大學時期曾經有固定收聽 Podcast 的習慣。最近，重新發現 Podcast ，並且開始收聽「This American Life」是我今年下的最正確的決定之一。每個星期製作人兼主持人 Ira Glass 會從一個主題出發，講幾個發生在社會周遭、發生在一般人身上的故事。
這個節目深深的觸碰我，因為它不屬於任何一個已知的傳媒節目類型：它不是如大愛電視或是讀者文摘一樣，以提供正向力量為製作目的，而不免掩蓋社會的醜陋真實。他也不是自由派的公共電視／廣播，以曝露社會真相為目標，例如公視我們的島碰觸的環保議題，不免時時沉重。
節目所呈現的美國眾生相，不是我們所知的「美國夢」、或是 Friends （六人行）裡的虛構都市生活、甚至是新聞裡的 99% v.s. 1%，而是直觀且清楚的「生活」：有悲、有喜、有真實、也沉重，更重要的是它入世的態度。對於置身之外的我來說，我一方面慶幸我找到一個窺看的窗口，卻又思考著為何沒有這樣了解自己所屬的社會的機會。
「美國眾生相」是我的私下翻譯，我想得到的最符合的節目名稱。
Note: this is a recycled, unpublished post form July, 2013, when the first Firefox OS phone was released. Below are my personal reflections on the Firefox OS project upon the release.
Within a relatively short time, Mozilla managed to open up an Taipei office with relative large operation, signed deals with various partners, and ship the first version of Firefox OS.
To me personally, this is a challenging yet exciting work. I would imagine the description to be true for Mozilla as whole as well. The office in Taipei grows tenfold; MoCo as whole grows as well to accommodated the new project (I’ve already lost counts on that, as always). I started as one junior developer working on the code base with merely a few checked-ins, to be a people manager leading the front-end team in Taipei and one of the tech leads that struggle to involve every aspect of a code base involves multiple teams within Mozilla and external teams from many of our partners (note that Taipei front-end devs have since spilt into two teams and we have another capable manager on another team). It’s a learning process to work with project of this size — for Mozilla, product-wise, to enter a new market, to coordinate with partners on their launch dates and feature sets — is new too.
Nonetheless we made it. I don’t feel particularly proud for the release. There were many decisions made that should have been made differently, although I am certain that everyone have made the best decision with information at hand. I am also in no position to judge a past decision if all the information is still not available to me.
There are still many, many work to be done here.
週末小作品：手開發票檢查小幫手。
星期六和女友吃飯亂聊，講到他們行業很多人的個人工作室和公司有手開發票的需求（其實我們這行也有？），但是這些不問世事的設計師或藝術家常常寫錯發票，造成後面程序的麻煩。於是回家之後就順手寫了一個手開發票小幫手。
簡單發想與實作了以下功能：
預想的使用流程是把資料打進去，檢查正確之後把螢幕上的資料抄到發票上，避免錯誤。雖然說互動很簡單（連「送出檢查」按鈕都沒有），但沒有做過使用測試也說不上來這樣設計好不好用。至少，因為是 Twitter Bootstrap 版面所以可以說算畫面乾淨而且 mobile ready。
最後，做這個工具研究了一下才發現市面根本就有幾萬塊就可以打死的電子計算機統一發票的套裝解決方案 … 常開發票的話去辦那個還是比較方便吧。當然最好的情況是發票可以全部電子化，用手機上網就能開發票之類的。
這個工具，真的有用上有什麼感想再跟我說。