Preparing Exams

This week will be the last week before mid test starting next week (it will start on February 8). I should get prepared for the questions. I only have two classes which have a mid test, computer security and computer modeling. I think it will be a fun mid test

New Release of Skype

Skype has just released a major upgrade to it's Skype product in Windows. Dubbed as 4.2, this release brings several new features, such as:

• Skype Access – access WiFi hotspots the easy way with your Skype Credit.
• Call transfer – transfer calls to a Skype contact or a mobile or landline.
• Updated call quality guide with pre-call soundcheck.

Full detail about the this release can be found on the Changelog (PDF).

Unfortunately, there is no update (yet) for Linux platform. The latest version for Linux is 2.1.0.81. I don't know about Mac OS X as i don't use it.

Mercurial Tutorial

Today i found an interesting website about Mercurial written by Joel Spolsky. It gives you a brief tutorial about Mercurial and how is it compared to Subversion, another revision control tool widely used in this world. I would recommend this site if you are planning to find a revision control tool to help you working with other people around the world. This tutorial is also helpful if you are having problem with CVS or Subversion and you would like to find an alternatives to it.

Other alternative to Mercurial is Git, originally written by Linus Torvalds (now maintained by Junio). It's also distributed revision control tool, unlike Subversion or CVS which are centralized. You can find the tutorial for Git on Git Book or in Charles Duan's website in Harvard.

Learning how to use revision control will help you organize your team even if your team are not located in the same place, same building, same city, same country. Your team can be widespread around the world, but they can share their work to others without interupting other's work or causing a dillema on the code itself (whether it's a buggy code or late code because people are afraid to commit to the repository unless it has been well tested).

Chinatown in Ketandan

As always, Chinese New Year is always celebrated in many places, including Jogja. For the last several years, Jogja always held a mini Chinatown in Ketandan (near Melia Hotel) to held a Chinese New Year celebration.

This year, the celebration was held since 23 - 28 February 2010. I was lucky enough to visit there tonight and to see my girlfriend sang on the event because she was asked to give a contribution by singing.

There were so many foods on this area and what i saw is that the booth were getting much bigger and bigger in terms of number. That's because the event took place in more alleys than before, so more booth can join and make this event much more spectacular.

You can attend the last two day and probably you can also see fireworks at the last day. Go visit it or you will have to wait until next year

Videos and Education Method

Today i tried to use videos instead of giving all the lectures to my students. I used a demonstration made by VirtualForge to demonstrate how XSS and XSRF works in real life.

They were really enjoying the video as well as i did, so i thought it worked. I will try to find more videos to be presented to the students, so they can enjoy the class and can have better understanding about the material i will give to them.

Thanks to those who have created all the videos available on the Internet. You really helped me out to explain something to the students

Wushu Show

I just came back from attending an event at Grand Pacific and i saw a Wushu demonstration from two wushu association in Jogja and another one from Guangzhou, China. All of them showed a spectacular moves and i was amazed by them.

Some of the players from Jogja has achieved gold medal in junior olympic competition and also in national events. Great job and keep it up

Time Management

What i learn from my student's posting at Plurk is that most of them are too busy working on the assignment given to them by the lecturers. Before this semester started, i have given a warning about how much classes should they take. We even already have a guidance book, but it's rarely be read or even opened. In the end, they got frustated because the assignments are coming in almost every week.

It's a consequence of trying to finish the study as fast as they can, but they will gain nothing from it. This is a paradigm that happened nowadays. Students wanted to take as much as possible, without looking whether they can get benefit of it or not. The main focus is take the class and don't care if they even get a knowledge or not. What a shame

If you know what's the risk are, then what you need is a good time management, so that you can have time to finish all the assignments given to you. Start managing your time or you will be frustated with all the assignments

Recording My Own Screen Activity

In Windows, we could use Camtasia to record our activity in our screen. I thought that would be impossible to be done in Linux, but i was wrong. I use RecordMyDesktop which is able to record what you are doing on your own desktop and this is for Linux/Unix platform. This application also has 2 frontends: pyGtk (gtk-recordMyDesktop) and pyQt4 (qt-recordMyDesktop). I compiled both of them and works great on my Slackware Linux desktop.

I will use it to produce my own video for demonstrating to do something on Linux or even to teach my students on some of my course (computer security for example).

Graduation

Today, my campus held a graduation ceremony. There were 201 students who graduated this time and my department contribute 84 of them and what makes me proud is that the best three graduates comes from my department

Congratulations to all of you and prepare yourself to enter the real world

I'm sorry that i can't be there yesterday and today as i have another task to do in these two days, but i wish you luck

Talk Show

Tonight, i was asked to be one of the speaker of a talk show at Petra Radio. It talked about using Facebook to do online business. Even though Facebook was not meant to be a place to do business (except for advertisements), it's very common to see many people sell their items on Facebook and what happens is that many people see this as a new opportunities to do side jobs, because they don't have to work 8 hours a day in front of their computer, starring their screen all day long. They can do other activities and you only need to spend few hours a day to check if there's an order and deal with your customers.

Thank you for listening the show and i hope all of your questions were answered in the show. If you still have any questions which i didn't or haven't answered, please send me an email and i will gladly answer it.

Pidgin 2.6.6

Pidgin has released a new version of Pidgin, 2.6.6 which has several updates to many protocols. It also includes some fixes to security vulnerabilities. Please take a look on the Changelog for more information.

I hope it will be included on the next batch of Slackware-Current

Switching to QTwitter

For few months, i have been using TwitterFox (now Echofon) to update and manage my Twitter account. I don't have problem with Echofon at all in the past, until i upgraded my Firefox to 3.6 and since then i have problem with it.

Whenever i wanted to reply a tweet from my follower, i couldn't write anything after i clicked on the reply icon. I have close the Echofon window and reopen it again, tab the End key to move the cursor to the end and start writing my replies. This is very annoying for me, so i started to find several other Twitter client, until finally i saw an email from SlackBuilds mailing list about QTwitter, a new Twitter client which work on Slackware.

I download the source and also the SlackBuilds script and install it without any problem and after trying to authorize my account several times (it's not quite stable for me), i managed to make it work and now, i love it. It works like a widget, so you can just put it on your desktop and it will start grabbing updates from friends you followed.

I would recommend this application if you are looking for a Twitter client application.

Percy Jackson on Movie

Finally, the Percy Jackson series will be brought to theather starting this February. The first book: The Lightning Thief has been played in Indonesia starting last Wednesday, but only in several cities in Indonesia, not including Jogja

I am hoping that this movie will be played on Jogja as soon as possible, as i liked this movie (based on the book which i have read until the forth series)

Windows Update Caused BSOD

Last Tuesday, Microsoft released 13 patches to fix many problems on Microsoft's product, mainly Windows. This batch of updates also fixed an old time bug which has been known (but still unpatched until today) for 17 years old (yes, 17 years).

After updating to all of the patches, some users reported that they encountered a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) which caused their computer unusable. They couldn't even entered a safe mode, so they ended stop using their computer.

If you happened to experience the same problem, you may want to visit Microsoft Forum and you will see the solution to this problem which i will post on this blog also.

So, basically this is what you should do in order to fix your computer (credit goes to the writer, Kevin Hau, which is the moderator for Microsoft Forum):

1. Boot from your Windows XP CD or DVD and start the recovery console (see this Microsoft article for help with this step)

Once you are in the Repair Screen..

2. Type this command: CHDIR $NtUninstallKB977165$\spuninst

NOTES: no spaces between them all except for CHDIR and $NtUninstall...

3. Type this command: BATCH spuninst.txt

4. When complete, type this command: exit


IMPORTANT: If you are able to uninstall the patch and get back into Windows, in order to stay protected you can use the following automated solution which secures your PC against the vulnerabilities that are resolved with KB977165 until you can successfully get the update installed without the blue screens.

Please see the link below for the article describing the vulnerability that is fixed with KB977165 and how you can get protected without installing the actual KB update:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979682

Happy Valentine and Chinese New Year

Happy Valentine day and also Chinese New Year to all of you who celebrate it. It's so rare to have this two events on the same day, but today is the day and according to some source, it will happen again in the next 38 years, so i will be 64 years old by that time, so i'll enjoy the moment where i can enjoy it today.

It's been a great day and in the end, i got a very pleasant gift from my girlfriend. She bought me a 6x6x6 rubik cube so i can play with . I bought her a neclace which has a watch on it and also it has 4 GB of flash disk inside it, so perfect combination. I bought it from a Hongkong site on the Internet and the price wasn't too expensive, so it's worthed to have it. I will probably buy again from the same shop for her birthday soon

Two Events at One Day

Tomorrow there will be two events at one day, Valentine day and a Chinese New Year. I believe this had happened before, but for me this is my first time and i think it's very rare to have this event on my life, so i should enjoy it as much as possible tomorrow.

Enjoy yours as well

Google Maps 4.0 Includes Google Buzz

I upgraded my Google Maps on my Nokia E71 after i read Kristupa's post on Twitter saying that he had upgraded his Google Maps to version 4.0. I googled and i was surprised to see the updated Google Maps have included Google Buzz, the latest product from Google. I downloaded a 1,6 MB Google Maps 4.0 and in no time, it has been installed on my E71. It works just like the old one, but with some addition on it's features.

If you want to download the latest Google Maps on your phone, just launch a browser on your phone and point to http://m.google.com.

Here's what it's like in a phone (i'm not sure what the phone is):

I Got Google Buzz

When i logged in to my GMail account, i got a new notification saying that i already have a chance to enable Google Buzz on my GMail account. Of course i activate it since i'm a bit curious about it. After i enable it, there's a new option called Buzz under Inbox link on the left side of my account and i can add many sites which relates to me so that my post from every site i added will be available on my buzz.

IMHO, Google Buzz is working like Google Wave + Google Reader combined as one application and integrated in GMail. It's a place where you can share everything with others, but in terms of social networks. You can add Twitter and Flickr (besides Google's site such as Blogger and YouTube), but not yet for Plurks. I'm waiting for Plurk to be added to Google Buzz as it's my favorite social network site for now.

Oh well, as always Google always put something interesting on each of it's products

Google Buzz

Today, Google introduced their new product called Google Buzz. According to the official announcement:

"Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting".

This product will not be a separate product, but it will be built on top of GMail, so all you need to access or use this new product is to login to your GMail account and if you are lucky enough, you will be able to see this new shiny product in the next few days, as Google will start rolling it few days after the official announcement. It will also be available on mobile version, so don't worry if you are a mobile users .

For now, you can see the idea of Google Buzz by watching the official video below:

Facebook Photo Uploader and Firefox 3.6

So, you probably have heard out about new Photo Uploaded used by Facebook to enhance user experience when uploading photos to FB's server. What you probably don't know is that the current Photo Uploader will not work on Firefox 3.6. It will work on the next update, 3.6.1, but unfortunately, there's no definite date or schedule when will 3.6.1 be shipped to public.

For now, we (who uses 3.6) will have to use the old, manual way, uploading five photos

First Day

Today is my first day working again after few days resting. It was fine and i can finish my class nicely without any problem. Let's hope i can manage to finish tomorrow's classes, as there will be 3 classes in a row, so no time to take a rest between them.

Luckily, i have a co lecturer who will give the presentation on the first session, so i will give the second and third session which happened to be my class.

I have to become a man

Near 100

In the next two days or so, i will reach 100 on my Plurk account, which is the highest karma on Plurk system. It took me about 6 months to reach this status and i believe it will be much easier if you start now, as more and more people have joined Plurk.

When i started Plurk on August 2009, not many people in my campus knew about this site, so i had some problem finding my friends. Lately, i used Plurk to give notifications about my class because some of them have joined in and they tend to watch Plurk more often than visiting my lecturer page

Echofon and Firefox 3.6

I'm having some problem replying tweets from other people from my Echofon. I can't write anything on my Echofon window after i clicked the reply icon. This never happened when i used Firefox 3.5.x. Does this problem exists only in my computer or does it happened in other computer as well?

Do you have any suggestion for Twitter-client application that integrates with Firefox 3.6+ ? I would love to hear your opinion.

Thanks before

Full Day Resting

Finally i have one full day to rest tomorrow. I will spend my time resting at home and hoping that at Sunday, i will be find and ready to work full time again on Monday.

Caoo for now

Not Feeling Well

This week, i'm kinda over-exhausted due to my busy schedule. For that reason, i'm taking an early sleep today to reclaim my strength to finish my two classes tomorrow. I will be teaching CEH and computer security classes tomorrow, so it will be a tough class. Let's hope for the best

Meanwhile, i will be out of YM, Plurk, Facebook, Email, Wave, and Skype

Playing With BT4

I have been using BT 3 for a long time and i'm quite satisfied with it, since it is a complete Linux distribution for penetration testing purposes, which is required for my CEH classes. Most of the tools described in CEH are already included in BT 3. Besides, BT 3 are Slackware-based, which means i'm used with it, since my primary operating system is now Slackware (good bye Windows ).

Ever since the developer of BT are planning to switch to Ubuntu-based, i kinda feel disappointed (and i believe many of BT users did too), but there's nothing we can do about it. So when the final version of BT 4 comes out, i keep downloading it both the full ISO or the VMWare image.

Last night, i tried to use the VMWare image on my vmware application, because my student who tried it said that it was very slow and the ethernet card wasn't detected on his laptop. I'm so curious about it and give it a try. I extracted my image which is compressed using zip and then load it onto VMWare and the system started. It was configured to have 768 MB as the RAM, which i think sufficient as it still uses the old KDE 3.5.x and it has been reduced to minimum to provide faster access to the desktop itself.

I have no problem running it at the first time and it's still as fast as BT 3. The changes from Slackware to Ubuntu is not very significant in my opinion. In fact, i am quite happy with how easy for BT 4 to upgrade it's packages by just running
sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade

about the ethernet card, i just ran dhclient eth0 and it will receive an IP address and it will get connected to the Internet at no time. I wonder why the developer didn't use DHCP as the option for BT 4.

By the way, Back Track Linux has a new web page, so you should visit the new page instead of the old one. BT 4 is also able to be installed on your USB stick. Please check the tutorial page for more information about this

Stem Cell Institute

Technology keep evolving and this gives us many advantages, since many things can be solved by the advanced technology that we might not be able to solve in the past. Many universities in the world conduct a research in many topics and some of them are giving more focus on health section. One of them is Hardvard with it's Stem Cell Institute.

Here's a quote from the official home page:

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute's overall aim is to use the power of stem cell biology to understand and ultimately treat selected diseases and conditions.

In short, The Harvard Stem Cell Institute is a place where scientist from many places gathered and trying to find new treatments for many kinds of illnesses and brings hope to many people who sufferred from those illnesses. You can find information about Stem Cell in Wikipedia or you can view the video below



Harvard is not the first one who investigate the possibility with stem cells, but it was done by Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Harvard took the action to improve what has been done in the past and combine it with the technology that they have to significantly improve the research methodologies and techniques to develop new breakthrough in medical areas.

Why stem cell? Many scientiest believes that stem cells therapy can help people who has problem, such as leukemia, cancer, parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and muscle damage. For now, most of disease can't be cured, but i believe with the advancing technology, we will find the cure for this illness and many people will be saved in the future.

HSCI also offer internship program to provide undergraduate students with a focused and challenging summer research experience in a cutting-edge stem cell science laboratory. It will be held in Cambridge and Boston, MA – Harvard University and the 11 Harvard-affiliated hospitals and research centers from Monday, June 7 – Friday, August 13, 2010.

Way to go Harvard and the Stem Cell Institute

Have You Used Wave?

I have been using Wave more actively since this semester. It gives me and my colleagues a way to share our work together along with my students. We are able to communicate and discuss something in real time with only a browser and a google wave account.

Even though i think the idea of Google Wave is not yet very mature, since it lacks of many things for now, but i believe in the future, Google will add more nice features on it's product and it will become a nice application