This week I spent a considerable amount of time working on a piece of code for an upcoming Processing.js workshop.  I wanted to re-purpose a jQuery plugin for accessing and displaying a live Twitter feed so that it could be used in Processing code.  I got it working pretty…

In a little less than two weeks, we're going to be releasing Popcorn.js version 1.0.  Our team is pretty excited, not least because we'll be doing the release at the Mozilla Media Festival in London.  We're also excited because getting to 1.0 is a really big deal,…

My youngest daughter wanted to make "Property Pie."  That is, a pie containing all the different fruit that grows wild on our property and in our woods; this includes wild raspberries, apples, wild strawberries, and elderberries.  Obviously getting all of these ripe at the same time is impossible,…

I sent an email to some friends the other day, describing an idea I'd had.  I thought I'd blog about it, too, since you, dear reader, will likely have ways to improve it.  My idea is this: an index, like the DOW or S&P 500 that provides a…

Yesterday we shipped Processing.js 1.3.5.  This release was mostly devoid of new code, and instead focused on fixing various issues that came-up in our 1.3.0 release.  By the time we finished fixing the "few" things we'd found wrong with 1.3.0, we…

I've written previously about Webkinz, the toys and the game, and the experience of our children with both.  Recently, my youngest daughter came to my wife and me with a simple question: "How do I stop my Webkinz account?"  She doesn't play the game, but remains very connected…

This week my students have to submit their first deliverable for the Mozilla Open Source class at Seneca.  I try to practice what I preach, so today I sat down and tried something something similar in size to what they are doing. The other day I had had an idea…

I got a great question this morning on irc.  A student in my Mozilla Open Source course wanted to know exactly what the 0.1 release, due this Thursday, should include.  I purposely leave the requirements vague for a number of reasons: 1) each project is so, so different that…

First, an apology.  I have taken an unintended holiday from blogging.  There are various reasons: I have converted my writing-as-blog time to writing-as-programmer, and written more and better code than at any time in my career (I'll talk about these another time); I have been surprisingly affected by the loss…

UPDATE: the patch has landed, and nightly builds now get put posted here beside the Firefox nightly builds. One of the tools I use on a daily basis is the SpiderMonkey JavaScript Shell.  "But Dave," you say, "I also use SpiderMonkey every day...in Firefox!"  Right,…