Matt Brubeck: Planet Matt

Journal: Learning Norwegian

Posted in Journal on May 02, 2013 12:40 AM (comments)

I'm still studying French every day, but since you can't study French all the time, I needed another hobby. So now I'm learning Norwegian.

We're going to Norway this summer to visit some of my relatives, and I thought it would be fun and useful to learn some of the language first (even though Norway has a very high level of English proficiency). Since Assimil's French book + audio set worked so well for me, I looked for a similar course for Norwegian. Assimil doesn't have any English-to-Norwegian books, and the comparable ones I found from other publishers were extremely expensive, so I ended up buying Assimil's Le Norvégien… because why not study both languages at once? Anyway, I'm now having fun learning a new language that's quite different from French, though I'm still stuggling with the pronunciation.

After Norway we will continue on to Paris. Unlike our last trip to Europe, this time we are bringing Nora along. She started kindergarten this year and is working very hard at learning to read; we hope that'll help occupy her on the trans-Atlantic flights!

Journal: Learning French

Posted in Journal on January 27, 2013 08:23 AM (comments)

I haven't really posted in a while, so I'm going to try to write some catch-up posts about stuff that happened over the past year. First up: if you have talked to me at all recently, I've probably mentioned my new-found obsession with the French language.

It started when Sarah and I planned a trip to Paris last spring to celebrate our tenth anniversary, leaving the kid with grandparents for the week. The trip itself was great; along with the museums and dining and shopping, we also managed to stop by Mozilla's Paris office, and spend an evening with my old teammate Vivien and his lovely girlfriend Clarista.

I had started studying French a few months earlier in preparation, using Assimil and other resources. By the time of the trip I could read comfortably and could speak well enough to communicate, though my aural comprehension was exttremely weak. But I had so much fun learning that I've kept at it ever since: reading books and newspapers to build my vocabulary, using Anki to retain it, listening to Coffee Break French and Le journal en français facile to improve my listening skills, and occasionally chatting on Verbling to practice conversation. I'm pretty happy with my progress over the last year; I have a long way to go still but I'm getting closer to reading at an adult level and I am almost comfortable having simple conversations. :)

I've also been hanging out in the MozFR IRC channel and sometimes helping out with French-to-English translations. Recently Clarista honored both Sarah and me with posts on the Bonjour Mozilla blog that she runs.

Like the baritone ukulele that I picked up the previous year [oops, it looks like I never wrote about that either... I've been delinquent longer than I thought!], I like French because it's challenging and rewarding, and also completely unrelated to any of the stuff I usually do. Unlike the ukulele which I mostly just like to strum for my own amusement, I actually want to get good enough at French to put it to real use, so I'm spending quite a bit more time on it.

Bookmarks: The Way We Teach Math, Sciences, and Languages Is Wrong

Posted in Bookmarks on January 10, 2013 01:31 AM

"While still in America, to get more benefit from the language course, I started relearning French. On the recommendation of a friend who is a linguist and mathematician, I got the self-study French course made by Assimil entitled Le Nouveau Français sans Peine (New French With Ease)."

Bookmarks: The Way We Teach Math, Sciences, and Languages Is Wrong

Posted in Bookmarks on January 10, 2013 01:31 AM

"While still in America, to get more benefit from the language course, I started relearning French. On the recommendation of a friend who is a linguist and mathematician, I got the self-study French course made by Assimil entitled Le Nouveau Français sans Peine (New French With Ease)."

Bookmarks: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

Posted in Bookmarks on December 19, 2012 06:44 PM

"Like many of my friends, I have treated professional sports with cultivated indifference. But a year and a half ago, I decided to become a football fan."

Bookmarks: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

Posted in Bookmarks on December 19, 2012 06:44 PM

"Like many of my friends, I have treated professional sports with cultivated indifference. But a year and a half ago, I decided to become a football fan."

Bookmarks: Insufferable

Posted in Bookmarks on December 13, 2012 05:52 PM

"What happens when you’re a crimefighter and your sidekick grows up to be an arrogant, ungrateful douchebag?" Web series written by Mark Waid (Irredeemable; Incorruptible).

Bookmarks: Insufferable

Posted in Bookmarks on December 13, 2012 05:52 PM

"What happens when you’re a crimefighter and your sidekick grows up to be an arrogant, ungrateful douchebag?" Web series written by Mark Waid (Irredeemable; Incorruptible).

Bookmarks: Demystifying Garbage Collectors

Posted in Bookmarks on December 13, 2012 05:48 PM

"In this post, I’ll try to shed some light on how GCs work in a way that (hopefully) any developer can understand."

Bookmarks: Demystifying Garbage Collectors

Posted in Bookmarks on December 13, 2012 05:48 PM

"In this post, I’ll try to shed some light on how GCs work in a way that (hopefully) any developer can understand."

Bookmarks: Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity

Posted in Bookmarks on November 09, 2012 11:45 PM

"Just before you play a wrong note, your fingers were in a position that made that wrong note inevitable. Fixing wrong notes isn't about 'practicing harder' but about trying to unkink those systematically error-causing fingerings and hand motions."

Bookmarks: Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity

Posted in Bookmarks on November 09, 2012 11:45 PM

"Just before you play a wrong note, your fingers were in a position that made that wrong note inevitable. Fixing wrong notes isn't about 'practicing harder' but about trying to unkink those systematically error-causing fingerings and hand motions."

Bookmarks: You're never too young for thermite

Posted in Bookmarks on November 06, 2012 07:34 AM

Some science experiments and gizmos suitable for 4- or 5-year-olds.

Bookmarks: You're never too young for thermite

Posted in Bookmarks on November 06, 2012 07:34 AM

Some science experiments and gizmos suitable for 4- or 5-year-olds.

Weblog: Congratulations on IE10: from Mozilla with cake

Posted in Weblog on October 26, 2012 09:38 PM

“Congratulations on shipping! Love, the IE team”

Back when Firefox 2 was released (six years ago this week!), the Internet Explorer team started a friendly tradition of sending Mozilla a cake as congratulations. This continued for Firefox 3 and Firefox 4. After Firefox switched from major releases once or twice a year to incremental updates every six weeks, they sent us a cupcake for the next few updates instead. :)

I thought it would be fun to revive the tradition by ordering a cake for the IE team for the IE10 release today. Here it is right after I picked it up from Baked Custom Cakes, with a Firefox logo in painted fondant:

“Congratulations on IE10! Love, Mozilla”

Fellow Mozilla developer Eitan Isaacson drove with my wife Sarah and me to Microsoft Building 50 in Redmond, where program manager Jacob Rossi helped us deliver the cake to a group of IE team members:

Photo: IE team members and two Mozilla developers gather around the     IE10 cake in Microsoft Building 50

That's me on the left and Eitan on the right in Firefox hoodies.

The IE team posted their thanks through their official Twitter account. (As you can see from their picture, the bottom border of the cake was slightly restyled in transit.) Just 30 minutes later, Michael Bolan tweeted that the cake was gone. I hear the sugary Firefox logo was eaten soon after.

So congratulations to the Internet Explorer team on your latest release, and we hope you enjoyed the cake!

Photos: Mozilla IE10 cake

Posted in Photos on October 26, 2012 09:11 PM (comments)

Mozilla IE10 cake

We (some Seattle-area Mozillians) delivered a cake to the IE team at Microsoft for their new releases! This continues the tradition that the IE team started by giving cakes to Mozilla for Firefox releases. More story at limpet.net/mbrubeck/2012/10/26/mozilla-ie10-cake.html

Bookmarks: Alternate Keyboards for Windows

Posted in Bookmarks on October 09, 2012 03:59 PM

Includes Dvorak International layouts (with AltGr as compose key).

Bookmarks: Alternate Keyboards for Windows

Posted in Bookmarks on October 09, 2012 03:59 PM

Includes Dvorak International layouts (with AltGr as compose key).

Weblog: Metro Firefox without Windows 8

Posted in Weblog on September 20, 2012 12:42 AM

A few weeks ago I started working on the Firefox “Metro UI” project, for Windows 8’s Metro (or Modern) touch-screen environment. While we’re still working on getting our first preview builds ready for Windows 8 users to try out, you can already check out the current source code from the elm branch and build it yourself if you want to get involved and help us fix some bugs.

What you might not know is that you can run “Metro” Firefox even if you don’t have Windows 8. It’s been possible for a while to build and run on older versions of Windows using the -metrodesktop flag. Today I landed a patch to make this work on other platforms too. To build the latest elm source code on Linux or Mac OS X, follow these instructions:

  1. Clone the elm repo: hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/elm/
    (If you have already cloned mozilla-central or some other repo that shares with it, there’s a faster way to do this.)

  2. Create a .mozconfig file with ac_add_options --enable-metro

  3. Build Firefox as you normally would.

  4. From your objdir, run dist/bin/firefox -metrodesktop (Linux)
    or dist/Nightly.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -metrodesktop (Mac)

  5. You can visit about:config and enable metro.debug.treatmouseastouch (then restart the browser) to simulate touch interaction with the mouse. Right-click to simulate the Windows 8 edge-swipe gesture, which displays the toolbars.

This is still experimental and mostly untested. Elm might accidentally break on non-Windows platforms from time to time (because of course we are doing all our main development and testing on Windows). While it’s not a perfect replacement for running in the real Windows 8 environment, I hope this is a useful option for adventurous Firefox contributors who want to experiment with the Metro code but don’t have convenient access to Windows 8.

Bookmarks: Les émissions Radio France Internationale - RFI

Posted in Bookmarks on July 17, 2012 12:02 AM

Includes "Le journal en français facile" (the news in simple French), a daily radio program for French learners. The RFI site has other listening exercises and learning resources.

Bookmarks: Les émissions Radio France Internationale - RFI

Posted in Bookmarks on July 17, 2012 12:02 AM

Includes "Le journal en français facile" (the news in simple French), a daily radio program for French learners. The RFI site has other listening exercises and learning resources.

Bookmarks: Nerd & Nerdling in the Nation's Capitol | Ask MetaFilter

Posted in Bookmarks on July 01, 2012 10:02 AM

"Grown-up nerd and seven year-old nerdling are visiting Washington D.C. next week. ISO amusement, entertainment, novelty and awesomeness."

Bookmarks: Nerd & Nerdling in the Nation's Capitol | Ask MetaFilter

Posted in Bookmarks on July 01, 2012 10:02 AM

"Grown-up nerd and seven year-old nerdling are visiting Washington D.C. next week. ISO amusement, entertainment, novelty and awesomeness."

Bookmarks: Hectic City 15 – Paths To Graceland

Posted in Bookmarks on June 29, 2012 10:48 PM

"The 'Gumboots' album, should you be unaware, has been awarded it’s place in history due to a cassette copy which found its way into Paul Simon’s car stereo sometime in 1984-85 and providing him with the initial inspiration to seek out (and eventually travel to South Africa to record with) the musicians playing on the album." (via waxy.org)

Bookmarks: Hectic City 15 – Paths To Graceland

Posted in Bookmarks on June 29, 2012 10:48 PM

"The 'Gumboots' album, should you be unaware, has been awarded it’s place in history due to a cassette copy which found its way into Paul Simon’s car stereo sometime in 1984-85 and providing him with the initial inspiration to seek out (and eventually travel to South Africa to record with) the musicians playing on the album." (via waxy.org)