The Firefox world record attempt has just weighed in with a whopping 8 million downloads (plus change) in a 24-hour period.

And, as I recently noticed, each Firefox instance carries my name among the men and women mentioned in the credits list (for my work on the Mozilla Add-ons project):

Awesome :) (did I mention I dig my name being spelled correctly?)

If you want to see who else is on the list, click on "About Firefox" in the help (or Firefox, on Mac) menu, then "Credits".

Thanks to Mike Connor (who I believe put me on the list) and to everybody who made Firefox 3 such a great product.

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Nice, I ordered a "radioactive" t-shirt from Assault last week and it was just delivered. Here's the design:

Looks like a pretty nice piece of fabric, doesn't it?

The shirt is made by American Apparel -- usually I don't like AA, but I gave them another try. Why I don't like them? Because the shape of their shirts is kind of weird, and they are usually way too small: In particular, when I get an M it fits pretty well the first day, but once I wash it, it shrinks far enough to resemble a small, making it a perfectly fine... cleaning rag. A colleague of mine once got a Women's S and after when it arrived, it turned out so small she passed it on to her 7-year-old daughter (!). They even offer women's XS and XXS. These must be either baby clothes, or they want to cater anorexic hollywood stars. Either option weirds me out.

So anyway, judging by this logic, I ordered an L, which is just a little too big on me right now -- let's hope it shrinks to a perfect M when I first wash it. If it shrinks further than that (and no, I am not washing it on "hot"), I'll have to take it to the office and put it up for grabs--somebody sure has a kid at home it'll fit.

For none of my other shirts I ever needed such elaborate considerations, so I am sorry but American Apparel sucks. While they are perfectly aware of their shirts "running small", it will probably forever remain their secret why they don't just go ahead and make shirts in the right size from the get-go...

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That went quite quick: I looked at two places and the second one was good enough so I took it. It's a little room in Squirrel Hill, furnished and with air condition (believe me, that is important here). I even have an own bathroom. (And, as I mentioned earlier, I have decent cable TV that allows me to watch Euro 2008 soccer -- yay for the landlady!)

At the moment however I live in a different room of the house because the current person to live in my room-to-be will only move out on July 15.

Either way, I am happy to have found a place to stay.

Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill's main street (picture off Wikipedia)

By the way, the neighborhood is really nice, there are a lot of families living there, it's very close to amenities (grocery store, restaurants, post office, even a liquor store) and it's a really short walk to the bus stop too.

Looks like I'm all set -- Now I only need to write my master's thesis. Peanuts! ;)

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We are interrupting our program for a shameless plug for... ourselves:

Wow, some time during my last few posts on this blog I crossed the 1000 post mark :)

This means, since its opening in early 2004, this blog has entertained (or bored, which I hope not) you with some 20 posts a month on average. Not bad, is it?

(I need to admit, lately it's been a little less than that, but very soon I should have more to talk about again :) )

All right, so much for the shameless plug. Now, carry on.

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Long time no see, everybody. I was quite busy lately, and I also spent a few days on vacation in Krakow, Poland. But I am back now and getting ready for leaving to Pittsburgh soon. Here are some pictures of Krakow for your enjoyment (click!):

During the course of our stay, we also went to see the Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial sites. I took some pictures there also:

I think these two flights to Krakow and back were the perfect "practice" for my upcoming intercontinental flight. By the way, I have to say, Poland having joined Schengen is awesome. Traveling all over Europe has never been that easy. Thumbs up for the European Union!

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"Don't fall asleep!" -- a nice reminder for the drummer of the big band I play in, on the 1943 Tommy Dorsy piece "Opus One".

And because you've been such a good readership lately, here's the original record for you. Enjoy!

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Just to give you a piece of unwanted knowledge, I just passed my last exam ever! It was about parallel programming, by the way.

Now it's really only my masters thesis that stands between me and graduation. Yay!

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Unbelievable: This coming week is my last week of classes, ever. It will be followed by an 8-week period of exams (with 1-2 weeks in between every two exams).

Then, provided I pass them all (which I like to hope), I will have done all requirements but my master's thesis in order to graduate from college with a degree in Information Engineering and Management.

I can't believe I am almost done studying -- it still feels like I've only started attending university just recently. Time flies, I guess.

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Dear readers!

I wish you a merry Christmas and a good and successful year 2008. I hope you had fun reading my blog this year and thank you all for your helpful comments and constructive input. I hope you'll still bear with me for a long time to come!

Now get back to your Christmas feasts but make sure to not drink and sing (instead, always choose a designated singer!), or you may end up like this guy: ;-)

(The song being so graciously interpreted here, by the way, is a German Christmas song that goes "silent, silent, silent, because the child wants to sleep...")

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Yesterday, Apple released a system update that is supposed to fix the severe "keyboard unresponsive" bug in OS X Leopard:

With hardly 800K in size, the patch is a lightweight that could have a big influence. If that's not the right place to use the word of the year, where else: W00t.

I just installed it and so far, the keyboard works fine, but of course I haven't sent the box to sleep yet, so by now I can't tell yet if the patch actually fixed the bug. Of course, the reboot the update asked for promptly resulted in a kernel panic (great start), but luckily, another reboot went through without problems.

If you like, please let me know in the comments if the patch worked for you or not. Good luck!

(Thanks Justin, Jean Pierre and Marc, who all told me about the update being available.)

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