Today I officially began my Mozilla internship where I’ll be playing around with ActionMonkey [wiki.mozilla.org] for the Mozilla 2. This new monkey is a combination of two monkeys: SpiderMonkey (current JavaScript engine used by Mozilla created by Brendan Eich [wikipedia.org]) and Tamarin (VM and JIT for ECMAScript 4th edition donated by Adobe).

Eventually, this new engine will speed up Firefox, which has a front-end that is mainly controlled by JavaScript, as well as web applications using JavaScript. It’ll be able to do runtime optimizations instead of just interpreting the code - similar ideas to what can make Java faster than C++ code.

As for the Summer of Code project, I’ll need to finish up the Link Fingerprints Internet Draft and wait for comments. Code-wise, I have a working implementation with patches in bug 377245 [bugzilla.mozilla.org], but it seems like things are waiting on the standardization of the Link Fingerprints concept. And the side project of coding up Download Manager changes might take a back seat for now. (Well, the main big thing here was using bytes/KB/MB/GB units when appropriate [bugzilla.mozilla.org]. )

Status Update:

[RFC] Writing draft for #hash(type:data) syntax with a specific type of sha256
for all mime types.

[Code] Updated code from reviews + strictify syntax and made big patch
available in bug 377245. (grab v2 bug 385599 with the #undef if you want to try
things out)

Last week (2007/06/17 - 2007/06/23):

- Get code reviewed and update from comments
- Add flag to turn on/off (bug 385599)
- (Interview for platform internship)
- Not get responses from various people about drafts, RFC, IETF
- Outline and draft the internet draft

This week (2007/06/24 - 2007/06/30):

- Continue writing draft and review/submit before July 2nd
- (Start internship?)

As many going to Berkeley know, there’s a sushi place in Alameda with really good sushi - Sushi House (on Shoreline, next to Carlsbad Beach). There’s many sushi specialties on the menu (but the cartoony pictures don’t quite match up exactly..), but it’s not too expensive if you don’t order too much. Just make sure to arrive early and prepare for a long wait even though it’s a pretty big place - good thing there’s a beach right next to the restaurant.

This caterpillar lacks antennas and eyes shown on the menu

Cherry blossoms are made of fish!

This particular farmer’s market in Redwood City seems to be open every day - kinda like a grocery store, but it also has the open air market setting for various booths to set up for the gourmet food festival. There was plenty of fresh produce like piles and piles of corn for cheap! (Wait.. am I back in Illinois already?)

“The Fresh Approach” with many onions and more onions

For the special event, there seemed to have been a bunch of specialty cheeses, so if you want to test out all sorts of fancy cheeses, come back here next time. There were also some not-quite-so-edible displays (but I suppose you could eat the flowers if you really wanted to..) And a single specialty chocolatier stand. Mmmm.. Chocolates + Almonds!

8+ flowers per orchid.. tasty?

A bowl of Orange Twigs from Charles Chocolates (milk chocolate ganache, orange, more chocolate!)

Status Update:

[Code] Things are working fine for me. Waiting for reviews.

[RFCs] Contacting people on how to draft Link Fingerprints for IETF’s July 2nd meeting.

Last 2 weeks (2007/06/03 - 2007/06/16):

- Done initial coding to support Link Fingerprints for HTTP downloads/pages
- Open various bugs to break the patch into pieces - waiting for reviews.
- (Submit to MICRO; Attend FCRC for ISCA, PLDI, HOPL - majority of last 2 weeks)
- Fix related download manager bugs (and other random bugs..)

This week (2007/06/17 - 2007/06/23):

- Draft Link Fingerprints.
- Write. Write. Write.
- Contact Borden and St.Laurent about their type-independent #fragment-id

Wow. The numbers are coming in from NPD with Nintendo way on top for both hardware and software. A total of over 850,000 units of DS, Wii and other hardware as well as over 1.1 million copies of games when counting the top 5 games of all systems from the month. This is especially interesting because compared to May 2006 numbers, hardware and software are up almost 70% and 50% respectively for the usually slow-for-video-game middle part of the year.

I suppose Nintendo has been getting more and more sales in the recent months, but now they’re starting to put up press releases like this…

Oh, my! All this attention is enough to make a girl blush!

As a princess I’m used to being adored, but this is just too much! I know I’m probably sounding like a broken record, but once again my friends at the NPD Group are telling me that Wii and Nintendo DS finished May as the most popular systems in the United States.

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful support! Nintendo couldn’t have made it back to the top without you. You’re all Mario-caliber heroes in my book.

Peach’s reaction to insanely strong video game sales

Source: NeoGAF and GoNintendo

Maybe I’ll be back here in 4 years for the next FCRC.. and perhaps with a paper submission! (Note to self: Don’t sign up for 2 conferences that are back to back that end/begin in the middle of the day. Apparently there’s no food for conferences ending today in the middle of the day, and no food for conferences starting in the middle of the day either..)

Time to head back to the commuter airport at SAN, which has the open ramp for boarding the smaller Embraer planes. (Watch out for passing planes that might cross your path while you’re out there it can get pretty noisy and windy..)

Outdoor dining area in front of the Convention Center

Making up for the lack of desserts at the banquet.. a trip with a high school friend at UCSD to a super fancy dessert place! After a few loops around the complex highway network of San Diego.. we pull up to 5th avenue to look for cakes, pies, cookies, or maybe just a cupcake at Extraordinary Desserts.

Mmmm chocolateee (but I didn’t eat it! just some of the top )

It turns out that there was a trip to the San Diego Zoo after the first day of ISCA. I was slightly confused during the last couple presentations today when people kept asking when and where the buses were picking people up. Apparently the bigger conferences have fancy trips like these for a night of adventure and mingling.

After the shuttles brought us to the zoo, we switched over to the guided tour buses that would bring us to the dining area. And just as we pulled out of the boarding area.. a peacock!

Peacock sending us off on our merry way through the San Diego Zoo

The rest of the tour had quite a few animals showing up with an 80% attendance rate - perhaps the missing group were tired from the day and went to sleep already. (Hrmm.. sitting around and getting fed while people watch you could be a tough job..) So of the ones that did show up, there were all sorts of birds and boars to meerkats and antelope-like creatures. A note about the meerkats.. they have one of them standing guard to alert the rest, so you probably won’t see many of them - let alone the one that stands motionless blending into the area.

There’s nothing here! ?

At the end of the journey, there were drinks and a ton of food (desserts too, but those disappeared quickly) for all the computer architecture people to sit down and chat. It was an interesting experience for me because I just joined while a lot of people have been around for many many years. I got to meet some people and hear what they’ve been doing in this field, so I could get up to speed and see where things are going. But I won’t go into all those details here - instead, I’ll fill the rest of this post with animal pictures.

Is the polar bear thirsty or looking for a swim?

The elephants were having dinner… right next to where we were having dinner

A fuzzy little koala (squinting causes the camera to blur ?!)

A bunch of pink flamingos partying late at night

The History of Programming Languages conference is pretty neat because programming languages designers describe how they developed the language and reflect on how it has progressed. There have only been three of these conferences with the first being in 1978, so it was nice that I was able to attend and listen to all these important people.

Just last semester at UIUC, I was attending a dynamic language virtual machine seminar where we went through quite a few Self papers - all of them had David Ungar in the author list. And it turns out the Ungar was around to give a presentation and ask some questions at the panel at the end of the conference.

David Ungar asking questions for Larry Wall (far right, Perl guy) and Olin Shivers (middle, Scheme) about their goals for making programming languages