True assholes constantly talk about others behind their back.

True assholes are not honest about what they believe, and avoid any controversy.

True assholes try to blend in by not sticking out too far.

True assholes care more about themselves than they care about you.

True assholes punish you for the favors they do for you.

We call lots of people ‘assholes’, but there’s a difference between someone with poor social skills and an asshole.

A pedant values details and wants to infect you with what they believe is a virtue.

Brutal honesty is practiced by people who value honesty in kind.

These are not true assholes, and they deserve kindness and friendship.

I am truly fortunate to lead an asshole-free life, and I urge you to strive to do the same.

My rain chain at 1/1000 sec, clicky for the set

It rained a lot this weekend, and normally the first rain of the year involves clearing clogged drains from the roof of my flat-topped house.  On Monday morning, I cleared the drain for our rain chain, which led to some fun photography, experimenting with different exposures and compositions. It’s rare to have the rain chain going at full tilt in the middle of the sunny day, and the time change meant that 8 am was tantalizingly close to the “golden hour“.  These have been hectic times for me, so it’s nice to be able to take a break and just fool around with a camera for a while.

AMO is a great site for finding and sharing your favorite Firefox add-ons, but as we like to say, one size definitely doesn’t fit all.  While we made meaningful improvements for the millions of loyal add-ons fanatics out there, it was clear that the tens of thousands of available add-ons were overwhelming for many users new to add-ons.  Enter Rock Your Firefox- a blog we launched last month that tells folks about the great add-ons out there.

Some of you may know Rock Your Firefox as a Facebook application, originaly created by Justin Scott to help add-ons users share their add-ons on Facebook.  While the original Rock Your Firefox has been retired with fond memories, we decided to resurrect and reinvigorate the brand for the new Rock Your Firefox- where we shine the spotlight on a single add-on while telling a compelling story about how an add-on can make your life better.  We’ve made an effort to try and make these stories fun as well; and we’re actively looking for new guest bloggers to help us tell the story of great add-ons.

If you’re reading this, chance are you’re a big add-ons fan, and some of you have wondered about the reason for a new site.  Rest assured that AMO will continue to evolve in useful and delightful ways, and Rock Your Firefox is intended to complement AMO by offering a low impact and easy way to discover add-ons, whether you’re a new user or a seasoned veteran.  Also- since it’s a catchy URL- we hope that you’ll tell interested strangers to check it out, we’ll do the rest with our witty prose and slickly produced videos.

Editor’s note: Patricia Clausnitzer has translated this post into Belorussian!

To get started, install the new Jetpack Extension and restart the browser (this will be the only time you’ll need to restart when doing development).  When Jetpack installs, you’ll be taken to the about:jetpack page, which contains a couple of sample Jetpacks (the name for extensions created with the Jetpack API).

Install some demos and check them out!  For the time being, the experiment is limited to status bar widgets, but I was able to put together a Delicious Notifier Jetpack Feature in less than an hour using simple JQuery, CSS, and html. All I did was install the GMail Notifier widget and pasted it into Bespin, read the 20 lines of code that made it work, and started hacking away to get the information i wanted.  Since I didn’t have to restart and could inspect and debug via Firebug, development was painless.

If you have Jetpack installed, check out my Delicious Notifier, I find it incredibly useful when browsing the web, as the count of saves in Delicious is a great indicator of how interesting a particular page on the internet can be.

As with all experiments, there’s a lot of polishing to do with Jetpack, but we felt that it was true to Mozilla’s values to get this out early and involve the community in determining its future- please let us know what you think!

Seriously.  Think about this- addons.mozilla.org has over 6,000 add-ons and add-on developers.  Our add-ons are created by large corporations as well as people with day jobs.  Our number 1 add-on was created by a hobbyist in his spare time and has been downloaded 40 million times.  Our add-ons can turn Firefox into a kid-friendly browser or a Twitter application.  Like the Renegade Craft Fair, we’ve got an amazing array of stuff but we fall short in one key way- we’re not as fun.  We want to change that- we want to replicate the excitement of finding the unexpected so that our visitors always something they want, even if it’s not something they expect.  We want to make “serendipitous discovery” the way most people interact with AMO.  Any ideas?

The appeal of driving yourself boils down to personal space and freedom.  But nowadays we spent most of our driving going to one of two places, and portable devices allow you to create a personal space virtually anywhere.  While they don’t erect a physical barrier with the outside world, an iPod or Kindle allows its user to effectively shut out the outside world, even in the middle of a crowded train.

Technology has also diminished the significance of physical location; half of Mozilla’s employees are remote and they seem to have no trouble getting as much done as the rest of us.  How long will it be until commuting and travel become obsolete altogether?

For instance, comparing “blond” to “blonde”, it appears that the latter is far more popular:

Another interesting faceoff is “you” and “your” vs “u” and “ur”.   I predict some sort of apocalypse when “u” overtakes “you”.

Individual wall posts are basically throwaway messages, analogous to that whiteboard you had on the door of your dorm room.  Not terribly interesting, but being able to see this data in aggregate is much more interesting, especially since the throwaway nature of these posts means that people write in a way that is most natural to them.

I could imagine this being useful for SEO, creating online ad campaigns, or just general zeitgeist tracking.  For instance, looking at ‘obama’ and ‘mccain’ in Lexicon shows a real dropoff after the election, with McCain all but dying out and Obama maintaining a slow but steady trickle of wall posts.  I imagine we’ll see a spike as we approach the inauguration (yay!).

]]> http://osunick.com/2008/12/29/facebook-lexicon/feed/ 0 http://osunick.com/2008/09/29/no-on-prop-8/ http://osunick.com/2008/09/29/no-on-prop-8/#comments Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:58:52 +0000 osunick http://osunick.com/?p=45 As the election looms, there’s a proposition on the California ballot that’s getting a lot of attention.  Prop 8 is a proposed amendment to the California constitution that strictly defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  Clearly, there’s a lot of hysteria about this proposition but I think I can break down my “no on prop 8″  position.

What Changes:

• Same sex couples will be able to get legal marriage status in California
• Solemnizing authorities who wish to ordain same sex marriages will be allowed to do so
• Providing a legal framework for marriage encourages monogamous long term relationships, which (aside from the public health concerns) is good in terms of providing financially stable households.
• Gay couples win dignity by averting another “Jim Crow” separate-but-equal civil union situation
• Less fraud with partner benefits as California companies can use a state marriage license as proof of eligibility
• Potential economic benefits from offering a limited and in demand resources.  Gay weddings will be the new oil.

What doesn’t change

• Gay couples will continue to be able to adopt in California, but with less uncertainty around guardianship and greater incentives to build a stable household.
• Same sex couples will continue to have healthy, meaningful relationships and choose to live together as they wish.
• Churches will continue to be able to define marriage as they see fit

So for me, the rational argument is that marriage as defined by the state really is a civil union, with no pretext regarding romance between the actual parties.  It really is a declaration of sharing a single household for tax and legal purposes.  The reason why we can’t call it a civil union is because ‘separate but equal’ has never worked out well in reality.  (see Jim Crow for examples)  Even today, there are completely chaste marriages between opposite sex partners because of the benefits that marriage confers.

I have yet to see a rational argument in favor of Prop 8.  I’m not going to argue with you based on faith, but if you’re going to convince me that I’m wrong, you have to present a rational, secular argument for saying “yes”.  A glib argument like “I want to be a Groom, not Partner A” just won’t cut it, nor does the straw man of ‘the intent of marriage is procreation, therefore only people who are capable of reproducing should be able to marry’.  Tell that to the 20% of 40-44 year old married couples who are childless.

Put another way- just like any proposition,  think hard about the impact on yourself and others when deciding your vote.  Even if gay marriage makes you uneasy, does its existence really impact you very much if at all?  On the flip side, people who are already in committed relationships, and their CHILDREN, will be able to enjoy the benefits and incentives that married couples enjoy today.

The engine in all its glory... clicky for a set

Audis have a reputation for stellar design and materials quality, but a less good reputation for overall reliability.  A typical car manufacturer will stop working on an ancillary part like a window switch once the part has proven to be reliable. Not Audi. The 2nd generation Audi A4 had three separate window switch designs during its 3 year model run, to improve the haptic feel of each switch. With each redesign comes an opportunity for new and unseen failures.

We put up with this because when Audis work, the experience is fantastic, and all that work into the tactile aspect of driving really pays off. But don’t buy a used Audi unless you like reading forums and making minor and simple fixes yourself for things like a trunk release.

As our car broke the 65K mile barrier, it was time to think about doing the timing belt.  A timing belt is a toothed rubber belt that connects the top of an engine (the valves that let in air+fuel and let out exhaust) with the bottom (the pistons and crankshaft).  The belt has a finite service life- and if it fails, valves and pistons start trying to occupy the same place. The result would be disastrous and expensive.  Audi recommends the belt get replaced around the 75-85K mark, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Since an independent shop would charge around $1000 for the timing belt replacement, I decided to tackle this myself.  One post on the Audizine.com NorCal forum, and I received a response from a helpful forum member.  For $250 he would do the t-belt if I provided the parts (another $250) and I’d even be able to help out!  The opportunity to have an expert show me how to do a complex maintenance operation was simply too good to pass up, so I drove the 60 miles to Pleasant Hill to do the job.

The job took 5 hours and without the help of ActiveMonkey (who happens to also go by ‘Nick’), it would have been impossible. I also learned a few tricks for dealing with a timing belt- for instance, instead of rotating the engine to Top Dead Center, simply mark the old belt and gears with a sharpie, and transfer the marks to the exact same spots on the new belt.  This saves a step and adds an extra measure of assurance that things are aligned as they should be.

While we were in there, we changed some belts and replaced the water pump.  The car should be good now for another couple of years, and we got to check everything for leaks.  I actually think I could do the job myself now, though perhaps it is for the best that it won’t have to be done for another 70K miles…