the first place.. LOL. Each kilometer from then on seemed so distant. But now that I am home, I feel elated to have completed it. Many thanks to all the people who inspired me on Daily Mile and the Bangalore Bikers Club list

Raring to go again

Trip Statistics:

Distance: 67 km

Time: 04 hours 38 minutes

Overall Pace: 14.5 kmph

Route map and other info at DailyMile

BTW, my Iron Man housemate, Sunil, who is a regular at the neighbourhood gym reached an hour before me!

PS:- Also, took this lame opportunity to update my blog which has been in hibernation for a really long time