The wine is not sacred.  It merely colours.  The bread is not sacred.  It will leave as we leave.  Rather, the bread and wine create the possibility of a gathering around the table.  The moment spent around the table together, this is sacred.…

I came across a couple of bugs today in the Thunderbird code that need a fix, and they are both easy fixes for a student looking for contribution.  Basically, in DXR I have a C++ parser to create HTML files with markup versions of source code.  My parser chokes on…

Today I learned something new.  Last night I integrated callgraph into dxr (I'll blog about that later, once I rebuild dxr indices for mozilla-central and comm-central), and that meant that I needed to be able to run a Treehydra script in addition to my existing Dehydra one.  Dehydra scripts are…

I've been down and out with FSOSS followed by flu, so haven't blogged this yet.  But I wanted to add my voice to the others who have already written about Mozilla's new Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge.  As Frank Hecker writes, We invite you to help turn the open Web…

Since I've got some time to kill here while I wait for just about every piece of software I need on my box to rebuild, I thought I'd reflect on what I've been doing the past few evenings.  I want to try and show what I mean by "contribution&…

My friend Mike Hoye has done something important for the web: It’s small, just a start, but the world doesn’t work this way yet and I think a lot more of it should. PatchCulture.org is live. Might work, might not. I’m hopeful. This is exciting for…

A number of colleagues have pointed me at Joel Spolsky's latest post, Capstone projects and time management.  In it, Joel argues for the inclusion of real-world projects in computer science programs and laments the near universal dismissal by (top) schools of any grounding in things like version control, debuggers, testing,…

This week there are a whole bunch of open source events in the city, one of which is our own FSOSS.  Over the years Chris and I have been involved in running this and many other tech events at Seneca.  In that time we've had hundreds (literally) of industry and…

The life of a child is full of milestones.  As a parent you are always aware of the progress, or lack thereof, with regard to any of them.  One of the most important lessons I've learned as a parent is that what, how, and when are not something to which…

<@taras> you should blog that < andrew> you should blog more about that project My students have a first release due today by midnight, and all day I've been watching attachments go up on bugs and demos getting posted online.  It's been really cool to watch how…