This post is mainly for the benefit of my Fox Hollow French School cohort (that's right, we had none of this “Charlemagne” nonsense; we didn't need a snooty name to know that we were better than other children), but perhaps it will be interesting to others who are just curious about the strange influences that shaped my childhood.

For years, I've been carting around a bunch of cassette tapes from my youth. Mostly I ignore them except to feel that I have to keep them out of vague sentimental attachment, but there is one that I have periodically rediscovered and always had to listen to immediately: the tape of French songs from 2nd grade, which miraculously has not been lost or destroyed along the way. Each time I've though that it was a shame that they weren't easier to listen to, so finally something had to be done.

And so, for your listening pleasure: the songs of 2nd grade French, converted to MP3s. I did my best to clean up the sound, but there's only so much that can be done with a 20-year cassette that was a home-made copy to start with. Still, what they lack in audio fidelty, they more than make up for in nostalgia; if you grew up with these songs, I'd be willing to bet that you'll find yourself singing along at some point—à moins que tu aies dans les oreilles deux gros haricots!

Category: Life

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I've been looking around at reactions to the release of Camino 1.6, and a lot of it could be summarized as: “So?” The points are generally valid; amid the hype around the upcoming release of Firefox 3 (and to some extent, all the WebKit hype), releasing a new version using Gecko 1.8 (as seen in Camino 1.5 and Firefox 2) is hardly ground-breaking. But then, it wasn't meant to be, which is why it's Camino 1.6, rather than Camino 2—that would have been more clear if we'd released it last November as we had originally hoped, but such is the nature of trying to do scheduling in a volunteer project. Camino 1.6 is, as it was intended, just an incremental improvement; nice if you were already using Camino, but not nearly as exciting to read about as Firefox 3. (Here's a hint for the people wondering why we didn't use Gecko 1.9 by the way: Gecko 1.9 development is very, very closely tied to Firefox 3 development, and Firefox 3 isn't out of beta yet.)

If it were just the unfortunate timing of releasing amid flurries of stories about how Firefox 3 is just around the corner and will bring about world peace and cut through tin cans without getting dull, having press coverage like “Good news for those of you who are part of the ever-shrinking community that still uses Camino” (thanks for the love, Ars) would be easy to ignore, but I think the real issue is a more lasting one: the change in Safari's place in the web.

In the past year or so, WebKit has made very significant advances in compatibility, the iPhone has raised WebKit prominence, site authors are finally starting to get the idea that locking out the browser that comes installed on the machines of 5+% of their potential visitors (as well as the only one available to iPhone users) is probably not a good idea, and Safari is available for testing (and with Drosera, potentially development) on Windows. All that adds up to far fewer people finding themselves in need of a browser other than Safari to use all the sites they need to, which used to be a big part of why people turned to Camino.

That leaves us competing almost entirely on browser features and UI. But things have changed there too: with Safari 3, Apple changed their approach and actually back-ported a new version of Safari to the previous OS, rather than just back-porting WebKit as they had been doing. Assuming that continues, historical OS X adoption rates tell us that new versions of Safari will be available to almost all Mac users, rather than only about half, and so we lose another large uncontested (by Safari) user base. In a head to head match between Apple and a handful of very-part-time volunteers, it wouldn't take much effort on Apple's part to move fast enough that we wouldn't be able to keep ahead of them.

To be clear, I'm not complaining. Camino is about giving users a sleek Mac browser that Just Works; if Safari is equally good at being the browser that we have been working to build, then users win, because the browsing experience we wanted to provide is pre-installed on their machines. And it's not like we are in this for the money. I'm also not saying I'm ready to hang up my hat just yet (nor am I in any way, shape, or form speaking for the Camino project; this is all just my own musing and opinions); just that I spend a lot of time recently thinking about what might be next for Camino. Certainly, in the short term, we work to get Camino 2 out there soon, based on Gecko 1.9 and with a few new features that we've ween working on tossed in for good measure. Beyond that, the path is (to me, at least) unclear.

Category: Camino

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Coming back to Cupertino from our visit to L.A., I was struck by how green and residential it felt here by comparison—much like the feeling I get when I visit Eugene, but very odd to feel in Cupertino. It really makes me wonder what it would be like visiting Eugene after living in L.A. for several years.

Speaking of which, we are moving to L.A. in a few months (well, Santa Monica hopefully, which sounds nicer but still seems to be covered in smog).

Category: Life

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Lost Cities came today, much to my enjoyment (even though Laura promptly creamed me, despite her never having played before). It's a fantastic two-player game, with the right combination of simple rules and gameplay, but interesting strategy and variation. It's nice to find a good game that doesn't require getting a bunch of people's schedules to mesh in order to enjoy it; a big thanks to Josh for introducing me to it while I was visiting.

Speaking of lost things, I apparently haven't posted here in over seven months. I hadn't realized it had been quite that long (although now that I think about it, it's possible that one or two people may have mentioned the lack of posts...). But I thought about posting fairly regularly over these silent months, and I've always been told that it's the thought that counts, so no harm done.

Category: Random

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