Evolution of Nintendo

It's been more than 28 years of continuous evolution from Nintendo since they started at 1980 with Game & Watch and their latest product is Nintendo Wii. Some are well accepted, like SNES and Wii, but some doesn't get the same popularity, like N64. If you are interested to see the whole Nintendo tree, check this image (i don't put it on this blog, as it's too big, 1200x1333 pixels)

The interesting point is that Mario is always among the game published for each gaming console. Probably the second game is Zelda. It's as popular as Mario.

CodeFetch

Sometimes, we need to look on other's code to understand a concept. The easiest way is by looking at books that talks about programming languages. Unfortunately, people find it too hard to buy a book, mostly because it's written in English and it's quite expensive.

So here's one of the solution: codefetch. Just enter the topic you wanted to know, and it will display the code from several programming books. Beware as it might not show the whole code, but just a little portion of it (except when the function is small enough).

They also provide a link on each function to the manual page of each programming languages, suitable for learning what the function is there for. Here's an example of PHP code

Perfect Title

Spain finally won the EURO 2008 championship by 1-0 goal via Torres. It's a perfect title for the team and also for the coach. They won the championship without having any losses since the preliminary round (except for a draw against Italy which ended in penalty shootout). For the coach, it will be a nice present for his seventieth birthday. Congratulations......

I didn't watched the match as i couldn't wake up I slept at 00:00 AM and hoping that i would woke up at 1.45 AM, but in the end, it didn't happened. Well, i'm not that disappointed, as i'm not a football mania.

Time to get prepared. I'm leaving for Kaliurang in a few hours

Annual Meeting

Well, this year, i will attend my campus' annual meeting which will be held in Boutique Hotel in Kaliurang. It's a new hotel (just launched last week), so i hope it's still in good shape and clean enough. I hope i won't forget to bring digicam to take some picture of the view. It will be a two days meeting and we will evaluate our performance for 2007 and also our strategy for 2008/2009.

I don't know if they had Internet connection, so i'd take the worse scenario: No Internet At All If you send an email around Monday noon until Tuesday noon, perhaps i will not be able to reply it until Tuesday night. My Blog? Don't worry, it will get updated normally as Blogger now has future posting

New Rule From RapidShare

New rule has been roled out from RapidShare News:

Celebrating the European soccer championship we have simplified the rules regarding the maximum download volume: all premium users get 10 gigabyte per day now and can save the hassle to check how much traffic they have used already during the last five days.

New OOo Writer Guide

Ihsan Faisal has finished writing translations for some OOo Writer guide from OOoAuthors. He has sent the file for me and i have just finished uploading the documents on Indonesian Documentation Project. It's a replacement for the old documents that were made for OOo 1.x. This one is for 2.x. I hope it could help you using OOo better.

Meanwhile, we are progressing with the Indonesian Native Lang project. It has reached almost 50% of the translations. Maybe you are all wondering, why did it take so long to finish the project? Well, OOo evolves, so many translations are changed each release and this would change the previous translations, so rework must be done. Another reason is that most of the members is a full-time employee on their organization or company, meaning that they do this project on their free time. So forgive us for bringing Indonesian version of OOo

Pay Anywhere Using New PayPal Plugin

Paypal has made shopping in the Internet easier by developing a plugin which enables we use PayPal in sites that doesn't support PayPal. How's that possible? After you install the plugin, you can visit any site and do some shopping there. When you are ready to check out and pay, there's only a credit card form and you can't use PayPal to hide your credit card number. This could lead to fraud by the merchant or if you are in public place, it's very dangerous to put your critical information on the web, because people can sniff the data (if you are using public Wireless connection).

So this plugin can help you by generating random number which represents your credit card number and PayPal can track it automatically, meaning that you don't need to put your real credit card number. Cool huh? You can also add some description and it will be available on your PayPal accounts.

The problem is that this plugins are only available in US and not in other countries (for now). Let's hope they will include Indonesia in the future.

You can watch the demo here

OWASP Application Security Desk Reference Project

OWASP (The Open Web Application Security Project) is working on OWASP Application Security Desk Reference Project that produced a helpful basic reference material when performing such activities as threat modeling, security architecture review, security testing, code review, and metrics. It will be launched in August 1 2008 (only one month and few days from now).

You can download the draft (965 pages, in PDF format) at their wiki site, or you can download them per section (there are a lot of them) that suits your interests.

Here's the table of content:

• Section 1: ASDR TOC Principles
• Section 2: ASDR TOC Threat Agents
• Section 3: ASDR TOC Attacks
• Section 4: ASDR TOC Vulnerabilities
• Section 5: ASDR TOC Control
• Section 6: ASDR TOC Technical Impacts
• Section 7: ASDR TOC Business Impacts

Bad News From RapidShare

Last night, i tried to download from rapidshare using my premium account and i got this message:

The premium account xxx is already in use within ip network aa.bb.cc.dd/24. Please try again later.

So i contacted RapidShare Support team and here's their answer:

Kindly note, because these days despite the interdiction the amount of shared accounts was rising, we had to take action. If the last number in your IP change, this will not cause the problem. The first three numbers must be same.

Example:
123.255.7.234
123.255.7.232
-> simultaneous downloads possible

123.45.67.89
123.45.60.11
-> no simultaneous downloads possible

So from now on, it is only allowed to sign up to your account from one place at the same time.

Please make sure that everytime you signed up to your account from another computer you delete the cookies afterwards, so you will not be blocked if you download from your computer again.

I guess it's the result of quota upgrade that they introduced earlier this month. With 50GB for five days, it won't be enough for one people to consume that, so the solution is using it with their friends so he can save some money (because the money he spent will be less and distributed to the amount of participants).

Until few days ago, this is not a problem. But after RapidShare took this steps, i think it will be a big problem for those who bought the account with their friends and they used different ISP, because the first three number of IP address will surely be different.

ARggghh... why is this happening when i wanted to extend my premium account for one year

Icon War

We have seen lots of war, but have you seen icon war? If you don't, then it's time to watch this video by MASO. It's not that long, but it's quite funny to see the materials. Can you guess who's the winnner?

No KDE 4 RC Yet?

It's almost the end of June and there's no sign of KDE 4 RC 1. The last development release was Beta 1 that were released last month. Usually, they provide RC 1 to make sure there's no regression and people would have seen the (quite) stable version that are much likely similar to the final version which is planned to be released on July.

Will it be delayed again? I'm not sure about that, but i do hope they will release the RC this week, so they have enough time to get the feedback they needed to make sure it has fixed all the remaining blocker and major bugs.

So far, only Fedora and OpenSuSE 11.0 which has used KDE 4.0.x as the default window manager. Slackware team will try to test KDE 4.1 when it comes out whether it's stable enough to be included in the next Slackware release (12.2 or probably a bump to 13.0). It has big dependencies and lots of efforts, but Robby Workman has tested and provided the binary packages (and also the source) to be tested by public. You can get them in Robby's page

Good Bye Italy

One more big nation has been swept out from EURO 2008. So now we have four team competing for their title, Germany, Turki, Russia, and Spain. Russia and Turki is not on my prediction, but they have made many surprises on this tournament (which Greece has done in the previous tournament). Can they do something more by winning their semi final matches and advanced to the final? We will see that later.

I only watched Spain vs Italy match until first half until i decided to go to sleep, which was a good decision, since the match has to be decided by penalties. If i watched it all the time, i would have to stayed until around 4.30 AM. Well, it's a dramatic for Italy. They has managed to go through the preliminary round with some 'help' from Netherlands, yet they couldn't score any goal in the normal match (again). In this tournament, Italian strikers didn't produce any goal at all (which is very odd, since they have very good strikers in their clubs).

Well, that's soccer. You'll never know what will happen until the whistle is blown off.

Firefox 3 Revealed

Sitepoint has released a book called Firefox 3 Revealed made by Fabio Cevasco. This book will try to list all new features in Firefox 3, like:

• how the new user interface will streamline your browsing experience
• why the new security improvements will keep you, and your data, more secure
• what new features are available for storing bookmarks, passwords and more
• how the AwesomeBar will make locating pages you've visited in the past faster and easier
• and much, much more!

Get them here (RS links)

How Long Can You Last?

I found this funny game called Avoider via Stumble Upon. It's a Japaneses website (CMIIW) and the purpose of the game is to protect your cursor from the crazy attack from a single person on the screen. His move is unpredictable and you will never know what will come next. It's very funny and interesting.

Russia Moves To Semi Final

Russia is truly a killer. Gus Hiddink has proven himself as a great coach by turning around all the prediction and bring Russia to the semi finals crushing Dutch 3-1 in an extra time period. Nobody would expect this kind of situation would happen because the Dutch was so dominant in the group stage. They beat bigger nation with a promising score. Nobody doubt that. But like always, football can never be 100% accurate. Sometimes, big surprises happened, and it has happened right now.

For those who likes to give some predictions, i think it's time to update your predictions, because i'm sure most of you predicted that Netherlands who would win the match

Snow Buddies

I just watched Snow Buddies, a nice movies for all ages. It talks about dogs and relationship between them. Even though they are different, they could work together to achieve what they wanted. It would be nice if all of us can do the same thing in our community.

One Full Day

Tomorrow, my girlfriend's older brother will get married. Congratulations for him. We held a party tonight

It will be a busy day for me and for my girlfriend's family. I had to go to campus at morning because my class has started again. After i go back, i should be dressed and go to the studio to take a picture and after that we need to go to the building for some preparation. Oh... it will be a long and busy day tomorrow

How to be a Programmer

Ever dreamed about being a programmer? Well, here's a short and comprehensive tips on how to be a programmer by Robert L. Read. It has been classified to Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, depending on which level are you targeting.

Beginner are taught on basic skills (divided into personal and team skills) every programmers need. Intermediate works a little bit more by adding a judgement skills to the steps, and finally the advanced part added more management actions to the list.

Best Programming Jokes

I just stumbled upon a nice website which contains a long list of best programming jokes. Check it out and laugh hard (good for weekend). Some of them aren't that funny though.

Biggest ASCII Art Site

I think this site owns a record of the biggest ASCII art ever created on the world (so far). Can you guess what the picture is?

SEO For Firefox Extension

Eager to find out more SEO with Firefox? You can start by using SEO for Firefox Extension. You can view all the SEO information on each site when you look on Google and Yahoo search engine (i hope they support more than this in the future). This tool also links to a couple cool keyword research tools near the top of the search results, including:

• Google Trends - shows historical search volume trends
• SEO Book Keyword Research Tool - cross references many popular keyword research tools
• Overture View Bid - shows Yahoo!'s top bid prices for a particular keyword
• Google Traffic Estimator - shows top bid estimates and click volume estimates associated with Google AdWords.
• Google Keyword Sandbox - Google's keyword research tool

Spin Your String

Have you ever thought that a simple string can do much more than what you can think of? Well, if you don't believe it, try visit String Spin Toy by ZeFrank. Draw something and start spinning it to make something more

Electricity Problem (AGAIN)

I think it's the worst electricity problem i ever had. Last night, my friend told me that there will be an electricity issue at 8 AM to 6 PM (can you believe it? it's 10 hours in office hours). I think it's just a rumor, so i thought it was a joke.

Today is my last day on this short semester. All the materials are finished and today was only presenting their work for the second project task. When the presentation was finished, i played several videos i got from YouTube about Google Tech Talk. The topic i picked was about Linux Kernel project by Greg Kroah Hartman that was held at June 5. I wanted to give a real project to the students and showed them how cool the Linux Kernel project is. It's a distributed, fast-changing, keep-growing, community-based, and mature project. It all went very nice, and i moved to the second movie about Google: Behind The Scene (also from YouTube). Too bad, around 9 AM, the electricity went down like it was said. So i had to ends the class prematurely.

It's still off until my next class around 10.30, so i decided to show the videos without using any projector. I stopped the video once a while and discuss them with the students, because i know most of them don't use Linux (yet). I wanted to introduce them to it. Well, everything just flows as normal.

Well, after the class ended, i went to my office and there were some students who wanted to talk to me, so we had a chat. We chat for several hours and the electricity still down. We ended around 3.30 PM, and it's still no sign of the electricity will be up again. I went to the parking station, but on my way, i was stopped by my colleagues, so we had a chat again. One of my colleague called the electric company and asked them when will it be ready? They said it will be ready in short time, but they couldn't give a precise answer (a typical answer from a customer service operator)

The reason why the electricity is being cut off is they were planning to cut some trees in the side of the road and they are not taking any risk if the trees broke the electricity cable, so they shut it down (i wonder why on earth they do such thing in office hours and it took them ten hours to finish that job).

The electricity went up (finally) around 3.45 for about 30 seconds and it went down again I gave up. I went back to my house and my house was affected also

More Than Predicted

The counter has been stopped and it reveals an interesting numbers. Even though Firefox team only targeting at five millions download on 24 hours, they got more than eight millions (8.638.392 for more precise). It has a rate of 4168 download per minute, so it's very fast download. I don't know how they count this, but if we could look at the web server logs, i think this number is quite valid, since many people has loved Firefox since it's debut few years back.

Even though it has stopped the counter, the download still goes on (and i believe it will past ten millions download in less than a week. Probably it will take one more day to past that milestone). In one month, there will be lot more. Firefox is so fantastic. They have really improved, mostly in reducing the memory usage and prevent memory leak. I could open lots of tab and leave it idle for few hours and the memory is still in acceptable levels (of course, this is subjective). It also handles Javascript codes better, as i never had problems with new GMail interface after using Firefox 3 (i often get a not responding browser when i used Firefox 2 to access GMail's new web interface).

Firefox 3 Installed

I finally installed Firefox 3 on my Slackware box. I tried to download the latest Firefox at midnight, but the servers where overwhelmed by the request of thousand of people around the world, so i think it's not a good time to download when peak hours. So i decided to go to bed first. This morning (around 4 AM), i woke up (i just went to sleep four hours) and turned on my TV because i thought the big match was still running, but unfortunately it has ended with Netherlands and Italy goes to the next round (as i predicted).

Next, i pointed my browser to Firefox download page to grab the latest version and download them. Before i totally migrate to Firefox 3, i backed up my .mozilla directory which contains my preferences and any other things related to Firefox configuration just in case it blew up (well, it didn't and that's a good news). After that, i moved the old Firefox installation and put the new one. I clicked on the Firefox icon and the compatibility checks started the process and found several of my extensions and theme are not compatible with the current Firefox. That's normal for me. So i visit the extension home page to see if there is an update and there was some updates but not for all extensions. I managed to get updates for ColorfulTabs, HTML Validator, and Google Page Rank Status. There are a couple of extensions which hasn't has any updates (yet), so i'll just wait for them to be compatible with Firefox 3.

Next problem is the theme. So far, i haven't seen any good Firefox 3 theme. I used Outlook 2003 in the past when i used Firefox 2, since it's nice (well, it's rather personal opinion though). Anybody can recommend a good theme with a slight blue as a background?

It's just a great product from Mozilla and i believe that Firefox 3 will grab more market share than Firefox 2 in short time. Bravo....

Wine 1.0 Released

Well, it's not just Firefox who had their milestone, but also Wine project. After long development cycle (about 10 years or so), they have finally decided to release their first 1.0 version. 1.0.1 will come up shortly and 1.2 is on their queue list. Congratulations for Wine project team. The 1.0 didn't close all the blocker bugs, but it will be a good base to fix the next version to be a better version.

Indonesian Firefox 3 Party

For those who aren't too busy and located in Jakarta, there will be Firefox 3 party that will be held in Starbucks Senayan City / Metropolitan Mall Bekasi. For more information, check this page. Congratulations. Unfortunately, there aren't this kind of party in Jogja

Firefox 3 Launch Day

Today is the day. Firefox 3 will be released and it will be a new milestone for Mozilla after long development cycle and efforts being pushed into the upstream code. It will get started in a few hours since we are several hours ahead them. I think tonight, it will be a massive process since lots of users will download simultaneously. I just hoped their servers are able to handle this kind of vast requests.

Are you ready to migrate to Firefox 3?

Field Guide to Firefox 3

Firefox 3 will come out soon (in one or two days) and it will contains huge amounts of changes and new features. Sometimes, we are too lazy to read the documentation that includes technical things and sometimes confusing and hard to find (because they documented separately). There's another option for you to understand what's new in Firefox 3 by reading one document.

Dria has published a Field Guide to Firefox 3 that talks about Firefox 3 in detail and listed other resources that are related to the features being written on the guide. Check it out

Software Engineering on Video

I just watched Greg Kroah Hartman, a Linux kernel developers from Novell that talks about Linux Kernel development on Google Tech Talk that was published on YouTube. Well, i think this video can be used as an example for my software engineering class next semester. It's good for discussion class, because it's not an ordinary project that we usually use in examples. It's a growing communities with changes considered as a natural flow of an evolution towards perfectness.

Four Minutes

Four minutes, that's the amount of time needed by Turki to inverse the situation and grab one more ticket to the next round over Czech. Two goal from Nihat separates the two and of course makes one of them have to leave the tournament earlier. The other match is only for formality, as Portugal has makes their way to the next round in the previous match.

Nevertheless, it's a big win for Swiss as a host and also a farewell party for their coach, Jakob Kuhn, which will be replaced by Ottmar Hitzfeld after this tournament.

Back to Turki and Czech. It reminds me of Manchester United who took the 1999 UEFA Champion's trophy by 2-1 over Bayern Muenchen when late goal from Teddy Sheringham and also Ole Gunnar Solksjaer in less than two minutes make their dream (treble) come true.

Tomorrow, one more ticket will be given to one of the last three members in group B, where Germany, Austria, and Polandia has a chance to do that. Kroasia already grabbed the ticket.

ASCII Art

After finishing my mid test today, i browsed the web using StumbleUpon extension which gave me random URL based on the category i selected during registration process (it can be changed later on). I came across this site, called Typorganism. It's an interesting website as you can upload an image and they will draw it using ASCII art (yes, i know, there are several similar site). Too bad, the picture size is only 60x50 and it must be in JPEG format.

Here's an example of the output. Can you guess what is the original picture?

Good Bye Greece

Greece, the defending champion has lost twice and that means good bye for them. They are the champion at EURO 2004 with their classical strategy 1-0 won all the time (except for the 2-1 once). Unfortunately, this strategy is no longer works on this EURO as strikers are getting more hungry when they touch the ball nowadays.

It's time to produce a new champion this year. Who will it be?

Full of Surprises

Group C of the UEFA Euro 2008 Championship is truly full of surprises. It started with a big win 3-0 of Netherlands over Italy. Next is the draw between Romania and French. Last night, Italy and Romania had a draw again. It's not a good day for Italy. They had lots of chances, but they couldn't get more than one goal. It's just a bad luck for them. If there wasn't Buffon at the goal keeper, i would have thought they will leave the competition earlier. He denied Mutu's penalty kick and gives a little hope for Italy.

Another surprises comes from Netherlands. They done their impressive actions again by crushing French 4-1. Too bad i only watched the first half, so i couldn't saw their second, third, and fourth goal . It's because i had an exam this morning, so i wouldn't take any risk by watching the second half which ended around 4 AM. It's a big match and i really wanted to see them.

I think the surprises it hasn't ended yet, because one last ticket is still available for the remaining three contestants. Two of them are big nations, Italy, world champion in 2006 and French, 1998 world champion. We will see them in the next few days

Update (7:25): Thanks to Soccernet, i could see the second, third, and fourth goal from Netherlands. They have a simple clips that showed last night and this morning's game between the contestants in Group C. They are superb goal

Update (21:09): It's being broadcasted again in Global TV right now, so it's your chance to see the superb goal again. Sorry if you missed it again

NGN Seminar

This morning, i will attend Next Generation Networking seminar, held by MKOM UGM. It's scheduled to be three session and lasted until 4 PM. I'll leave my Pidgin stays online, but i may not answer it until i get back later on.

The problem with Pidgin nowadays is that sometimes the new status is not visible to other people. Sometimes they could only saw the old status. Oh well, i got to go now.

Browser Galore

This week, two new browsers are introduced to public. Next week, a new one will appear. It's really a browser galore

Let's start with Safari. Apple team has introduced their next major Safari product to developers for preview. It's available for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger and of course their new playground, Windows. It will be named Safari 4 and it's focusing on performance (probably because Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard will also focusing on performance rather than introducing new features). The good thing is that it complies with ACID 3 Test. It scored 100/100 (perfect). Safari 4 adds the ability to Save a webpage as an application, similar functionality to the third-party application Fluid. Also spotted in the Safari preferences is the ability to specify whether new tabs or windows open with; home page, same page, empty page or bookmarks. I predicted that it will be released when Mac 10.6 comes out in Macworld 2009. They still have plenty of times to make it better than current version (3.1).

Next is Opera. After long development, finally they released a major upgrade for Opera (9.50). It now uses a new rendering engine which is dubbed to be 2x faster than previous Opera 9.2x in rendering JS and HTML code. It also has faster handling of third party plug-ins and also start up time. As other new rendering did, it also has better support for more Web Standards, like DOM, CSS, XHTML, and many more. Like Safari, the new rendering engine will produce better points at ACID 3 tests, so it's getting better and better.

The last browser is Firefox, which will release their next major version (3.0) in Tuesday, 17 June 2008. Probably right now they are busy preparing the party that will be held everywhere around the world. Besides that, they are preparing their infrastructure for an attempt to break Guinness World Record for most download in 24 hours. We won't see 100/100 on ACID 3 test on Firefox, since it's quite late on the development, but i saw that in RC 2, they have increased 5 points since they have fixed some bugs related to the test.

IE 8? Oh.... i totally forgot about this, but i don't think they will ship in this month, so let's forget about it for some time

FireGPG Rocks

Thanks to Eko's Post, i finally found a great Firefox extension that could help me signing, encrypting, decrypting, and verifying my email message through GnuPG. In the past, i used PGP, but since i used Linux all the time nowadays and i no longer use my email client (i saved all my email at my GMail account), i need a tool which can be used in GMail web interface directly.

The FireGPG is the answer to my search. By using this extension, i could sign all of my message i wanted to send and people could verifying it by downloading my public key here or here or even here.

Project Gutenberg

If you are looking books online, you might be interested in Project Gutenberg. It's a collaborative projects to produce free ebooks which can be downloaded by public. So far, they have made more than 25000 free ebook listed on their site. You can also read the book on your gadget by downloading the plucker version. More over, you can also download the audio book, so you can play it using your player.

It's an interesting project

Perfect Winning

What can i say? Netherlands was far more superior than Italy today. It's a perfect winning. At the beginning, i had some doubt that there will be lots of goals, since this two nations are two of the big ones, so i was predicting a draw. But it seems that my prediction was totally wrong. The Dutch led by 1-0 through van Nistelrooy, even though i agreed that it was totally offside. But you can't denied the second (which i think is the best goal today) and third goal. Almost all of them came through counter attacks.

Getting the big win today makes their was to the next round easier, but the road is still far away. They must at least got one more victory to make sure they qualified to the next round.

It seems that Mr. Yahya's prediction will miss again this time (it's not yet finalized, but Italy does have a lot of homework to do if they want to go to the finals just like predicted )

OOo 2.4.1

While waiting for the kickoff between Italy and Netherlands, i was surprised to find out that OOo 2.4.1 has been distributed through mirrors and it will be officially released on June 10 (that means today, but it will be tomorrow for most western people). I have downloaded them and install it on my Slackware box and no problem found (yet).

Since it hasn't been officially been released, no official release notes is available for now, but soon it will be available, so please wait for few days until all mirrors are ready to serve public requests.

Well, time to watch the big match

Update (11 June 2008 01:38): It's finally released in the download page. The release note is also available.

Ohh, and Netherlands won by 3-0

Firefox Campus Edition

My friend has posted a link to Firefox Campus Edition. It's basically an original version Firefox that has been added several extensions that makes them suitable for students to help on their daily activities. Those extensions are:

• Zotero: helps you track your notes while doing your research
• FoxyTunes: manage your multimedia player through Firefox (i don't see any relation to study, but it's a great extension though, as it supports lots of player, including amaroK that i used daily. It also integrates well with Blogger)
• StumbleUpon: discover new sites based on your interests and rate them
  

Kungfu Panda

This morning, i downloaded the latest movie that isn't yet available on movie theater (yet). It's the hilarious Kung Fu Panda. It's still listed on the Coming Soon section at 21Cineplex (up to the time i wrote this post). Well, this movie is already available on US and some people are posting it on the forum, but it's not the highest quality we could get like when we are watching at the movie theater, but not as bad as CAM. The video quality is as good as the sound. I can say 8/10.

I won't write any spoilers and let you see the movie by yourselves. It's very funny , but there are some morals that we could learn from this movie

• We have to believe (even though it's hard at first)
  
• Nothing is impossible
• There are no accidents (it's being said three times on the movie and related to events around us that occurred beyond our control)
  
• Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift (a very wise word from the grand master)

Happy Watching.....

Enabling GMail Labs Manually

So, you have heard that GMail is rolling GMail Labs few days ago and it contains about 13 new features that are being developed before they will be integrated to all GMail users. When i heard this news, i wanted to try it, so i logged in to my GMail account and i found a NEW text on the upper section of the page, but i couldn't find any Labs text on the setting screen. Meaning what? I am not yet rolled in as GMail Labs users (yet).

This morning, i opened my RSS Reader and while reading the news, i found an interesting article from LifeHacker, called Manually Enabling GMail Labs in Your Account. I tried the step and it does works. Now i have access to GMail labs and i can test those 13 new features GMail team is working on.

The only thing to do is open this URL (https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=1#settings) after you logged in into your account. When it's done loading, you will have a new tab on your Setting screen. Congrats... you have your Labs tab now and you can start testing this new feature

Note: This doesn't work for GMail Apps according to the article, but i can't prove it since i don't use it.

Joining Chat Room on Pidgin

Some people asked about Pidgin capabilities to join a chat room. I never used Chat Room before in YM nor Pidgin. So i tried to do some small testing on my Slackware box. First thing, click on Buddies > Join a Chat on Pidgin's main window. You will be asked what room you are joining (first screenshot). If you are unsure or you don't know what room to join, just click on the Room List and you will lots of rooms there (second screenshot). Just pick one of them and you will see an empty chat room filled with text from Yahoo Chat (third screenshot).

Go to the URL provided and entered the random CAPTCHA text there to prove that you are human

When you have entered the text, your account will be activated and you can start to chat on the room. Unfortunately, this steps will have to be taken each time you entered a room (even the same room in the future). I know it's daunting, but it's true. I don't know why they do this (i'm not sure YM users will have to do this).

In The Darkness

When i went back from my office tonight, i sensed something wrong. It was dark everywhere (well, not everywhere, but most of the area i passed, starting from Mangkubumi, near Tugu). All the street lamps were not turned on like usual. It seems that the electricity was down. I thought it was that area, but it turned out that my house was also affected (even though mine is quite far from Tugu). The electricity went up again around 6.30 PM, but sadly, it went down again around 7.45 PM until 8.30 PM).

Now, it's already up again, and i never hoped it would goes down again. I just lost my mood to work on my thesis because of this

Right now, i'm downloading Indonesian Linux Forum database to prepare for the second release of CD Forum, an offline version of Indonesian Linux Forum which is made by Budi Baliwae in forms of Linux ISO. It has been six months since our first release, so it's time to update the database and also the application (we have moved to phpBB 3 engine).

More Actions With Google Chart API

Flona King told me about an article "50 Cool Things You Can Do With Google Chart API". It listed several cool application developed by using Google Chart API that already being published few months ago. Which one is your favorite?

OOo 2.4.1 RC 2

It's a bit unfair to post something about Firefox and not about OOo, so here's the new thing. OOo 2.4.1 RC 2 has also been released with quite a big changes, including some new features (which is usually being added to 2.X.0 release, not in minor updates. New features that people might like are Base supports for MS Access 2007 files (*.accdb), Context menu entry to quickly insert picture background for slides on Impress, and backward references support in Find and Replace, New shortcuts to apply Heading 4+5 and Text body and Default, and automatic updates for extensions. Full detailed changes can be seen on the release notes

Firefox 3.0 RC 2 Released

New Release Candidate version of the next major Firefox release has been shipped by Mozilla Developers. It has been officially announced at their announcement page. While it doesn't list changes compared to RC 1, it's worthed to download this version if you are using earlier version of Firefox 3 (Beta or RC).

New Rapidshare Web Site

Thanks to Maseko, i found out that Rapidshare has changed their website. It's already on the news page, but most of the time, i never saw it and in the last few days, i have never logged in to Rapidshare web page, so i didn't notice the change.

It's getting better from design point of view. It still uses the KISS principle (you won't see too much fancy artwork on the new version, which is good). They have changed their action button to text links, which is also good for text-based browser.

Still, they could do better than this. Why should they hide user information (such as expiration date, how much TrafficShare left, how big their storage, how many files uploaded, etc)? It will be displayed if you clicked on the + sign. Why don't they displayed it just like in the old version?

The files information gets a major changes by revealing more information and also a quick text link to convert from normal download to TrafficShare and Secure TrafficShare mode. They also provide the URL in a normal text in addition to the normal hyperlink text.

But probably the most favorite changes is the capacity. They have upgrade the download quota to 50 GB for five days

10 Ways to Improve Your Memory for School

Are you having trouble with school because your memory isn't what it used to be? Memory loss can occur as we grow older, but there are ways to slow this down or stop it altogether. Students should be very keen on improving their memory, as it will help them to retain information for tests. Below are 10 ways to improve your memory.

1. Sleep at least eight hours a day. Sleep deprivation is a leading factor in temporary memory loss.
2. Eat a well-balanced diet and drink plenty of water. A healthy body really does lead to a healthier mind.
3. Keep your brain active with puzzles and brainteasers. Playing Sudoku, for example, can give your mind a little workout.
4. Relax! Stress can also lead to memory loss, so try to chill out whenever you can. Breathing exercises can help you out during a really stressful period.
5. Repeat things you wish to learn. If you are studying for a test, for instance, you will want to read the same material several times so you can retain the information.
6. Determine whether you learn better with visuals or audio. Then, adapt your studying accordingly. If you learn better by hearing things, then record your professors instead of taking notes in class.
7. Pay closer attention to the things going on around you. Are you the type of person to zone out on the couch or in your desk at school? If so, then train your brain to absorb information by being more observant.
8. Don't cram for a test. By waiting for the last minute to study, you will overload your brain. It takes several repetitions before you really retain something.
9. Stay organized. From your home to your car, you should keep things neat and tidy. Believe it or not, a tidy life will help you keep a tidier mind.
10. Keep distractions to a minimum when you are learning something new. If this means listening to calmer music or living with quieter roommates, do it.

This article is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on the topic of balance transfer credit cards. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com

Future Prediction

Well, it's not Deddy C., but it's almost the same topic. Jucelino Noberga da Luz, a Brazilian school teacher has predicted several events would happened in the future and he has done several prediction, just like described in this article (in Indonesian, but an article is also available in English). In this article and this article, it's said that he has predicted several more events that will happen in the future. Some of his prediction are related to Indonesia. For example, he predicted that in 2009, Sumatra will have a big earthquake again.

Perhaps the most interesting prediction is that in 2043, 80% of world population will die in a huge disaster, leaving only 20% of the world population. I guess i will have to wait another 35 years (i will be 60 by that time) to prove this prediction

Here's his prophecies for 2008 (in English). You can see the whether he's telling the truth or just cheap talk

30 Skills Every IT Person Should Have

Another good article, this time from InfoWorld by Richard Casselberry about 30 Skills every IT person should have. I don't agree with all of those skills, but most of them i agree. It does needed to be IT person on your daily activities.

One thing i noted from the article is number 3. Do public speaking. Sometimes IT person is unable to present a topic to other people because they were too technical. By doing this, i think it can help IT person to talk with ordinary people

Why Internet Shouldn't Be Banned At Work

Press Association has released an interesting article about Web Break Boost Productivity. It's said that banning Internet could reduce productivity because people tends to use social networking sites to reduce stress rather than drinking coffee or tea or even having a cigarette.

It's a study of 1700 employees working in PopCap Games industry where they were asked to build games everyday. I don't know about Indonesian people, but i guess people prefer to have some cigarette than to open social sites here (probably because they already accessed it during work hour).

I have seen several companies in Indonesia restricted Internet access during office hour. I just confused how people could communicate with others if Internet is banned. If it's a developer, what if he/she had some trouble that he/she couldn't solve? By looking for solution at the Internet, he/she could reduce time wasted to find his/her solution which might not work.

If you are a boss on your company, what would you do?

Related articles:
Facebook should be encouraged at work
Workers benefit from e-break
Playing Games at Work Increased Productivity

Start Working

Tomorrow, i will start working again after few weeks of break. This time, i will teach for short semester and there will be two class in two blocks. I got first and second session, meaning that i will have to wake up early in the morning (well, i usually woke up at 6 AM) and go to campus earlier than usual.

I'm hoping for good class this semester