Friday, October 13, 2006

Hello, hey, hi

It has been almost 2 calendar months since my project with Google/Mozilla finished. I have continued to work on Camino since the end of August.

The scrolling tab bar patch landed on the trunk of the Camino code on 5th October 2006. As a result there have been at least a dozen follow up bugs - some of them are actually bugs, some of them are feature requests, some of them confuse me.

I have no idea when the scrolling tab bar will make it into a public release of Camino - there are words like 'branch', 'Gecko 1.9', '1.2', '1.5', and '2.0' flying around and I don't understand any of it. Your guess is as good as my guess. If you are keen to try out the new tab bar, then this should allow you to.

Clicking on that link comes with the following health warning taken from here:

We make nightly builds for testing only. We write code and post the results right away so people like you can join our testing process and report bugs. You will find bugs, and lots of them. Mozilla might crash on startup. It might delete all your files and cause your computer to burst into flames. Don't bother downloading nightly builds if you're unwilling to put up with problems.
The Summer of Code was a fantastic way to spend my summer. I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in being a software engineer because the experience I gained was really valuable. It has made me want to develop software when I graduate next summer.

The hardest thing about Summer of Code is getting a slot. There are thousands and thousands of people who apply for 600 slots. I spent ages on my application and made a great impression!

The first 4 lines of my dazzling application

I did spent about 2 weeks writing my application. Making sure that I made the most of my limited to Java experience but didn't lie about it; drawing attention to my previous team experience; trying to convince Mozilla that they should choose me out of 100 hopefuls. I bugged the hell out of #camino to make sure that my application might be something that Mike would be interested in working on.

All of that work to make my application great, to open with the benefits to the Molizza Community - bloody hell. This no doubt made it clear to the selectors for Mozilla that I was a student of the highest calibre.

Everybody who knows me will know that the real reason I took part in SoC was so I could get the t-shirt. It is awesome and presented below in 2 snapshots

The t-shirt itself

A rather handsome man modelling the t-shirt

I tried to convince Mike to take a photograph of himslef wearing his t-shirt - he got two, apparently! He hasn't e-mailed me yet so I guess he decided it was a totally naff idea.

There is an opportunity to visit the Google offices in London where Chris DiBona shall be hosting an afternoon for SoC students. While this could be a great networking opportunity, I am not sure if I can afford to go, or whether I have the time. It looks like it will be a 5 hour train journey to London and a 7 hour train journey back to Edinburgh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're at Ed Uni? I've been reading this blog since the beginning and always figured you were in the States!

Desmond Elliott said...

Yes, I am at Edinburgh University in my final year. I guess it is difficult to tell where somebody is from in the world if they only talk about code!