NSID

My wife and daughter (and probably anyone else who I’ve run in to lately) is happy that December is over so that I can now shave. Here’s a quick before and after comparison:

I’ll shave tonight or tomorrow in stages — first down to a fu or mutton chops and then all the way off. More pictures to come if the first phase goes well.

Breaking Facial Hair Related News: So I ended up going with the fu and the mutton chops.

New Mozilla Shirt Now Available In International Store

I wanted to let people know that the new Mozilla shirt is now in the International store. It was posted in the domestic store a couple months ago, but it took a bit longer to make it available in both stores. Apologies for the delay. The links to both are:

• Shirt in International store
• Shirt in North America store

Fiat Libellus

I just finished reading A Canticle for Leibowitz. I came across a reference to it recently that referred to it as a classic of science fiction and I hadn’t heard of it so I wanted to see what it was about. It was good, so go read it.

There was a fair amount of Latin in it (some of it was translated and some wasn’t) so this would have seemed to be a perfect excuse to apply the skills I picked up in college when I received a Latin major. I made a half-hearted attempt to translate some of it, but mostly didn’t bother. Maybe I was being lazy or maybe I thought that after being out of school for more than ten years I wouldn’t be able to translate any more?

This reminds me of when my family went to France when I was twelve or so. We were at a museum to see the Bayeux Tapestry, sort of a long graphic novel of the Norman invasion of 1066, and I was trying to get my dad to read the Latin text on it. I had remembered that he had mentioned before that he had taken some Latin courses in school, so I just assumed he could translate it if he wanted to. After nagging him a bit about this, I noticed that there was an English mum up ahead of us translating the text to her two kids. Pretty soon all of us were trailing behind her trying to listen in to what she was saying.

Anyway, the title of this post is my little attempt to make a Latin joke referencing the book. Now that everyone has had a good laugh, I’ll tell you that it’s my attempt to say ‘Let there be a blog post’. Not sure if libellus is right here. Maybe I should have coined the new Latin word bloggus? The Vatican may have an answer to this since they apparently are keeping the language up to date.

Up next, I still want to read some more David Foster Wallace (either the book about infinity or the book with the piece about cruises) but I have some other books I might read first. I think the issue is moot for now though since I’ll probably not be doing any reading for a bit with #2 due to show up any day now.

Where To Find Information About Mozilla-Based Applications

Today I moved the list of all known Mozilla-based applications from the mozpad.org site to the Mozilla Developer Center. There is also a list of featured Mozilla-based applications that is hosted on www.mozilla.org that highlights a set of projects from the full list. If you’d like to make changes to the list on MDC feel free to edit it directly since it’s on a wiki. If you’d like to suggest changes to the list on www.mozilla.org, feel free to comment on this post or send email to the site administrators.

A Live Christmas Tree

At the risk of sounding like a complete Grinch, I try to get out of getting a Christmas tree each year. This is not a debate I ever win, but I was able to convince Kim to try a live tree this time. By live I don’t mean that the tree was once live (instead of being plastic) but that the tree is live in a big pot in our living room right now (and will continue to stay alive after Christmas when we haul* it back outside and then bring it back inside again next December**).

I don’t think the Christmas tree industry is something to crusade against, but there are costs that go along with growing a bunch of tress, cutting them down, transporting them and then throwing them away after a few weeks. For instance, the use of pesticides damages the local environment as well as the people working on the tree farms. One benefit that can be cited is that the trees absorb carbon dioxide while they’re growing, but if you clear a forest to grow these trees you’re not gaining anything.

I also think the idea of having a live tree fits the spirit of the season better as well as fitting in better with the general idea of having a green home. If I can get a Christmas tree by going to my backyard and if can reuse that tree again for the next few years (we were warned that at some point the tree will get too big to move it) then that’s great.

* Haul is certainly the right word here. A live tree, with all of the dirt a live tree needs, is very heavy.

** Since we got the tree we’ve heard of a couple other people who have done this sort of thing as well, so it’s good to know I’m not totally alone on this.

Learning More About Mozilla-Based Applications

One of the goals for the Powered by Mozilla logo is to learn more about what people are doing with Mozilla technologies. As the logo starts to get adopted, we’ll find out more about what types of applications are being created and how our code is being extended and improved.

We can learn some information by checking out a company’s web site or installing a new application, but it seems like we could learn a lot more by also doing a survey. I’m sure there are a lot of technical questions that we can ask, but I’m also interested in questions related to community (for instance, are you familiar with the different ways to contribute changes back to Mozilla?).

I’ve started a page that lists a few questions, but I wanted to see what other questions people would want to ask in this survey. If there is something you’d like to find out, please help us create a Powered by Mozilla survey. This is on a wiki page, so feel free to make changes directly (or post suggestions here on this blog if you’d prefer).

My Wordle

Evan recently mentioned that my blog had a lot of work-related posts but not many personal posts. It looks like Wordle disagrees with him (although this picture is slightly skewed due to my recent extended turkey rationalization).

A Romanian Mozilla Brochure

I wanted to let people know that there is now a Romanian version of the Mozilla brochure available. Thanks to Irina, William and Rhonda for putting this together. If anyone is interested in making the brochure available in other languages, please feel free to let me know.

Mapping the Great Underground Empire

As part of my recent unsuccessful attempt to complete Zork III without cheating, I made a map of the different rooms in the game. It’s been in my bag for a while and I figured I’d scan it before it fell apart. There are probably prettier maps of the GUE out there, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Doing My Part For Biodiversity

I’ve been a vegetarian since college, but there have been a few times where I’ve made an exception and ate meat (for example, I needed to show Kim, who was raised in the Northeast, some real bar-b-que when we were in Texas). Another exception we just made was having turkey last week for Thanksgiving.

A friend from New York was coming to visit, so Kim decided to do a big spread, instead of the low-key thing we usually do. Since our friend had made it clear that tofurkey wasn’t an option, Kim suggested we get a heritage turkey. I had just read Barbara Kingsolver’s book about growing her own food for a year, including a heritage turkey, and was interested in the idea too.

The idea of heritage food (also referred to as heirloom foods) is to bring back some of the animals or plants that have been almost driven to extinction due to industrial agriculture standardizing on a small number of food varieties.

One argument for supporting heritage foods is that they just taste better because farmers often pick varieties based on factors other than flavor (for instance, the most common turkey variety is picked because of the quantity of meat* and white feathers).

Another reason to support a wider range of food types is that increased biodiversity is a good thing. If we rely too heavily on any one crop or animal then it would be bad if something were to happen to that variety. For instance, the article on monoculture agriculture has a section called Catastrophic crop failure and lists the Irish potato famine as an example when “a single genetic variant becomes susceptible to a pathogen or when a change in weather patterns occur”.

This is all to say that buying a heritage turkey for Thanksgiving helped create demand for farmers to preserve a range of different turkey varieties to create enough of a supply of the animals. Or to quote from the place where we got the turkey: “The best way to save the old time poultry is to return them to our dining tables.” This is hardly a call to go out and eat a bunch of rare animals, but I might make an exception like this again next year.

* This variety grows so big that they can’t breed on their own (and if I remember Kingsolver’s book correctly they also have trouble standing up when they are fully grown). This explains why one of the selling points on the Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch’s site is that their turkeys can mate naturally.