Tagopen source

🔖 Designing in the open (archive) by Kjell Reigstad

When participating in conversations on open source project your technical background or history in the company doesn’t matter as much as how you conduct yourself and the value you provide in the discussion.

With open source work you have to let strangers look at your initial sketches. This forces you to articulate and present your work better — clearly explaining ideas and anticipating questions.

By designing in the open you expose yourself to multiple perspectives and ultimately the work is better for it.

Interactive dashboard for COVID-19 India

NOTE: The scale of the spread has meant that the individual data is no longer relevant or useful. This visualization has been removed to reduce any confusion. See the main dashboard for up to date information.

I stumbled across the Covid-19 India Ops telegram group and through that the covid19india.org dev group. The people there have setup a website for live tracking, a way to report new patients and even a cluster map. They also have a live updated API end-point that provides patient data in JSON. Not limited to the total number of cases and their location, the data has patient demographics and reporting dates.

I started working on a tool that others can use to make sense of the data. Since I don’t understand the domain and nuances of the data, I have made no attempt to interpret it.

You can check-out the live dashboard here — Interactive Covid-19 India Dashboard — please share it with someone who might find it useful.

The above dashboard was made using dc.js which brings crossfilter and d3 together to be able to filter the visualisation on the fly by interacting with the charts. While making this I had help from two Sanjaya’s — one Sanjay helped me figure out the GeoJSON file and the projects, and another Sanjaya pointed out some key UX improvements. There are still quite a few things to fix and I’ve noted them in Github issues. As always, pull requests are welcome on Github.

Make Firefox fast

Recently, I have been trying to untangle myself from closed software, and move to open source and free (as in speech) alternatives. The first switch I made was from Chrome to Firefox. I was always a Firefox fan, but after college, when the only computer I had was a borrowed 8 year old MacBook Pro, I had no choice but to switch to Chrome for it’s speed.

Even though I have a fast computer now, I was a bit skeptical about Firefox’s performance. I use it often for testing and the speed did not compare favorably with Chrome. Upon a friend’s suggestion I installed the Developer Edition and was pleasantly surprised to see the improvement that Electrolysis brought! After a few days of using it, I decided to do some more research and stumbled upon a config that lets each tab run it’s own process. I set the process count limit to 128 and since then it has been smooth sailing.

These features exist in the normal versions of Firefox too, but are hidden behind config flags. To set them, go to about:config and set the following:


browser.tabs.remote.autostart true
dom.ipc.processCount 128

Restart, and see multiple browser processes (Activity Manager on Mac OS). Enjoy your new 128 Foxpower browser, yes foxes are better than horses.

Update: Based on when you’re reading this, you might need the Developer Edition or the Beta version of Firefox for this to work.

The Year Without Pants

by Scott Berkun

This book is a form of participatory journalism where the author talks about his experience of being one of the first managers at Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com) . He gives a commentary on the culture of the company as it moves from a flat to a hierarchical structure. He often contrasts it with his experience at Microsoft.

A Year Without Pants

This contrast isn’t as clear as Cathedral and Bazaar. The author even points out instances where WordPress’ culture tends towards cathedral and Microsoft’s towards bazaar. The quality and quantity of work done amidst the chaos of the open source project amazes him, and he attributes this success to the people at the organization – who are passionate about their work, and to Matt Mullenweg – who grants these people autonomy, and encourages them to experiment. He also talks about how he manages his team which is distributed across the world and sometimes even across timezones.

This is the first time I’ve read about open source culture from a manager’s viewpoint. His critique for the communication tools used at Automattic resonated deeply with me. Reading it I was able to look at the Wikimedia Foundation, its work, and my place in it through a new lens.