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).