North American Adventure - Part II

The Air Canada flight from New Delhi to Vancouver is about to head to the runway but suddenly the pilot takes charge of the communication system and announces that the fight will take off the next day due to a technical issue. Well, welcome to the blogpost of the ‘North American Adventures – Part II’. Here comes the A sign or Parental Advisory, this post is not like my other blogposts where-in I am specific to the event but it is going to be as long as my airport layovers. Haha kiddin!

Last year, that is May 2018, I had visited the United States or in general, the North American continent for the first time and it also happened to be my first international solo trip. This year’s visit to the North American continent, that is June 2019, was again a solo international trip and therefore I have titled this post as ‘North American Adventure – Part II’.

Some facts about this tour :

- 2 countries

- 9 cities/towns

- 7 Star Alliance flight connections (plus 3 missed connections)

- 15 days

- Visiting friends and Family

- Work week

- 40 kgs of carry on baggage without paying any fines :D

- 42 hours of sleepless airport layovers (So much of #MeTime is dangerous :P)

The prominent travel itinerary :

Leg I > Toronto and Niagara (Canada) : 10^th June to 12^th June 2019

Leg II > San Francisco, Santa Clara and the Bay Area/Silicone Valley all together (USA) : 12^th June to 16^th June 2019

Leg III > Whistler (Canada) : 17^th June to 23^rd June 2019

Leg I and Leg III were all about exploring the unexplored and thinking strategically whereas Leg II was more about celebrating success and re-defining my existing perception.

The idea behind Leg I was simple : Meeting my best friend

I am very fortunate to have best friends who care and believe in me. My best friend from my primary school Parth is a masters student in Toronto. Myself being a Canadian multiple-entry visa holder, I thought it could be a great opportunity to meet my friend after a year and see how colourful his painting of life is turning to. My visit not just focused on visiting and exploring the disciplined Toronto or living the beautiful and memorable fall of Niagara but it was about capturing the essence of the Canadian life and dreams. I am very much grateful to my friend Parth for his warm hospitality and his help to connect the pieces.

Leg II was not less than a milestone in life : Attending my sister’s convocation

Words will never describe my love for my family and attending my sister’s convocation was not less than a dream for me. My biggest inspiration in life had chosen the American Street on her path to success two years back and I felt completely satisfied to see her getting felicitated on the aspirants stage at the University of Santa Clara. It was also my first time to visit the Golden Gate bridge which is considered as an engineering marvel in the contemporary world.

Leg III : The Open Source Way!

I was invited to attend the Mozilla All Hands at Whistler, Canada by the Open Innovation Team at Mozilla. Mozilla All Hands are a unique and special opportunity for all paid staff and the most impactful volunteers to come together, in person, to share experiences and interact with people they may not normally work with. This was my second Mozilla All Hands and I was very much excited to work with my mates and various project and program managers across Mozilla. Anyone attending the All Hands have to sign a Non-Disclosure agreement and so, most of the things that happen at All Hands stay in All Hands until they are publicly announced by Mozilla in various forums and comms.

As a part of the Mozilla Representatives Council and the Open Innovation team, I had attended few meetings which have the following updates for the lovely Mozilla Representatives and community :

- The Firefox branding styles are evolving

- Firefox account is going to be a centre place of authentication for all the Firefox users

- The Firefox v69 is coming up with a lot of add-ons and services which will focus more on user privacy, security and data

- Firefox Lite has a lot to offer for the Indian users

- I would be working more on the Reps Branding and Reps visibility on various Open Source platforms. More updates to follow soon in the upcoming Reps call.

- I felt that Mozilla Reps or any community member can recommend the individual contributors (coming from a non-tech background) to the Support Mozilla and Localization projects since the volunteer engagement can help us to take our mission forward

Travelling solo is fun but it gets more crazy when other solo travellers join in. I am thankful to a lot many people and I look forward to ink down such adventures in future. Prathamesh Chavan signing off to return again real soon.

Check out the tour pics : https://flic.kr/s/aHsmEE8QL3

A year as a Mozilla Reps Councilman

The nominations for the Reps Council elections Autumn 2017 were opened on 27^th Oct 2017 and I had shared my Councilman’s plan on 1^st November 2017. My plan was focused more on sustainable improvements and accommodating contemporary interests. It was my first time to take a leap from being a Reps Mentor to a member of the Reps Council and my knowledge and perception about the Reps Council was new and ambitious. I am thankful to all the Reps who had supported me and I feel that it is my responsibility to present my tenure report as a member of the Reps Council. I am sharing the highlights since most of the content is protected by the Non-Disclosure Agreement.

The three most-important issues/suggestions/vision with which I had contested the Reps Council Autumn 2017 elections were :

1) Opportunities for new Contributors and Reps

2) Communications

3) Scalability

In Opportunities for new Contributors and Reps, my thought-process was streamlined to the idea of creating a portal which will have information about Mozilla projects, contribution areas and staff POCs and this could be an improved version of whatcanidoformozilla.org . In the All Hands 2018 SF, I had taken up this discussion with the relevant staff and when we were exploring the possibilities, it came to our notice that infrastructure for such portal and maintaining the same could be a challenge and might take a lot of time. Thus, there was no immediate action possible and the status of this idea was indefinite.

Communications was the dearest point in the agenda for me and I had started working on the same from the very initial days in my Reps Council tenure. I started working on improving and restructuring the Reps Monthly Newsletter and getting a team in place. With the help and support of my fellow Councilmen and Councilwomen, I was able to come up with a Reps Monthly Newsletter team applications (https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/reps-monthly-newsletter-applications-are-now-open/27359). I am happy to say that the current Reps Monthly Newsletter team is doing an amazing job and hope to see such great work been continued. Apart from the Reps Monthly Newsletter, one of the most important events for the Reps is the All Hands. It is a platform where new products, policies and plans are presented. I was in my Reps Council onboarding phase when the All Hands 2017 Austin was about to happen and so I thought of not attending the All Hands since I was still a trainee and was unclear about the impact which I can have in the team meetings of the Reps Council as a new member. However, I attended the All Hands 2018 SF and came up with a All Hands report (https://blog.mozilla.org/mozillareps/2018/07/20/reps-council-at-sf-all-hands-2018/).

Thirdly, my agenda for the Reps Council Autumn 2017 elections covered the point of scalability. The idea was to empower the Reps Mentors and help new Reps get on-board. This plan is currently getting worked and I am happy to be supportive in this regards.

As a Council member, I worked on various other projects and initiatives. The Mozilla Reps logo needed an update as per the new branding guidelines and the Reps Council, the Branding team and volunteers worked together to come up with the Reps logo (https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/announcement-mozilla-reps-logo/30210). I was fortunate to serve as as a Council chair from April 2018 to May 2018. I am also a part of the Review Team as a representative from the Reps Council replacing the then Council member Ankit Gadgil (25^th June 2018 till today i.e. 2^nd Oct 2018).

I personally feel that as a elected member, it is my personal responsibility to be accountable for all the actions and commitments for which I was nominated and this blog is one such efforts of being transparent. Because of the NDA agreement, I cannot be more open and elaborate than this. I would again like to thank all the Reps and everyone at the Reps Council for being supportive and motivative.

A quarter mark!

The area of Mixed Reality amazes me every time I try to deep dive in it. And explaining stuff about the same is the best part. The past three months which were February, March and April were very special for me because there were many occasions where I could teach people about A-frame in workshops and talks.

I was invited as a A-frame speaker at the below events :

Virtual Reality @ Inquivesta Science Festival – IISER 

GNUnify 2018

FootPrintsX8

MozVr Devroom @ NewVision

Virtual Reality @ Hackfest, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad

AR and MR at Anibrain School of Media

VR, AR and MR at Bharathi Vidyapeeth Katraj Campus

Virtual Reality @ Indian Institute of Technology (BHU)

These events were very diverse in terms of participation and geographical locations. It was a great fun to deliver the Mixed Reality content in front of a vivid audience. It was not just teaching but personally I got a chance to explore the vast scope which the MR offers in many ways.

The talks and workshops covered the areas like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, the scope of Mixed Reality, various hardware associated with it and remixing the A-Frame code.

Apart from signing the songs of Reality, I was quite fortunate to travel and explore new places and meeting and understanding the local community members was a cherry on top. It is always a pleasure to connect the dots and build a transparent environment. Mozilla Reps Council is something which I can relate here.

I am very thankful to all the people who hosted me during these last three months. Special thanks to Umesh, Shahidji, Faisal and Sara, Vaibhav, Ranodeep, Shahbaz, Pranshu, Pushpita, Viral, Shina, Aadarsh and the amazing team of volunteers.

Here are some of the pics :)
 

January 2018 so far ...

The first month of a fresh year had to be special. I was pretty excited about January 2018 right from the middle of December 2017 as it had something special to offer.

The major events which I attended or conducted were :

- MakerFest 2018 – Ahmedabad

- Mozilla VR session at Anibrain School of Media Design – Pune

MakerFest 2018 – Ahmedabad

 

Attending MakerFest has always been an exciting experience. I was not able to attend MakerFest 2017 because of some personal reasons but I was totally determinant about MakerFest 2018. New venue, new audience, new function areas and a team of new Mozillians (I had not met these folks earlier) had raised my spirits. With high ambitions, we started off with the Mozilla presence at MakerFest 2018. We spoke about many different things at the Mozilla booth; some of which created a buzz in the entire arena. Firefox Quantum, Mozilla VR, Privacy and Security, Rust, Web extensions, Locations and what not. The confidence of the Mozillians and the enthusiasm of the audience was just perfect. I enjoyed the MakerFest 2018 and the expectations are getting higher and higher for the future variants.

Mozilla VR session at Anibrain School of Media Design – Pune

 

Setting foot outside your house on a typical Saturday morning could be boring at times but this was not the case on 20^th January. Reason being, the much curious and super awesome participants at the Mozilla VR workshop at the Anibrain School of Media Design – Pune. Right from exploring the A-frame application source code to building a VR application using A-frame were the scenes at the venue. It was not just the students who were eager to learn some cool VR stuff but also the in-house professors and trainers of the school. An active content and a positive audience is something which makes a session perfect and this kind of mixture was seen at the venue. It was a wonderful experience being the event speaker and I would really appreciate the facilitation by Pratiksha and Srushti at the event. I am very thankful to the Faculty of Anibrain School of Media Design for inviting us as the event speakers and for presenting a vibrant participation and warm hospitality.

Red Hat's University Connect at SKNCOE

The Red Hat's University Connect team visited the campus of Smt. Kashibai Navale College of Engineering on 12th February 2017 Sunday. Prathamesh Chavan and Kenneth Dsouza were the members who represented Red Hat Pune at the event.

The members were welcomed by the faculty members of the IT Dept of SKNCOE. The members conducted a 5 hours talk cum hands-on workshop for the attendees which included the following points:

• Introduction to Red Hat - History, Red Hat values, Products and Technology
• Red Hat's University Connect initiative
• Linux booting process
• Fedora, basic commands and contributing to Fedora
• Open Source communities 

Prathamesh and Kenneth started with introducing Red Hat to the participants. The introduction included points like the Red Hat history, the values and culture of Red Hat and the products and technologies with which Red Hat is identified with. A quiz round was conducted based on these points and the winners were awarded with Red Hat goodies.

The Linux boot process is one of the amazing processes which could be seen first hand. The members gave a brief overview as how the process is carried out with the control getting transferred from one component to other. The participants were more curious and were proactive in asking questions which stroked to their ignited minds.

The participants were asked to install Fedora 25 in their machines and which was then followed by a brief introduction to Fedora. Execution of the basic commands was displayed via projector and the participants were asked to implement the same on their machines. The participants were excited after learning the power of the Terminal. Kenneth also spoke about the file permissions which makes the Linux more secure.

Prathamesh spoke about the various Open Source communities, the collaboration amongst them and ways to contribute to various Open Source projects. The participants asked questions related to project selection and contributions areas. A demand for a workshop dedicated to Open Source was raised by the participants.

Overall, the workshop was a great success and the team was asked to conduct more such Red Hat sessions in future.

Mozilla Contribution Day at STES

Mozilla Contribution Day at STES

Date : 8^th March 2016 Tuesday

Venue : Dept. of IT, Smt. Kashibai Navale College of Engineering

The Firefox Club STES had organized a contribution day event on 8^th March on the occasion of Women’s Day. The aim of this event was to keep up with the Super March initiative of Mozilla Pune community. The agenda was inclined with the women-centric topics as well as with the Super March goals and included the following points :
- Mozilla L10n
- Mozilla Developers Network
- WoMoz
Accordingly, there were talks as well as hands-ons activities for the generic participants who wished to contribute towards various Mozilla projects.

The event started with 2 parallel tracks : Mozilla L10n and Mozilla Developers Network.

Mozilla L10n was a handson activity in which about 29 participants had enrolled. It also covered a general introduction to Mozilla contribution areas and whatcanidoformozilla.org. The participants were given a detailed info about L10n in general and how to localize strings. This track saw many string submissions in many Indian languages. Prathamesh Chavan, Tanmayee Khadilkar and Saurabh Chivate mentored this track. 

Mozilla Developers Network was taken up by Tejas Kale, Shivraj Kadam and Dhanashri Kadu. The main points which were covered in this track were introduction to MDN, how useful it is to developers and how to make use of it in active learning.

 

The next session was based on WoMoz. Since it was the Women’s Day, the club’s leading women presented some aspiring stories of women in Mozilla and urged all the female participants to step up and come forward to contribute in various projects. Swati Hulyalkar, Meghali Rane and Soni Kriplani were the elites of this session.

After the lunch break, there were various lightening talks on new technologies and happenings in open source were organized. Many participants looked excited after attending this session. A post event feedback session was also organized in which the participants and the speakers got a frank time to interact with each other.

Looking at the satisfied audience, the event was a great success.

Bricked Flame

Bricked Flame

 

What exactly is this problem ?

A bricked device is a device which won't turn on in any way and there's nothing you can do to fix it. It is as useful as a brick. In case of the Flame device, when you try to switch it on, it only shows the Firefox OS logo and shuts down.

 

Solution to this problem :

The operating system used to solve this problem is Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro .There are in all 9 steps to solve this problem.

 

Step 1 : Download and install SDK in your Windows machine.

Step 2 : Download the Firefox OS image of any version which you wish to install from this link : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/Flame/Updating_your_Flame#Base_image_installation

Step 3 : Copy this image in the location where you have installed your SDK file. Example : C Drive> Users > (Username) > AppData > Local > Android > SDK > platform-tools  
Uncompress the image in that location.

Step 4 : Connect your device to the machine with the help of USB cable. Long press Power and Volume Up buttons. Choose option ‘apply update from ADB’.

Step 5 : Open Command Prompt (Open in administrator)

Step 6 : Goto the location where the image has been uncompressed.

Step 7 : Type the command ‘adb devices’ next to the path. You will be able to see the Flame device in sideload.

Step 8 : Type the command ‘flash.bat’ and it will start processing further.

 

Step 9 : After the process is over, the device will enter into fastboot mode. If this doesn’t happen then it can be done manually by long pressing Power and Volume Down buttons of the Flame device.

Bingo! Your Flame will now run on the installed version. 

Just in case :
If you face any issues regarding phone connectivity, you may also need to download the Alcatel USB drivers for the Flame device.

Contributors : Nehal Kadu and Prathamesh Chavan

 Tags : Firefox OS, Alcatel Flame, Bricked Device