A little bit about me

It has just dawned on me that I've not written anything about myself yet, so without further ado...

My name is Desmond Elliott, I am 22 years old. I am an undergraduate student at The University of Edinburgh studying for a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science - I have just finished the 3rd year of this 4 year degree.

I work part-time for Apple as a Campus Rep during term-time.

I have been using Apple Macs since OS X.1 in Spring 2002. My first Mac was an iMac G4 700 and I still use it (it runs Ubuntu these days). My main machine is an iBook G4 1.33 and that is what I will probably be using for Camino development this summer. I plan to buy a Mac Pro at the end of the summer with the money that I will hopefully earn from this summer.

My interests include music - I read several music review sites everyday; football - very excited about the prospect of being able to watch the World Cup; cricket - I play for my school team; cookery - it's a great way to unwind at the end of the day; and art - I studied a course in Art History in 2001 and it has become a personal interest.

MacDev link (will hopefully generate more activity on the brainstorming front!)

Giles Turnbull at MacDevCentre has linked to my blog and my calls to the community.

It's great to see that people are taking notice of the work that we are planning to do to the Camino browser this summer. Hopefully his link will generate more discussion activity on MozillaZine and on the mailing-list.

Thanks to Chris Lawson for noticing this, it seems like I will have to add soo many more sites to my daily visit routine.

First communication with my Mentor

I spoke with my Mentor for the first time today. He informed me that he was really really busy last week and was away at the weekend, which helped allay my fears. He has kindly allowed me to transcribe our conversations for purposes of record keeping when it comes to writing evaluations on the condition that I let him see what I am going to blog before I post it.

We spoke about the number of clocked hours Mike expected me to do, or when he needed me to be available to speak with? He told me that he didn't need or expect me to take a 9 - 5 approach to this position. Mike agreed with me that we should arrange a weekly check-in day - he will get back to me as to when is suitable.

We spoke about how Mike would be judging my performance when my interim and final evalutions are due. Mike suggested that we use the Project Schedule in my proposal and adjust it as necessary as the summer progresses.

I have been looking into the possibilty of interning at MoFo CA. Mike has suggested that I get in touch with Josh Aas to see what can be done. He thinks that it'd be a fantastic thing to do if I get the chance.

Mike suggested that when we reach week 4 of my schedule that we set more specific milestones so we can get an accurate picture of my progress. He seems to be pleased that I have taken the initiative and got in touch with the community about what they would like to see happen with tabbed-browsing.

I asked Mike if he was alright with my taking on summer work alongside SoC. He said that as long as I was on-top of my SoC work then he didn't have a problem with it and it wasn't as if he could stop me.

Mike offered me his instant messenger details and his work e-mail address for more direct contact than the one he uses for BugZilla and also told me that I should feel free to get in touch with him at any time. He also pointed out that #camino and #developers would be great resources to use when he is not around.

A different call to the same community (2nd attempt)

(My last post may have broken the Camino Contributor's Blog Aggregator, hopefully it will not break it this time and this can save Nate Weaver some debugging time! The previous post which contained practically the same content except for what is within these parenthesis has now been deleted.)

Smokey Ardisson has suggested that I post my call to the community to the Camino mailing-list aswell as the forum because they cater for different kinds of user.

You (I) can keep track of the mailing-list discussion here

A call to the community

This morning I posted a thread to the Camino MozillaZine discussion forum to call for as many wild, innovative, and interesting features as possible that could be included in my work.

I hope that some of the responses will take into account my proposal and suggest extra features that could be bolted on, or that some of the responses may provide some extra work for me that could really enhance a users' experience.

I have now been linked to at the Camino Contributor's Blogs, at least 6 hours ago ;-)

Congratulations!

Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 00:22:25 -0700 [24/05/06 08:22:25 AM BST]
From: soc2006support@google.com
Subject: Congratulations!

Dear Applicant,

Congratulations! This email is being sent to inform you that your
application was accepted to take part in the Summer of Code. Please
check your student home page in the SoC web app at
http://code.google.com/soc/student_home.html to determine which of
your applications was accepted.

Over the next few days, you will be added to a special members only
Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/Summer-Accepted-2006)
that will be Google's main way of interacting with you. On this list,
you will receive important information about the program including
information surrounding payment. The list will also function as a
discussion list amongst the students. Mentors will not be present on
this list, but Google personnel will be to make sure you can get any
questions you have addressed.

You should also get into the habit of visiting your Summer of Code
page on a semi-regular basis, as we will track status, payments,
paperwork and take interim and final surveys from this page.

Your mentoring organization will likely also set up similar lists for
you and your cohorts so that they may interact with you on your
project. You should not wait for them, please feel free to contact
them and let them know you are ready to start developing open source
software with them.

If you have questions surrounding payment, please wait until you see a
message from Leslie Hawthorn on the Summer-Accepted-2006 Google Group
detailing what we will need from you. This will take a few days as we
button up the Summer of Code Web Application and make sure all the
students are properly assigned to the proper groups.

If you cannot for some reason take part, please email us at
soc2006support@google.com as soon as possible so that we can allocate
your slot to another student.

Other questions and concerns should be send to soc2006support@google.com

Thanks for taking part; we're very excited to see what the Summer will bring!

Congratulations once again,

The Summer of Code Progam Administration Team