The roads I take...

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 34/2012 (August 20 - 26, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Kept track of crash/hang stats regarding the Flash 11.4 release - looks like they improved on crashes somewhat, but not too much on hangs.
  Cared that another patch for correlation versions makes it into Socorro for release week.
  Stayed in the loop on getting B2G crash reporting up - basic Socorro support now landed, but channel/symbol corrections are needed to improve on that.
  Converted my device crash report to using the DB instead of CSVs, that means that now all my reports feed from PostgreSQL and are off the CSVs.
  Kept track of trunk crash regressions so we hopefully don't carry them into Aurora.
  Poked people about high-profile crashes in Firefox 15 for Android and managed to get them to push the fix into the last beta.
  Also poked people about another Android crash, which isn't new for 15, though, and will only be fixed in 16.
  Brought Naoki up to speed on B2G crash reporting and mobile crash developments in his absence.
  As usual, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed, and made sure my custom reports keep working well.
• German L10n:
  Reviewed the rest of L10n work for Firefox 16.
  Also brought core and SeaMonkey into sync with trunk in preparation of the uplift of 17 to Aurora.
• SeaMonkey:
  Tested the BananaBread demos in SeaMonkey and filed a bug on things not working there yet.
• Themes:
  Finished and uploaded the 2.12 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek, matching the Mozilla 15 train, waiting on AMO approval now.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  BananaBread demo and Linux, GitHub issue tracker vs. Bugzilla, WebRTC crash, etc.

The Firefox 15 releases we just shipped for desktop systems and Android (phones plus tablets!) are surely worth checking out - fewer add-on memory leaks, improved developer tools, Android tablet support and more are really nice highlights of this update.
What thrills me most though is that web technology is improving to make a lot of things possible in a website or web app that almost everyone thought to be impossible previously. And there are demo games to showcase those features, like BrowserQuest, which works nicely on desktop as well as mobile devices, and - hold your breath - a first-person shooter running smoothly in the browser! See Lawrence's blog post for more about that "BananaBread" demo, and a link to test it yourself (for the latter, you'll need Firefox 15 or newer, on Linux possibly even Firefox 16).

Seeing that in action, I have no doubts any more that the web can be a great platform even for gaming (and all that without OS boundaries mattering).

Many days I wake up and after a few minutes I realize there's a song in my head, often I don't get that one out for the rest of the day. In many cases, that's a song I heard the day before, or I've been singing in the Karaoke bar that night. In some cases, it's a song that I haven't heard for ages (like "Crash! Boom! Bang!" by Roxette some time a few weeks ago), or even one where it takes me some time to figure out what song it is at all (like the one spinning around in my mind today, I still wonder what it is, even though I'm sure I know it).

I'm particularly proud if what sticks that much is a song I've written myself (recently had that with one called "Where I Belong"). After all, if it has qualities to hold on to my (probably subconscious) mind like that, it's likely not that bad a song after all.

Of course that's different from song even coming to me while dreaming - I have written at least one or two songs where major parts of them were there in my last dream before waking up, and I needed to race to write something of them down to not lose them on the way of fully waking up. That's sometimes the tricky part - making sure that an inspiration from a dream makes it over into the waking world.
Interestingly, with those songs in my head, they're usually not there in a dream but manifest themselves only after being fully awake. (Still fascinating to me how our minds work, and how little we know about it on a really scientific level.)

I wonder if I'll find out what song this is that I have wandering around in my head today - I know it's Country Music, multiple voices with female lead, fast and energetic... Well, I hear that part of the song in my mind repeatedly, I just don't remember what the actual song is...

And as long as I don't go and listen to such a song that occupies my thoughts, it usually holds a pretty tight grab on it...

Update: I guess "Wanna Take You Home" by Gloriana is reasonably near to what spooks me today, and that makes sense as I just bought that CD recently.

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 33/2012 (August 13 - 19, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Followed Adobe ramp up the pace of 11.4 beta beta releases towards the final release of this version.
  Discussed bsmedberg's proposal to revamp hang reporting.
  Kept a closer eye on mobile stability while Naoki is away.
  Did some preliminary testing of a staged version of Socorro with rapid beta / by-build reporting support.
  Also there, tested additional fields appearing in UI for single crash reports.
  Replaced clunky handling of throttling in my explosiveness reports.
  Made some of the data gathering for my reports automatically know about new versions by just querying Socorro data and made crashes per build recognize ESR.
  As usual, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed, and made sure my custom reports keep working well.
• comm-central build system:
  Reviewed some ports of build system improvements.
• German L10n:
  Reviewed some L10n work on Mozilla-16-cycle builds of Thunderbird, Firefox for Android and Firefox for desktop.
• Themes:
  More work on the 2.12 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek, matching the Mozilla 15 train.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  BananaBread demo, Thunderbird crashes, DB sync issues, Google suggest on Android and privacy, etc.

If you have Flash 11.3 running, please update to the just-released 11.4 version as soon as possible (Adobe should send the update your way anyhow). We're trying to help Adobe on improving their plugin on the basis of the newest release, which is that one now - and they tell us there should be some improvements in this one already. Also, if you have reproducible cases of the plugin crashing or freezing/hanging, please file reports in Bugzilla against the Plugins product and "Flash (Adobe)" component and CC me or someone else from the stability team so we can track this!

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 32/2012 (August 6 - 12, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Flash continues to be a huge stability topic, followed new updates of 11.3 as well as the 11.4 beta versions, where Adobe fixed a high-ranking crash we saw in an earlier beta.
  In all that Flash talk, I found a slight detection issue in Socorro and created a patch to fix it.
  An even larger topic in that week was a crash that happened to people with Google as a homepage, related to their sports game doodles to celebrate some large sporting event on the UK's capital. I'm planning a separate post on this issue, but the relevant bug was found to have security implications, so I'll wait until we have a release out with the fix and the bug becomes public.
  I also stayed in contact with the Socorro team while they were working with IT to get their staging environment fixed and to push support for rapid betas to it.
  Together with Naoki, I investigated a rising mobile crash with quite old Android versions (Froyo).
  Weighed into design discussions of the B2G first run experience to make sure we include an info and opt-out for crash reporting.
  Coming out of those discussions, and talking to Ted about bandwidth concerns, I filed a bug on compressing reports based on his suggestions.
  Did some small updates to my pretty rough overview page for my custom reports.
  Also added a column with other affected versions to the Flash version topcrash report and made display of hang pair details a bit nicer.
  Had some conversations with aphadke on crash summary data.
  As usual, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed, and made sure my custom reports keep working well.
• Themes:
  While the 2.11 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek were made public on AMO, worked on the first parts for the 2.12 versions matching the Mozilla 15 train.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  B2G and FTP, Google suggest on Android and privacy, packaged apps and developer experience, bug fix verifications, build system changes and comm-central, etc.

This update is late again, as I was limited in work time at the start of the week due to a family birthday party.
That said, with the ongoing focus on Flash stability and the Google doodle issue, the last week was quite busy and intense in Firefox stability matters. It looks like we are making progress on all fronts, though, so I'm definitely positive that things will get better in the long run.
And in other news, I now know that I'll attend MozCamp Europe in Warsaw. Hope to meet many Mozillians there!

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 31/2012 (July 30 - August 5, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Followed the developments of getting daily jobs running in a stable fashion again on Socorro and trying to get stage to work reliably, as that now blocks shipping any new code to production.
  Flash 11.3 is still a hot topic, though the recent update improved the situation somewhat. This series stays more unstable than 11.2 by a significant factor, though.
  Weighed into the discussion of doing an out-of-plan Firefox update on Android because of a high-visibility crash on Jelly Bean.
  Kept track of the B2G crash reporting story in Bugzilla, GitHub, email and IRC discussions.
  Moved my components report over to using data from the database, now only the device reports is still based on CSVs.
  As usual, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• German L10n:
  Reviewed / commented on Thunderbird 16 L10n.
  Updated ChatZilla, core and SeaMonkey L10n to recent trunk changes.
• Themes:
  Finished up work on 2.11 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek, and uploaded those to AMO.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Mailcompose recycling crashes, localizing B2G, social API and trains, build system changes and comm-central, etc.

It's a rare day that I start my work day late and see the reason for that waiting on xkcd!
I'm still in awe how such a complex mechanism works so perfectly on the first try, esp. as I know how easy you can get things right - in the software business I think everyone is aware how hard it is to stay completely free of bugs. In my work with crash analysis, I see daily how far off that we are. All that makes me even more aware of what a feat it is to be successful with a landing like MSL/Curiosity made early today. After all, there's no second try, this needed to go right on the first shot. And it did. Awesome.

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 30/2012 (July 23 - 29, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Once again, had a lot of discussions on Flash 11.3 stability. This continues to be our greatest concern in overall Firefox stability, even though the problems lie entirely on Adobe's side. Several people on our side continue working with people on their side to improve the situation. Adobe released an update with some improvements at the end of the week.
  Kept track of another not-so-successful try to switch the system for running regular Socorro jobs.
  Discussed how we can improve getting info about Android crashes to developers, and filed a bug on exposing some more info.
  Filed a bug on losing browser-side hang specificity again on Firefox 16 and up.
  Also continued following B2G crash reporting progress. The basic mechanics have landed, but there's quite a few additional pieces that need to be put together.
  As usual, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Localizing B2G, crashes with SeaMonkey and Thunderbird mail compose, B2G status bar icons, etc.

If you are on Windows 7 or Vista and seeing stability problems with Flash, please update to their newest version (currently 11.3.200.268) and if the issues persist, please try to find reliable steps how to reproduce the problems. Report those to us, we are working with Adobe so they can fix their plugin, but it much easier for them to find solutions if they can reproduce the crashes or hangs themselves.