One Full Day at JAX Asia 2006

Today i attend the first annual JAX Asia 2006 event which was held on Borobudur Hotel, a nice and great hotel near National Monument and also Gambir Train Station. The conference was held successfully and i got lots of new information from this event, even though most of them are Java-related technology which is not my specialty, but it's still worthed since i got some information which i think it's important. It's too bad that i cannot met Kemas since i don't recognize him during the event (and probably so did he), but i managed to meet Farid Azis, a new OpenOffice.org Marketing Contact for Indonesia which has just elected few weeks ago.

The event was started by a keynote from ministry of Information and Technology, Mr. Sofyan Djalil. He talked about the new committee ICT which was just been constructed few weeks ago and also lots of other things. This was followed by some short introduction by the S&S Media CEO Masoud Kamali and VP Marketing & Sales Frank Stepan. Masoud also complained to the ministry about the Internet connection in Indonesia and he hope that the cost of Internet connection can be reduced while speed should be increased. This will help Indonesian people to work more productive, especially for IT industry. After this, the first session started. Craig Russell, from Sun Microsystem explains about an introduction to Java persistence concept, but there was some problems, because the projector couldn't display his screen. After being delayed for about 10 minutes, finally the first session started and going very well.

The second session was supposed to be Thilo Frotscher, but since Chuk-Munn Lee was trying to catch up a plane, their session was switched. Chuk-Munn Lee did present something new, which was scripting application on Java Platform and his demo was magnificent, but unfortunately, he spoke too fast and his pronunciation was not so good, so i think some of the attendee didn't quite understand of what he said. He also mentioned that the next JDK 6.0 will be released next month (December) which is a good news, since it will include JSE (Java Scripting Engine) which was specified in JSR-223 and it will enable you to write scripts (see all available script engine here) and have a bidirectional connection with your Java apps (have a look on this site or this site for simple example and this site is the official scripting project site). He showed a very nice demo which he could develop a web application within 3 minutes by using NetBeans IDE and also scripting. The application was not just a simple web application, but it was a demo of how scripting can be used to produce a great apps. In his demo, he generate a simple form to be used to fill in some address and it will try to pass this value to the Google Map database and the application does show the building we used to held this event. He only drag and drop from a built-in plugins inside NetBeans and voila... the application worked. Other demo was creating a nice-looking clock widget which looks like Macintosh's Widget. All he did was drag and drop. Simple huh?

Third session was presented by Thilo Frotscher and he was presenting about Java Web Services with Apache Axis2. I don't know much about Apache Axis2, so i couldn't give too much comment on this material. After the presentation, we had a lunch break and then there were 3 session running parallel and i choose to go to Singosari room where i will take the Architecture of Java Persistence Implementation, Achieving Enterprise Application Security, and Advanced Enterprise Debugging Technique session. Why i pick this session? Because the other session was discussing about Eclipse, a great framework, but unfortunately i don't use them at daily work. But i don't regret it, since the session i took was great and i got a new information for my project right now (Thanks to Neal Ford).

Fourth session was more in-depth version of the first session and the speaker still the same, Craig Russell. Next session was delayed about 5 minutes, since the speaker, Randel Powell hasn't arrived yet and he arrived and still carrying his luggage. That was quite funny. He talked about enterprise security as general and the conclusion about this session was that the users must be well educated because it's the human factor who caused the malware could infect the system or giving password to unauthorized people (because they put their password on their monitor or under their keyboard) and making a disaster for the company. He was quite famous, since after the event was finished, the MC and her friend asked him to take a picture for several time :)

The last session was presented by Neal Ford and it was a great one. He had a macintosh laptop with a nice look-and-feel. He showed us how to conduct more effective debugging and gave us some tips on how to do it correctly. He also showed us a great testing tool for web application and i will try it tomorrow. It's called Selenium. It's an open source application and by using it, you can record some action which will be repeated by the application, so you don't have to do simulate the test all over from the beginning each time you want to conduct a test.

Well, that's my short story about what has happened today in the JAX Asia 2006. I'm sure Kemas will also write something about this in his blog soon. I hope i will get the invitation for the next JAX Asia event next year.

Download YouTube Videos

So.. you found an interesting video in YouTube, but you cannot download them and watch them locally. What will you do? You will have to find a way in which you can download them right? Well, the solution might be Youtube-dl. It's a python-based script which can be used to download the videos directly from YouTube into your hard drive and you can watch them locally. The only requirement of this script is only installation of Python 2.4.x or newer. Once you have Python installed, you are set to go.

Here are the usage instruction taken from the original site:

Use youtube-dl followed by a video URL. Example: youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar". The video will be saved to the file foobar.flv in that example. As YouTube.com videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be flv. In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those two work under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get a specific FLV player of your taste.

Here's the screenshot on my initial testing:

AniBoom : Home of Animation

Those who loves to watch animation movies will love this site. It's AniBoom: The Home of Animation. This description is taken from the about us page in the original site:

aniBoom is a cross-media, cross-platform animation content project which addresses wide audiences through a range of genres, techniques and means.

In the future, they will also expand their site not only viewable on browsers, but also cross over to other mediums as well as TV, Cellular, PC games etc. In short, Aniboom is the first content project of its kind which focuses solely on animation in the hyper world of user generated content and Web 2.0. It's a great news as more and more sites are becoming Web 2.0 application.

This site have a so-called Boom Zone, which is a place where you can share all of your creation (movie/animation) to public and let them rate them. You can also earn money by submitting your movie to the competition which is always being held by them. The current competition is Aniboom Award 2006 and the first round of the 2006 AniBOOM awards competition is still in progress. If you would like to join the competition, you will have to wait until the next competition is started which likely to be started after the current competition is over.

The site have a clean interface and contain user-friendly interface based on Ajax, but unfortunately, when i test it, it didn't worked very well with Opera. In other browser, when i hover on one of the movie thumbnail, it will display a mini window which shows some statistics about the movie, but i cannot reproduce this on Opera. I hope they can fix this in the future. Other problem that i found was that format of the movie is not always the same. Some of them are flash-based, and the other can be vlc or other formats. When i browsed this using Firefox in Windows platform, it will display a window dialog confirming that it will need to launch an external application, which is VLC or Windows Media Player. Since i have those application, then i can watch them directly, but i don't know what if the user doesn't have the needed application. It will be a good idea to have a format which is being used by many people around the world, so they don't have to install lots of application just to enjoy the site. My suggestion will be flash or mpeg format.

Here are some of my favorite example of the movie:
Mortal Combat Mishaps
Mortal Combat Mishaps 2
Mortal Combat Mishaps 3
(contain violence, so parental advisory is needed).

OOo 2.1 Development

The development of OpenOffice.org 2.1 is continuing and they have released their first Release Candidates yesterday. It's not the final version, so please consider using OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 for now as it is the most stable version currently. Those who has a problem with OOo 2.0.4 and want to test the latest version can go to Download Page or look into Release Note to see changes being implemented between 2.0.4 release and 2.1 release. Things will likely to be added or fixed in the final version of 2.1 release, so keep watching the news of the upcoming 2.1 release.

Indonesian Sallary Guide 2006

Those who are looking for a guide about salary in Indonesia, can look for this guide. I got this URL from one of the posting in Indonesian Linux Forum when somebody asked about the salary for the sysadmin. Don't be surprised if the salary that we got right now is not the same as the salary listed here (most of the cases are smaller than in the guide). We all hoping that next year, our salary will be at least equals with the salary listed here or even more (if possible) hehehe :D

Microsoft Give Away Ribbon UI

Microsoft is announcing a licensing program for the new 2007 Microsoft Office User Interface. That means that individuals or companies will have opportunities to use Ribbon and other User Interface being used in Microsoft Office 2007 in their product and it's royalty-free, except if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license (That means application such as OpenOffice.org will not be able to use this UI, but i think OOo team will come up with new idea of UI in the next major version).

Microsoft has provided a 120+ page document containing the guidelines that you will need to implement the Office-style UI. It's just a guide that should (but not always) help you when you had problems while implementing this new UI.

Although this new UI has brought a major changes, not everybody likes it, so please make a wise decision when you want to implement this new UI on your application, since not all of the users will like the new UI behaviour.

Reference:
Jensen Harris' Blog
Microsoft Press Release
Office UI Licensing Site

Cancer Breakthrough

According to MercuryNews, Oakland Researcher, Dr. Julie Saba (aka. Queen of the Lyase) has been working for about ten years of studying an enzim called sphingosine phosphate lyase (SPL), which can regulate cell growth. Taken from MercuryNews:

SPL naturally decreases cancer cell growth but is de-activated when cancerous cells are present, thus allowing cancer to thrive. `The cancer cells are very smart,` said Saba, noting that `cancer cells stop anything` in the way of their progression.

Using cells in a tissue culture Saba said she and her team `have been able to turn-on the enzyme after cancer cell growth had occurred.` The Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that re-introducing the enzyme made chemotherapy more effective in tissue cultures.

`Although we're beginning our studies in colon cancer, we believe our research findings will have a direct impact on investigations for other cancers, including pediatric cancers,` said Saba.

`When we find genes that have a role in regulating cell growth, we automatically suspect that they might be involved in cancer and now it's very clear,` Saba said, commenting on the results of her year-long study.

Saba said the next step in her study will be to determine how many types of cancer are impacted by the enzyme, and to measure the enzyme's activity throughout cancer progression.

Saba said she also wanted to `find out if there is a way to deliver the enzymes to cancer cells.`

`When you are an oncologist you are always thinking what are the possible ways we can use this to help a cancer patient and those are the possible ways,` Saba said.

A similar study focusing on a different enzyme has been conducted in Texas with results that Saba said mirror her own, however according to Saba, `one of the things that is exciting is that this is the first time this enzyme has been linked to any disease.`

Saba said she will continue her research once she receives approval from a drug company whose product she plans to use.

Though many people fear cancer, Saba, `Queen of the Lyase,` may yet protect us all; `Don't worry, don't get overwhelmed,` she said, `there are lots of us working on it, and sooner or later we will have it figured out.`

`It is premature to suggest that SPL is the answer to curing cancer, but our research findings should dramatically advance our search for a cure,` said Saba.

I'm hoping that this research will have a good breakthrough on Cancer diagnose in the future so that Cancer is no longer being considered as a big threat to human life.

Started the Translation Project

I have started the translation project for the Slackbook and it's running well. I would like to thanks Ozzie for the website and the related tools and every people who are willing to help running the project. I have uploaded all the files in the CVS Server and it's ready to be translated. I have finished the preface and the index page and i'm finishing the last section of part 1.

I'm looking forward to see this project finished and if possible, update the materials and screenshots also to reflect changes in Slackware 11.0, since many new materials has been out of date and some of them will need to be updated.

JAX Asia 2006

SDA-Indo is presenting JAX Asia 2006 which will be held in 30 November 2006 in Borobudur Hotel, Jakarta. This event is the first conference about Java, XML, Web Service, Enterprise Architecture, and Eclipse. All of the speakers will came from outside Indonesia, such as Akmal B. Chaudhri, Alexander von Zitzewitz, Chuk-Munn Lee, Craig Russell, Neal Ford, Randel D. Powell, Thilo Frotscher, and Tillmann Seidel.

Here are the list of the conference program:
- Architecture of Java Persistence Implementations (Craig Russell)
- Introduction to Java Persistence (Craig Russell)
- Java Web Services with Apache Axis2 (Thilo Frotscher)
- Best Practices for Implementing Web Services (Thilo Frotscher)
- Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) (Tillmann Seidel)
- Best Practices for Eclipse Plug-in Development (Tillmann Seidel)
- Advanced Enterprise Debugging Techniques (Neal Ford)
- SOA: Next Wave of Enterprise Development (Neal Ford)
- SOA: The Core of Business Process Management (Randel Powell)
- Achieving Enterprise Application Security (Randel Powell)
- Making the most of Eclipse (Akmal Chaudhri)
- Increase project success with Java architecture management (Alexander von Zitzewit)

I was quite lucky since i got a JAX Free Pass invitation today via email. Anybody else who will attend this conference? Maybe we can meet each other.

PS3 and Linux

Thanks to Open Platform, PS3 users can now install Fedore Core 5 on PS3 which will be identified as "Other OS". I think GNU/Linux distros which can be installed on PS3 are not limited to Fedora Core only, but it has been tested on Fedora and it worked well. You can also install other application as along it has a PPC builds on it.

Here's the brief description (from Open Platform):

Installing an “Other OS" on PLAYSTATION®3 requires two files. One is the “Other OS Installer” distributed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (which is called installer hereafter), and the other is the “Other OS boot loader” (called boot loader hereafter) provided by the third party.

The installer installs the boot loader of an "Other OS" on a boot‐loader‐dedicated storage area of PLAYSTATION®3. Once the boot loader of an "Other OS" has been successfully installed, it automatically starts up instead of the PLAYSTATION®3’s system software at every power on by selecting it as”Default System”in the menu of the PLAYSTATION®3’s system software.

The installer installs only the boot loader of an "Other OS". It is assumed that any further installations, such as the installation of "Other OS" files on the built-in hard disk of PLAYSTATION®3, are performed when the installed boot loader starts up. For more details, please contact the provider of the boot loader you are using.

If you want to do this, please read the manual first.

This is not the first time GNU/Linux OS can be installed and running on gaming console. Nintendo DS was the other example.

IT Education

Taken from EWeek today:

In response to strong demand among students and the potential job market growth, Kaplan University School of Information Systems and Technology in Davenport, Iowa, announced Nov. 15 two new bachelor's degree programs in IT systems.

The B.S. in Networking Technology focuses on students learning to install and manage operating systems and wireless devices, configure routers and switches, and design and monitor networks.

The Networking Technology degree aims to prepare students for post-college jobs as computer and network systems administrators or system support analysts.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this area of IT will see 12,000 new jobs per year through 2012, with starting salaries anticipated at $49,000.

Kaplan's new B.S. degree in Software Development will have a curriculum focused on the software development life-cycle, from software requirements to design and implementation techniques.

The program aims to prepare college-degreed students for work as entry-level software developers, analysts and programmers, where according to staffing firm Robert Half Technology, 2005 starting salaries ranged from $52,000 to $83,000.

It's a good approach by the Kaplan University School of Information Systems and Technology, since the students will have a focused education and not being filled with a bunch of knowledge which is not really useful. For example, if you are planning to be a system administrator, then you don't have to know how SDLC works (even it's good to know them).

Well, sadly, this is not what has been implemented in most college in Indonesia. When students choose to major an IT related, for example Computer Science, they will be filled with lots of materials from other major also. At the end, most students lack of experience or knowledge and not ready when they entered real world.

Novell's OOo Support VBA

Novell has integrate basic support for VBA (Visual Basic for Application) into OpenOffice.org's source code and release them into Novell's version of OOo. With this release, people who has written a VBA script in Microsoft Office don't have to rewritten the macro they made when being opened in OpenOffice.org application. Though it's not 100% finished yet, it is a good sign that the application will have more interoperability between platforms. So far, Novell is focusing on OpenOffice.org Calc which is the equivalent application for Microsoft Excel.

The source code is freely available from OpenOffice.org Hacker Page and instructions on how to build it are on the OpenOffice.org build page. Want to try it? Start hacking OOo!!!

MD5, SHA1, and now RSA?

MD5 and SHA1 has already been considered broken by some analyst and while they're trying to find a better algorithm, a new concept of breaking RSA is on the move by German cryptographer Jean-Pierre Seifert. He announced a new method called SBPA (Simple Branch Prediction Analysis) which is more efficient than Branch Prediction Analysis, the most recent attack vector against RSA public-key cryptography. While this method is being heavily reviewed, you can see the abstract of this method in ePrint Archive.

Some links from Wikipedia:

How to Break MD5 and Other Hash Functions
Explanation of the successful attacks on SHA-1

Strange Building

Today i went to one of our client's office with my colleague. We went there to setup their environment related to our project. We set a schedule to go there at 10 AM and we arrived a little late because my colleague had to extend his driving license first. Our client's office was located at 20th floor, so we had to take a lift to get there. The unique thing was that you cannot directly go to 20th floor, but you will go to 11th floor by using the first lift, and then you will have to go to the other lift to go to the 20th floor. Another uniqueness was the floor naming. When i got into the 11th floor, it was considered as 9th floor on the second lift. Strange huh? Oh yeah, they even got an open canteen on 9th floor, so you can have lunch over there when you are working there.

When i was in their office and i looked down, ever cars were like toys. They looked very very small and yes, it's still crowded like always in Jakarta. The setup was faster than we expected so we can got back earlier and have lunch (because we were really starving).

Tab Mix Plus

My friend has just started to try Firefox after he noticed that that 2.0 version has come out. Before this, he preferred Opera as his browser. Before he start migrating to Firefox, he would like to look for some extension which will bring Opera's features to Firefox and one of them that he showed me was Tab Mix Plus, a small simple extension which can extend Firefox's tab feature. This is a simple description of Tab Mix Plus from their website:

Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

So if you was an Opera fans and you would like to have Opera's tab feature in Firefox, the probably you will definitely install this extension.

Local IM Client

We all know that communication is very important. Without any communication, there won't be any civilization like nowadays. In virtual world, communication can be done also, via email or IM client. Some of the most popular IM client are YM, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, GTalk, Gaim, and many more. All of them requires an Internet connection. Even if we are in the same building, sometimes we also use this IM Client to communicate with our colleagues.

Now what will happen if the ISP is having some problems so that the Internet connection is down? We can't use that kind of IM client any longer, since there's no route to the servers. The solution is to use a local IM client. One of the simple one is YaK!. Taken from YaK!'s website:

Yak! is a text-based, chat application for use on Microsoft Windows 32-bit local area networks. It has a simple and easy to use interface, does not require a dedicated server and makes communicating across a LAN a dream

It doesn't have so much features compared to other IM client, but i think it's very sufficient for basic chat and also file transfer. You can look all of YaK!'s features here. Unfortunately, YaK! is not a freeware, but it's not time limited software, so you can use it as long as you like, but with a simple annonying message dialog (a reminder to purchase the application) when you minimized the application and want to restore it again (you will have to wait for 8 seconds). It also have little and simple smileys compared to other client.

The other application which can be used is Akeni LAN Messenger. This application is multiplatform so that it can be installed on Linux platform also (not like YaK! which only works in Windows platform). Akeni LAN Messenger came in several version and this is a shareware application, meaning that it's limited to 30 days trial and after that you will have to buy the license to continue using it.

Few Days Left

After being delayed for some time due to some Change Request from the customer and also a lot of improvements of the program itself, finally the OWG project will be finished. This project has been started few months before i joined my current company last year and i was assigned to be the developer of this project along with other fun colleagues. As time goes by, the project has been running for one year and three months. Quite a long time, since it's a complicated modules.

I learn a lot of things during the implementation of this project, mostly due to accessibility issue. Thanks to Dick Lunenborg from Bartimeus for his knowledge on accessibility issues. I would like to thank my colleagues that already worked hard together to make this project accomplished.

FYI, OWG project is a desktop-based educational application that was built to help visual and hearing impaired childrens to learn using computers as their tools. It consists of eleven modules which are categorized for learning alphabets, words, typing, basic arithmetic such as decimal numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in a fun and friendly environment. It has a text-to-speech and also highlighting features to provide both visual and audio feedback to the students.

What Happened With LinuxOrId ?

This morning Indonesian Linux Forum was still accessible and suddenly at noon, they can't be accessed anymore. All domain which belongs to linux.or.id couldn't be reached, including all Linux User Group websites and also Indonesian Slackware's Community Site. What happened? Maybe Ronny Haryanto can give an explanation about this?

UPDATE 4:24 PM: All Linux.or.id domain has been restored and is working normally as it used to be :)

Email Obfuscator

Nowadays, spambot are getting smarter and wilder. They harvest many email address from public site and sending spams all over the world with unwanted messages. Suppose we have a running website which sometimes displays an email address and we don't want to have them harvested by the spambots. What can we do about that? There are several ways to solve this and it's up to you to decide.

- Using images (most of case are using GD library)
- Use added words, such as (user@_NOSPAM_domain.com)
- Use replaced text, such as (user(at)domain(dot)com)
- Use space between text, such as (user at domain dot com)
- Use email obfuscator

Talking about email obfuscator, there're several application which use this to protect their email address to be harvested. It's quite effective since the text will be converted to an equivalent hex value, thus the same result will be displayed on the browser but it will not be the same text the spambot wants when they view at the source. You can try to look at the implementation of email obfuscator by looking at Alicorna.

WP also have Obfuscate email plugins which automatically convert the email address into the obfuscated email address.

Here's the example for my email address will look like if being translated to obfuscated version:
willysr@gmail.com

New Filter Extension Tutorial

Finally i have time to install Filter packages in my Slackware system and managed to try the Filter Extension. The result can be seen in my CodeBlog. So far only 3 posts are available but it will be increasing soon. I hope it will help other people as well. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Mono 1.2 Released

Novell which has just signed a deal with Microsoft has just released a new updates to Mono which adds several improvements support for the Microsoft*Windows* Forms API to more easily port .NET client-side applications to Linux. This version will be more compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 (and Microsoft has just launched .NET Framework 3.0 few days ago). The Mono can be downloaded at Download page.

Click here if you want to read the press release.

Indonesian Slackware Community

The new Indonesian Slackware Community has been launched, thanks to Ozzie and Ronny Haryanto for the domain name and hosting. You can download the latest Slackware 11.0 ISOs there and you might find a lot of information (soon, because it's still empty currently) about Slackware. When the site has been running, maybe i can propose to Patrick Volkerding to include this site as one of Slackware's repository.

We are waiting for your contribution to this site.

.NET Framework 3.0 Arrived

Windows Vista is being planned to be released this year and it will include .NET Framework 3.0 which has just been released. In this page, you will find detailed information about .NET Framework 3.0 which is considered a "additive" release compared to .NET Framework 2.0 so every application that was build using 2.0 will be fully working with the new .NET Framework. BUT if you use .NET Framework 1.x version and wants to upgrade to .NET Framework, it's best to look for changes in 2.0 that might break your application.

This version includes some new features such as:
- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly code-named "Avalon")
Provides classes for building next-generation smart-client applications that combine UI, documents, and media.

- Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly code-named "Indigo")
Offers a unified programming model and runtime for building service-oriented applications.

- Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
Offers a programming model, engine, and tools to build workflow-enabled applications that model business processes.

- Windows CardSpace (formerly code-named "InfoCard")
Provides a technology for simplifying and improving the safety of working online with personal identity information.

- Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Enables productively building Windows and Web-based applications.

This new version will only be available for this OS:
* Microsoft Windows XP Home or Microsoft Windows XP Home Professional, with Service Pack 2 or later.
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family with Service Pack 1 or later.

Living Without Anonymity

There will be no net anonymity in Brazil soon if the bill proposed by Senator Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB-MG) is being approved. What a nightmare it will be. I wonder what will people react if this kind of bill is applied in every country, including Indonesia? I don't think there will be a freedom again in Internet. Well, it's too paranoid i think as it's very very complicated to force every people to give their personal data just to download something.

From this blog, you can see some consequent of this bill:

This bill, if passed into law, will require every ISP to store each connection performed by a user for at least 3 years.

If approved, it will be a crime, punishable with up to 4 years of jail time, to disseminate virus or trojans, unauthorizedly access data banks or networks and send e-mail, join chat, write a blog or download content anonymously. The bill states that every user must fully identify herself before using the Net, with full name, current address, phone number and the equivalent of the Social Security Number. To access the Net without providing this information, or to give false information, will also be a crime.

OMG!!!!!!

Broken PEAR Script?

Today i want to test the new FILTER extension which was introduced in PHP 5.2.0, but when i tried, i got an error message: PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function input_get(), so i looked at PHP's manual on FILTER extension and i got an information that this filter is not installed by default. You will have to install PEAR first and then run pear install filter in order to have this filter installed.

The problem is when i tried to run the batch script provided from PHP, it's broken and i couldn't get PEAR installed on my system. I forgot to capture the screen, but after looking at PEAR's manual, i managed to get PEAR installed by downloading the latest script from go-pear and running it by using php go-pear.php (see screenshot below).

Next i want to list all upgrades available by using pear list-upgrades, but it displayed a warning message : WARNING: channel "pear.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "channel-update pear.php.net" to update , so i run the command and i can remove the warning message when i want to list all available updates again.

Next step is installing the filter extension. When i run pear install filter, it displayed a feedback message:

No releases available for package "pear.php.net/filter" - package pecl/filter can be installed with "pecl install filter"
Cannot initialize 'filter', invalid or missing package file
Package "filter" is not valid
install failed

According to the messages, i had to use pecl command rather than pear and so i do what they ask. But then i got another message :

Failed to download pecl/filter within preferred state "stable", latest release is version 0.11.0, stability "beta", use "channel://pecl.php.net/filter-0.11.0" to install
Cannot initialize 'filter', invalid or missing package file
Package "filter" is not valid
install failed

So finally i run pecl install channel://pecl.php.net/filter-0.11.0 and i ended with :

downloading filter-0.11.0.tgz ...
Starting to download filter-0.11.0.tgz (25,946 bytes)
.........done: 25,946 bytes
8 source files, building
ERROR: The DSP filter.dsp does not exist.

I'm curious, what is this DSP file? So i searched PECL's site and found some information on this page. Here's the answer:

The ".dsp" file is a Ms Visual Studio project that is meant to be compiled on Windows.

So i think in Windows platform, you may have to spend more efforts in order to get Filter installed. I will try to use my Slackware later on and see if it worked.

Has anybody have successfully installed Filter extension on Windows platform? If yes, please give your steps.

Thanks in advance

Return of Incredible Machine

My girlfriend once introduced me to Incredible Machine, the old-time educational and rational game which is played under Windows 98. I'm looking for the PC version and could not find the same version anywhere, until i came up with Return of Incredible Machine Even More Contraption. It's like a reborn to the game since it has won a lot of awards from PC Magazine, Computer Gaming World, Family PC, PC World, Newsweek, etc. You will love it when you play it, since it's challenging and fun to play this game.

For children, it can be used to increase their rational way of thinking and problem solving. For adults, the same reason can be used also plus another way of removing stress.

By the way, here's the screenshot from eBay:

Hidden Expedition is Over

After three days of playing the game, finally i finished Hidden Expedition last night (actually i didn't know if the game has only 15 dive and i stopped at Dive 14 the day before yesterday). The last task was very tricky, since after you had to solve 36 items, you will have to open the treasure chest which contains the lost crown and the captain save the combination number around the chest and you didn't get any clue (there's still a hint to be used but it waste a lot of time if you used it, so i suggest that you don't use it except for the last number). You will have to click most of the items and hopefully you can finish this game off. I had to restart three times before i managed to get the clue (did i forgot to mention that the items that holds the combination number was always changing?).

After finishing the game, you will find this screen:

Working With New PHP 5.2

Just looking at Eris post on Planet Terasi, i then looked at the PHP 5.2 changelog and it does include HUGE updates. They even release a special note about upgrading to PHP 5.2.

Time to work with PHP 5.2 and i will test whether my site is already PHP 5.2 compatible (it's just a simple site, so i think it will have no side effect). Besides, it depends on the hosting service whether they want to upgrade to PHP 5.2 or not. Let's get back to reviewing our code to support changes in PHP 5.2.0.

Update (2:24 PM): It seems that PHP team has updated their Windows installers also (and also the size has increased a lot compared to their previous one). They changed into MSI format and they make life easier by giving an options to set what extenstion will be installed by default and also an option to install PEAR and PHP Manual as well. It's a worthed update and no wonder it takes PHP team three months to upgrade from 5.1.6 into 5.2.0.

Next step is to try to upgrade my Slackware into PHP 5.2.0. For several times, i failed to upgrade to PHP 5.2.0. Maybe because i used incorrect parameter when configuring PHP. I will try later on and hopefully it will be successfull today. Btw, here's the updated PHP installer screenshot:

Resetting Atom

In blogger, if you set the Atom to display full post, then it might changed to semi full if you encountered some problem when publishing your post. I don't know why they changed automatically, but the only way to fix this is by post a new post and it will automatically rebuild the Atom using your setting. I have tried to republish the blog completely, but it didn't work either.

New Click and Found Game

After finishing the Mystery Case File (Prime Suspect and huntsville), i'm looking for the similar game and i never got one, until yesterday when i browsed BigFishGame and i found an interesting game which i thought will be like the MCF series and it was called Hidden Expedition. It's the no. 1 hit game on BigFishGame, so i'm curious about this game, so i tried to download it and play the trial version of the game (trial version is limited to 60 minutes of play, but if you're quick enough, you can finish half of the game).

The game was more complicated compared to MCF, because your time was very limited by the oxygen that you had (mostly if you use the hints which will reduce your oxygen suply). Luckily there's an option to extend your oxygen supply by finding the oxygen supply icon which will add your supply a little bit. There's also some gems to be found, but i don't know what's the advantage of collecting this gems. After you collect all the items, you will face an extra task which has three variations as far as i know. The first task is collecting all the gems, the second one is completing the puzzle (some kind pictures), and the third one is collecting another set of someone's belonging. For the first and third task, your time will be very very limited as you will use the remaining time after collecting all the items, so sometimes it's very very hard to finish the last task because mostly you will run out of oxygen/time.

Last night i managed to complete 7 dive and i'm looking for more today. If you are curious, here is the screenshot:

Mandriva PowerPack 2007

Finally i finished downloading Mandriva Power Pack 2007 edition after 4 days of downloading at night. I had to scheduled the download because i'm not the only one who's using the Internet connection at the office, so i set it to start the download at night when nobody is using it. I started to download last saturday and it was finished this morning. I already burn them into CD, but i don't think i will install it on my laptop as i'm already satisfied with Slackware and i don't have new space left for the new system. Maybe i will install it on my office laptop if someday i will need to use it.