Fully Slackware

Today, i went to several computer stores to find a replacement for my desktop computer. It seems that some store are now playing in branded models and they don't sell non-branded models. This happened due to warranty problem if you sell non-branded models.

Anyways, i found one model which is quite cheap, but it's enough for me. I don't play heavy games, but i need some powerful resources because i might use it for development and for my work as a lecturer. I don't need state-of-the-art VGA card, but i do need big RAM and also HD space.

I'm thinking of fully using Slackware on this machine and no longer using Windows on my new desktop. I wanted to make my computer Windows free and fully using Slackware. On my previous desktop, there were Windows and Slackware, even though i rarely logged in to Windows in the last 12 months. I logged in to Windows only to update the application and apply security patches from Microsoft.

Well, let's just see. I will buy the new one tomorrow, so at night, i will be quite busy installing and configuring my new desktop

New Computer

After eight years accompanying me, finally my desktop computer is now dead

I think the problem lies in the PSU, as it cannot powered up when i press the power button. The processor won't work, but the LED on the motherboard still blinking. I hope the hard drive is fine, since some of my data is still there.

I'm thinking of buying new computer to replace this one as it's getting older and older and out of date. We will see about it in the next few days.

Vegas Venetian

Often, i go to other places and i stayed at several hotels. There are a lot of good hotels in Indonesia and i'm sure most of them have online websites where you can book online. But as far as i know, most hotel is only used for resting at night, because at morning, usually people goes out of the hotel to shop, eat, and so on.

It would be a good idea to have a hotel which provides many services to their customers so that they don't need to leave the hotels to go other places. I don't think it's possible, until i saw this review. Many people who have come to this hotel said that they really enjoyed staying at this hotel because it brings luxurious and unforgettable moment in a reasonable fare. I don't see any review less than 3 stars. Most of them gave 4 or even 5 for this hotel, which makes it a hotel with good reputation.

So i visited the main page of the hotel and i was surprised to see that this hotel has this much of facilities. It's really a complete one-stop hotel. You can have several options for wedding ceremony, meetings, and many more. You can also order online and check the rate for that date. It has quite an easy to use website to access all the facilities available on the spot.

You can also enjoy Venetian Blue Man Group Show, Jersey Boys, Phantom of the Opera, Wayne Brady, and also Bronx Tale on the entertainment section as well.

Amazing and marvelous. That's all i can say to express how Vegas Venetian managed to bring luxurious moment on their place in Vegas. It blends a resort, a hotel, and also a casino into a single place for people who would like to taste the romance of Italy without really having to go to the Italy.

I really hope someday i can travel to US and stayed at this hotel

Motivational Quotes

Sometimes, when we were down, we need some support from others. A simple quotes might be inspirational for some people, so i decided to look for some application which displays a random quotes every day. I got this page and they even have an application for Facebook. So i decided to install those application on my profile, so i can see a new motivational quotes everyday on my account

FireGPG Update

After being broken for some time, finally FireGPG has released a new update which should fix GMail's integration with GnuPG. Thanks to the developer, i now have access to the sign/inline button again when i'm composing new message or replying someone's message on my inbox.

The Indonesian translation has been updated as well to reflect tha latest changes in FireGPG, so it should sync with the latest version as well. Enjoy the apps

Back From Parangtritis

I have came back from Makrab in Parangtritis with UKDW Net Club members and also from Karate members. The event was a successful one. My goal has been accomplished and hopefully, i could give the best solution for the issues that were raised during this event.

Time to get some sleep now, as i didn't sleep since yesterday

Wine 1.1.30 to Support OpenAL

Wine 1.1.30 has come out even though it's coming quite late with more than two weeks as promised. But as the result, there are so many improvements on this development snapshots. Some of them are:

• Support for OpenAL.
• Many improvements in HTML and JavaScript support.
• Many common controls fixes and improvements.
• More Direct3D 10 work.
• Better MAPI support.
• Various bug fixes.

Looking great on each release

The Lost Symbol

Few days ago i bought another novel (yeah, i know i'm addicted to books) and this time, i bought The Lost Symbol, the latest novel from Dan Brown, the author of Da Vinci Code and several other thriller novels. It's not yet published in Indonesian, so i just bought the original (in English) version at Gramedia.

I'm reading it now and it's fantastic. Even though i have just completed around 20% of it, i think Dan Brown's idea is brilliant. He combined so many known knowledge into his novel. I'm looking forward to see the end of this novel in the next few days.

All Day Meeting

Today, i attended meetings for about 9 hours. It started at 9 AM and finished around 6 PM. Well, not all that we discussed were serious matters, but we did discussed lots of things, starting from our plan to held UKDW NUTZ! 2.0 which is our Install Fest event on October 10, our preparation for MAKRAB next Saturday, and also our internal issues.

Let's hope there will be no more meetings like this again

Big Gap

Lately, i saw so many students made a big gap between them and the lecturers. They think lecturer is beyond their reach, thus they wouldn't dare to communicate with their lecturers. They don't dare to raise their hand and ask if they don't really understand about the course. This is wrong.

IMHO, effective learning means good communications between the mentor and the students. Lecturers must be open-minded and supports their students not only in classroom, but also outside the classroom. By having a chat session outside the regular class, i think this could help creating new environment where students can talk more freely with their lecturers.

This is what i'm trying to do with the new students. I'm trying to make them understand that college is different with high school. You must work together and be communicative with your lecturers in order to be success. Ganbate... let's hope this works

Staying At Home

Today, i spent all day long at home, without going out because in most places in Jogja, it's very crowded and i would had a bad traffic jam just like in Jakarta. So today, i decided to stay at home. Some people would have to work starting tomorrow, so it will be less crowded tomorrow, so it's a good time to go somewhere else

Inactive Period

When long weekend comes, as usual, most blogs become inactive and there aren't so many activities in aggregator sites such as Planet Terasi. Only some blogs still being maintained. It will become normal again in few days when some people start working again, but it be a full load starting next week when people started to write down what have they done in this long holidays

Derby Match

One big derby match has been over with a single winner: Manchester United (4-3). Yes, they had a derby against Manchester City which gives a big surprise this season by having a perfect start until finally MU stopped them at Old Trafford. The match was a great one, with MU leading and then an equalizer comes up from City players.

With new owner, City began to buy lots of good players and turned into a serious contender for the BIG 4 and now Lead by Mark Hughes, City has transformed the EPL into BIG 5 along with MU, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal on it.

I think it's going to be a good season with many new challenges. Will MU be able to defend their title once again? or can City bring new surprises again? We shall see in the end of this season next year

Amarok 2.2 Beta 1

Amarok keeps growing and developing their product. Their latest product is Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 aka Crystal Clear. It has fixed lots of bugs and integrated many new features.

The only complaint i had with Amarok 2.x is the RAM usage. It's getting bigger and bigger. It won't be a big problem on computer with wealthy resources, but for most computer, it took too much.

Let's just hope they will get it done on the final version of Amarok 2.2

Petal Around The Rose

There is an old game which confused my friend when we were still studying at college. I solved the puzzle in short time, while he took months to solve it. The name of the game is Petal Around The Rose. It also become the only hint for this game. If you are curious, try to play it here

Virtual Communication

This morning, i opened up my Google Reader to see the news i subscribed to and when i read one of my friend's shared news, i found an interesting picture. Based on the picture, it seems that we have changed how we communicate with others. In the past, we prefer to have a face-to-face communication, but in today's world, it's changing into a virtual communication, where you can have a mass communication with lots of people in the same time using emails, IM, social networking services (such as Facebook), and the last but not least, micro blogging (Twitter and Plurk).

So, this is one of the evolution that Internet has done for us. We can always think it as a positive or negative, depending on your own perspective.

Thanks to my friend at Netherlands, Sam Warnaars for his share

Running Shoes

I had a friend who loves basketball so much. I met him when we attend the junior high school together. His favorite player is Michael Jordan. He learned all his tricks, watched his videos, bought his merchandise, and even bought his shoes products. In short, he's a MJ wannabe.

One of the most important thing when we do sports is the equipments. It helps us do things better. In swimming, it would be the swim suit. For basketball, i would say the running shoes. By having a good running shoes, we can move freely and reduce the risk of hurting our feet, mostly when we are running on bad or unstable court. Good shoes are designed to help it's users to avoid accident, such as ankle problem. Since basketball is very prone to accidents like that, it's good to have a good equipments before you start playing.

In most cases, we can buy the equipments on local stores, but sometimes they haven't supplied the newest stock yet, so you might need to buy it online (just in case you really wants to buy a good one). Many websites offers running shoes and also other items as well.

On Foot Locker, you can have a look on list of items, varying from mens, womens, kids gear, casual, and also accessories. If you visit the page, on the front page, it will give you a display of MJ's Hall of Fame shoe collection. It's very cool indeed. It's called Retro Air Jordan 1 Hall of Fame. If you want to look at the real image, click here (it's way too big to be displayed on my blog).

I'm sure when my friend saw this website, he will definitely buy this shoes as his collections. If you want to see some reviews on 2009 Running Shoes, you can visit Runner's World. The reviews are quite detailed with the item's information and also an opinion from the tester.

Last Day

Tomorrow will be the last day before long weekend next week. I'm going to enjoy the last day as much as possible, but i will keep working on holidays, as i don't have any plan to go somewhere outside my hometown.

My schedule tomorrow will be teaching OS class and also attending yudisium event at noon. I will have another meeting with the UKDW Net Club boards at 3 PM. Happy TGIF

Great Discussion

Today, i had an Operating Class course and the subject was about Threads. There were lots of questions coming from the students and it was pointed to the other group who gave the presentation. I like the situation where they have prepared themselves before the class started by reading the text book, searching some related materials on the Internet and so on. The result was a better discussion on the class.

When the class ended, i asked for the next group who will be giving presentations about CPU Scheduling and there were about eight groups who were willing to give the presentations, but i had to choose two of them. I'm so relieved that they were so enthusiast to learn more about an Operating System. Let's hope their spirit will last until the end of the semester

Old Love Songs

When i was a kid, i used to listen to Stevie B.'s music. Most of his music were all great and mostly were love songs. He has good word selection and also good music. I enjoyed it very much.

Today, i remembered him and suddenly, i wanted to listen to his music, so i searched the Internet and i found some site who provides the music via online player, so i can listen it directly.

Thanks to the Internet which enables users to find almost everything on it

phpBB 3.0.6 RC1

In order to make sure everything is OK with the final release, phpBB team decided to release their first RC1 of phpBB 3.0.6.

The following is a list of major new features implemented in phpBB 3.0.6:

• Backported 3.2 captcha plugins:
  
  • Classic and GD CAPTCHA
  • reCaptcha (based on API from recaptcha.net by Mike Crawford and Ben Maurer)
  • Q&A CAPTCHA
  • 3D Wave (by Robert "Xore" Hetzler)

• Introduced new ACM plugins:
  
  • null (to disable caching completely)
  • memcache (http://pecl.php.net/package/memcache)
  • APC (http://pecl.php.net/package/APC)
  • XCache (http://xcache.lighttpd.net/)
  • eAccelerator (http://eaccelerator.net/)
    

• ATOM Feeds
• bare-bones Quick Reply editor in viewtopic
• Users can report PMs to moderators which are then visible in a new MCP module
• Ability to copy permissions from one forum to several other forums.
• Send statistical information (anonymously) about PHP and phpBB configuration to help improve phpBB.

I just hoped that the upgrade process will be painless when the final version is released

Linux Activities

I'm quite happy with today's event on my campus. It's a weekly activities held by UKDW Net Club. On Saturday, we hold meetings for new students who wanted to learn more about GNU/Linux. It's organized by our local Linux User Group in UKDW which is a sub division of UKDW Net Club.

Many new students were so enthusiast to learn more about GNU/Linux. Most of them were using Ubuntu and Kubuntu for their operating system, but some of them dare to choose Slackware and go with it

Creating a big start is quite easy, but maintaining it would be a tough job. I hope their motivation will keep on rising on each meeting

See you on next meeting next week

Silver Jewelry

Not every company can survive for a long time. Silver Jewelry is a living proof that they still existed up to now and has been the world's premier jeweler and America's house of design.

Playing in jewelries area is not as simple as many people thought. They must spend big efforts to keep up with the latest trend and knowing what user really want. One simple idea that Tifanny & Co used to make sure their company keep up on running is being sustainable. They even had a special page for this philosophy. There's a cute penguin covered with gem stones on this page too

In order to keep surviving, we usually have to have a unique items where it can't be bought from other places. Talking about uniqueness of products, i think they have managed to do so. You can see it on their summer silver collection page where you can get lots of unique items on it. They also provides hand-made and machine-engraved items. It will be different on the time duration required to finish the final design. It will usually take 3-5 days for machine-engraved items and 8-10 days for hand-engraved items. One thing that i admired most is that they gave an option for lower-price items on almost of their products. It helps people who have limited budget to buy it from this online shop. You can buy some items under US$ 100 (excluding the shipping cost).

I personally like the design of the web site. It's clear and doesn't use too much fancy background color. It's just a simple white background and with detailed images on each products, makes it easier for the consumer to see the items.

The only problem that you may encounter is that this site only ships to US addresses only, so unless you have a relative living in the US, you might want to reconsider buying it from this page.

The Lost Symbol

I just visited Gramedia book store at Ambarrukmo Plaza and there was a pre-order for Dan Brown's next novel called The Lost Symbol. It will be sold starting at 15 September 2009, but it's the English version. The Indonesian version will approximately be released one year later (usually).

I'm waiting for this novel as it comes with another codes that are puzzling and interesting to be solved

Playing With Ubuntu for a While

One of my student has some problem installing ATI driver on her laptop which is running Kubuntu 9.04. She asked me to solve the problem, because she desperately wanted to try the new desktop effect in KDE. She saw my presentation before and since then, she become quite a fanatic Linux users.

So, today, i'm playing with Kubuntu for a while, but i will be back to my Slackware when it's done. I still prefer Slackware for my primary Linux distribution that resides on my systems.

Late Email

Lately, email that comes into my inbox from Facebook often comes late. When i checked the wall or other's status related to the email confirmation, it was posted almost more than 10 minutes ago. Does the Facebook server is too busy sending all those emails or is it GMail which is late to see and scan the messages from viruses?

Oh well, no big deal for me anyway. I'm more active in Plurk lately

Lots of New Terms

Last week, new term has just been used on Plurk, called Slackification. It's a term to invite people to use or migrate to Slackware Linux. This term was born due to a great hype about Slackware 13.0 release last month. Since that day, many people have tried Slackware Linux and some of them are satisfied with the latest release, while some of them are still battling to make their hardware working on Slackware Linux.

Today, new term has just been announced by Budi from Baliwae, called Mandrivaassociation. He is now using Mandriva Linux, so he is so enthusiast to grow Indonesian Mandriva Community (it was mdk-id, but since Mandrake has changed into Mandriva, a new name must be made).

I think when OpenSuSE 11.2 is released in short time, there will be another terms related to OpenSUSE. The same thing will also happened when Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.10 released next month. We would have so many terms related to Linux distribution

Waiting for New phpBB Release

The release schedule for phpBB 3.0.6 is getting closer and closer and i'm getting worried since the next release will contain quite a huge amount of changes. While it's a good news that new features are coming in, compatibility and upgradeable factors are also important, mostly for administrators who maintain the board.

New changes in 3.0.6 will have quite a big impact to the main application, so early precaution must be made to make sure the migration from earlier version works as intended.

Let's just hope the upgrade will be as smooth just like the previous version

Attending InfoCamp 2009

This morning, i attended InfoCamp 2009. It's an annual event held for new students where they were taken to outbound place in Kaliurang and there, they would held so many activities to learn about their new learning environments.

Today is the day for lecturer's session. Some lecturers, including me attended the sessions. We departed from our campus at around 8.30 AM and arrived around 9.30 AM because we had to bought some snacks for breakfast.

I had a chance to talk about Linux User Group in UKDW and about the EC-Council Academia program which has started since this semester. I wish that those information can be used by them to learn more about a world which is very dynamic and changed at a rapid pace.

It's my second time attending InfoCamp after last year, and i'm happy to attend next year's InfoCamp too

Online Vegas

Ever since i was a child, i had a dream that someday, i would visit America. I had a chance when i was a kid, but then a small surgery makes my dream ruined. At that time, only my mother and my sister went to US and also Japan. When my grand mother was ill few years ago, i actually wanted to go to US since i haven't met her since 1998 when she left Indonesia and stayed there with my relatives there, but then it failed again and only my mother and my sister who went there (again)

There is one place that i'm very curious about, which is Las Vegas, the world's most famous place for gambling. I have seen the city, but only through a movie called CSI. My cousin had a chance to go to US last year and he visited Las Vegas. The same thing happened with my friend, Ronny. He told me that i should visit Las Vegas sometimes. That increase my curiosity about going there and see the glamorous world of entertainment in Vegas. I wonder what it's like to be in the real casino. Even though Malaysia has a similar place (Genting), the situation will be quite different with what's in US.

Luckily, there are so many web sites which provides this kind of services on the Internet. One of them is Online Vegas. They provides so many games which can be played just like when you play in Las Vegas, but in the privacy and comfort of your home sweet home. You can play it while eating pop corn or listening to your favorite music.

Like any other web sites, this site also provides you with all the popular games in Vegas, including blackjack, roulette, and many fun classic slots and video slots. For list of games included on this site, please check this page. This site only allows users older than 18 as part of their Responsible Gaming reputation. Not only that, they even give advice to parents who wanted to prevent their children to access the site by writing it on this page. It's something that are not being done by others.

It's too bad that it only supports Windows for the operating system. Even though i can use of Wine to install the client application, it would be more convenient to have native support for the program. Migrating to Java might be a good idea .

I personally don't like gambling, but i'm still curious about the real situation on Vegas. Let's just hope someday, i would really visit US and see it with my own eyes . Before i go there, probably i should visit the Official Las Vegas city website.

Glitches

Lately, i have seen so many glitches happening on social networking sites. Starts with Plurk which unable to display any comments received by others. I had the solution by clicking the number instead of the plurk status, and it worked. I guess it's fixed now.

Next and the latest glitch i encountered today is in Facebook. The glitch is when you tried to access someone's profile, but you will get no profile found instead of going to the profile page.

Let's just hope they fix it as soon as possible, since it's quite annoying.

Future Firefox Checks Outdated Flash Player

According to a blog post on Planet Mozilla by Johnathan Nightingale, it seems that future Firefox (starting Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14) will check for Adobe Flash Player Plugin installed on user's system and notified them if the version is outdated. Old version may cause some problem, mostly security problems, so Mozilla team takes this matter seriously.

This action is chosen after a recent studies at h-online which states 80% of the users are running old version of Adobe Flash Player.

After installing the Firefox security update, users with fully updated flash player will get a regular screen, but users with an outdated version of the Adobe Flash Player will see this message:

IRC Meeting

I have just finished having a meeting on IRC. Yes, a meeting on IRC. This is a non-planned meeting since the announcement was made on about 4.30 PM and the meeting was scheduled at 9 PM. Luckily, Plurk does help us a lot to notify many other people so that they could came to the meeting even though some people were late.

The main topic about this meeting is to discuss about our next project related to Slackware. When will people be able to see the results? We don't know yet, but we are working hard to get it done A.S.A.P.

It's good to have an IRC session again. I missed them a lot

FYI, our first meeting was held for 3 hours and we have so many Slackware users around Indonesia gathered on the channel to discuss. I'm really thankful for all of your efforts and time. On Makassar, they are one hour earlier than us, so it's 1 AM when we were done with the meeting. Good night and have a nice dream

Ten Things You Don't Know About Apache 2.2

Thanks to STWN, i got this interesting links via Plurk. It's about 10 things you don't know about Apache 2.2. It's true that the migration from Apache 2.0 to Apache 2.2 was smoother rather than 1.3 into 2.0. But some people didn't realize what Apache 2.2 brings instead of just regular bug fixes. It brings quite enormous changes, which aren't realized by many people.

This article discuss those changes and bring it to you in a easy to read and understand ways, so for those who works with Apache should be reading this article.

Another Earthquake

Today, there was another earthquake disaster on several cities in Java island. The epicenter was located near Tasikmalaya and it has a magnitude of 7.3 (according to USGS, it's 7.0). It happened around 3 PM, when i was just finished my last class today. I was talking with some students when i suddenly feel the room was shaking. One of my student didn't believe that there was an earthquake and i asked her to stop moving and feel it. She finally realized that it was an earthquake and the rest of the students went out of the class.

When i came back home, i saw all TV stations were reporting the earthquake. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, Plurk, and Twitter also being used to let others know about what happened. There were so many posting about the earthquake.

What's funny is that some people didn't realize that there was an earthquake, even though the magnitude was so big (it's even bigger than what struck Jogja in 2006). They believe after watching several sites, such as Detik.

There has been some casualties, but it's not as much as what happened in 2006. Let's hope there will be no more casualties and no more earthquake in the future

IIS Zero Day Exploit

Another Microsoft IIS Zero-day Exploit has been reported on InformationWeek. I'm not sure when will Microsoft patch this bug. Should the customer waits for their monthly updates or should they rush to release the patch, since the exploit code has been posted at wilw0rm and i believe in just a few hours, many people will use this code to conduct an attack to many IIS-based web servers.