Big Match

There's a big match today between MU and Arsenal which will be held in Arsenal's home base. So far, the score at half time is 0 - 2 for Manchester United and the score at the time i write this post is 0 - 3 for MU. I think this will be a big win for MU in Arsenal's home base and Arsenal couldn't get into the top of the league anymore as MU will get 3 points from this match.

Go Go MU

Good Bye IE 6

Google is now dropping IE 6 support for most of it's products, starting from YouTube, Google Docs, and more will follow. The official post is here and IMHO, it's a good decision, not based on the war between those two companies. Maintaining a lot of browser in one application does have a drawbacks, since it may requires a lot of hacks to work in every browser available and IE 6 (and below) is surely one of those product that need a lot of hacks.

I believe other companies should do the same with Google and drop support for IE 6, since Microsoft has launched IE 8 for some time and i think it has improved so much on the security and also the technology supported by the products.

On my course (Internet Application Engineering), i only asked my students to create an application which SHOULD work with IE 8 and Firefox 3.5+. I will give them bonus points if they are able to make it work on other browser as well (Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE 7). I think i made the correct decision on this and it has been decided since few months ago.

Real Time Plurk

My friend told me that Plurk now support Real Time Update. He got this from Plurk developers. I got confused at first, because i see no updates at real time, just like the usual one. The fact is that the real time update is happening on the plurk response window.

In the past, you have to click the new updates to see the new responses on your plurk, but now you don't have to do that anymore, as plurk responses from your friends will be available to you in real time as long as you open your plurk status.

Great job to Plurk developers

Earthquake in the Morning

Another earthquake has strucked Jogja and some other areas in Indonesia. According to USGS, it has 4.8 of magnitude and located south of Java island (8.840°S, 110.986°E) and has a depth of 71.3 km.

I don't feel the shaking, perhaps i'm enjoying my sleep too much . I found out that there was an earthquake through my Plurk account since my students said there was an earthquake and i looked of it when i woke up and check my accounts.

The Importance of Ruby on Rails Development

The following guest post was contributed by Wendy Graham who frequently writes about online college and college related topics for Online College Guru.

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is the Ruby programming language’s web application framework, and it includes certain tools that make common development steps less difficult and speed up the development process as well. For example, its scaffolding automatically constructs certain views and models that a basic website will need. To complete the task, Rake, a building system, and a simple web server are included.

RoR is divided into the following packages, which developers can use for extending existing pages with plug-ins:
● ActiveRecord, a mapping system used to access data bases,
● ActiveResource, which is used to provide web services,
● Action Pack,
● ActionMailer, and
● ActiveSupport.

The methodology behind RoR

RoR places emphasis on the developmental principle of Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) and Convention over Configuration (CoC). CoC signifies that developers only need to indicate the “unconventional” features of an application. For example, if a class called Employees is included in the model, the matching table found in the data base is automatically called “employees.” If there is a deviation from this convention, such as labeling the table “staff members,” the developer will have to produce coding related to those names. As a rule, CoC leads to less repetition and coding, while saving the developer time.

DRY signifies that information can be found in one, unambiguous location. For example when developers use RoR’s ActiveRecord, module, they do not have to indicate the data base column names in the class definition category because they are able to retrieve that information by simply using the class name, which also saves time.

Installing RoR

Often, RoR is installed using a package manager called RubyGems, and its installation is also supported by a number of Linux distributions through their own package management system. In general, it is integrated with a web server like Apache and a data base server like MySQL, and in lieu of manual installation, a TurnKey Rails appliance can be used for deploying a server that is ready for use. In addition, Rails hosting providers, including Heroku and Engine Yard, will support the deployment of RoR as a “cloud” service.

Wakoopa

I have joined a new site called Wakoopa after being invited by Andronicus Riyono. It's an unique site, since it will track your application (please read the privacy policy before you signed up to this site if you have problem with privacy) and it will give you a rank based on the actions you do (use an app, review an app, submit applications, and so on).

It uses a client-based application to track your application being used (including some popular web sites that you visit on your browser) which is available on three different platform. On Linux, you can have RPM, DEB, or Generic binary format which should work on all Linux distribution. I think the idea of this site is very simple and it should be FUN

Brainstorming

I asked my students to conduct a brainstorming session to find an idea about a social network application that they should build for this semester for Internet Application Engineering course. This course is very interesting, as it will simulate a real life project where we the lecturers will be the clients and the students will be the people who design the application from scratch.

For the first week, we asked them to find the core idea of their social network and it seems that it's quite difficult for them. They are still looking at the current trend, Plurk, Facebook, and Twitter without trying to find something new, innovative, and creative ideas. Let's hope they can finish their brainstorming session before they present it to us next Thursday

Insider Threat

Internal attack are far more dangerous than external attack, because people inside may have know the details of the system and how it works while external people may have to do some enumeration on the target first before they can launch the attack.

That's why IEEE's Security and Privacy magazine took this as the main topic for the latest edition, with a wolf inside of sheep as the main cover. Sometimes, a gruntled employees are the main threat to an organization. There has been a lot of cases like this and it will be a good idea if you take any precautions by creating a strict procedure on your own organizations.

Back on Top

MU is back on top of Premiere League table for now after beating Hull 4 - 0 at Old Trafford with Wayne Rooney as the only goal scorer today. It was a fantastic performance by Rooney and it surely will give pressure to Chelsea and Arsenal which will play their matches next week as they played on FA Cup and postponed match.

He is a very determined boy seeking for better performance on each of his performance with MU. He might not be as fast as Christiano Ronaldo, but i'm sure he got much better spirit than any other MU players on the field. He does both offence and defence, running all around the field, chasing the ball, threatening the goalkeeper to force errors, and even motivating his teammate. Such a great person. MU is very lucky to bought this guy

How Secure is Your PC?

I asked all of my students who took the computer security course to visit Secunia and use their free online scanning service or their PSI tool to check how secure their computer is. Some of them have done it and reported it back to me. On class, i said that in most cases, it's very rare to have 95% or beyond if you are new to security and guess what? It's correct. Most of the students got lower than 95%, which i think it's still at acceptable level.

When they got the results of the scanning process, i'm asking them to raise the level by patching the OS and also upgrading the applications to use the latest version which should have fixed the problem found on the previous version.

I hope this kind of simple homework will boost their motivation to secure their system and follow best practices to keep their system secure by updating the applications and the operating system itself.

Movie as Education Media

What's so fun about learning security is that nowadays there are so many movie that uses many common security techniques, such as brute-forcing, encryption, social engineering, and so on.

For that reason, i'm trying a new way to make students enjoy learning security by asking them to watch movie which relates to security or it has security-related terminologies. I'm sure some of you have known such movies.

Security Awareness

For this semester, i'm teaching Computer Security in four classes. Today is my second class and i always asked the same questions on each class about how often they update their operating system and applications? In most case, the answer is 90% never. It seems that their security awareness are still very low, which is my primary target and focus for this course to raise that level.

Computer security course is now a mandatory course which should be taken by second year students, so it's now considered an important course because we now lived in a digital world where threats came from everywhere, anywhere, and anytime. We should be able to defend ourselves against those threats at all cost. Learning simple things might do the tricks and it only requires small efforts to do so. The main thing is stay alert and keep updated with the latest news about security, because it never stopped threatening your assets.

Master Q Comic

Thanks to Yahya Kurniawan via Plurk, i can finally watch Master Q comic again. It's a famous Chinese comic book when i was a kid. It's flash-based, so please be sure to install Flash Player before going to the site. I think it's updated daily, so make sure you visit them daily in order not to miss every strip of it

First Class

Today is my first day working again on new semester. There was only one class today since the other class hasn't started yet. As always, new students means they were still too shy to ask about the course, even though i have asked them to ask anything about the course. Any idea on how to change this habit?

I would really like to see an active class where they are curious about the topic and always tries to find something new and challenging. That way, they can gain more instead of waiting for the class every week.

Sleepy

After i arrived from Singapore, i'm always getting sleepy all the time. I don't know why. Perhaps because when i was in Singapore, i woke up in the morning, go to some places for one full day and this cycle was repeated four days in a row. On the fifth day, i went back to Indonesia and i just need some rest for recovery.

Tomorrow i will start teaching again, so it's time to bring back my working mood. Luckily it's just only one class since the other class hasn't started yet. Let's work work work

Safely Arrived in Indonesia

Today is my last day in Singapore. We woke up early in the morning and have some breakfast before leaving to Changi Airport. The trip to Changi was very fast, due to not many people are working at Saturday. We spent around SGD 20 to reach the airport.

We arrived at the airport around 8.30, and the gate was not opened yet. The gate opened 2 hours before departing, so we have to wait for about 30 minutes. After finishing the baggage, we entered the immigration office and waiting in the queue again. We have plenty of time before the plain departed.

After spending two hours of flight, we finally arrived at Jogja around 12:30 PM. We had lunch at Lombok Ijo and finally came home

It was a great trip and i will post another writing to write interesting things that i have seen in Singapore.

Fourth Day: Bugis and Orchard

Today i went to Buddhist temple in Chinatown around Bugis area. This temple are always full of people who came from many places, including foreigners. Outside this temple, there were a lot of people selling many kinds of items. There were also shops there, mostly selling Chinese foods and items.

There was one mother who was sitting in front of the temple, wearing a board in front and in the back of her body, asking for people to search for (probably) her daughter. She was missing (which is rarely happened in Singapore) since few days ago. Many people helped her out, but up to the time i left that place, she still hasn't found it yet.

Next, we went to Bugis to buy some goods and have lunch at Oriental House restaurant. After that, we leave to Sun City Mall through MRT and we walked around there for several hours before we finally looked at the Wealth Fountain and also Koi Garden inside Sun City Mall. Unfortunately, the show for Wealth Fountain started at 8 PM, so i couldn't see it, because i have an appointment to meet my relatives in Orchard at 6.30 PM.

We went to Orchard through MRT again and we finally met at Ippundo Ramen, located at 4th floor of Mandarin Gallery, adjacent to Takashimaya building. It is a new mall in Singapore, so not many stores are open at that time. It was full of people, because it's the only branch in Singapore, so we had to take some time waiting in queue in order to take our seat. Lucky for us, we got a nice seat near the painting. They paint three version of ramen story in English, Chinese, and Japanese. We got the Chinese version.

We finished eating and came back to our apartment around 9.30 PM and start packing for tomorrow's journey to Indonesia.

Third Day: Jurong Bird Park

Today, i visited Jurong Bird Park, located on the west side of the Singapore's MRT system. It took about 30 minutes to reach there from my apartment where i stayed. It's an integrated area where almost all kind of birds are preserved there. They are tamed animals, so people can enjoy the nature and also many kinds of shows over there. Luckily, the website already published the events schedule, so i wrote a note first before leaving to Jurong.

One thing that amazes me is that in almost every place in Singapore, i always see people reading a book while traveling, whether in the MRT or while walking down the street. It seems that the reading habit in Singapore is very high. I hope that people in Indonesia could do the same thing like in Singapore

Second Day: Amazing

Today, i went to Sentosa Island using MRT to reach Harbour Front and then from there, i took the Sentosa Express which brought me to Sentosa Island. It's a separate island from Singapore, but it has been designed with full planning, so that everything is very easy to reach, even for people who has just been there for the first time. What amazes me is how clean the area is. There weren't so much cleaning service at that area, since most people threw away the trashes in the trash bin (probably because Singapore are very strict with the rules and they give quite a lot of money as the fine if someone broke the rule. They even sell shirt which describes all the fine). There weren't so many people who acts like a security officers, because i rarely heard of any crime committed in most of Singapore areas.

By the way, Sentosa Island trip was an amazing experience. It was a big island and it's full of fun and pleasure. I can't say much about it, except that it's great to be there and i recommend that you should visit it if you are planning to go to Singapore. Also, you msust see the Songs of the Sea if you are Sentosa Island. It's a must-see event.

One thing i learn from today: don't be afraid to ask other people for information. They are so friendly and they will likely to help you at no cost at all.

Lost My Luggage

Today, i was travelling to Singapore for holidays. It supposed to be my first experience and i was expecting a great experience, but that's not what i got from the start. My first unlucky case was when i wanted to copy my NPWP and my passport. The store was out of paper, so i had to use whatever paper they have to copy it. Luckily, it was OK for the imigration.

The biggest problem ever happened today was when my baggage wasn't found when i wanted to claim it. It was lost and i had a feeling that it was missing since we boarded in Jogja. The officer in Jogja probably missed my luggage and i don't know where is it right now. I have filled a complaint, but i can't do anything but wait for it. The bag consists of my clothes, so i don't have any clothes besides what i'm wearing right now. I will be five days in Singapore, so that means i have to buy enough clothes here.

Let's just hope that there will be no more problems in the rest of my holidays. It supposed to be a fun holiday, but unfortunately, it wasn't. Just because of a missing luggage, everything screwed up and i have lost my mood to enjoy this holiday.

Offline Temporary

I will be offline starting from tomorrow until Saturday, since i will not be here. Yes, i'm leaving to Singapore early in the morning and i don't bring my laptop around, so it's impossible to write a blog from a mobile phone (i know it's possible on my E71, but still it's more complicated).

So, cao for the moment, and i will be back online when i return to Indonesia

Wine 1.1.36

Another development version of Wine (1.1.36) has been released. This time, it has completed the separation of 16 and 32-bit codes, improvement on Improved Shader Model 4 support, fixed lots of memory leak, improvement on MinGW debugging support, and also bunch of MSHTML fixes.

See the complete announcement here and get it here. I have download it, compile it using SlackBuild script, and then upgrade the current version with the latest one

My Smashing Book Arrived

Last year (well, it's actually last month, but now it's 2010, so let it be one year ), i ordered Smashing Book from Smashing Magazine. This book talked about web, starting from designing a good user interface, CSS, typography, usability, and everything you should know about web designing. It's written by those who are passionate about the web and those who runs the Smashing Magazine.

When i came back from my office today, i found a package on my desk. I look into it and i saw a Smashing Magazine logo on it. So the package i have been waiting for has just arrived . I have been waiting for this for two weeks, since i got a shipping confirmation at December 24, and it's January 8 now, so it's actually around 2 weeks + 1 day. It took so long probably because due to long holidays (Christmas and New Year). The delivery estimation is already mentioned on this page also

I know this book from my colleague, Andronicus Riyono who have bought this book when pre-orders came out and he had received his book before holidays. There is another colleague of mine who had ordered the same book, but unfortunately his order haven't arrived yet. Mine already arrived even though he ordered his book long before i ordered mine. He took the air mail, while i took the ground mail, as per suggestion by Andronicus who also got his order via ground mail.

The book costs around USD 29.90 plus shipping fees which is USD 5 for ground and USD 10 for air mail. So in total, i spent USD 34.90 for this book. It's worthed to spend this amount of money to buy this book, because the content is more valuable than the price itself.

I would recommend this book for all of you who have the same passion on web design or wanting to learn about how to create a good web design. It's a must-have book IMHO.

Three Hours Invigilator

Today i became an invigilator for Data Warehouse exam which was held at UKDW's Conference Room. The duration for the exam was 3 hours, that's the longest exam i have ever seen. Normally, in regular classes, we hold up to 2 hours maximum, but we never gave that much time, since sometimes the students may have to face up to two or three exams a day, so they need some time before entering the next exam.

Waiting for three hours was a pain, but it's my job. Everything is over now. I have given the marks and the only left to do is submitting the grades to the officials.

Linux Kernel 2.6.33 Less Interesting?

Linux kernel 2.6.33-rc3 has been released by Linus post holidays and it's getting slimmer and slimmer, mostly due to long holidays since new year. What i have seen on this version is that it may not as interesting as previous release, since most people were busy with spending time on their holidays, but we should also think about the distribution of people who contributed to this project. There are more than 1000 people working on Linux kernel project and on each release, they might want to put their effort into the main kernel tree, which is done at the merge window (usually takes time after the release of final version of a Linux kernel and before 2.6.33-rc1 gets released).

KernelNewbies still didn't have the brief summary yet, probably waiting for one or two RC before they considered it to be stable enough to be put online and read by public. Here's the 2.6.33-rc2 announcement by Linus on LWN.

First Workday

This was my first workday on 2010 and it was good to be able to work again since too much holidays are not good as well. It's not a full time yet, since the classes hasn't started yet, but i wanted to make my mind refreshed again by the mind of working environment, so that i will be fully prepared for tomorrow's job which requires me to work full load since we will be discussing about the new curriculum. Can't wait for tomorrow

New Memory and Battery

Today i bought a new memory stick and also a new rechargeable battery for my digital camera, Sony Cybershot DSC-100. Why would i do this when i have 2 GB on it already? It's because i will be going next week for about a week and i'm sure it will took a lot of pictures there.

I bought 8 GB of memory stick pro duo from SONY, which is the same vendor who produced the digital camera. At first, i was unsure whether the memory stick can be supported by the camera, since there was no information about this. I checked the Internet and one people said that it supported only up to 4 GB. The seller dare to take a risk and put a 8 GB on it and voila, it's detected normally. It can save up to 3000 8 MB quality pictures. Very nice right? So in total, i have 6 GB (4 + 2), which should be enough for taking lots of photos on my traveling journey

Just for precautions, i also bought a new rechargeable battery, which is the same as i had now (original battery). The one i had now has been used for some time and it's still very good, but it will be safe to bring another one for backup.

Vegas Casino Mirage

Going to Vegas means you are ready to rock and roll. You will most likely spend your money on the gambling places wide spread all around Vegas. For those who have been to Vegas, doing this activity is piece a cake, but for those who have never been to Vegas, they have to work on preparations, since Vegas are big enough and they sure have plenty of casinos and hotels there.

Vegas Casino Mirage is one of many places that have both hotel and casino under one roof top and guess what? They have just makeover the Mirage casino & hotel, so you will get a new design with more heat on the Volcano, which resembles Vegas (hot). The Volcano will erupt nightly every hour from 8PM till midnight. Can you imagine that? It will be a fascinating event every night before you go to sleep

Likes to taste new drinks? They have it all too. It's on their dazzling pools along with many other entertainments, such as waterfall, pool oasis, Cirque du Soleil and also Terry Fator Theatre. It's all there on the Vegas Casino Mirage.

Special note for the Casino. It's not only for gambling, but you can also play responsible gaming too. If you like sports rather than gaming, take a look on Mirage's 10,000 square feet of big-screen, state-of-the-art race and sports book, where you can see many kinds of sports, includingPro and college football, Hockey, Pro and college basketball, Auto racing,Womens' professional basketball, Golf, Baseball, Tennis, Boxing, World Series, NBA Championship, Stanley Cup, and mens' college football and basketball championships. It's all there in Mirage's Casino.

Afraid of not getting vacancy rooms? They have 3004 in totals, which means you have plenty of spaces there. For safety, it's advisable if you book them now using online reservations.

If you want to have a look on it's history, you can check Wikipedia's article about The Mirage. They sure have a long history, since it's been serving since 1989, which means 21 years since it's opening.

Portrait Drawings

Yesterday, i had a chance to browse YouTube and i found a cool video where the author drew several celebrities in the world, including Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Christian Bale, Angelina Jolie, and many more. He can even drew Po (Kung Fu Panda). You can check the official website here.

If you want to see how he draw those pictures, you can visit his channel on YouTube. What a creative person

End of Holidays

Tomorrow will be the last day before i'm going to work again on Monday. It's been a wonderful long holidays since last December (that's one year ago ). My sister took longer time to stay in Jogja so she could accompany my mother longer, since she only came back once a year. We had a wonderful time in the last few days since we always go out together along with my family and also my girlfriend.

Today, we were planning to go to Jejamuran, but when we got there, it was so full, so we decided to ate somewhere else. We finally decided to go to Pring Sewu which was the nearest with Jejamuran (it was 2.30 PM, so we were already hungry). After that, she went again with my mother and i took my girlfriend home and resting at home.

Tomorrow, she will leave to Jakarta and probably she will be coming back again next December. Thank sis and have a safe trip

Happy New Year

2009 has been a great year for all of us, but it's time to leave 2009 and start living in 2010 where new challenges, opportunities lies within it. I hope this would be a good start in 2010, so i would greet you all with:

Happy New Year 2010