Family Reunion

At the end, there's no gifts from Linus nor PV, but i got a nice family reunion at the end of this year (except for Ivan, my cousin who didn't come back from Australia this year). We just had our dinner together at Kobra restaurant, near my girlfriend's house. We are going to play cards until midnight after i write this post

Scrolling Problem

Today i went to Plaza Ambarukmo with my girlfriend and i tried to use the e-directory to find one of the store i need to go to. It was smaller that i saw in Taman Anggrek in Jakarta, but both of them has touch screen feature in it. At first, i thought it would be easy to use it as touch screen is very easy to use, but unfortunately, it wasn't.

I'm not saying that the problem lies in the touch screen, but it's on the system. When i used the e-directory in Taman Anggrek, it has no mount pointer in it, so all you can do is click on the buttons. They provide big buttons to locate the store and also to scroll, so no mouse pointer needed. What i saw in Plaza Ambarukmo was like a Flash format, so the touch screen replaces your mouse input. You can click and also you must drag the pointer to the scrollbar if you want to go down/up through the pages. Clicking is not a big problem, but scrolling does. The touch screen was not very responsive, thus the mouse pointer movement was not very smooth. Sometimes it stucked on one location even though my fingers has moved to another place (dragging it).

I hope they will fix this as soon as possible, as it's very important, mostly for people outside Jogja who has never been to Amplaz before

Going to Semarang

Next week, i will go to Semarang, since my cousin has his first baby (it's a boy). His wife gave a birth last night at around 8 PM and my auntie sent my mother a SMS message. I will leave for one day only, since my sister had to go back to Jakarta at January 3, so i only stayed for one night (i know it will be very crowded, but there's no other choice). Well... anyways... congratulations to Andi for his first baby... be a good father

I'll take this a short vacations also

Will Linus Give New Year Gifts?

After failing to give Christmas presents few weeks ago, most people are expecting Linus to give the presents before this year ends which should happened around the next 50 hours (at the time i write this post). Many people are expecting the final 2.6.24 release as it should have been released by now if it wasn't late and there's no show stopper bugs around. So far, there's 247 oops in the RC release of 2.6.24, according to Kernel OOPS BugCount, which is the biggest since 2.6.17 was tracked (i don't know whether this number has dropped or not, but my guest is that this number reflected the oops counted during the first RC release and it will be updated when the final 2.6.24 released).

Heavy Rain

Yesterday, my hometown had a heavy rain and it caused electrical problem (again) in some places. My girlfriend's house was affected by this problem and so did the other house around hers. My ADSL modem which wasn't connected to the UPS sometimes had to be restarted when the electricity went off even for a second. My computer stays on, since i have UPS connected and working well. Solo, a city near Jogja was rumored to be drowned, but not the whole city, but only some parts of it. I wonder what happened with Jakarta if this kind of rain dropped there? The critical month will be next month and a month later (February). I hope last year's tragedy won't happened again.

MU on Top

MU won it's away matches against Sunderland with a big goal difference, 0-4. Meanwhile, Arsenal was held to draw by Portsmouth, which means that MU is now on top of the Barclays Premier League table, with one point different to Arsenal. It's a good sign and i hope that they will keep it that way until the end of this season.

There's a curse-like that said whoever became the top of the table on the middle of the season (December) will not be the champion at the end of the season, but MU has broke that curse several times and i do hope they will do it again

Yesterday's match was also a nice comeback from Louis Saha who scored twice (one from Penalty) and also Wayne Rooney who scored the first goal. The other person was the winger, Ronaldo. They even got 0-3 in the first half, so it's a big win yesterday. Check the report on Soccernet

Bad Delivery Service

Two days ago i ordered a cake at Holland Bakery. The cake was promised to be delivered at 3 PM today to my girlfriend's house and i agreed with that. I wrote the recipient and sender information correctly and i have strongly said that to the person who received my order so that it won't delivered to the wrong person.

Guess what? The cake was delivered to my house My address was clearly written in the sender field, and not in the recipient field (the receipt was in Indonesian). My sister who noticed this package call them and they said that they would someone to took the package and send it to the correct recipient. After more than 50 minutes without any progress, i recalled them and they said they were just leaving 15 minutes ago because they couldn't find any free drivers. OK, no problem for me. So i waited again... Another 45 minutes passed without any confirmation. So i decided to deliver that package myself

I know that the route from Holland Bakery to my house is not that far and it could be reached under 10 minutes and today is not as crowded as yesterday, so it should be possible. I don't know what took them so long. They arrived at my house 5 minutes before i came back delivering the cake to my girlfriend's house.

Which One Shoud I Use?

Nowadays, there are a lot of Linux distributions and sometimes, it can make people confused. If you ask to someone else, they might give an answer with their preferred distribution, so i usually never pick specific distro and let them choose by themselves. If you are looking for a good Linux distribution, i suggest you read this nice article:
- Choosing a Linux Distro Part 1
- Choosing a Linux Distro Part 2
- Choosing a Distro - Newbie Guide

And if you want better interface, try this website. From this website, i get this results:
- Slackware
- Gentoo
- Arch Linux

Hm... nice... exactly as i used currently (Slackware)

Don't forget to look at DistroWatch for more information about the Linux distribution that you are going to use.

Comments Changes

I decided to change the setting for this blog regarding commenting. It seems that spammers are getting wild again, so for now, i changed how people can leave a comments on this blog. Now, only registered users that can leave a message on this blog, which i guess doesn't have big impact, since most of the them already have an account on other blog services or perhaps OpenID, which can be used to identify themselves.

Merry Christmas For All of You

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2007

圣诞快乐2007年

聖誕快樂2007年

Joyeux Noël 2007

Frohe Weihnachten 2007

Καλα Χριστουγεννα 2007

Buon Natale 2007

メリークリスマス2007

메리 크리스마스 2,007

Feliz Natal 2007

Счастливого Рождества 2007

Feliz Navidad 2007

Selamat Natal 2007

Thanks to Google Translate

Indonesian Version of HP 7

Next month (and also next year), Indonesian version of Harry Potter 7 will arrive around 12 January. In my opinion, it was a quick release, since usually Indonesian version will come out one year after the English version comes out. At least this is what happened in the previous six edition.

Today i went to Gramedia book store and there was a promotion about it. I can get 10% off if i did a pre-order and i did that. I paid Rp. 50.000 and i should pay the rest when i receive the book next month. I choose the soft cover, since i had the soft cover version with the previous version. The soft cover price were Rp. 150.000 and the hard cover were Rp. 195.000. I was customer number 649 meaning that there were more than 600 people have pre-ordered the book before me (some of them were ordering more than one book).

If you haven't done so, then you will have to wait for Wednesday, since i guess Gramedia will not be open tomorrow.

Good and Bad Business

Every year, people celebrates something, birthday, anniversary, Christmas, New Year, etc. When the time comes, people are taking opportunities to get lots of money, either by running good business or sometimes a bad one. One good example of the good business is making the Santa's hat or Christmas goods. Since it's almost Christmas (tomorrow), many Christian will surely buy those things. It happened in most events, like Chinese New Year, Thanks Giving, Halloween, etc.

Well, besides good business, some people do bad business also. One of them is a lazy parking man. Today i went to the Kota Baru Church to celebrate Christmas night with my girlfriend and we went there using a car. Because we were quite late (we planned to go one hour before it, but we arrived there 40 minutes before, which is considered late, since it was already crowded). When i stepped out of the car, there was some men acting like a parking man and asked for money. He asked for Rp. 5000 and i rejected, since it's way too high. Normal rate is Rp. 1000-2000 in Jogja. So i finally gave him Rp. 3000 because it's not my car and i don't want something happened while i was in the church.

When the celebration was over, we went back to the car and nothing happened and that's a good sign, but when we wanted to get out, there were nobody out there helping out. Those guys were busy asking money from people for the second session. This is an example of bad business. They are not responsible for anything after they got the money. It's very crowded and they don't give a **** care about that. All they care is the money

Out of Space

Today, i was checking my laptop and i found out that my Windows primary partition (C) is almost out of space with 1,6 GB remaining. I don't realize this, since in the last few weeks, i rarely boot my laptop and always use my desktop. Even if i boot to my laptop, most of the time, i boot to my Slackware, not my Windows operating system.

Back to main topic here. I was quite surprised when i had that low space problem, since i never added new things on my laptop if it's not very important (i don't like bloated system). The only things i add most of the time were Windows updates. And probably that's the problem. I searched my system and looking for the directory that holds a lot of spaces and finally i found one of them, which is C:\Windows\Installer. On my system it's only 1,25 GB, but on other forums, some of them were having 8-12 GB of space wasted on that directory. What are the files stored there actually? I tried to find some answers on Google, and most of them didn't have a good answer about this. It's said that those files were the installer information that can be used when you want to reinstall the application and it can be deleted, but they don't talk about the potential risk if those files are deleted.

I really really want to delete those files since it doesn't help at all. It's just wasting space. Maybe this space requirements should be added to Windows requirement page

In case you are using Windows, have you check yours? How much does it consume your space? You might be surprised, mostly if you often install/remove applications on your system

Better Gmail 2.0

If you are using GMail and Better GMail extension, it's a good idea to grab and download the second version of Better GMail extension, as GMail has changed a little bit and it could cause problems if you are using the first version. I also had this problem and when i click the Find Updates button, it won't tell if there's an update. So when i activate my better gmail extension, i got a warning on GMail's interface that using the old version of Better GMail could cause problem and it's suggested to update to the second version and i simply upgrade to the second version and now most of my problem has gone with the wind....

Please note that Better GMail 2.0 only works with new version of GMail

Alpine Goes Gold

After being developed for some time, finally Alpine has been officially released by the release of Alpine 1.0. They have slightly different versioning during development phase, but the results is now officially released. FYI, Alpine is a fast, easy to use email client that is suitable for both the inexperienced email user as well as for the most demanding of power users. It's build based on Pine, one of the most popular text-based email client (i also use it on my Slackware). I don't know whether it will replace Pine or not, but since it's build on Pine, i'm assuming it will be better than Pine. Alpine is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0

Close to 6GB

What do you thing 6GB represents? It's GMail's quota. It's almost 6 GB and keep counting. My email account is still 35 MB, not even 1% of the quota given by GMail.

Clamav 0.92

A new final version of Clamav has been released by the Clamav team. The changelog is also provided if you want to know further changes compared to the previous version. It's quite big, with 13,6 MB for the file size (source).

If you see the changelog, there's a lot of code cleanup on this release, so in most cases, it's a good progress, but we don't know yet until we tried the application. Hopefully it will compile nicely on my Slackware again

Indonesian Translations for Smarty

Smarty now has Indonesian translations for the manuals. The translation work has been finished by Zaenal Mutaqin. Check the site for the finished task. Congratulations to Zaenal I hope his work will help the adoption of Smarty by PHP users in Indonesia

New Room

Today is the day where i should get my new room for next year. I already received the key from the dean, Mr. Henry Feriadi. It's still empty, since i still don't have any desk nor computer to use, but i hope they will finish the migration session next Saturday and hopefully i can use any free desk and computer (i don't expect a nice shinny computer, but it's a good idea if somebody can give that to me ). I will share the room with Mr. Harald Walcher, a foreign lecturer in UKDW.

I'm planning to wipe the hard disk and install Slackware Linux on the computer, so no more Windows on my computer. I'm tired of having problem with viruses and since the computer does not have the bleeding-edge specs, it would be quite heavy if i force to use Windows. Slackware Linux has been my favorite Linux distribution since 2005. There's a lot of cool things that Linux could do and Windows couldn't.

Well, most of them will have to wait until next year......

Opera 9.25

I know that most of Opera users will likely to wait for 9.50, but it's still in beta version and being developed, so for now, you can get the updated 9.25 that deals with security fixes and miscellaneous fixes as meant on the changelog:

* Fixed an issue where plug-ins could be used to allow cross domain scripting
* Fixed an issue with TLS certificates that could be used to execute arbitrary code

* Rich text editing can no longer be used to allow cross domain scripting

* Prevented bitmaps from revealing random data from memory

* Fixed a problem where malformed BMP files could cause Opera to temporarily freeze.

How SE Fix Things

If you are a software engineer (or programmer), you might often said this sentence "It worked yesterday", "This is designed according to specification", or probably "It must be a hardware problem". Check this page for more complete sentence that we often said when problem arises. It's filled with an image for representation of the text

Task Completed

Today i have submitted all of my results to the administration division on my campus, meaning that my task for this semester (and this year) is already completed. It's time to start thinking about next semester which i will teach more subjects than this semester.

Next semester i will teach 3 different subjects (this semester i also taught three different subject, but two of them were similar, but only in different faculty). Those three subject are distributed system, web engineering, and internet application engineering. Too bad i couldn't join the networking class that uses Linux because my schedule has some conflict with my other class. I really wanted to co-teaching with Hendra Sentono (ex sysadmin on my campus). Well, probably next time

Since i had spare time, i will start working on the material for the two remaining subjects. The other lecturer is busy with moving their stuffs to the new building. I was placed in a room without any window I will try to move to other room which is still empty (i have looked at the room map today and i will ask if i could use that room )

MU Beats Liverpool

MU beat Liverpool on their home base 0-1 to gain the top of the English Premiere League table for temporary (as Arsenal is going to play against Chelsea in a few minutes). This is a big win and it will give a burden to Arsenal if they want to regain their position as the leader. Wonderful goal from Carlos Tevez in 43th minute. Too bad i couldn't watch it as i don't have TV Cable on my house. I just watch the result from LiveScore

Forum Surpasses 8000 Members

Hm... i forgot when did Indonesian Linux Forum surpasses 7000 members, but today, it surpasses 8000 members So next year, we could gain about around 10000 members (if the new member of the day statistics doesn't decrease). It's the next milestone in Forum's existence since 2004. The database has surpassed 100 MB with total of Number of posts: 71284, Number of topics: 11573 and Topics per day: 9.23

New Version Control Application

A new version control application has been released by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu development. Unlike CVS or SVN which use centralized repository, Bazzar (the new application name from Canonical) use a distributed repository (perhaps like in GIT). Any web server that includes a FTP server can be a Bazzar server, interesting huh?

So what's the requirements? Only Python is required. Curious? Grab them at Bazzar's website

Related article: Linux-Watch

IEEE Computer Society Invitation

Few weeks ago i created an account on IEEE and today i got the invitation to join IEE Computer Society. They gave a discount US$90 if i'm willing to join before the end of this year (31 Dec 2007). I will think about it first, as the rate is quite expensive (for me). Personally, it's very interesting, since i can get access to more than 1300 courses and also got IEEE magazines, etc. I wonder if my campus has already subscribe to this community or not.

Lost Integration

Usually, when i sign in to my GMail account, then i launched blogger's URL, it went directly to my dashboard, where i can choose which blog i should write, but lately the integration between those two services were lost (or broken). I don't know why. Perhaps it only happened on my browser. Well, it's just blogger, as i can logged in directly to other Google's service, such as Google Docs, GoogleGroups, and many other services.

More Assignments

From today's meeting, i got a new assignment for next semester, which will be Internet Application Engineering (i don't know if it's the correct translations from "Rekayasa Aplikasi Internet"). The focus for this subject is to introduce Internet application as much as possible to the students in order to prepare them for the next subject, Web Engineering, where students are taught how to develop a good web application, starting from requirements, planning, designing, until implementation.

Sometimes, people need some introduction when they meet new things, and this is the perfect subject for that. I should start making the syllabus for the subject and if it's working as planned, it will be an interesting class, since we will have a lot of discussion about lots of web applications (including blogs). Nowadays, web-based application are gaining reputation compared to desktop application, so i guess it's a good idea to introduce the current trend to students as early as possible

OpenID Commenting

After two weeks of testing, finally OpenID commenting has been released officially for Bloggers around the world. You can check it on Settings > Comments. You will have four options there:
* Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
* Registered Users - includes OpenID
* Users with Google Accounts
* Only members of this blog

For convenience, you can set to Anyone, with some risk that anonymous poster will be allowed to post. If you want to identify all commenter, you should use second or third options. Fourth options is the most strict options by only allowing member of the blog (if you have several contributors) to comment on the blog you are running.

Back in Action

After one week being quarantined at my own room, today i will be back in action. I had to go to my campus since one of my student need my signature for his field work approval (today is the deadline for submission). There will be a meeting this afternoon that i had to attend. It's good to be back in action since in the last 7 days, i only stayed at home. It's quite boring, but i'm feeling lucky that i have quite fast Internet connection. I can't imagine what will i do if i have to stay at home without any Internet connection. I guess i'm quite Internet addicted

One Material Completed

One of my material for next semester has been finished. I completed it this afternoon. I did this because i don't want to get rushed when new semester came and also since i was sick and must be quarantined, i don't have many activities, so it's better to spend it with good thing

Next thing is deciding the silabus for the other material. I'm still confused with this one, since i don't have the textbook (yet), but i will go to the library next week to find the correct book for this subject. Hopefully i can find a good one.

Start Counting Down

KDE 4 will arrive in the next 30 days, so KDE people have started to count down from 30 to 0 and give the banner for that. Even though it has been decided to being postponed from this year's release into next month, people seems to accept that as part of delivering a good release for the first major changes since KDE 3.x

Web-Based OOo

After Google Doc and MS Office online (trial), now it's time for OOo to have online version of it's application. It's not done by the OOo team itself, but by Ulteo. They have made several application to have online several applications, and now it's OOo time.

In order to try out this service, you will have to sign up for an account (which is free and very quick). After activating your account, then fire up the URL and wait until the applet is loaded. Pick the application you want (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math, Base) and click Launch OpenOffice.org NOW. You need the latest Java JRE in order to use this feature. Don't try to load this software if you are using slow connection, since it's quite heavy.

It's still based on 2.3.0, but it's not a big deal, since 2.3.1 is only a maintenance version.

Thanks to Florian Effenberger for giving me the information

In The Mood

While you are in the mood of doing something, everything seems to be very quick and vice versa. Today, i'm in the mood of working for next semester's material. I usually had a habit to try to finish the material before the class started, so my burden will not be very big when the class starts. Another advantage is that i already have something to talk about and i don't have to make anymore in case i'm ill. So while i'm in the mood today, i make it as much as i can (and sacrificing my rest time). The result is looks good for me, so let's just hope in this week, all of them should be near complete

Nice Work Place

I wish there are office that have such a nice work place like this in Indonesia (well, not all of them, but only some which i'm interested with). It's truly Monday Inspiration

Almost Done

Today is my last day of my study at UGM. Next week, i will have my final test for this semester. Next thing is preparing to study the material while i had to review the results of my students' test result that will be conducted tomorrow and Thursday. What's next? Holiday of course...
At the start of new year, all activities will rise again, from preparing material for next semester (i think i got about 3 different subject to teach), looking for a thesis title, and some other stuffs. I have to enjoy the limited time i have at the end of this year

For now, i will focus on curing my chickenpox disease. It's getting better now and hopefully less than a week, it will be cured totally

Chickenpox Disease

I was supposed to be on Dieng right now to attend a training held by my campus, but i canceled it because i was not feeling very well and i should attend a busy class tomorrow. I wish i could join the training, but lately, i knew that if i joined that training, it would be bad for me, since this morning, i realized that i was infected by chickenpox.

I guest it was infected by one of my student, because he had this disease also. The problem was i met him at the last meeting of my class when he shouldn't be attending the class, since he still had chickenpox (probably he didn't aware of that), so i got infected also. Plus my condition wasn't fit in the last few days, so it's like 2-in-1 combo that struck me.

I hope it will recover ASAP, since i still had some activities to do next week.

It's a bad event to end this year

Google Chart API

Google has made developer's life easier by releasing Google Chart API which can be used to create chart online. Just arrange your data, and point your browser to Goggle's site with the correct query string and voila... you will have your chart presented If you want to embed it into your webpages, then you will have to use img tag to include it as an image and that's it. Nothing is simpler as that.

Of course the style here is not OOP like in JpGraph and also the parameter can be confusing, as you have to combine all of them in one single query string, but if you're used to it, you will be fine in just a few days.

AIM + Colored Labels on GMail

Two new features has been added into GMail, which is AIM chat client and also colored labels. Now you can chat with AIM's friends (i think it's only popular in US). To use this features, you will have to use the latest browser version (IE 7 and Firefox 2). I don't know whether Opera has support on this, but i think it's just a matter of time if it doesn't.

Forum Linux 7.12 Released

After few weeks of compiling, testing, and working, finally Budi has managed to release the first Forum Linux 7.12 Release. The ISO size was reduced quite a lot compared to the last beta. It's less than 200 MB (about 188 MB).

You can have LiveCD or USB version and the tutorial has been published as well. The data being used is still the same as the last beta, so about 21 November, but don't worry about that. We will release it every six months (yes, it has been changed from three to six months), so for now, enjoy the release

FYI, Forum Linux is based on targeT, which is based on Slackware 11.0.

At Limit

After several days with less sleep time, i think i'm on my limit today. I should get some rest now. It's getting worse and if i let it be, i'd get ill. So.... caooo and see you tomorrow...

Pending forum account should also wait until tomorrow. Sorry for this inconvenience.

OOo 2.3.1 Released

The first maintenance version for OpenOffice.org 2.3.x series has been released. It's called 2.3.1. Since it's a maintenance version, most of the updates were correction and bug fixes, not adding new feature (that should wait for 2.4). Some mirrors are still syncronizing (meaning that most of them are still having empty directory), but for now you can get it from PlanetMirror (Australia).

Car Puzzle

I got this puzzle from one of my friend in Jakarta. He was my ex-colleague. It's a simple car puzzle, but when you play it, it might make you confuse Go get them from my Box Account. I already solved it the same day i got the puzzle, and it's quite interested. I thought you might need some refreshing, so i shared this file to all of you

OpenID in Blogger (Soon)

Thanks to Maseko, i found out that Blogger will (soon) support OpenID for comments. Unfortunately, they don't have any plan (yet) for supporting OpenID for registrations. It will be a good one if they could implement this also.

Short descriptions about OpenID (taken from Wikipedia):

OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider" (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.

Application on Social Networking

It seems that Friendster has started to add Application (like in Facebook) into their system (they called it Widget). It's a big change and it's a new way to fight back Facebook that have used this approach before friendster. In the future, there's a possibility that they can share application to each other (perhaps by using Google's OpenSocial API)

Better Chat Feature in GMail

GMail team has updated GMail's chat feature with some interesting feature, which are group chat and new basic emoticons. Now you can have conference-like conversations with your friends. It's very convenient when you want to discuss something with more than one people at the same time. Rather than switching to different window every time, invite them into a single group and chat together

The second feature is a new basic emoticons. If you have used with Yahoo Messenger's emoticons, you will feel that the emoticons built on GMail's chat is very boring, but it's better than nothing at all.

Full of Spammers

I approved almost 30-40 new Forum members everyday and today, almost 50% of the registered members were spammers I can't believe it was that high. Usually only 5-10% of the new members were spammers. I don't know why. Does it have any relations with the end of this year? The spammers became more aggressive when it's almost new year

Forum Linux Beta

me and Budi from Baliwae (we both represents Slackware-ID community) is proud to announce an availability of a new Indonesian Linux distribution (based on Slackware) that (hopefully) can be used by peoples who wanted to have an offline version of Indonesian Linux Forum. This idea comes from Forum members about two years ago (23 January 2005). At that time, i tried to provide the database dump for people, but it's quite useless, because people still has to install phpBB and modify the application first. It's not suitable for everyone.

So at the last ILC 2007 Conference, Budi was offering a help for a new Linux distribution that can be used for that purpose. He has finished making targeT Linux, so it will be quite easy for him to modify it again for this new distro.

After working for about two days, he finally managed to create a new Linux distribution that we called Forum Linux. It's still in beta version and we hope that we can release this distribution at the end of this year (so it's like a new year gift from both of us ). We are planning to update this distribution every six months (like any other popular Linux distribution), so that your version will not be very out-dated.

Like targeT Linux, this new Linux distribution will be able to be executed via LiveCD or via USB, so you have more choices.

There's no ISO available for now (since Budi is trying to make the final version smaller by removing unneeded application so it's very prone to changes. So far, he managed to make it 230 MB, but it will decrease again soon). BUT, you can see the screenshots on http://cd.slackware-id.org/.

We wanted your feedbacks on this idea. Please send your inputs, critics, comments on this distro via mail to feedback@cd.slackware-id.org

Rainy Season But No Rain

It's very strange. Right now, it should be rainy season, but for the past few days, there hasn't been any rain until tonight (it was only last for 2-3 minutes). I wonder what happened here? Does it only happened here in Jogja or also in other cities? Any stories?

Planet For Linux Community

At the last ILC, i have been discussing about a need to have a central site which will aggregate all of Linux community in Indonesia. At that time, i talked to Vavai and Budi. Vavai was willing to provide the space for hosting, so my job was to lobby Ronny Haryanto to add a new sub domain under linux.or.id for the new planet and point the NS to Vavai's NS. We agreed that the sub domain will be http://planet.linux.or.id.

Few days later, i got a reply from Ronny and he agreed with the idea, so the process was very smooth. In just a few days, the Planet has been up and now it's already officially launched. It's made by Vavai and so far, we have managed to aggregate Slackware-ID, Ubuntu-ID, and some LUG (there are others, like Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID, but they haven't been aggregated yet. Perhaps they haven't submit any posts).

We really appreciate your comments on this new idea, so please share your thoughts to me and Vavai via our email address.

If you want your organization to be included in the aggregation, please email Vavai for this, as i don't have any account on the server. For now, we will only aggregate LUG and Linux communities. We don't plan on aggregating an individual, since sometimes the topics is out of context.

Congratulations for the Planet and enjoy them...

* Credit goes to Vavai and Ronny to make this idea comes true

Secure Your Browsing Activities

Continuing my previous article about securing your laptop, this article will give you ten Firefox extensions that will help you secure your browsing activities. We might have seen some of them, but i don't think we know all of them, so it's a good reason to start reading it.

GMail Offer Old Version

Not everybody likes to change and GMail realize that fact. That's why they offer the old GMail interface to their users via a link on top of your screen (near the sign out). I personally likes the old one, since i tend to have my Firefox hang up while loading the inbox or when i wanted to delete the spam messages. So i switched back to the old one. It's also faster when you want to permanently delete the previously deleted messages. Here's the screenshot on my account:

Secure Your Laptop

Do you work mobile by using your laptop and like to browse the Internet while working? If the answer is yes, then you should read this article from Information Week about 10 Tips to secure your laptop. Although the article is a common thing, but most people forgot about them and it could risk your laptop's security when you are accessing public connections, such as public hotspots.

Replication In MySQL

In some forums, i often saw a question asking about how to synchronize a database to some database servers (it could be local servers or even public servers via Internet). Using a dumped SQL is not very efficient if you want a real time access. Using mysqlhotcopy needs some resources, so it would rip off the performance of the system. The solution is by using Replication. Here's some information from MySQL's manual:

Replication enables data from one MySQL database server (called the master) to be replicated to one or more MySQL database servers (slaves). Replication is asynchronous - your replication slaves do not need to be connected permanently to receive updates from the master, which means that updates can occur over long-distance connections and even temporary solutions such as a dial-up service.

Today, at UGM, i got a material about replication (actually it was last week's material, but many of us had failed, so we had to restart it again. I was absent last week since i had to go to ILC 2007, so this is my first class actually). As always, Manual is the best place to start. I managed to set up one computer as a master and another computer as a slave in less than 10 minutes, so i guess it's pretty straightforward. By using this scheme, the slave would only have read-only access, meaning it only retrieve the updates from the server. Changing the slave wouldn't affect the server. In order to get a round robin model, we should use the daisy-chain model, which is like a P2P technology, where a computer became a server and also became a slave. To do this, it only requires some modifications and it won't take more than another ten minutes to configure it.

The steps needed to configure a replication can be described as below:
- Configure the master (set server-id and enable binary logging)
- Configure the slave (only set a different server-id)
- Obtain the master status information (this will be used for setting up the slave)
- Setting the master configuration in slave (you need the information from the master status information)
- Start the slave and you're done

After executing the last steps, any changes to the master will be replicated by the slave and you will have a clone of the master in slave. Of course, it's the most basic configuration and you will need to adjust it for more advanced needs.

Replication is pretty useful when you have several machines acting as a database servers and all of them are connected to the networks. You can use several database to ensure high availability on the data needed by the application.

Another Culture War?

According to KR, Malaysia has started another "culture war" by claiming that Reog is from Malaysia (even though they use another name which is Barongan). Reog ponorogo has been filed as a patent since 2004 and people knows Reog is from Ponorogo, some area in East Java, not from Malaysia.

Ohh well... i guess there will be some virtual war again

Here's the photo from Malaysian's site:

Midas Touch

Kind Midas is a well known king from Greek Mythology that has an ability to turn everything he touched into gold. That's why it was known as "Midas Touch".

Right now, that touch perhaps belongs to Guus Hiddink, the current Russian national football team coach. He has just made Russia goes through the Euro 2008 competition after removing England. Before Russia, his golden touch has mde South Korea became a semi-finalist on the FIFA 2002 World Cup before it was beaten by the Germany. The South Korean government gave a big reward to Guus Hiddink by making him as a honorary South Korean citizenship with other rewards also They also rename the stadium in Gwangju as Guus Hiddink Stadium.

After South Korea, Guus Hiddink's golden touch moved to Australian national football team, even though it's not as successful as South Korea.

I wonder what will happened if Guus coaches Indonesian national team? But that should wait after 2010, since he has extended his contract with the Russian until 2010.

Blogger Reviews

Few days ago, my friend notified me via that my blog (this one) was reviewed by Fatih Syuhud and i became one of his Blogger of The Week #76. I am amazed on how diligent he is to make such a review (he did this every week before his database was lost). I know lots of new blogger from his reviews.

Since i'm curious about the reviews, I tried to find the information via Google and i came to his (old) website. Apparently, the site is no longer maintained and he has moved to his own domain. I got this URL from Technorati which tracked blog or websites that has a link to my blog and finally i found the review.

One sentences that tickles me is this part:

Unless the readers is one of your most die-hard fans

I don't think have a die-hard fans yet like Priyadi or Budi Raharjo.

Anyways, thanks for the heads-up and the reviews

So Sudden

In the last few days, i got a lot of sudden activities that requires my attention. Sometimes it messed up with my current schedule, but i do have to give more priority to some event. I hope most of it will be fixed in the next few days and my scheduled plan will be smooth like before

Another New Feature From Blogger

Blogger team has published and launched another new feature, called Slideshow. This feature only works with the new Blogger, so this blog won't be equipped with the new feature. There's a reason why i don't upgrade to the new blogger, and it's related with theme. I have tried to upgrade, but the modifications i made will be gone and i have to do it again. The problem is that some hacks are not working in the new blogger, so i'll stay with the old one for now.

According to Blogger Buzz:

This feature lets you add a slick little slideshow of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, or any site that supports Media RSS.

The photos will show up in your blog’s sidebar, gently fading into one another. Your readers will be able to go forward and backward, pause, and click through to the photo’s web page.

You can also make a slideshow of public photos based on a tag or label.

Nice one

Planet For Linuxers

At ILC 2007, i had a chance to talk with Vavai about a plan to make a new planet which will aggregate all news from Linux communities, like Slackware-ID, Ubuntu-ID, Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID (and probably LUG's website), so people could read them easily using RSS Reader application without having to visit them all every time they want to read a news about Linux development in Indonesia. We (me and Vavai) are planning to put this application using a new sub domain, http://planet.linux.or.id. I already asked Ronny Haryanto as the maintainer and i'm waiting for his answer (i know he's busy, so i don't mind waiting).

Another idea was about distributing a new LiveCD that contains a phpBB application that is already equipped with all post from Indonesian Linux Forum. We hope that this CD can be distributed for those who can't access the Linux Forum daily. We are planning to release this version once a year, just like IlmuKomputer. For this, i'm coordinating with Budi from Baliwae. He has just finished making targeT Linux, so making a new variants won't be a big deal for him. I will try to supply the data from Linux Forum with some help by Ronny (again), and hopefully, we can make it happen (even though i can't promise you the exact date).

Any suggestions about this ideas will be accepted...

XMMS Is Not Dead Yet

XMMS Is Not Dead Yet. They have just released an update to XMMS (1.2.11) after 1211 (coincidence?) days ago (last release was Feb 23, 2004).

Meanwhile, XMMS2 has released 0.4 version (codename DrKosmos). This release also includes new logo for XMMS2 which is pretty cool to me

ILC 2007: Great Success

I have just came back from ILC 2007 KPLI Meeting that was held in UII where more than 100 peoples were attending this annual event. I had to skip two of my class today to attend this event, but no big deal about it. I met Vavai, Budi, Martinus, Rifqi, Ahmad from Makassar-Slacker, and many other people here. Most of them represents their LUG (Linux User Group) and also some distro-based community, like Ubuntu-ID, Slackware-ID, Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID, etc.

I came to the place at about 10:30 AM, since the place was quite far from UGM, so it took me some time, but i managed to get there safely. At first, i was quite confused with the location, as i never came to UII before. I contacted Fathir to help me out and i managed to find the location of the event.

Since the auditorium was equipped with hotspots, many attendance post their reports online in Kronologger and perhaps on their blog (so far, i don't see their post on Planet Terasi yet).

For you who couldn't come to the event, you may see the photos, materials and the discussion results that will be published on the ILC's website soon. I hope they published the videos also (and probably distribute it to each KPLI and community).

I think it's a great success and we'll see you next year in BALI!!! (YES, BALI!!!)

KPLI Meeting

Tomorrow, KPLI Meeting will be held. This is an annual event, so i can't miss this one. For this, i must skip one class and one practical class tomorrow. I have promised to come and meet other people who have spent their spare time to go to Jogja. It should be a great event where most people who usually met only via email, chat room, and mailing list meet each other face to face

Updated PHP Binary

It seems that i was right about broken PHP Build for Windows. Today, i visited PHP site and i saw an updated package which should fix the problem i (and probably most of PHP users running on Windows) encountered last week. I'm downloading it right now, and hopefully it will be the correct build.

Playing With Android

I have just finished downloading Android SDK and also Eclipse that is recommended for playing with Android, since it's based on Java language. I tried to play with the most simple example, but i got a different result. The example should have displayed a simple text widget with a text "Hello Android", but on my emulator, it showed up a default OS in Android Emulator, just like what has been presented by Steve Horowitz (and in the below screenshot). I don't know why. Perhaps i misconfigured or missing some packages (but i doubt that). I wonder if the code always tried to connect to the Internet, since i got a timeout when the Android emulator boots (check the other screenshot). It tooks quite some time to boot, but it has a nice bar, just like KITT had on Knight Rider.