alexa -- a search engine that provides traffic rankings about web pages too -- currently lists the first five websites on their "movers and shakers" list from Mozilla.

This blog is ranked #6 with an 80,000% growth and a weekly traffic rank of 4,277.

Chances are that's the one of the biggest growths Alexa has ever recorded for a single website :) -- I'm impressed!

Update: I am number 2 now! :) The growth percentage has fallen to a less impressive 460% this week but I guess being higher in the list is nice too ;)

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Gosh, all these visitors were giving my server a hard time.

No wonder, after my cake story got dugg more than 3500 times, slashdotted, "valleywagged" and I don't know what else...

You guys were very supportive when it came to helping me picking up the tab, thanks! I got a lot of help from supporters who all gave me a dollar-or-so, so I decided to send a small check to the Mozilla Foundation and another one to the OSU Open Source Lab.

The OSU OSL is where some of Mozilla's servers are and they work hard for some of the finest projects in the Open Source world, and they also need our support. Through the collaboration of the OSL and Mozilla, that a whole lot of Firefox downloads can take place flawlessly at the same time, free of charge.

You are great. Thanks again!

(And I hope some people keep my blog in their feed reader :))

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So, I posted this a while ago in German, but I forgot to put it on the English blog, too:

It's time. After studying at OSU for a year, I now have to go back and finish my masters degree at my home university in Germany, the University of Karlsruhe. Well, almost. My German university demands an internship for the completion of my degree. Thus it's time for me to leave the OSU Open Source Lab and its "most important racks in Open Source". Sad, really sad. And I leave half sadly but happily as well: Sadly, because for a soon-information-engineer, working passionately on Open Source Software while studying (and even getting paid for it) was pretty cool. I could see from the inside what holds the world of Open Source together, and I was pleased to collaborate with some of the finest people in the sphere of free software. Recently for example I even had the opportunity to visit the "OSCON" Open Source Conference in Portland, Oregon. At the OSL, we were not even short on geek-ness: Working only a few feet away from the Linux Kernel master server, important Gentoo and Debian servers as well as Apache and phpBB boxes, that is more than unique and a reason for me to say, Thank you, OSU OSL! But then, there's also the happy side. Because after a marathon of job interviews (around 15, if I remember correctly) with different companies (not 15, of course but I was passed on between different people) I could decide a few weeks ago where I wanted to go for an internship. Of course, it is Open Source related. Since the beginning of October I am proud to work at the Mozilla Corporation in Mountain View, California as a Software Development Intern.

Now I am here (moved to the Silicon Valley), I've been working at Mozilla for a week now and I really like it. People are nice, the environment is geeky and relaxed and I like how many interesting things are happening here. Good to be with you, Mozilla people!

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Seen from my home country, I am currently pretty much on the opposite side of the earth. Still, the internet keeps me connected as if I was just around the corner.

It has never been so easy to stay in touch: I use Skype and SIP for telephone calls home, and SSH to talk to servers back home.

On the other hand, due to the large distance, I am subject to many internet routing problems. It is, for example, never really sure that I my packages are routed on a "good connection". Therefore, for example, today my voice on Skype sounded like crap because the packages visited Taiwan, Slovakia, Danmark and France before they finally reached their destinations in the northeastern and western parts of Germany.

Minutes later, I am routed over San Francisco, San Jose directly to Düsseldorf again.

Sometimes the internet is hard to understand... and sorry people for my voice sounding robot-like from time to time ;)

P.S.: Today I set up my internet connection to do quality of service, meaning VoIP traffic should be prioritized higher than anything else. Hope it helps :)

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... left until my departure to the U.S. hooray

By the way: I switched to Wordpress yesterday (it's easier to handle two blogs on the same software) and after some web research I found a really cool theme for it (do you like it?).

I also wrote some new software called phpMyiCal, a PHP script that allows you to store and share your iCal / Mozilla Calendar files online in a MySQL database (it's probably compatible with PHP iCalendar, also). I'll release its beta version for you to check it out, soon.

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Welcome to fredericiana.com.

This is not my first blog entry, even though it looks alike. In fact, I am a German blogger already writing his sententia fredericiana for about a year now.

But now, it’s about time to start blogging in English also. Why? Mostly, because I’m going to study in the U.S. for a year soon. And then I’ll probably (hm… okay, let’s say hopefully, instead) get some new readers that won’t be able to speak German. Also, writing English gets easier when you do it more often - as it is with all foreign languages, I suppose.

At last, I hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I just did when starting it. And don’t be shy - add the RSS feed to your feed reader. You won’t regret! :)

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