Matt Brubeck: Planet Matt

Bookmarks: Find the shortest route between two Wikipedia articles.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:37:03 +0000

Vice Admiral to ARM Architecture in four clicks!

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:12:45 +0000

I'll be in Mountain View this week (Mon-Fri) at the Mozilla office for a Fennec work week. Let me know if you're in the area and want to meet for lunch, dinner, whatever!

Journal: Home office away from home

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:43:16 +0000

I've done working from home; I've done coworking; I've done the Mozilla Summit and soon I'll have my first work week. But this week I'm trying something different.

We're visiting my wife's parents in Port Townsend, WA for several days. Instead of taking vacation time, I'm working from their house this week. Since I already work remotely, my team will barely notice the difference. Meanwhile it will be a nice long visit for Sarah and her family, and I get to spend time with them in the mornings/evenings/mealtimes/weekend.

This has got me thinking about other new possibilities for nomadic working. It also seems relevant to this article on vacations and happiness research which says, "The most effective way to inoculate a vacationer against the deadening power of adaptation, however, may be the most counterintuitive — to break it up, to interrupt it with real life."

Photos: Summit at the Summit

nobody@flickr.com (mbrubeck) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:25:10 +0000

Photos: Mascots

nobody@flickr.com (mbrubeck) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:13:25 +0000

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:10:09 +0000

Paul Roget giving one of his most amazing demos of open web technologies and Firefox 4 features (SVG, CSS transitions, WebSockets, video, History API, accelerated graphics, and more) at the 2010 Mozilla Summit.

Bookmarks: rust

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:39:31 +0000

"A very preliminary work in progress" programming language from Mozilla's Graydon Hoare (with help from Brendan Eich, Andreas Gal, Dave Herman, and more).

Looks like a very attractive multi-paradigm design. Lots of safety features (memory safe, no null pointers, objects are immutable by default, actors/tasks have no shared mutable state), structural typing, tagged disjoint unions, type inference, impressive static analysis features, native compilation (direct x86 codegen in Ocaml, and prototype LLVM backend), low-overhead C function calls and easy integration with gdb, valgrind, etc.

Bookmarks: The Best Vacation Ever - vacations and happiness research

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:30:58 +0000

"Respondents were least happy about the vacation while they were taking it. Beforehand, they looked forward to it with eager anticipation, and within a few days of returning, they remembered it fondly. But while on it, they found themselves bogged down by the disappointments and logistical headaches of actually going somewhere and doing something."

"The most effective way to inoculate a vacationer against the deadening power of adaptation, however, may be the most counterintuitive — to break it up, to interrupt it with real life."

Bookmarks: Staying on message

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:35:57 +0000

"In Rework, we talk about how you need to be willing to let your customers outgrow you. There are more people who are not using your product than people who are; You need to make sure you make it easy for these people to get on board. That’s where your continued growth potential lies."

Bookmarks: The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:19:24 +0000

Amusing and detailed reviews of movies the author hates.

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Wed, 19 May 2010 04:36:42 +0000

Nightly builds of Fennec for Android are available! Details and known bugs at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android

Bookmarks: When to Include an Exit Button in Android Apps (Hint: Never)

Mon, 17 May 2010 20:38:03 +0000

"If you build an application that's predictable, configurable, and unambiguous your users won't ask for an exit button. The first time they see an unknown background Service that's been running for an hour, or the GPS icon unexpectedly starts flashing, or the device gets hot while in their pocket they're going to get narky."

Photos: Two-wheeler

nobody@flickr.com (mbrubeck) — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:47:10 +0000

Bookmarks: m.xkcd.com

Sun, 16 May 2010 17:08:58 +0000

Mobile-optimized XKCD site, including alt-text readable by mobile browsers.

Bookmarks: target-densityDpi in Android webkit

Mon, 10 May 2010 02:50:09 +0000

Android-specific meta-viewport property. "If it is not specified, it uses the default, 160dpi as of today. Then the 1.0 scale factor specified in the viewport tag means 100% on G1 and 150% on Sholes. If you set 'target-densityDpi' to 'device-dpi', then the 1.0 scale factor means 100% on both G1 and Sholes."

Bookmarks: Hot zones

Fri, 07 May 2010 21:57:45 +0000

"The iPad is always 'hot' — touch anywhere on the screen, brush off a speck of dust, or change its orientation slightly, and something changes... One reason the Kindle seems like a more 'peaceful' ebook reader... is that it has almost no hot zones."

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Thu, 06 May 2010 18:36:50 +0000

I finally put up a makeshift window shade in my office's skylight. Now I can actually work between 11am and 1pm on sunny days. (Wait, is that a good thing?)

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:33:52 +0000

My latest Fennec (mobile Firefox) extension, Show Image Title. Great for XKCD fans: http://bitbucket.org/mbrubeck/showtitle/wiki

Bookmarks: TouchScroll, a scrolling layer for WebKit mobile

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:19:41 +0000

"It is JavaScript/CSS 3 based and allows for fixed elements like headers and toolbars on web pages when viewed on the iPhone or on Android. It works on the iPad, too."

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:38:45 +0000

Working at Startpad again. Want to join me for lunch at Planet Java?

Bookmarks: Small is Beautiful: the design of Lua | Lambda the Ultimate

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:15:17 +0000

Journal: Coworking

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 01:22:16 +0000

I've just returned from a busy week-long trip visiting family on the East coast. Now I'm ready to start my second week of work for Mozilla.

I stayed home for all my first week, to minimize potential hassles or distractions. It sure is nice and productive working alone in a quiet office for long periods, and going downstairs for meals and snacks with my family. But tomorrow for a change of scene I will be at StartPad at 1st & Columbia downtown (near Pioneer Square). If you're in the area and want to share lunch or coffee, email/IM/call/text me.

In the future I'll post to Twitter (which auto-updates Buzz and Facebook) on the days I'm downtown. You can follow me on any of those sites (or subscribe to Planet Matt) if you want to know when I'll be around.

Bookmarks: Dynamic Programming Practice Problems

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:02:39 +0000

"This site contains a collection of practice dynamic programming problems and their solutions."

Buzz: Buzz by Matt Brubeck from Buzz

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:44:51 +0000

Since I know some of you are MBTI fans: check out my friend Nolan's simplified Myers-Briggs personality test for Android. Use your phone to test people you meet at parties. :)

Photos: Scratch

nobody@flickr.com (mbrubeck) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:02:36 +0000

Playing with a "game" we designed in Scratch.