Words.

Currently reading:

Do It!
By: Jerry Rubin


Seed Magazine
http://www.seedmagazine.com


Revolution For The Hell of It
By: Abbie Hoffman

Watching:

Ralph Bakshi


Ralph Bakshi & Frank Frazetta

Punk

VDO time

Vid #1.
Adobe's Zoetrope (web time machine).

Vid #2.
The Brain That Changes Itself. BBRRRRAAAINNNSSS.

Nano Wars

Now I'm not one to play games infact I find them a wast of time however this game has put me under a certain spell. Its simple, addictive, fun, and one of the best games I've played in a long time.

I highly recommend Nano Wars to everyone - not just gamers. The fact that I'm writing about a flash game should be enough brain lube for you to give it a try.

Oh and don't worry its not hosted on one of those atrocious games sites.

Minority Report

Check the vid. Some cool some not.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

I lost control again...

We just recently grabbed a Harmony remote for the house. Its a fine device no doubt however there is room for improvement(never happy).

That improvement would come in the form of a QWERTY keyboard embedded in the back of the remote. The keyboard would communicate via Bluetooth to any Bluetooth enabled device (media PC would be ideal). It would really push this already awesome remote into a new realm of dick kicking.

Imagine controlling your media PC via your remote and then flipping it over to type text into a browser, instant message window, chat room, etc. Eliminating the need to have Keyboard next to the couch.

Hell lets turn it up a notch (to a 11) and incorporate a BlackBerry ball type element to the remote thus removing 01000101110101010101000101001010100101010010101001010100101
101010000101111111000010101010100010111010101010100010100101010010101
000101111111000010101010100010111010101010100010100101010010101001011
(digital scratching to halt noise)
These guys have the right idea. Just need a BlackBerry equivalent.

ta|split|bs

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!

Just released a 0.1 version of my ta|split|bs extension. You can check it out at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9471
Core functionality is there. Play with it, write it songs, take it to the park, break it, and then come back and tell me how it all went down. I want feedback. Does it suck? Why does it suck? How can I improve it. You get the idea.

Shotgun How-To:
Open split tab by...
CTRL+COMMAND or Windows key + Right or Left arrows.
or
Right click a link (or anywhere on a page) and select 'Open in Split Tab'.

Once the split tab is open you can drag and drop to your hearts content (links, tabs, pictures, whatever).

To navigate in the left or right contents you must click them, doing so will high light the location bar blue(left) or red(right). So if your url bar is red, whatever you type in there will show up on the right side. You get the idea...

365 Tao

Get on it.
365 Tao

...read some here.

Split it up pt.2

OK so the previous post didn't do a great job illustrating how my extension works. Let me elaborate...

The pane in the right says "Drag Tab Here", which is a tad misleading because you can drag tabs, links, pretty much any element with a src/href attribute. So in the previous posts screen shots I dragged links instead of tabs.

I've made a few minor updates since...

• Split content is only activated/opened/visible by right clicking hyperlinks and selecting 'Open in Split Tab'.


• The opening of new tabs collapses the split content pane. A bug just surfaced while playing around with this. Once a new tab is opened the split content has to be dragged by the grippy back out. Clicking on the grippy does not open it.

I wouldn't recommend using this extension quite yet. Its still pretty awkward to use.
I've checked the source into google code @ http://code.google.com/p/tabsplitter/source/browse/

Split it up

Rummaging through MXR (Mozilla Code) last night, I found it painful navigating multiple documents/tabs/source. So much so that I hacked up a quick extension that enables you to merge/split tabs.

Its very rudimentary at the moment (gimme a break I did this last night), so there are a ton of features, bugs, UI enhancements that need to be made.

For the visual:

Its good for...

• Taking notes from webpages (have google docs open).


• Comparing/viewing source code.


• Looking at pr0n?


• Multiple YouTube vids going.

... anyways you get the idea.

Things to be done:

• When grippy is clicked for the first time it fails to expand, you have to drag it out first then it functions accordingly.


• Change grippy widget.


• Enable navigation in merged tab.


• Add "Open in Split Tab" option in right click options.


• Setup quick toggle keys, so no mouse is needed.


• Add horizontal view (had this going earlier).


• Fix content focus when merged tab is collapsed. Right now if you open up two video streams and collapse one, the collapsed video/audio is still playing (performance issue?).

Shit. Too many to list right now, I'm starving.
The install package(xpi) here.

Full Circle.

Like to read interesting things?

Me too.

The Future of Science is... Art?

From the above article:

"...The fundamental point is that modern science has made little progress toward any unified understanding of everything. Our unknowns have not dramatically receded. In many instances, the opposite has happened, so that our most fundamental sciences are bracketed by utter mystery. It's not that we don't have all the answers. It's that we don't even know the question."

"By taking these artistic explorations seriously, neuroscientists can better understand the holistic properties they are trying to parse. Before you break something apart, it helps to know how it hangs together. In this sense, the arts are an incredibly rich data set, providing science with a glimpse into its blind spots."

Design

Brilliant.
http://www.e-mrak.cz/index.php?lang=cs&page=home

v.03 The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The Good... v.03 is complete.
The Bad... I have to give back the school laptop.
The Ugly... My code.

Contribs:
Helped out Shomar Dejonge with his Litmus project. Gave him some code to login to litmus via JS.
Assisted Simon Jung on his project by running his server code on my home box.

l8r.

(Expect a more detailed post in the following week.)

Signs of Breathing

Arlene Stamp

XPCOM Lab

I just stepped through the XPCOM Lab ever so carefully but still ended up with a broken XPCOM component.

My FirstXpcom.cpp file is a verbatim the one from the wiki (cut n paste action) however it still bunks out at line 26 (in the constructor) with the following error:
/home/cozby/MozillaBuild/mozilla/extensions/firstxpcom/src/FirstXpcom.cpp: In constructor ‘FirstXpcom::FirstXpcom()’:
/home/cozby/MozillaBuild/mozilla/extensions/firstxpcom/src/FirstXpcom.cpp:26: error: no matching function for call to ‘nsString_external::Assign(const char [21])’
../../../dist/include/xpcom/nsStringAPI.h:124: note: candidates are: void nsAString::Assign(const nsAString&)
../../../dist/include/xpcom/nsStringAPI.h:128: note: void nsAString::Assign(const PRUnichar*, PRUint32)
../../../dist/include/xpcom/nsStringAPI.h:132: note: void nsAString::Assign(PRUnichar)
make[2]: *** [FirstXpcom.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/cozby/MozillaBuild/build/extensions/firstxpcom/src'
make[1]: *** [libs] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/cozby/MozillaBuild/build/extensions/firstxpcom'
make: *** [default] Error 2

OK I lied, its slightly different from the wiki, the one on the wiki has a stray 'L' character in the constructor, so I removed that (I did try it with and without the mysterious 'L' though). The busted goods ---> http://pastebin.mozilla.org/244779

Ideas, suggestions, donations?

*UPDATE*
Thanks Dave making it 'AssignLiteral' did the trick.
I screen you screen we all screen for...

Shoot First Ask Questions Later v0.2

Good news, I've been able to login to my OP via JS and establish a session. So now when you login to your favourite OpenID supported site and are redirected for authentication you no longer have to login to your OP because a session was previously established.

Nothing incredibly ground breaking but definitely a big step in the right direction. From this I can now try and capture the redirect and prompt a user from chrome which information they're willing to part with (IE. Email, First/Last name, Address, etc)...

This is currently handled via your OP's website, as shown below.Next I'm going to be making some UI additions to the preferences window to allow for some OpenID settings. Things like your OpenID and the URL along with your username/password to your OpenID provider.

Right now my code only supports one OP (http://www.myopenid.com).

Word.

FSAUCE Round Up

If there was a theme to this years FSOSS I would have to say it was community. All the talks I
attended emphasized how important this element is in creating and sustaining good software.

The first talk I attended was with Jay Goldman and David Crow on Usability and User Experience. I really dug this talk. I've always felt that the UX element in software development is often overlooked in the development process. However I think this is changing, developers and companies are realizing the importance of good functional design and what it could do for them. Their slides on the evolution of the Word toolbar were great, its really no surprise that half the features requested by users already existed for more than one version. Jay and David also touched on the importance of community. Getting feedback from users and involving them in the design process (to a degree) and what great effects this has.

This was the main theme in Beltzner's talk (Product and User Design in Open Communities). Another great talk on design and the involvement of community. I'm not sure if I got this right but I reckon Beltzner said something along the lines of 'its not consistent design thats important but a consistent user experience' and that kicked around in my head for awhile.
I also found it interesting when he spoke on community compromise and how so many projects drive themselves into the ground by not saying 'no'. The options always there, you don't always have to do what the community wants and that most of these battles are a result of people becoming emotionally invested in their ideas.

The next talk I hit was the Facebook talk. Now I was really keen on hearing what these chaps had to say about building on FB and using it as platform, etc. Unfortunately thats not what we got. Instead we got a pseudo technical talk on scaling 1000's of servers using their Thrift framework. This stuffs interesting but not really applicable to me. I'm not even on one server let alone a thousand servers. I did come out appreciating the FB family a little more though, finding out that a lot of their stuff is under the BSD license and how 'open' conscious they were was a nice surprise (I always thought they were evil - still kinda do).

Overall I had a great time, kudos to Dave, Chris, Cathy, and all the Hulka Maniacs involved in executing such a massive gig so smoothly.

What a mess...

OpenID is a mess! Half of the supposed OpenID supported sites are busted. I've been going to OiD sites and monitoring the Request/Response conversation and I can barely get into half of the sites I've tried, or when I do get authenticated they make me register an account with them and associate my OiD with the account!?# WTF! What's the point of this thing? It so far has done nothing helpful, if anything it has lengthened the login process. I've only got into one site smoothly (toodledo.com) and that was only with my myopenid.com account and not my Sxipper account?

I wrote a little httpObserver to monitor what kind of info is being passed to and from my OP and the site I'm trying to login to. Every thing works accept for obtaining the responseStatus. I have no clue why, its getting me twisted. I need this info to look out for authentication responses. Below is some traffic dump (for the curious).


Topic:http-on-modify-requestURI:https://www.mixx.com/login Req.Method:POST
Status Code:0
Topic:http-on-modify-requestURI:http://www.myopenid.com/server?openid.mode=checkid_setup&openid.return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixx.com%2Fopenid_login%3Fopen_id_complete%3D1%26nonce%3Dv3igUyzl%26nonce%3Dv3igUyzl&openid.trust_root=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixx.com%2F&openid.identity=http%3A%2F%2Fwugunz.myopenid.com%2F&openid.assoc_handle=%7BHMAC-SHA1%7D%7B470bb41e%7D%7Bmp0eyQ%3D%3D%7D Req.Method:GET
Status Code:0
Topic:http-on-modify-requestURI:https://www.myopenid.com/trust?request_id=0ab21b60 Req.Method:GET
Status Code:0
Topic:http-on-modify-requestURI:https://www.myopenid.com/trust_submit Req.Method:POST
Status Code:0
Topic:http-on-modify-requestURI:https://www.mixx.com/openid_login?open_id_complete=1&nonce=v3igUyzl&nonce=v3igUyzl&openid.assoc_handle=%7BHMAC-SHA1%7D%7B470bb41e%7D%7Bmp0eyQ%3D%3D%7D&openid.identity=http%3A%2F%2Fwugunz.myopenid.com%2F&openid.mode=id_res&openid.op_endpoint=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.myopenid.com%2Fserver&openid.response_nonce=2007-10-23T00%3A01%3A53ZvtuXjA&openid.return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixx.com%2Fopenid_login%3Fopen_id_complete%3D1%26nonce%3Dv3igUyzl%26nonce%3Dv3igUyzl&openid.sig=4i3IeUkNkcyaw9VweBkgCV8He%2Bk%3D&openid.signed=assoc_handle%2Cidentity%2Cmode%2Cop_endpoint%2Cresponse_nonce%2Creturn_to%2Csigned Req.Method:GET
Status Code:0

Back to work, more constructive posts will follow... I hope. I needed to vent.

OpenID[ea]

Change of plans.
My previous idea of capturing OpenID request by making the browser an OP is out of the question. Its just not possible, the protocol doesn't allow for it (what if you're behind a router?)

Right.

So now the deal is I'm going to make an extension that acts as an OP manager and a liaison between the user and their OPs. Getting around the current authentication paradigm OpenID poses - authentication via redirection. My efforts are to push the authentication process client side. I also have to keep this as light weight and seemless as possible, as to not suggest to users that this is an external extension (even though it is) but instead give the illusion that its native to the browsers functionality.

You might be thinking well this is already done. Well yes and no, Sxipper does a good job of this but it also does 23809849209832 other things and is UI intensive (you should try it out its pretty nifty) and Beltzner pointed me to an extension called Appalachian that handles OP managing but still suffers from the authentication via redirection issue. That leaves some middle ground for this extension. I'll be posting whatever developments I make. At the moment I'm combing through Sxipper and Appalachian code to get and idea of how things are done.

Over'n out.

Project Goods

Alright so I've been chipping away at this OpenID thing and I think I know how all this voodoo works.

I could give you the lengthy detailed version of how OpenID works but I'm hungry, so this will be brief like underwear.

A user goes to ilovelemurs.com and is asked to sign in with their OpenID, which is a URI that resembles something like example.com. example.com is any site that acts as an Identity Provider(it doesn't have to be, but I'm not getting into that). ilovelemurs.com then verifies that the user does indeed belong to/owns example.com and lets you in. I will post a purrrty diagram and a more detailed version of how this works later.

What I have to do is make Firefox act/function like example.com (to my knowledge).
I have to somehow make the browser handle the authentication request from consumer sites (sites that support OpenID) and chop out that middle man.


This will be tricky, as I have to somehow make the browser handle GET/POST request like a web server. In-fact the only way I know how to achieve this, is to actually embed a web server into my extension (I'm not even sure if thats possible for security reason).
I'm eyeing this sweet little 4k java web server I found here for the job. If I can get this thing going and implement single user OpenID support on top of it, then I'm rollin'. If for reasons I can't go this route, well then I'm not sure how I can do this? Suggestions?