Wrote lots more documentation for Firefox 5 and 6, including material about CSS animations.
Various updates for the Add-on SDK’s final beta, including documentation for the new “passwords” module.
With Luke Crouch and Les Orchard forming an official “team” for MDN webdev, we reviewed all the features for Kuma and decided to take the Firefox team’s “Feature pages” approach to planning and tracking development. We are building out a set of pages for each component and related features on the Kuma wiki to more effectively implement the pieces that will make up MDN 2.0 later this year.
Mark Giffin is helping us write some SpiderMonkey documentation.
During the Mozilla all-hands meeting, we invited several folks from Google over for lunch: Paul Irish, Alex Komoroske, Kevin Lim, and Kathy Walrath. We talked about how to work together to improve open web technology documentation, especially browser compatibility information. We also shared ours plans for Kuma.
No pictures were taken, but they did bring some HTML5 t-shirts:
(If you want HTML5 pants, see Christian Heilmann.)
Had a meeting about doc processes. We have some exciting ideas!
Localising and writing documents in other languages
After providing feedback on initial mockups, the MDN Learning pages are taking shape.  Chowse has most of the page design completed and we will be starting implementation soon on the staging server for the landing page + HTML, CSS and JS pages.
Been cranking out Firefox 5 documentation left and right.
Been working on Marble Run port for WoW.
The learn pages continue to evolve and improve. We are close to wrapping up the MDN 0.9.4 development and are on track for a late April launch.
Set up some HTML, CSS and JavaScript training. Trying it out on Mozilla folks.
I don’t think you should try to get more Twitter or Identica followers just because you want big numbers. But if you are trying to build up a set of followers that will have interesting conversations with you, here’s what I’d recommend:
Follow people you know first.
Add people you are interested in talking to (but don’t know) slowly. You don’t want the number of people following you to drop too far behind the number of people you follow. It’ll make people wonder why all those people don’t follow you.
Have interesting conversations with people. Reply to their tweets/dents.
Don’t make all your tweets the same. If you want, they can all be about the same topic, but it should be a mix of thoughts, observations, replies, etc.
Follow people after you’ve interacted with them, not before. (This one is a bit tricky, but it’s more likely they will follow you this way. They’ll get a notification about you after they’ve interacted with you.)
Don’t follow thousands of people. If you follow 15,000 people, others are unlikely to believe you are looking for conversation.
Tweet primarily in the language of the people you want to talk to. If they check out your profile and don’t see any tweets/dents they understand, they are unlikely to follow you back.
Don’t bug any one person. Or stalk them. Most “conversations” in the microblogging world go back and forth just a few times. Watch for a bit to see how people usually end a conversation.
Or ignore the whole list and just use Identica or Twitter in which ever way is fun for you. That’s what I do.
[This is not a pro-choice or pro-life post. I would feel exactly the same whether I was pro-life or pro-choice.]
I was reading the Economist and was astounded to see that funding for abortions was a big enough issue to be mentioned as part of an article about the Washington DC economy:
But the latest budget deal largely spared the region’s economy. The federal government will continue to chip in for the city’s rail transit system; but as part of the deal the District can no longer use its own money to pay for abortions. This will hurt the city’s poorer residents
(What the Economist doesn’t say is that the real reason people are upset is not because it will hurt poor people but because (a) it’s a case of the federal government trying to control the city’s budget and (b) it’s part of the whole abortion debate we’ve been having for years.)
But what really struck me was, “wow, how many women in DC get abortions?” I mean, if it’s big enough to impact the city budget, shouldn’t we try to help them not have unwanted pregnancies?
I wasn’t able to find an answer I trust but this obviously biased site claims that DC has 265 abortions for every 100 live births. Wow. And people are worried about whether abortion is legal or not, funded or not, … that’s not the issue. How come so many women end up pregnant that don’t want to? Is it lack of education? Lack of birth control? Relationships that are ending prematurely? Did they want to get pregnant and changed their minds? Did they get pregnant accidentally? Do many women have more than one abortion? What is going on here? Why aren’t we addressing that?
So I think the issue of how the federal government controls DC’s budget is important. But I also think it’s really important to help these women not get pregnant, if they don’t want to be.
Hermes and a student. Hermes is a local volunteer who with a few of his friends maintains all the labs in the area!
Kids on Computers is planning a Kids on Computers Summit in May in Huajuapan de Leon and we need your help!
We have had a lot of success setting up labs in the Huajuapan de Leon area and getting local community involved. Our first school, 18 de Marzo, counts on a lot of parental support. They built the building for the lab and a library and their school has gone from one of the least desirable to one of the most respected. We’ve also set up labs in a school for kids with disabilities and in a boarding school for girls from difficult situations. And we’ve gotten equipment donations from local banks.
The school at Savcitlan de Morelos in the mountains. They have computers but nobody to help them get them set up.
Now what we need is people to help! We have several schools with computers but nobody to set them up. Schools with labs but not much know how. We have local people helping but their time is stretched thin and they could use some help!
We are going down the week of May 23rd to:
Take down some new equipment.
Set up computers in new labs.
Replace broken equipment in existing labs.
Teach kids and teachers.
Update software, add things like Wikipedia in Spanish to the computers in a school without internet yet.
Show excitement, drum up support.
Thank all the local people and organizations that have helped.
So we need you! There are all sorts of tasks and we need people that can do any one of the following. (No need to be able to do them all.)
The new building they made for the computers in Savcitlande Morelos. Adults will be able to use the computers in the evenings.
Plug in computers, turn them on, make sure they work.
Create logins, install software.
Swap out a fan or a hard drive.
Setup networking.
Speak Spanish and translate for other volunteers that don’t speak Spanish.
Talk to teachers about how computers can be integrated into education.
Run errands, stick Spanish key stickers on American keyboards, clean up cables, pick up boxes, …
Use a computer and show someone else how to use a mouse and start a game.
So there is something for everyone and we could use your help! We had a great time on our last trip and we are all looking forward to this one.
Let me know if you’d like to join us. We’d love to have your help!
The first grade class at 18 de Marzo, our first school lab
