As mentioned some time ago and as recently announced on the MathML and MediaWiki mailing lists, a MathML mode with SVG/PNG fallback is now available on Wikipedia. In order to test it, you need to log in with a Wikipedia account and select the mode in the "Math" section of your preferences.

Some quick notes for Mozillians:

• Although Mozilla intern Jonathan Wei has done some work on MathML accessibility and that there are reports about work in progress to make Firefox work with NVDA / Orca / VoiceOver, we unfortunately still don't have something ready for Gecko browsers. You can instead try the existing solutions for Safari or Internet Explorer (ChromeVox and JAWS 16 beta are supposed to be MathML-aware but fail to read the MathML on Wikipedia at the moment).

• By default, the following MATH fonts are tried: Cambria Math, Latin Modern Math, STIX Math, Latin Modern Math (Web font). In my opinion, our support for Cambria Math (installed by default on Windows) is still not very good, so I'd recommend to use Latin Modern Math instead, which has the same "Computer Modern" style as the current PNG mode. To do that, go to the "Skin" section of your preferences and just add the rule math { font-family: Latin Modern Math; } to your "Custom CSS". Latin Modern Math is installed with most LaTeX distributions, available from the GUST website and provided by the MathML font add-on.

• You can actually install various fonts and try to make the size and style of the math font consistent with the surrounding text. Here are some examples:

  /* Asana Math (Palatino style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: Palatino Linotype, URW Palladio L, Asana Math;
  }
  math {
      font-family: Asana Math;
  }
  
  
  /* Cambria (Microsoft Office style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: Cambria;
  }
  math {
      font-family: Cambria Math;
  }
  
  
  /* Latin Modern (Computer Modern style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: Latin Modern Roman;
  }
  math {
      font-family: Latin Modern Math;
  }
  
  
  /* STIX/XITS (Times New Roman style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: XITS, STIX;
  }
  math {
      font-family: XITS Math, STIX Math;
  }
  
  
  /* TeX Gyre Bonum (Bookman style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Bonum;
  }
  math {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Bonum Math;
  }
  
  
  /* TeX Gyre Pagella (Palatino style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Pagella;
  }
  math {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Pagella Math;
  }
  
  
  /* TeX Gyre Schola (Century Schoolbook style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Schola;
  }
  math {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Schola Math;
  }
  
  
  /* TeX Gyre Termes (Times New Roman style) */
  .mw-body, mtext {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Termes;
  }
  math {
      font-family: TeX Gyre Termes Math;
  }
  

• We still have bugs with missing fonts and font inflation on mobile devices. If you are affected by these bugs, you can force the SVG fallback instead:

  span.mwe-math-mathml-inline, div.mwe-math-mathml-display {
    display: none !important;
  }
  span.mwe-math-mathml-inline + .mwe-math-fallback-image-inline {
    display: inline !important;
  }
  div.mwe-math-mathml-display + .mwe-math-fallback-image-display {
    display: block !important;
  }
  

• You might want to install some Firefox add-ons for copying MathML/LaTeX, zooming formulas or configuring the math font.

• Finally, don't forget to report bugs to Bugzilla so that volunteers can continue to improve our MathML support. Thank you!

http://www.maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic/?post/2014/10/24/A-quick-note-for-Mozillians-regarding-MathML-on-Wikipedia

TIL Debugging Gaia with B2G Desktop and WebIDE.

24 Oct 2014 - Toronto, ON

With some great help from Rob Wood from Mozilla Firefox OS Automation team, I finally managed to get Gaia up and running and ready for debugging with B2G Desktop Nightly build and WebIDE.

It is currently impossible to develop / debug Gaia using Firefox for Desktop. Thus, it's a pretty big barrier for new contributors who are just starting out with Gaia. Turns out, it is fairly easy to run Gaia codebase with B2G Desktop build. Here are the instructions:

Prerequisits:

• Download and install B2G Desktop Nightly build
• Download and install Firefox for Desktop Nightly build
• Check out Gaia code base: git clone https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia.git

Instructions:

• In your Gaia repository build a Gaia user profile from scratch: make

• Run the following command to start the B2G Nightly build with Gaia profile that you just built: /path/to/your/B2G/b2g-bin -profile /path/to/your/gaia/profile -start-debugger-server [PORT_NUMBER] For example: /Applications/B2G.app/Contents/MacOS/b2g-bin -profile /Users/me/gaia/profile -start-debugger-server 7000

• Start Firefox for Desktop Nightly build

• Open WebIDE (Tools -> Web Developer -> WebIDE)

• Press Select Runtime -> Remote Runtime

• Replace the port with the one used in step 2 (7000) and click OK

• A dialog should pop up within the B2G emulator asking to permit remote debugging. Press OK

• At this point you should have access to all apps bundled with the profile as well as the Main Process via WebIDE

• When you make changes to Gaia code base, you can run make again to rebuild your profile. Hint: if you are working on a single app, just run APP=my_app make to only rebuild the app.

yzen

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/yura-zenevich/~3/RTG9M6EwXHE/today-i-learned.html

La tecnolog'ia multiplataforma de Unity se est'a erigiendo como la mejor alternativa para todos los que quieren disfrutar de los cada vez m'as populares juegos para navegadores web. De hecho, la compa~n'ia est'a actualmente trabajando para integrar la tecnolog'ia WebGL por la que cada vez m'as navegadores est'an apostando.

Con la intenci'on de facilitar su labor a la hora de integrar WebGL, Unity ha desarrollado un benchmark para medir el rendimiento de los diferentes navegadores y sistemas operativos a la hora de usar su tecnolog'ia. Para realizar la serie de test a la que han sometido a los navegadores, el equipo de Unity ha comparado el rendimiento nativo con el de los navegadores Firefox 32, Chrome 37 y Safari 8 instalados en un MacBook Pro con procesador i7 a 2,6 GHz y sistema operativo OS X 10.10.

En la imagen se puede observar como en ocasiones Firefox obtiene mejor puntuaci'on ejecutando las pruebas que el propio c'odigo nativo de Unity.

Pruebas realizadas

Seg'un los resultados completos de los tests que pueden ver, y en los que se compara el rendimiento de los tres navegadores usando WebGL con el c'odigo nativo de Unity, de entre los tres participantes es Firefox el que ha resultado el ganador en pr'acticamente la totalidad de factores analizados por el benchmark, por lo que es sin duda el mejor para usar la tecnolog'ia Unity WebGL.

Suma total de las puntuaciones obtenidas

Podr'an encontrar m'as informaci'on sobre este tema en Unity3d.com.

Fuente: Genbeta

http://firefoxmania.uci.cu/unity-corona-a-firefox-como-el-mejor-navegador-para-utilizar-contenido-unity-webgl/

This’ll be my last post to planet.mozilla.org.

After 8 years and thousands of airmiles, I’ve decided to leave Mozilla. It’s been an incredible ride and I’ve met a lot of great people. I am incredibly grateful for the adventure.

Thanks for the memories.

http://robcee.net/2014/thanks-mozilla/

A quick remainder that one of the biggest benefit to having our own built-in profiler is that individual teams and project can add their own performance reporting features. The graphics team just landed a feature to measure how much GPU time is consumed when compositing.

I already started using this in bug 1087530 where I used it to measure the improvement from recycling our temporary intermediate surfaces.

Here we can see that the frame had two rendering phases (group opacity test case) totaling 7.42ms of GPU time. After applying the patch from the bug and measuring again I get:

Now with retaining the surface the rendering GPU time drops to 5.7ms of GPU time. Measuring the GPU time is important because timing things on the CPU time is not accurate.

Currently we still haven’t completed the D3D implementation or hooked it up to WebGL, we will do that as the need arises. To implement this, when profiling, we insert a query object into the GPU pipeline for each rendering phase (framebuffer switches).

http://benoitgirard.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/gpu-profiling-has-landed/

I’m happy to announce that Georg Fritzsche is now officially a Firefox reviewer.

Georg has been contributing to Firefox for a while now – his contributions started with done some great work on Firefox’s Telemetry system, as well as investigating stability issues in plugins and Firefox itself. He played a crucial role in building the telemetry experiments system, and more recently has become familiar with a few key parts of the Firefox front-end code, including our click to play plugin UI and the upcoming “FHR self support” feature. He’s a thorough reviewer with lots of experience with Mozilla code, so don’t hesitate to ask Georg for review if you’re patching Firefox!

Thanks Georg!

http://www.gavinsharp.com/blog/2014/10/22/rgfritzsche/

In systems that rely heavily on “most popular” lists, like Reddit or Hacker News, the rich get richer while the poor stay poor. Since most people only look at the top of the charts, anything that’s not already listed has a much harder time being seen. You need visibility to get ratings, and you need ratings to get visibility.

Aggregators try to address this problem by promoting the items as well as popular ones. But this is hard to do effectively. For example, the “new” page at Hacker News gets only a fraction of the front page’s traffic. Most users want to see the best content, not wade through an unfiltered stream of links. Thus, very little input is available to decide which links get promoted to the front page.

As an experiment, I wrote a userscript that uses the Hacker News API to search for new or low-ranked links and randomly insert just one or two of them into the front page. It’s also available as a bookmarklet for those who can’t or don’t want to install the user script.

Install user script (may require a browser extension)

Randomize HN (drag to bookmark bar, or right-click to bookmark)

This gives readers a chance to see and vote on links that they otherwise wouldn’t, without altering their habits or wading through a ton of unfiltered content. Each user will see just one or two links per visit, but thanks to randomness a much larger number of links will be seen by the overall user population. My belief, though I can’t prove it, is that widespread use of this feature would improve the quality of the selection process.

The script isn’t perfect (search for FIXME in the source code for some known issues), but it works well enough to try out the idea. Unfortunately, the HN API doesn’t give access to all the data I’d like, and sometimes the script won’t find any suitable links to insert. (You can look at your browser’s console to see which which items were randomly inserted.) Ideally, this feature would be built in to Hacker News—and any other service that recommends “popular” items.

http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2014/10/22/randomize-hacker-news.html

tl;dr; Fetching from IndexedDB is about 5-15 times faster than fetching from AJAX.

localForage is a wrapper for the browser that makes it easy to work with any local storage in the browser. Different browsers have different implementations. By default, when you use localForage in Firefox is that it used IndexedDB which is asynchronous by default meaning your script don't get blocked whilst waiting for data to be retrieved.

A good pattern for a "fat client" (lots of javascript, server primarly speaks JSON) is to download some data, by AJAX using JSON and then store that in the browser. Next time you load the page, you first read from the local storage in the browser whilst you wait for a fresh new JSON from the server. That way you can present data to the screen sooner. (This is how Buggy works, blogged about it here)

Another similar pattern is that you load everything by AJAX from the server, present it and store it in the local storage. Then you perdiocally (or just on onload) you send the most recent timestamp from the data you've received and the server gives you back everything new and everything that has changed by that timestamp. The advantage of this is that the payload is continuously small but the server has to make a custom response for each client whereas a big fat blob of JSON can be better cached and such. However, oftentimes the data is dependent on your credentials/cookie anyway so most possibly you can't do much caching.

Anyway, whichever pattern you attempt I thought it'd be interesting to get a feel for how much faster it is to retrieve from the browsers memory compared to doing a plain old AJAX GET request. After all, browsers have seriously optimized for AJAX requests these days so basically the only thing standing in your way is network latency.

So I wrote a little comparison script that tests this. It's here: http://www.peterbe.com/localforage-vs-xhr/index.html

It retrieves a 225Kb JSON blob from the server and measures how long that took to become an object. Equally it does the same with localforage.getItem and then it runs this 10 times and compares the times. It's obviously not a surprise the local storage retrieval is faster, what's interesting is the difference in general.

What do you think? I'm sure both sides can be optimized but at this level it feels quite realistic scenarios.

http://www.peterbe.com/plog/localforage-vs.-xhr

Thanks to my colleague Adam Lofting, I’ve been able to crunch some of the numbers from the Web Literacy Map v2.0 community survey. This will remain open until the end of the month, but I thought I’d share some of the results.

This is the high-level overview. Respondents are able to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each proposal on a five-point scale. The image above shows the average score as well as the standard deviation. Basically, for the top row the higher the number the better. For the bottom row, low is good.

Breaking it down a bit further, there’s some interesting things you can pull out of this. Note that the top-most row represents people who completed the survey, but chose not to disclose their location. All of the questions are optional.

Things that stand out:

• There’s strong support for Proposal 4: I believe that concepts such as ‘Mobile’, 'Identity’, and 'Protecting’ should be represented as cross-cutting themes in the Web Literacy Map.
• There’s also support for Proposal 1: I believe the Web Literacy Map should explicitly reference the Mozilla manifesto and Proposal 5: I believe a 'remix’ button should allow me to remix the Web Literacy Map for my community and context.
• People aren’t so keen on Proposal 2: I believe the three strands should be renamed 'Reading’, 'Writing’ and 'Participating’. (although, interestingly, in the comments people say they like the term 'Participating’, just not 'Reading’ and 'Writing’ which many said reminded them too much of school!)

This leaves Proposal 3: I believe the Web Literacy Map should look more like a 'map’. This could have been better phrased, as the assumption in the comments seems to be that we can present it either as a grid or as a map. In fact, here’s no reason why we can’t do both. In fact, I’d like to see us produce:

• text version (like at webmaker.org/literacy)
• simple overview (as we’ve got at webmaker.org/resources)
• map version (for badged learning pathways)

Finally, a word on Proposal 5 and remixing. In the comments there’s support for this - but also a hesitation lest it 'dilutes’ the impact of the Web Literacy Map. A number of people suggested using a GitHub-like model where people can 'fork’ the map if necessary. In fact, this is already possible as v1.1 is listed as a repository under the Mozilla account.

I’m looking forward to doing some more analysis of the community survey after it closes!

Comments? Questions? Send them this way: @dajbelshaw or doug@mozillafoundation.org

http://literaci.es/weblitmap-survey-interim-results

Since I received some good feedback about my prior post, How I Hire at Mozilla, I thought I’d try to continue this is a mini-series about how I do other things at Mozilla. Next up is code review.

Even though I have found new module owners for some of the code I own, I still end up doing 8-12 review/feedback cycles per week. Reviews are only as good as the time you spend on them: I approach reviews in a fairly systematic way.

When I load a patch for review, I don’t read it top-to-bottom. I also try to avoid reading the bug report: a code change should be able to explain itself either directly in the code or in the code commit message which is part of the patch. If bugzilla comments are required to understand a patch, those comments should probably be part of the commit message itself. Instead, I try to understand the patch by unwrapping it from the big picture into the small details:

The Commit Message

• Does the commit message describe accurately what the patch does?
• Am I the right person to make a decision about this change?
• Is this the right change to be making?
• Are there any external specifications for this change? This could include a UX design, or a DOM/HTML specification, or something else.
• Should there be an external specification for this change?
• Are there other experts who should be involved in this change? Does this change require a UX design/review, or a security, privacy, legal, localization, accessibility, or addon-compatibility review or notification?

Read the Specification

If there is an external specification that this change should conform to, I will read it or the appropriate sections of it. In the following steps of the review, I try to relate the changes to the specification.

Documentation

If there is in-tree documentation for a feature, it should be kept up to date by patches. Some changes, such as Firefox data collection, must be documented. I encourage anyone writing Mozilla-specific features and APIs to document them primarily with in-tree docs, and not on developer.mozilla.org. In-tree docs are much more likely to remain correct and be updated over time.

API Review

APIs define the interaction between units of Mozilla code. A well-designed API that strikes the right balance between simplicity and power is a key component of software engineering.

In Mozilla code, APIs can come in many forms: IDL, IPDL, .webidl, C++ headers, XBL bindings, and JS can all contain APIs. Sometimes even C++ files can contain an API; for example Mozilla has an mostly-unfortunate pattern of using the global observer service as an API surface between disconnected code.

In the first pass I try to avoid reviewing the implementation of an API. I’m focused on the API itself and its associated doccomments. The design of the system and the interaction between systems should be clear from the API docs. Error handling should be clear. If it’s not perfectly obvious, the threading, asynchronous behavior, or other state-machine aspects of an API should be carefully documented.

During this phase, it is often necessary to read the surrounding code to understand the system. None of our existing tools are very good at this, so I often have several MXR tabs open while reading a patch. Hopefully future review-board integration will make this better!

Brainstorm Design Issues

In my experience, the design review is the hardest phase of a review, the part which requires the most experience and creativity, and provides the most value.

• How will this change interact with other code in the tree?
• Are there edge cases or failure cases that need to be addressed in the design?
• Is it likely that this change will affect performance or security in unexpected ways?

Testing Review

I try to review the tests before I review the implementation.

• Are there automated unit tests?
• Are there automated performance tests?
• Is there appropriate telemetry/field measurement, especially for error conditions?
• Do the tests cover the specification, if there is one?
• Do the tests cover error conditions?
• Do the tests strike the right balance between “unit” testing of small pieces of code versus “integration” tests that ensure a feature works properly end-to-end?

Code Review

The code review is the least interesting part of the review. At this point I’m going through the patch line by line.

• Make sure that the code uses standard Mozilla coding style. I really desperately want somebody to automated lots of this as part of the patch-submission process. It’s tedious both for me and for the patch author if there are style issues that delay a patch and require another review cycle.
• Make sure that the number of comments is appropriate for the code in question. New coders/contributors sometimes have a tendency to over-comment things that are obvious just by reading the code. Experienced contributors sometimes make assumptions that are correct based on experience but should be called out more explicitly in the code.
• Look for appropriate assertions. Assertions are a great form of documentation and runtime checking.
• Look for appropriate logging. In Mozilla we tend to under-log, and I’d like to push especially new code toward more aggressive logging.
• Mostly this is scanning the implementation. If there is complexity (such as threading!), I’ll have to slow down a lot and make sure that each access and state change is properly synchronized.

Re-read the Specification

If there is a specification, I’ll briefly re-read it to make sure that it was covered by the code I just finished reading.

Mechanics

Currently, I primarily do reviews in the bugzilla “edit” interface, with the “edit attachment as comment” option. Splinter is confusing and useless to me, and review-board doesn’t seem to be ready for prime-time.

For long or complex reviews, I will sometimes copy and quote the patch in emacs and paste or attach it to bugzilla when I’m finished.

In some cases I will cut off a review after one of the earlier phases: if I have questions about the general approach, the design, or the API surface, I will often try to clarify those questions before proceeding with the rest of the review.

There’s an interesting thread in mozilla.dev.planning about whether it is discouraging to new contributors to mark “review-” on a patch, and whether there are less-painful ways of indicating that a patch needs work without making them feel discouraged. My current practice is to mark r- in all cases where a patch needs to be revised, but to thank contributors for their effort so that they are still appreciated and to be as specific as possible about required changes while avoiding any words that could be perceived as an insult.

If I haven’t worked with a coder (paid or volunteer) in the past, I will typically always ask them to submit an updated patch with any changes for re-review. This allows me to make sure that the changes were completed properly and didn’t introduce any new problems. After I gain some experience, I will often trust people to make necessary changes and simply mark “r+ with review comments fixed”.

http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2014-10-22/how-i-do-code-reviews-at-mozilla/

I get asked a lot how to disable certain buttons in preferences like Make Firefox the default browser or the various buttons in the Startup groupbox. Firefox does have a way to disable these buttons, but it's not very obvious. This post will attempt to remedy that.

These buttons are controlled through preferences that have the text "disable_button" in them. Just changing the preference to true isn't enough, though. The preference has to be locked, either via the CCK2 or AutoConfig. What follows is a mapping of all the preferences to their corresponding buttons.

pref.general.disable_button.default_browser

Advanced->General->Make Firefox the default browser

As a bonus, there's one more preference you can set and lock - pref.downloads.disable_button.edit_actions. It prevents the changing of any actions on the Applications page in preferences.

http://mike.kaply.com/2014/10/22/disabling-buttons-in-preferences/

• 60 changesets
• 135 files changed
• 2926 insertions
• 673 deletions

List of changesets:

http://release.mozilla.org/statistics/34/2014/10/22/fx-34-b1-to-b2.html

The other day when I wrote about Vim and how to get started with it, I got a bit nostalgic with the editors I’ve been using over the years.

Therefore, I thought I’d list the editors I’ve been using over the years. I remember dabbling around with a few and trying to understand them, but this list is made up of editors that I’ve been using extensively:

Allaire HomeSite
Ah, good ol’ HomeSite. You never forget your first real editor that you used for your creations. It was later bought by MacroMedia and then, in 2009, it was retired. Its creator, Nick Bradbury, wrote a bit about that in HomeSite Discontinued. I also sometimes used TopStyle, also created by Nick, as a complement to HomeSite – and that one is actually still alive!
Visual Studio.NET
I was young and I needed the money.
TextMate
After my switch to Mac OS X, I quickly started using TextMate and it was my main editor for a good number of years.
MacVim
When I had used TextMate for a long time, a number of developers told me I should really get into Vim, where MacVim seemed like the most suitable alternative. I tried, really hard, with it for about 6 months; learned a lot, but eventually went back to TextMate.
Sublime Text
Later, along came Sublime Text and seemed to have a lot of nice features and active development, while TextMate had been pretty stale for a long time.
MacVim (again)
And now, as explained in my recent blog post on Vim, I’m back there again.

I also do like to dabble around with various editors, to see what I like, get another perspective on workflow and general inspiration. One thing I’m toying around with there is Atom from GitHub, and I look forward to testing it more as well.

Which editor are you using?

It would be very interesting and great if you’d like to share in the comments which editor you are using, and why you prefer it! Or with which editor you started your developer career!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robertnyman/~3/0L2t0GdINh4/

http://featherweightmusings.blogspot.com/2014/10/thoughts-on-numeric-types.html

The Status of Math in Open Access

This week, October 20–26, 2014, held the Open Access Week (see the announcement) and will end with Mozilla Festival that has a awesome science track. This post has some thoughts about math and open access and this two events.

Leia mais...

http://blog.rgaiacs.com/2014/10/22/oa_math.html

I’ve always loved that book or in fact any of Douglas Adams books as they made me laugh while reading for the first time. And like the ending of that series it always seemed a good way to start a ending. This is only the 3rd real job I’ve ever had and they’ve all ended with that as the subject line, so by now you all know where this is going.

The last 3 years 9 months and 21 days have been the best of my adult working life. Mozilla has been more than a job, more than a career. It was a home. The opportunity to apply ones talent in conjunction with values and mission is a gift. It’s a dream state, even on bad days, that I gladly would have remained a slumberer in. The Community of Mozilla is a powerful and wonderful uniqueness that embodies the core of what it means to be Open, and if we ever lose that we’ve lost a precious gem.

I hope to work with many of you again at some future time. If we cross paths somewhere I’d happily lift a libation in remembrance.

With that I shall end with one of my favorite bits of poetry:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

/Curtis

https://spartiates.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/thanks-for-all-the-fish/

NOTE: This is a personal post, so if these sort of things do not interest you please feel free to disregard.

Yesterday I drove from Seattle to Missoula to visit my mother and help her sort out her health issues. I left later than usual, but with the drive time reduced by an hour compared to Portland combined with the relatively straight and boring I-90 I made it to Missoula with energy to spare (which also might have been why I was up far later than my arrival time).

The purpose of my visit is to visit my mother, show that I still care about my family, and help her sort out her medical issues (she’s currently going through her third round of cancer). When I arrived last night around 2300 I didn’t get a very good look at her. She had stayed awake past her normal 2000 time to await my arrival and greet me. Last night was relatively uneventful besides my restful sleep. She showed me to the apartment’s single bedroom. Each surface was meticulously cleaned, although none of the multitude of tchotchkes or personal accessories were organized or put away. While using the bathroom I noticed there was a small mop and bucket. Normally I wouldn’t think much of it, but in previous weeks my sister told me that my mother had given herself a panic attack making sure the apartment was spotless for my arrival. Unfortunately my trip over was waylaid for a few weeks, so I hope that she hasn’t been in such a state the whole time.

Last year I sent her an air purifier to remove all the pet danger from the air, and although she couldn’t figure out what it was or its purpose, thankfully she had finally figured it out and was using it. As a result the air was much cleaner and her phlegm-laden smoker’s cough was slightly better than last time I visited.

This morning I woke up later because I also fell asleep quite late into the morning combined with the timezone change. She has a few friends here in Missoula who (as far as I can tell) provide her with some company and source of gossip and usefulness. when I emerged from my room this morning I found her on the phone with one such friend. I didn’t get much from the conversation, but apparently the daily phone calls are a routine for her. That’s good.

What I really didn’t like though was the television. During the day it was a large part of her unchanging environment. Equipped with a “digital cable” box, this tube never showed anything besides Informative Murder Porn. Likewise, the bookshelves were chocked full of James Patterson books, promising more tripe romance and novelized informative murder porn. Although I fear that it’s rotting her brain I refrained from commenting about it.

After my emergence this morning we finally got a good look at each other. She finally noticed my attempt at growing a beard and I finally noticed her emaciation. Her weight is below 100lb now, and she looks positively skeletal. It’s not a pretty sight. It appears she attempted to dye her hair recently, but even with that effort it’s resisted, instead opting for a grey and wispy appearance. I offered to pick her up a meal with my lunch, but she refused saying that she already had breakfast.

We talked for a while about how she’s been. Besides the new medical situation nothing ever seems to change with her. She remains cloistered in her dark, smoke-smelling apartment with nothing to keep her company save her pets, her informative murder porn, and trashy novels. She hasn’t expressed any dissatisfaction with the situation, so perhaps she enjoys it. I haven’t asked, and haven’t decided if it’s appropriate to ask yet. Perhaps it’s imposing my values on her to think that she would be unhappy with this bountiful life she’s living.

This morning we talked about her medical situation. The gist of the situation is that she believes that she’s been caught up in a catch-22 with a set of doctors, each waiting to hear from another before proceeding to make a diagnosis and start a treatment. I asked her about what she knows (red blood cell count is down), and what kind of treatment she was currently undergoing. The answer was no treatment, so I continued by asking which doctor’s she’s seen and what their next steps would be (or what they’re waiting on). I got quite a few answers about quite a few doctors, and was unfortunately unable to follow most of it. I asked her to write a list of doctors down, along with what she thinks they’re waiting on and the last time they’ve been in contact. Hopefully when I get home this evening I can help untangle this and get her the treatment she needs. She didn’t seem particularly worried about things, which frustrated me. The scenario in front of me was her off-the-cuff attitude about it combined with the television showing an emotionally charged lady with a bloody knife crumpled into a heap on the ground, the police intervening to save the day and arrest the paedophile, had caused me to want to ragequit and give her some time to compile the list of doctors. I do not have much hope of returning home this evening to any list.

This afternoon, as usual for my Missoula visits, I’ve holed up at The Break coffee shop. It’s an old standby for spending uninterrupted time on my laptop to get a little work done. It’s also conveniently located far away from that apartment, and near the other goodness of downtown Missoula. The espresso might have been burnt, but the well worn tables, music reminiscent of my high school days in Missoula, and mixed client`ele lead to a very pleasing atmosphere. As I sit at my stained and worn coffee table typing away at my laptop I can see a young man in a cowboy hat and vest conversing with a friend in a denim jacket over a cup of joe, a dreadlocked young lady enjoying an iced coffee alone, equipped with Macbook and textbooks. Various others including a suited businessman, and a few white collar workers taking a lunch break are around. The bright but persistently drizzling conditions outside add to the hearth-like atmosphere of the shop. This place is going to get sick of me before the week is out.

This afternoon I’m going to attempt to do a bit do a bit of work and get in contact with my father and sister for their obligatory visits. I hope that I can return to my mother’s place and provide some sort of assistance besides moral support.

I’ll be in Missoula until Thursday evening.

http://bke.ro/?p=404

I would guess many people would react to this title like what on earth is she talking about? Design my life - what does that even mean? Many people I coach and work with have not thought about their life’s design - meaning the focused work you do, is it in support of your values and vision? the people you surround yourself with - do they inspire and motivate you? the physical space you live in - does it give you energy?  

Your life design includes more than your career. I invite my clients to think beyond what's on paper. Your career is your role, salary, title, industry company. I’m asking you also think of -  who you will be surrounded with, where it might take you beyond the role right now, how it will honour or not honour your values and how it will fit with your vision for your life.

If we jump mindlessly from one opportunity to the next - even if they are great opportunities on the surface eg more money, bigger title etc it can cost us in our personal lives in ways we may not consider. Arianna Huffington recently wrote about this in her book Thrive, “Our relentless pursuit of the two traditional metrics of success - money and power - has led to an epidemic of burnout and stress-related illnesses, and an erosion in the quality of our relationships, family life, and, ironically, our careers”. In addition to this sentiment, everyone’s heard repeated stories of those on their deathbed who never regret not having worked more or harder - what they always say is they wished they'd spent more time with people they loved or doing things that inspire and nurture. These are our regrets. So how do you want to design your life with no regrets in mind?

Here are my 3 tips on designing which I hope inspires you to re-create your designed life:

1. Know your values and how you want to honour them

2. Define your vision if not for 5 years at least for the next year - what are the big impressions you want to leave

3. Who are your stakeholders (the people that matter to you) and how will you honour them

http://michalberman.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/10/how-have-you-designed-your-life.html

It’s the Mozilla Festival in London this weekend. It’s sold out, so you’ll have to beg, borrow or steal a ticket! This will will be my fourth, and third as a paid contributor (i.e. Mozilla employee).

Here’s my tips for getting the most of it.

1. Attend the whole thing

There’s always the temptation with multi-day events not to go to each of the days. It’s easy to slip off into the city – especially if it’s one you haven’t been to before. However, that would a real shame as there’s so much to do and see at MozFest. Plus, you really should have booked a few days either side to chill out.

2. Sample everything

Some tracks will grab you more than others. However, with nine floors and multiple sessions happening at the same time, there’s always going to be something to keep you entertained. Feel free to vote with your feet if you’re not getting maximum value from a session – and drop into something you don’t necessarily know a lot about!

3. Drink lots

Not alcohol or coffee – although there’ll be plenty of that on offer! I mean fluids that will rehydrate you. At the Mozilla Summit at the end of last year we were all given rehydration powder along with a Camelbak refillable bottle. This was the perfect combination and I urge you to bring something similar. Pro tip: if you can’t find the powder (it’s harder to come by in the UK) just put a slice of lemon in the bottom of the bottle to keep it tasting fresh all day!

4. Introduce yourself to people

The chances are that you don’t know all 1,600 people who have tickets for MozFest. I know I don’t! You should feel encouraged to go up and introduce yourself to people who look lost, bewildered, or at a loose end. Sample phrases that seem to work well:

• “Wow, it’s pretty crazy, eh?”
• “Hi! Which session have you just been to?”
• “Is this your first MozFest?”

5. Take time out

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, so feel free to find a corner, put your headphones on and zone out for a while. You’ll see plenty of people doing this – on all floors! Pace yourself – it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

6. Wear comfortable shoes/clothing

There are lifts at the venue but, as you can imagine, with so many people there they get full quickly. As a result there’ll be plenty of walking up and down stairs. Wear your most comfortable pair of shoes and clothing that’ll still look good when you’re a sticky mess.

7. Expect tech fails

I’ve been to a lot of events and at every single one, whether because of a technical problem or human error, there’s been a tech fail. Expect it! Embrace it. The wifi is pretty good, but mobile phone coverage is poor. Plan accordingly and have a backup option.

8. Ask questions

With so many people coming from so many backgrounds and disciplines, it’s difficult to know the terminology involved. If someone ‘drops a jargon bomb’ then you should call them out on it. If you don’t know what they mean, then the chances are others won’t know either. And if you’re the one doing the explaining, be aware that others may not share your context.

9. Come equipped

Your mileage may vary, but I’d suggest the following:

• Bag
• Laptop
• Mobile phone and/or tablet
• Pen
• Notepad
• Multi-gang extension lead
• Charging cables
• Headphones
• Snacks (e.g. granola bars)
• Refillable water bottle

I’d suggest a backpack as something over one shoulder might eventually cause pain. You might also want to put a cloth bag inside the bag you’re carrying in case you pick up extra stuff.

10. Build (and network!)

MozFest is a huge opportunity to meet and co-create stuff with exceptionally talented and enthusiastic people. So get involved! Bring your skills and lend a hand in whatever’s being built. If nothing else, you can take photos and help document the festival.

The strapline of MozFest is ‘arrive with an idea, leave with a community’. Unlike some conferences that have subtitles that, frankly, bear no relation to what actually happens, this one is dead on. You’ll want to keep in touch with people, so in addition to the stuff listed above you might want to bring business cards. Far from being a 20th century thing, I’ve found them much more useful than just writing on a scrap of paper or exchanging Twitter usernames.

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, just my top tips. But I’d be very interested to hear your advice to newbies if you’re a MozFest veteran! Leave a comment below.

Image CC BY-SA Alan Levine

Update: my colleague Kay Thaney has a great list of blighty sights that you should check out too!

http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2014/10/21/mozfest-survival/

There are many wiser than me that have offered knowing yourself as a valuable pursuit that brings great rewards.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes on why to do this:

• “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark Twain

• "If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."  Sun Tzu

• “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” – Lucille Ball

• “The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.” – Cicero

This is how I invest in knowing myself - I hope it inspires you to create your own practice

1. I spend time understanding my motivations, values in action or inaction, and my triggers. I leverage my coach to deconstruct situations that were particularly difficult or rewarding, where I’m overwhelmed by emotion and don’t feel I can think rationally - I check in to get crystal clear on what is going on, how am I feeling, what was the trigger(s) and how will I be at choice in action going forward.
2. I challenge myself in areas I want to understand more about myself by reading, going to lectures, sharing honestly with leanred or experienced friends.
3. I keep a daily journal - particularly around areas in my life I want to change or improve like being on time and creating sufficient time in my day for reflection. I’ve long run my calendar to ‘maximize time and service’ i.e. every available minute is in meetings, working on a project, etc. This is not only un-sustainable for me, it doesn’t leave me any room for the unexpected and more importantly an opportunity to reflect on what may have just happened or prepare for what or who I may be seeing next. This is not fair to me nor to the people I work with.

http://michalberman.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/10/what-do-you-want-for-you-life-knowing-oneself.html