• Remote XUL Manager has taken most of my spare time. It’s been exciting just because it’s a fairly new project and it had a pretty well-defined goal, which was reached only a few days ago. Version 1.0 was released on March 10th, and it does every I planned for this add-on to do. There are a couple of feature requests that I will consider in due time, but they’re pretty minor and I’m satisfied with the current state of this project.
• Fire.fm has taken the back seat. In the past few months all we’ve done is update locales, clean up some code, and push a few bug fixes (and then fixes on the fixes, and so on…). We have some plans for version 1.5, but it’s getting harder and harder to find the time for this. Specially because Last.fm keeps closing down their service and that has a very negative effect on my motivation. If it weren’t for the people that still use it – close to 200K – I would have abandoned this add-on a long time ago.
• My Add-on Packaging Proposal for the Google Summer of Code never gained any traction. Unfortunately the project was abandoned by the student assigned to it, so the whole idea stalled and was discarded. Now I’ve been approached by somebody who is interested in working on it. That’s very encouraging, but I need to give this some thought. I’ve been planning on reviewing the whole spec and giving it an overhaul based on all the stuff that has changed with Firefox 4 and the feedback I received. I’ll post here when (and if) I have an updated draft.
• The band I help as Executive Producer, Pneuma, has had a great deal of success locally, and they’re getting ready to tour Mexico and Europe. It’s very exciting times for them and I’m glad to be a part of this.

It’s been crazy times for me and the AMO Editor team. We had a very successful competition that yielded a incredible throughput and over 2500 reviews by the top 4 winners alone. And yet we’re still swamped with review submissions due to the upcoming Firefox 4 launch and the mass disabling of sandboxed add-ons, which resulted in a great deal of new submissions of old add-ons.

I have a bunch of ideas for new add-ons that I wish I had the time to work on. For now, I just write them down on my Someday list and wait

I keep feeling the same about a side project of mine that began shortly before I joined Mozilla. A long time friend of mine has lead a heavy metal band called Pneuma for quite a few years now. They had to break ties with their production company recently because of unacceptable delays on their part, and lots of the typical crap professional musicians have to deal with. They were looking for people to invest in the independent production of their next album, and I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.

Of course I wouldn’t invest in them if I didn’t think they were really good.  I have great expectations for their upcoming album and I’m helping them in every way I can. The best way I can help them is by bringing my knowledge of the web and technology to the table. So far I’ve helped them set up their temporary website and twitter account. I will also be helping them out with their online distribution, because not having your album listed on the iTunes Store is a very new and very big mistake a band can easily make.

But I digress. The point of this post is that I decided to use HTML5 on their site, and provide their first single in open OGG/Vorbis format (falling back to MP3 and Quicktime), with the added bonus that the band agreed to have the track available for download and free distribution. So anybody can listen and download the track in their preferred format, MP3 or OGG. The audio player looks fantastic on the site, by the way. Much better than QuickTime or WMP plugins. The audio quality is also great, and the file is much smaller than its MP3 counterpart.

Adding also to the surrealism of the whole “music producer” side of my life is the fact that Pneuma will be the opening act at the first Metallica concert in Costa Rica, next Sunday. This is the biggest concert in Costa Rican history, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be backstage. I haven’t really taken that in yet, there’s just too much work to do before the concert. But WOW.

If you like thrash / progressive metal, I recommend you visit http://pneumametal.com/ and have a quick listen. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

No, it’s not even close to being related to open source, and far from real coding. It’s closer to one of my biggest passions: heavy metal music. Metal is possibly my greatest source of inspiration, and I have more guitar-grinding heroes than technology-producing heroes. Sorry Steve Jobs, but I’ll take Luca Turilli before you any day.

Sadly, the metal scene in Costa Rica is mostly dead. There are very few professional bands around, and most have conformed with playing a few local gigs and selling a few hundred albums in the area. Lame. And this is where Pneuma steps in. Pneuma is a Costa Rican progressive thrash metal band lead by a friend of mine, Antonio Masís (vocals and bass). It’s also my favorite local band and pretty high up my global preference list. They’ve been around for a while, and already have a studio album which sold decently, although only locally. Their second album… that’s a long story.

They met with delay after delay in the production of their second album, until they decided to take matters into their own hands and record it again independently. Here’s where I step in. I volunteered to invest in their album, as well as contribute with my ‘Internet skills’ to give them more leverage in a worldwide market that no longer requires mega-corporate backing to enter. I’ve already studied several alternatives, such as CDBaby and TuneCore. They both look very promising.

The album is already fully recorded, and it’s now in the mixing/mastering process in California. It’s absolutely amazing. Nothing like this have ever been produced in this country, and I hope it will do well internationally as well. I’ll do my best to make that happen. For now, I’m setting up their website, pneumarock.com, which doesn’t have much now. We’ll begin more aggressive marketing soon, when we’re closer to the release date and we’ve sorted out a few details.

I’m very excited by this project. I’m happy to be able to make a contribution to local artists, specially artists as good as Pneuma. I also think there’s a very real possibility of making good money out of this, which is good because I’m not a complete socialist .