Earthquake on Last Day

I was at Amplaz this afternoon with my sister, my girlfriend, and also my little cousins because they wanted to watch Madagascar : Escape 2 Africa. We came there around 12.45 PM and bought the ticket for 4 PM because we were afraid that we couldn't make it if we bought for 2 PM show (it was full anyways).

Then we had lunch at Pizza Hut. After we finished our lunch, we didn't leave the site at once, because we were still full and the show was still two hours to go, so we sat there for a while until an earthquake came and shook my feet. Some people were screaming about an earthquake and some people ran outside the shopping mall. I was still sitting there and only few seconds later, it stopped. So, it was just a small one i thought, but apparently, it has 4,7 on the magnitude.

Let's hope no more earthquake next year. We had enough with it at 2006 and let's not make it happened again in 2009.

Happy New Years 2009

OOo 3 Translation Project

OOo is one of many project who are well-known because of it's L10n or i18n project. For OOo, it's under the NL (Native Lang) project. They have enabled people around the world to contribute to the OOo project by translating it to their mother language. In the past, the translations were done by the l10n and i18n team locally and we had to submit the SDF or GSI files to the issue tracker or to Pavel in order to get it build.

With the new OOo 3 release, the development process has been changed. We could use the old method (local coordination) or use the online tool, called Pootle. Sun has generously provide the server for Pootle server and database to hold of the translations and Indonesia is already listed on the servers as well. Check this server for Indonesian project. There are two sub projects, OOo UI (User Interface) and OOo HC (Help Contents).

We encourage you to join this project to make Indonesian version of OOo available as soon as possible. The process is simple. All you have to do is sign up and change your option to join Indonesian team. Next, mail me your username so i can update your privileges and you are ready to start contributing to the project. Piece a cake huh? I'll be waiting for you on the project

Meet NL/L10N/CIP People

OpenOffice.org has just launched a program called Meet NL/L10N/CIP People, where you can see all the people behind NL (Native Lang) or L10N (Localization) project around the world (I'm sorry, but i don't know what CIP means currently).

At this point, there were two posters that has been finished and i'm on the second poster as well

You can see all the posters here. Please note that it's not finished yet, as OOo team has grown up very fast and it won't be covered in just two big posters.

Thanks to Kazunari Hirano from Japanese NL team (bottom right corner) who has coordinated this work and JiHui Choi for the design and layout.

We are looking forward to see part three soon (as a gift of new year).

Improper Content

I have just came back from Amplaz where i watched Madagascar : Escape 2 Africa in 21 Cineplex. The movie was good, but i'm a little bit disappointed with some of the content, because it wasn't supposed to be there. There was an action where Alex fought the grandma on the road and they were slapping to each others (and grandma won). This might give bad examples to the children if they didn't get enough explanation from their parents.

I wish it didn't happened in the next movies, because i think this movie has quite a lot of morale messages that we can take and use on our life.

Bandungan 2008

For years, i have been spending time with my relatives at home at Christmas Day. This year, we decided to go somewhere else and we choose Bandungan. It's not too far from Jogja and it has cool weather. So we went there at December 26 and we came back today, December 28. We had fun there and some of the pictures (most of it are mine though) can be seen at my PicasaWeb account.

It's really a full three days and because of traffic jam in Magelang today, my journey of coming back to Jogja had to be longer than i expected. I need to get some sleep right now

Converting Ext3 to Ext4

Ext4 has been declared as NON Experimental in the latest kernel, 2.6.28, so it can be used on most system now, as long as you have used the latest kernel. The detailed information about Ext4 can be seen at KernelNewbies. You can see also how to convert your ext3 to ext4. It's safe and you won't lose your data. It's also possible to mount existing Ext3 partition using Ext4 but without changing it permanently. Everything is listed there.

Please note that Ext4 is still in early release and so far, no distribution has used it as the default file system. Probably they will start doing so next year when they have done sufficient testing.

End of Year Vacation

In the next one hour, i will be on my way to Bandungan for two days of vacation with my relatives. I may not bring my laptop for this, as this is vacation. I should try my best to avoid Internet and work for two days. I wish i could, but i don't think i can do that, so i just bring my cellphone which can be used to check my emails and logging in facebook

It's been some time since we had vacation together, so i hope it would be a good vacation for all of us.

Well then, i will be off for probably for two days, so please spare me for any lateness for replying email messages coming at my inbox, any pending request to join the Indonesian Linux Forum, or any friend request at Facebook

Caoooooo.....

Kernel 2.6.28 Released

Well, it's Christmas Day and Linux "almost Santa" Torvald released the final version of Linux Kernel 2.6.28. It's not a big change since RC 9, but it finally appeared as final after lots of discussion on LKML whether to postpone the release or release earlier and make the merge window longer as the developers goes on long holidays.

Here's some summary of Kernel 2.6.28 (taken from KernelNewbies): Linux 2.6.28 adds the first version of Ext4 as a stable filesystem, the much-expected GPU memory manager which will be the foundation of a renewed graphic stack, support for Ultra Wide Band (Wireless USB, UWB-IP), memory management scalability and performance improvements, a boot tracer, disk shock protection, the phonet network protocol, support of SSD discard requests, transparent proxy support, several new network drivers, controlable IO CPU affinity, high-resolution poll()/select(), support of a minimal "dummy" policy in SELinux, tracing improvements, x86 x2APIC support, a fb driver for VIA UniChrome devices, Mitac Mio A701 ARM-based smartphone support, some new drivers, improved device support, and many other small improvements and fixes.

More on the detailed can be viewed at KernelNewbies.

The official announcement are here and here

Merry Christmas and Happy Compiling

Buying Smart Bundle

I finally bought Smart bundle for Internet access which costs me IDR 289.000 at Amplaz yesterday. I got number 10 at the waiting list and the current number that was processed was 5. It took me about 1,5 hour to get my new phone . I think they must make some improvements on the sales department. Handling one customer for buying a new Smart phone requires 15-20 minutes, which i think takes too much time. With only two counters available, the process is very very slow.

Why would i buy this? Because i need mobile access while i'm away from my home. I already used Speedy for my primary connection and while i'm in the office, i already had one also, so the only thing left is when i'm away from both location. That's why i bought the Smart bundle. I hope the quality is good enough for me.

I have tested the mobile with my Windows and Linux (Slackware) and both worked, so i guess it's not a big problem for the installation.

Upgrading PHP

PHP 5.2.8 has been released for some time, but i didn't just upgrade, because i used specific version during my thesis. Now, when my thesis is finished, i can upgrade all my desktop and laptop to the latest version which fixed quite a lot of bugs and also security vulnerabilities. I added new parameter on the configure, '--with-mcrypt', because the latest version of PHPMyAdmin requires that also. I need to install libmcrypt in order to compile, but it's just an easy step, because the SlackBuild project already has it on their repository.

Too bad i can't upgrade my Windows, because there was an error on the installation script. I wonder why on earth did the bug didn't get fixed up to now. The installer didn't work and i can install PHP 5.2.8 on Windows. Ahh... never mind that. I rarely used Windows anymore, so i got nothing to lose

RPG-Like

In the last few weeks, i am working on my thesis and also administrative papers. It feels like i'm playing a RPG (Role Playing Games). I have to go to A and then followed by B, and do something before i can continue to C and so on. Well, finally today the game has ended and my journey has finished

I have completed all the mini games (that's what most gamers said) and all the requirement for my graduation (my final target) has been collected. All i have to do now is wait for the announcement next month and attend the graduation party at 29 January.

I think i need to play a real RPG game for now

Last Working Day

Today is the last day in this year at my office. We will have a (quite) long holidays until next year and we will be back working starting January 5. I also have my final work today, as the students were having a distributed final test today. There are 119 students that have a permission to work on the final test. Let's hope i can finish the evaluation as soon as possible and i can have a wonderful holidays without any interruption of work.

Maybe i'll post the updates on Facebook. My students watched FB very often, so it's good for announcement

Wine 1.1.11 Released + New Design

New development version of WINE (1.1.11) has been released yesterday. It has better support on IE 7 and 64 bit cross-compilation using MingW64, new UI for crypto certificates, and many improvements to Direct3D and MSI Installation.

Along with the release, WINE project has a new shinny web design, which i say very cool. Once the home page loaded up, you will see a bigger logo of WINE project with dark red background. It uses better usability due to new font being used on the web site. The animated image kinda rough, though. I think it's minor, but you will see it clearly when you hover your mouse over the icon.

In overal, the new design look good (for me). I hope you enjoyed the new design as well.

Relax A Bit

After rushing for documents last week, finally i can relax a bit this week. Tomorrow there will be a good football match and MU will go on the final for World Club Competition in Japan. I do hope they will win this and it will become a good motivation against Inter Milan in the Champion League. They are now two matches behind the other, but i'm sure they will managed their schedule so that they won't get too tired and having a good matches because the other team has shown a stable performance during the last three matches as well. More slip and say good bye to the title race

IP Banned From SpamHaus

There are several reports from several member of Indonesian Linux Forum that they can't post because their IP address were blacklisted by SpamHaus. What is SpamHaus Project?

Spamhaus tracks the Internet's Spammers, Spam Gangs and Spam Services, provides dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, and works with Law Enforcement to identify and pursue spammers worldwide.

They have three sub project, SBL (SpamHaus Block List), XBL (Exploit Block List), and PBL (Policy Block List). Each project will have different policy, so i suggest you check all three of them.

phpBB engine used SpamHaus to check every post posted to the engine. If the IP are listed on SpamHaus, it will be blocked and the request to post will be denied. OK, enough with theory, what's the solution?

They blacklisted IPs which are identified related to spams, virus distribution and many more. Why on earth a valid IP can be blacklisted by SpamHaus? There are several reason. Most obvious reason is that one or more computer on that IP has been compromised or infected by a virus/worms which spreads spam messages, so the spam message comes from that IP address.

When your IPs are blocked, you will get a warning when you tried to post. It's something like this: Your IP aa.bb.cc.dd has been blocked because it is blacklisted. For details please see http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=aa.bb.cc.dd.

You can start by visiting the page (change aa.bb.cc.dd with your real IP address) and you will see which project blacklisted your IP address. You can start working on fixing the problem when you know what's wrong with your IP. When you have fixed them, you can start asking the SpamHaus to remove your IP from their list and you will be able to post again on the forum. It may take hours to days to remove your IP, so be patient

Waste of Papers

Even though we have lived in digital world, some people still prefer to use the old way, papers. We just can't live without papers. It's very strange actually, because we could be more effective by using paperless mechanisms, but in the end, papers still dominate the bureaucracy and administrative systems.

I wasted lots of papers during my thesis because everytime i add a revision on my thesis, i would have to re-print those changed page and all the sub sequences, because the numbering will be effected also. This is only at the thesis report, not including the administrative papers i should print. It's just too much....

Firefox 3.0.5 Released

This morning, Firefox has released an update to fix several vulnerabilities, including security fixes. Those fixes are wrapped up and build as Firefox 3.0.5. Here's the list taken from the release notes:
# Fixed several security issues.
# Fixed several stability issues.
# Official releases for the Bengali, Esperanto, Galician, Hindi, and Latvian languages are now available.
# Replaced the End-User License Agreement with a new "Know Your Rights" info bar on initial install.
# When installing multiple signed XPIs simultaneously, previous versions of Firefox would fail.
# Fixed several issues found in the accessibility implementation.
# Added the ability to send OS-specific system notes in the crash reporter.

Check the full list here

This update can be retrieved from Firefox's auto update mechanism, so go get them now

A Little Bit More

In the last few days, i have been busy working on my papers (well, administrative papers) for my graduation. Today i already got all the signatures from the supervisors, but tomorrow i will have to ask for more signatures from the head of the master program and also printing the updated report and also a publication as a requirement to be able to graduate. Let's hope everything can be finished before this year ends It's very close to long weekend due to Christmas next week, so i got to rush in everything.

Big Fans

This week, suddenly there has been a lot of new instant celebrities. I don't mean a real celebrities, but lecturers who has to give his/her signature as a sign of approval for their students in order to pass the field work or pre test before they are going to go for the final presentation.

No wonder some of the lecturers were very busy on their room, while the others were moving around because they have lots of students to handle with.

Me? I'm busy with administrative papers for my thesis. I also asked my supervisors for their signatures, so the situation is basically the same. Tomorrow i will work with more papers to sign and preparing to print my revised thesis. Let's hope i can make it this week and i can go to graduation on January 2009.

That would be a good new year gift for me

Weird Complaints

Usually, people would complaints when something goes wrong or didn't work. But it may not be the condition when you talked about Slackware users (or some people would say Slackers). Some of them complaints when everything has worked out of the box, where they expected that they should have "hacked" their system to get it working

Check this thread at LinuxQuestions: Complaints about Slackware 12.2. With new kernel and better device management system, most Linux distribution now works out of the box and can detect most devices (except for special devices or newer devices which has been released after the kernel has been released) automatically. But note that not everybody likes this, because there's no adventure of hacking their own machine to get the system detected the devices. That's the beauty of working on Linux

Let's say you use Ubuntu because it is usable out of the box, meaning that you don't need to set up anything for general use. You *may* not like Slackware because you *may* have to set up things by yourself to get the preferences you prefered. It's just an example, and should not be taken as general rules, as there are people who loves both distribution.

Using Smart Haier DP1200P on Linux

Cheap Internet access is everybody's dream. So when Smart released their promo, most people bought the bundle because it's cheap and no need to buy another modem because the cellphone is equipped with 3G modem.

The problem is will it work on Linux? This is the common problem when new devices are being introduced in the market. Even if you used the latest kernel, by default, it will not be recognized, but with special parameter on usbserial module, the device can be detected. Please refer to this blogs for how to detect Smart Haier DP1200P:
- Maswawa
- Supranov

Those two blogs used Mandriva as their OS, but i think it can be used on others as well, because the main component is the kernel.

Upgrading Forum Engine

This morning, i logged in into Indonesian Linux Forum and i saw a notification saying that the installation is out dated because newer version has been released. Because it's still early in the morning and it's weekend, i thought it would be nice to perform an upgrade because some people might still be sleeping at that time.

So i download the automatic update package, disable the board, upload the extracted files, start an upgrade process, and in less than 10 minutes, the forum has been upgraded. This is faster because the changed files are less than previous updates. I also used this chance to upgrade the Quick Login MOD. The older version doesn't work out of the box, so i decided to upgrade and hack it a little bit to work on 3.0.4 (the current version is designed for 3.0.3).

Everything is back to normal again now and you shall see no differences with the previous installation, but at the backend, there's a difference

Final Presentation

I finally got my final presentation schedule. I submit my reports yesterday morning and in the evening, i got a phone call from the administration that my presentation will be held next Saturday. Today i got another phone call to confirm my schedule and it was set to 11 AM (previously, it was set to 10 AM). I don't know why it has to be postponed for one hour, but i think another people will have a presentation at 9 AM.

Well, wish me luck tomorrow

Christmas Gifts

Even though it's not Christmas day yet, but i already got my presents from the OpenSource community. They are:
- Slackware 12.2 Released
- Amarok 2.0 Released

Those two are the most application i used daily, so having a major update surely a great gift for me (and i'm sure for many people around the world also). Too bad Amarok 2 will have to wait until Slackware 13.0 comes up with KDE 4 and many new shinny things (hopefully) and that would be sometime in next year.

It's two weeks before Christmas, so i'm sure there will be more gifts at the end of this year

Better Traffic Light

In the last few weeks, there has been a new look on the traffic lights in Jogja. Some of them has been replaced with a newer version which has bigger and brighter lamp than the previous one. Another advantage of the new light is that most of it has a timer, reflecting how many seconds left before the light turn to red, yellow, or green. This will allow the driver to predict when to stop and when to go on a crowded street.

Unfortunately, the placement of the timer sometimes aren't in the best place, because there are trees that stand before them, making the timer not in the good sight for the driver. I think they should have cut the tree's branch in order to make the timer visible. Some places still uses the old (and sometimes broken) lamp, so i hope all light will be replaced sometime in the future.

PHP 5.2.8 Released

Only four days from the release of PHP 5.2.7, the new PHP 5.2.8 has been released due to regression found on 5.2.7 which affected magic_quotes_gpc setting. This issue can be easily resolved by changing "filter.default_flags=0" in php.ini, but this is not done at installation time, so a new release is the best solution for end users who SHOULD NOT be bothered by this kind of operation when they wanted to install PHP on their computer.

It's really a shame though. Spending seven months of development time and when it should be a *good* release, the previous version got a serious flaw for something that will be removed in PHP 6. I think the QA team should have aware of this issue when they test the build, but unfortunately, they missed it. It's a good lesson for PHP developers and hopefully the next release will be better.

The changelog can be found HERE

Arrived Back in Jogja

Yesterday's event was amazing. It was one full day from morning until late at night. Of course not all of them were related to the wedding, but let's just say it's part of the party . All of the relatives from Bandung gathered here in Semarang and it's a rare situation, so we don't want to miss lots of things.

Today, i went back from Semarang and because of Idul Adha, the road was very clear, so i can go back to Jogja in 2,5 hours from 3 hours at usual time. There weren't too much bus and truck like what i had when i go to Semarang at Saturday. Well, i'm finally arrived here in Jogja, home sweet home

Going to Semarang

Today i will go to Semarang to attend my cousin's wedding party. This morning, i go down from Kaliurang around 8 AM and i arrived at my office to attend Linux Install Fezt and Dual Boot demo. Thanks to Mr. Yahya Kurniawan for accepting my request to be a speaker for the event. At first, i only targeted for about 20 students from UKDW to attend this event, but at the end, we got more than 30 people and some people were from outside UKDW. I'm thinking for bigger event next year and better preparation (FYI, this event only had few days of planning, but i think it was quite successfull).

See you guys in Monday

Busy Day

Today i have a busy day. Start at morning, i have to print my thesis report to be reviewed by my supervisor. I went to Sahara to print it there and i had to wait for one hour before the printing was done. Next, i went to my office and there my students already waited for me for a presentation which should be done yesterday, but some of them failed to do so, thus i gave them a second chance today.

The presentation was limited to 12 PM, because i had to prepare something else. In short time, i will go to UKDW's Guest House in Kaliurang to give presentation for new member of Informatica magazine about writing skills. I will stay there tonight and tomorrow morning, i will came back to my office because i had to attend UKDW's Dual Boot and Linux Install Fezt event. In the afternoon, i will go to Semarang with my mother to attend my cousin's marriage at Sunday.

There's no time to rest

EXT4 Benchmarks

The next stable kernel (2.6.28) will have EXT4 file system marked as stable. This file system has been developed for some time and finally it's being pushed to Linus' kernel tree (and approved). The kernel 2.6.28 has reached Release Candidate 7, meaning that it's getting closer to get the final version somewhere in this month or probably early in January. Phoronix has taken an early benchmark of four different file systems: EXT3, EXT4, XFS, and ReiserFS to compare several operations using the Phoronix Test Suite.

The result is that EXT4 is quite promising. While it's not the perfect file system, it does bring some performance improvements over EXT3 when it came to the pure disk benchmarks. Some conclusion from Phoronix:

EXT4 is more scalable, more efficient through the use of Extents, supports larger disk capacities, can handle twice the number of sub-directories, is capable of handling online defragmentation, and there is improved reliability via journal checksums.

It's not yet widely used, since the kernel that supports it is not yet released, but i have a feeling that in the next six months, some Linux distribution will start using it after they have done several tests to make sure it's stable enough to be used for daily activities. We will see this next year

Announcing via FB

Even though i have stated in the beginning of this semester that i would use my page on lecturer server to display any information related to my class, most students didn't pay attention to it. So i tried to make them a mailing list at GoogleGroups so i can announce it once and they will receive it on their inbox. That didn't work either, because they rarely see their email (strange thing actually, because some of them have dedicated Internet access, but they don't use it for something good. Instead, they use it to play online games).

So finally i tried to announce things via Facebook and it seems that some people does take a look on my status. It's just a good way to use the social network site to announce things

Last Class

Tomorrow will be the last class this semester and starting next week, all the students will fight for the final test until 22 December and then long weekend until January. For me, i will have a chance to finish up my thesis reports and taking care of the administration so i can apply for graduation in January. Let's hope everything worked as planned

Spam in LKML

LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) is one the busiest mailing list on earth. It's a virtual world where many Linux kernel developers joined and gathered to discuss things about Linux kernel development.

So what do you think when many people gathered around? There's a big cake for spammers to put their spam messages to whole people joining the mailing list and there you have it. Check this out (i hope it haven't been deleted or banned).

Not Enough Parking Space?

Today i went to Solo with my mother and my girlfriend. I was acting as a driver . She (my mother) was looking for a dress which she will use in my cousin's marriage next week in Semarang. We searched for several places in Solo and when i got into Solo Square, i found something which is strange for me.

So it started when i entered the building. As usual, the first place i was looking for was the parking space. I took the ticket from the machine and i went to the back of the building and decided to take the parking space on top of the building. The space was full, so the parking boy asked me to park somewhere near the exit area. I asked him if it was a parking area because people will use that road to get out of the parking area and he said it was OK. I thought it was a bad idea, because people's car may get scratched if another driver is not good enough to make a turn on that area.

If the parking area is full, then i suggest there are some notifications and don't use simple (and dangerous) way to get people's car parking not in the correct place.

CSSHttpRequest

Innovations always evolving and never stopped. This is what happened everyday. Every day, new concept and ideas arise from all people around the world. One of them is an evolving process of HttpRequest which is now not only for XML, but also for CSS, so the new concept is CSSHttpRequest. Quoting from the main site:

CSSHttpRequest (CHR) is a method for cross-domain AJAX using CSS for transport.

Maybe in the future there will be lots of other evolution of xHttpRequest

Thanks to Pram for the links

Another Meeting

Today i attend another meeting with UKDW Net Club community members. The meeting was supposed to be scheduled at 10 AM, but because there were giving training for new students about web, the meeting was re-scheduled to 1 PM. The main focus about the meeting is about the preparation for the dual boot and Linux install fezt that will be held next week. So far, the preparation was already being started and some of them were already finished, but we need more coordination during this week to make the event as good as possible.

My friend Mr. Wiranto and Owie will have their pre-thesis presentation on Sunday, so i can only hope they have prepared well for the presentation. Good luck to you guys...

One Step Closer

Today i finally gave my presentation about my thesis. I had to attend kolokium at UKDW before i went to UGM, so i stayed there until 2 PM. At 2.10, i went to UGM and prepare myself before giving the presentation. I was kinda shocked a little bit because the lecturers who will be the judge were Mr. Retantyo Wardoyo, Mr. Edy Winarko, and Mr. Khabib Mustofa. Few minutes later, i go inside the "judgment" room and i saw my friends was already inside because there was another friend of mine who also gave presentation. His session was supposed to end at 3 PM, but because of the "hot" discussion, it ended at 3.20 PM.

Before my session started, the lecturers asks for some time to pray first. So my session starts at 3.40 PM and i finished around 5 PM (only one and half hour). In general, i can defend my thesis, but i must do better job at my final presentation around December (depends on how fast i make my revision, mostly about DFD). I must add more analysis on my reports, mostly about the Same Origin Policy.

Well, at least i have passed one step and i'm one step closer to get my master degree. Let's hope i can graduate next January.

Presentation Call

Finally i had my presentation call this morning. Mr. Sugent, the administrator for my master degree program called me this morning asking whether i can give my presentation tomorrow. I actually have some activities tomorrow at my office, but i can leave that to my other colleagues, so i had to take this chance. If i missed it again like early this month, i don't know when will i get this opportunity again.

Well, i think all the preparations are done here tonight, but we will see about the results tomorrow

Fastening Your Blog

Blogger help has added new article about how to make your blog loads faster. It only contains general solutions, but i think it's a good article for everybody because not everybody knows about this. Most of the solutions depends on Google technology/infrastructure as they will give your faster loading time and better services because they are located in Google server farms which is inter-connected with high speed connection.

24 Redemption

The phenomenal Jack Bauer has returned in 24. The seventh season has appeared yesterday and it's called Redemption. You will see the old hourly ticking style on every occasion. This add my weekly TV series collection after i followed CSI, Knight Rider, Heroes, and Prison Break.

Dual Boot Demo and Linux Install Fezt

UKDW LUG (Linux User Group) and UKDW NetClub community will held a Dual Boot Demo and Linux Install Fezt event at 6 December 2008. This event will take place on Agape building and it will start at 9 AM until 3 PM.


For more information, please check on the following pages:
- UKDW Student Community Site
- Ch0coBo
- Facebook
- Jogja Linux

Via Collaborate with OpenChrome

VIA has stated that they will work cooperatively with open source developer (mostly OpenChrome) to release their open source driver for VGA card. This was officially stated at Taiwan few days ago. What does it mean? It means that in the future, more support will be given to the driver as the driver is scheduled to be included in the next 2.6.28 kernel.

In the past, some people were complaining due to lack of support for VIA chipset. They can only depend of OpenChrome package which is part of XOrg, which can't fulfill their requirements. By collaborating with open source and include the driver on the main kernel tree, it can also boost their sales, because many people will eventually use it and they can find better support of it.

Welcome to the Open Source World

Little Bit Lazy

Lately, i have become a little bit lazy. I usually prepare all my materials before the first class started, but recently, i didn't do that again. I prepared most of the materials the night before i give the materials to the students. Even though i always reviewed my materials one day before, i think it's safer to finish the materials long before the class begins and have a small review one night before the class starts.

It seems that my time management is getting worse this semester. Let's see if this is getting better next semester

Net Club Advisor

Today i attended another meeting, but this time, with the students who joined the Net Club community in UKDW. They have a plan to merge the Linux User Group (LUG) community under the Net Club. I was also appointed to became their advisor and i accepted.

We also discussed some project probability which can be planned for long and short term period and we already got some ideas about what we will do. Right now, we are planning to do something and i hope i can post it on this blog next week when the official announcement has been made. What i can tell you right now is that it has to do with open source

Preparing For Next Year

This morning, i attended a meeting at my office which discussed about the planning for next year's classes. We agreed on several things and we also distributed our job to each lecturers with hope that we already can start preparing for next year.

For next semester, i will teach two new subjects and two old subjects with one of them will be a team teaching with other lecturer. Teaching new subjects are really fun, because it's new for me, but as the consequences, i will have to make the materials from scratch.

GMail Themes

GMail team has done it again. They have added new themes (30) to the current GMail themes which enables us to change themes as we logged in to GMail. In order to activate the new themes, click on the Lab icon next to your email accounts on the top right section and then click on the Themes tab. You will see lots of new themes which can be selected as your default theme.

The cool thing is that you can choose when to activate the themes based on your country and location. Currently, i used the Ninja theme, but i will try the other one too. Looking good now....

Update (08:53 AM): I have changed it into Tea House. It's very cute actually. Check the screenshot below.

Update (16:07 PM):It seems that they use dynamic images, because just now, my themes has changed. Look at the second screenshot.

Thesis Presentation

Few weeks ago, i was scheduled to give first presentation about my thesis (before the real presentation) but i couldn't, because i had to go to Jakarta to attend Community Leader Award along with Sun Developer Day 2008 and i already bought the tickets. Right now, i'm waiting again for the queue to finish and hoping that my schedule won't get delayed too long, because i am hoping that i can finish my study this year and early next year, i can graduate

Surpassing 1000 MB

With only one week since my post about my email usage which already reached 960 MB, right now i have surpassed 1000 MB of usage for GMail. I now used 1008 MB (13%) out of 7264 MB provided by GMail. In one week, i can collect up to 48 MB of email messages. I wonder what will it be by the end of this year?

24: Is it Enough?

Even though we have 24 hours a day to spend, sometimes it's not enough for some people, because they have lots of work to do and it seems that 24 hours is not enough. Better time management is required, mostly when we have to do several work or roles in our life. I wish i had that ability

Indonesian Linux Forum Statistics

It's been some time since i gave some reports about Indonesian Linux Forum statistics. OK, here's some cool information about it (all these information were posted at the time i write this post. Actual number may have increased through time):
- It already has more than 13000 members
- It has 99446 posts in 15941 topics with an average of posts per day is 62,53 and average of topics per day is 10,02
- Member's growth per day is 8,18
- It has generated 274,01 MB of data

We are growing up every month and every year and it has been four years since the forum started in July 2004.

Japan Festival 2008 Rundown

OK, the JapFest 2008 has been started today and you still have until tomorrow to see lots of performance held in this two days. I went there this afternoon and there were so many people coming already, even though it's only in the early hours. At night, i didn't go there, but Anton said it was very crowded because of the singing contest, otaku contest, and many other games that were held at night.

Tomorrow, there will be a CosPlay (“Reborn! Ambition Cosplay”) which will be started at 10 AM. I can't wait to see the event because i missed it last year. More information can be seen here

Better Upgrade Mechanism

I have just upgraded Indonesian Linux Forum engine (phpBB3) to the latest version (3.0.3) which has just been released today. As always, i checked the changelog before i upgrade. phpBB offered several ways to upgrade the installation system. The preferred way is to use automatic updater which will look all your files, check the difference, and then merge them whenever possible. This feature is very handy and it has been improved since last update.

The new mechanism works better with modified file (mostly if we install MODs), so the upgrade process is slightly easier than before. In the past, i have to check all the MODs after upgrading, but now, i don't have to anymore, as the MODs are still preserved and the updater merged the new changes into the old one, so no full replacement needed.

Bravo and salute for the phpBB's developer. They have made their users easier by providing good upgrade mechanism.

Sea Monster in Ancol

Lately, the sea monster in Ancol has become very popular among us. The video is already on YouTube and the news has been spread throughout mailing list. I don't know whether it's real or not, but by looking at the video, there's strong evidence that it was taken from Ancol. Perhaps future statement from Ancol management will be needed to clarify this news.

Invitations

I received several invitations this month, but unfortunately, i can't attend all those invitations, because it most of them are held outside Jogja. I can't sacrifice my classes just to attend all those events. The first is JAX Asia 2008. I have attended this event on 2006. At that time, i was still working in Jakarta, so i could came to this event. In 2007, i pass the event and probably i will do that again in 2008.

The second event is Asia Africa Conference on Open Source which will be held in Jakarta at 18-19 November 2008. The conference will be hosted by RISTEK (Indonesian ministry of research and technology).

The third one is IEEE ComSoc Indonesia 2008 which will be held in Bandung at 22 November 2008.

The only event that i can attend was Sun Developer Day 2008 last week.

I really wished that those kind of event would be held in Jogja someday in the future, so i can attend it more often.

960 MB

Well, that's the amount of my email usage currently (up to the time i post this) on my GMail account. There were 2189 email on trash which i hadn't deleted for some time. I believe it may reach 1 GB by the end of this year. Even though the quota growth are slowing down, it won't be a problem for me because my growth is slower than GMail's.

Nowadays, i never used email client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, nor Thunderbird to download all my emails, because it would consume too much space on my system (except for my email which i got from my campus. I used pine and fetchmail to fetch those mail into my workstation). Also, i won't have problem when i had to go somewhere else and i don't bring my laptop because i can also access it via my mobile phone.

In the past, i used Outlook Express and Outlook (when i was working in Jakarta) and i had problem managing those emails when i had to go back to Jogja, because i had to syncronize all of them to make sure those email didn't get lost. Ahh.... it was the past. Now it's gone by time...

OpenOffice.org Reached Ten Million Downloads

OpenOffice.org has reached ten million downloads since it's release (OOo 3.0). This number was achieved after one month and also after the end of OpenOffice.org Annual Conference that was held in Beijing, China. This also marks the first OOo Con outside Europe. What a great achievement for OOo project which was ran by the communities and without advertisement budgets.

You are totally awesome and thanks to the developers who have contributed to this release. We are looking for more contributions to make OOo better in the future

Wrong Prediction

This morning, i was planning to watch the latest movie of James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace. I watched the schedule this morning and the first schedule was on 10.30 AM. I went there around 10 AM and i was thinking that the queue won't be that long because in the past, 21 Cineplex opened at 10 AM and today is already the fourth day, so i am guessing that the audience will not be that much. I was WRONG!!!

When i got there, the queue was already lining up until it reached the elevator outside the 21 Cineplex area. Amazing!!!. When i watched Spiderman 3, the queue list didn't surpass the 21 Cineplex area, even though it almost did.

I guess i make a wrong prediction this time. So i finally decided to cancel it, because i heard that the tickets for 11 AM show were already sold out and at that moment, i'm still outside the 21 Cineplex area so that means that i will only get the night schedule and probably at the front seat, which is very uncomfortable. Probably next time i will go there earlier or i should just wait until next week and let's hope the viewer is less than this week

Arrived @ Jogja

Finally, i arrived at Jogja after 9 hours of trip in Taksaka 1 from Jakarta. The train was behind schedule for about 30 minutes and on the way, it stopped very often, so the trip was more than 9 hours actually, but finally i made it

I couldn't sleep at the train so i was very tired now. I guess i should have a rest now

Ethics

When i was on my way to Jakarta on Wednesday, i took a flight from Jogja to Jakarta. When i have sat in the chair, there were two peoples in front of me who used his mobile phone which was equipped with a digital camera to take a picture of one of the flight attendances. She was quite annoyed by the behavior of those passenger because it was done several time and she noticed it because there was a sound like when you had a digital camera taking a snapshots.

Perhaps that's why the vendors didn't take away those sound when you are making a snapshots. It makes the object aware if they were being an object. But that's just the protection from the vendors. The best protection still lies on the person itself. It's called ethics. When people learned and know about ethics, they won't do such things even though they could.

KDE 4.1.3 Released

KDE 4.1.3 has been released and now it should be on the TODO list of Slackware-Current tree branch. We should expect it to be included in the future. The changelog lists all the detailed changes since 4.1.2.

Sun Developer Day 2008

I have been invited to Sun Developer Day 2008, which i already stated on my previous blog. Today i went to Shangri La Hotel to attend the event. There i met with Alex, Kemas Antonius and several other friends who also attended the event. Actually i and Kemas already had an appointment to meet at JAX 2006, but we couldn't meet each other even though we both attend the event. Today, we meet and this is an unplanned situation. Probably something should not be planned first.

This year, Sun has picked up a theme as a flight to the dream technology. The ballroom has been decorated like an airplane which will take us (the first class passengers) to the future technology which was presented by the evangelists who had come from outside Indonesia for this event.

As you already know, i was awarded a Community Leader Award by Sun Microsystem for the Indonesian Native Lang for OpenOffice.org project. I received a plate with my name on it (Alex, photo please). There were other peoples who also received same rewards.

I must say the event was very nice, except for the consumption. There were no orders and most of the people (i'm one of them) who didn't get a chance to enjoy the meal at coffee break. I'm sure the organizer should think of this in the future.

Congratulations for the Sun Microsystem to hold this kind of event for four years in a row. Thanks also to the presenters, especially Chuk Munn Lee who have demonstrated a very nice presentation about RIA with JavaFX. I'm looking forward to attend next year event.

2009 IT Salary Guide

For those who are working on IT related jobs, please consider looking at 2009 IT Salary Guide. While it's not the most precise number, it's based on a research done by Robert Half Technology.

In general, there are still some increment, but not too high, mostly after the recession that happened in US and in most countries around the world.

Here's the fact that has been concluded by them: "It is equally as challenging – or even more so – to find skilled IT applicants than it was a year ago."

Leaving to Jakarta

I will leave to Jakarta tomorrow and i will stay there until Saturday. Alex invited me to go to the Sun Developer Day 2008 which will be held in Shangri La hotel in Jakarta. Since the event will be held in the morning, i decided to go one day earlier because i'm not taking any risk.

It's also a good chance to have some reunion with my colleagues in Jakarta. Io already had a daughter, so probably it will be a good idea to meet her too (she's still a few day old). Let's hope we can have a good reunion @ Jakarta.

UKDW Japan Festival 2008

One year has passed since the first Japan Festival 2007 and this year, it's getting bigger with all the old and new events on the spot. Yes, it's UKDW's Japan Festival 2008 which will be held at 15-16 November 2008 at UKDW. The show will be held 12 hours non stop from 9 AM until 9 PM. The ticket price is IDR 7000 (early bid) and IDR 10.000 (during the show). Most event that day must be related to Japanese culture, so it's a very unique event. Go check it out.

This event was student's idea and they did most of the preparation by themselves. I hope this year will be better than last year which i couldn't attend, but i hope i can this year.

Curious About KDE 4.1

I'm so curious about KDE 4.1 which has been released for some time. At the moment, Slackware-Current does provide KDE 4.1.2 on /testing, but the current build requires me to remove the KDE 3.5.x. This is not a good solution for me as i still think KDE 3.5.x is more stable and flexible compared to KDE 4.1.x. Also some application is still not ready in KDE 4, so i'm sticking to KDE 3.5.x probably until KDE 4.2 released next year (they are planning to release it at January).

So when Kubuntu 8.10 has been released with KDE 4.1.2 on it, i tried it on a test computer which previously had Ubuntu 8.04 on it. I delete the old partition and install Kubuntu 8.10 on it. At first, i was impressed, since it seems that Kubuntu has done great job to make a good first impression. I had a chance to try the desktop effect as well and it's working, even though not all of them are available due to the usage of non high VGA cards. In general, everything works just great. Too bad 8.10 still ships with OOo 2.4.1, while OOo 3.0 is already being released.

KDE 4.x should give performance boost during startup, but i experienced a slow startup even though the specs are quite good and i expected better performance with that spec. Well, it's not a major problem as i can live with it.

Yogyakomtek 2008

I have just came back from Yogyakomtek, an annual computer exhibition held in JEC. Even though the dollar rate is so high nowadays, people still came to this events. Some of them did buy things, while the others were just looking around and prefer to wait until the rate is going down.

It was rainy, so i guess not many people would come to this event, but i was wrong. People who used motorcycle still come to this event with some risk that they will get wet . It wasn't too bad when i got there, but when i wanted to go home, it was very bad rain, but i still had to leave and had dinner.