Great Singapore Sale

One thing i like about Singapore is that they are very smart to attract people from around the world to visit their country and earns a lot of money from them. One of the simple way is by tourism. Singapore is holding another Great Singapore Sale Shop event which is held annually.

This year, this event will start next May 28 and ends in July 25. What are you waiting for? Start looking for tickets to Singapore and start filling your MUST-BUY items

Bayern vs MU

Bayern Muenchen finally met Manchester United again in the Champion League. I remember one of the most dramatic match between this two club was in 1999 where they both met at the final stage and MU was down to 0 - 1 and in less than five minutes, MU got two goals from Teddy Sheringham and Olle G. Solksjaer. MU won treble at that time and their coach got a new title and it's now called Sir Alex Ferguson.

In the next few hours, these two club will meet again, but not in the final. Nevertheless, it will be a great battle between these two giants in their own league, EPL and Bundes Liga. I support MU, that's for sure

Update (31 March 2010: 03:45): Yes, it happened again, but in the reverse way. Bayern took the late goal to turn the position into 2 - 1. Luckily, this is not the final match, so the second leg will be held in the next two week in Old Trafford. The bad news was that Rooney was injured (probably ankle due to wrong position when avoiding Bayern's player)

Empire XXI Disappointments

Just to be honest, i was happy when i heard there would be a new movie theater in Jogja and that hope comes to reality when Empire XXI started their business. People enjoyes this new theather since we can enjoy a new place and also M-TIX ready, so we don't have to stand in line for queue for the tickets.

But i'm also quite disappointed how they manage the movie that are played on the theater. Many good movies are not being played or they are way so late compared to theaters in other cities. I just don't know how they choose the films that will be played on the theater.

Let's took an example of the latest film that is played in Empire XXI lately. It's Ink Heart and Disaster Movie. That film has been available since 2008 and it's being played now at 2010 . Can you imagine that? It's two years late!! No wonder my students was surprised when he saw that there were only four people watching one of these movies. It's been two years since people have seen it on DVD or by downloading it from the Internet.

Hope they read this and change how they can stay up to date with movies played in Jogja

Only Two Days

This week, my work day is only two days, Monday and Tuesday. Starting from Wednesday, i'm off for Easter's celebration. Honestly, too much holidays is not good as it messed up my class schedule, but i can't do anything about it. Let's use the remaining day wisely and do what we can do with it

Hash Spririts

Today, Malioboro Hash House Harriers celebrate it's 16 years of anniversary. They invited hashers from all around Indonesia and they gathered in JEC for two days (yesterday and today). There are more than 2500 people that come to JEC tonight and have a dinner together with other hashers.

I had a chance to come because i got the invitations and i came there with my girlfriend, her sister, her mother, and her auntie. It was very crowded because the food booth were not as much as the people, so people were lining up to get the meal that they like.

What i admire from this event is the spirit. Most of the attendee today came from outside of Jogja. Some from Bandung, Surabaya, Malang, and probably from outside Java island. I heard some of them are from Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. They are willing to spend their time to visit Jogja and celebrate Malioboro HHH, one of many hash community in Jogja.

Maintaining Server

I have a new side job today, which is maintaining one of the server on my campus. It's a powerful server with Intel i7 and 3 GB as the backend. It's running Slackware 12.2 and it was previously installed and configured by my colleague.

My first task today is reconfiguring PHP so that it could load GD library. I solved this problem by removing php packages from Slackware's packages using removepkg and start compiling PHP from source. It's the best option to get optimum PHP package according to our need. Since it uses i7, the compilation process was very fast and i was really surprised to see how fast it is, even though i was watching the process on ssh session.

I like this new job

Movie for Education

I will use another movie to support educational process by selecting an appropriate movies about cryptography, the topic that i'm teaching for the half of the semester. I'm downloading Zodiac, A Beautiful Mind, and Sneakers. All of them are old movies (around 1990-2006), but they still talks about cryptography, which is what i need.

Do you have any opinion about what other movies can be used or perhaps you can help me pick one of this three movies to be played on the class, since i won't have time to play them all.

ICQ

In the past, i used to play ICQ (I Seek You) when i went online on my computer. It has a fun community, but unfortunately, a rather heavy client (at that time). I got a lot of friends and most of them were from outside of Indonesia, so it was a good time to practice my English as well.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long. I quit using ICQ after two years and up to now, i never opened my ICQ account anymore. More over, ICQ is only available on Windows, not in Linux, which is the main operating system i'm using right now. I know i can use Pidgin to connect to my ICQ account, but i guess it has so many limitations compared to the official ICQ client.

If you wonder if i still remember my ICQ ID, the answer is YES. Here's my ICQ Profile

Penguin's Floor Mat

While i was in Surabaya with my girlfriend, she bought me a very nice floor mat with Tux (Linux's logo) as the cover. It's very sticky, so you won't slip on top of it. Very nice item. Thank you my darling

Ada Lovelace Day

Tomorrow is 24 of March and it's celebrated as Ada Lovelace Day. What is Ada Lovelace Day? Taken from the official website:

It is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Why would they should celebrate this? Because sometimes women's achievement are not known or acknowledged by many people around the world and their faces are not recognized even though their contributions are very crutial to the evolution of science itself.

What can you do? So simple. Just go to their website and sign up for the pledge and then write a blog post and publish it on March 24 2010. Last year, there were about 2000 people and this year, they are targetting around 3072 people (i don't know why they give this number) and so far, 1600 people has pledged to contribute to this event. They are still missing 1472 pledges to reach their goals.

Who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software. Read more on our About page, or Wikipedia.

Doteasy Free Web Hosting

Nowadays, web has become a common ways to do many things that was impossible to be done in the past. You can write a documents, work in collaboration, share documents, play online games, and many more on the web. Many new web applications are built to make people's life easier. There are also a lot of tools which you can use to make your own web sites or web applications.

There are two requirements in order for you to build your own web sites or web applications, which are domain name and web hosting. Domain name are the unique name for your own web site, for example Google.com. Web hosting is where you place your files to be hosted and after configuring your DNS entries, your web sites should be accessible in less than 24 hours.

One of the option for you who wanted to have a minimum investment on web hosting and domain name registration, have a look on Doteasy. It has so many options for you and one of them is free web hosting which has this features:

Basic Hosting Benefits:

• Host upto 10 Add-on Domains
• 100MB disk storage
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They don't put any banner on your website, so your website can look professionally. 100 MB of disk storage is more than enough for a simple web sites and 1 GB of monthly traffic is enough unless your web sites got Digg or Slashdot Effect. You will also get CPanel to manage your accounts, such as setting FTP, sub domains, emails, and also backup manager. If you are too lazy to build some web application, Doteasy provides you with Doteasy Web Tools, which enables you to use these features instantly:

• Website Creator
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What about support? Don't worry as they provide many kinds of free support in the basic plan, such as email, chat, telephone, and knowledge base. Anytime you have problems, they will make sure to fix your problem as soon as possible.

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If you need more serious option, check the Unlimited Plan with USD 9.95/month. Some of the features that you will get (more features are listed on the page):

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What's next? It's time for you to sign up and if you enter this code (1003BPM), you can get a domain registration for $7.95 plus one year free web hosting. Cool isn't ?

Wonderful Trip

I just had a wonderful trip to Surabaya and Prigen, but i would like to focus on the Prigen area since Surabaya is already well-known to most people. The reason why i go to Prigen is to accompany my girlfriend's mother to attend a classmate reunion. The reunion was held in Royal Senyiur Hotel, a very luxurious hotel located in Prigen, near Tretes. It's located around one hour from Surabaya and the location is higher than any local places. It's almost like Kaliurang if it's in Jogja. Thus the weather was cooler than Surabaya (that's one of the good news).

This hotel has a lot of facilities, such as nice swimming pool, gym, table tennis, jogging tracks, karaoke room, bilyard, volleyball, basketball, and also outbound. Too bad i only stayed there for one night only, so i only have a chance to try the bilyard and basketball. They also have a mini car (like what we saw in a golf court) which we can rent to take a view of the hotel surroundings which is magnificent. Check out the Photo Gallery if you want to have a better look on it's facilities (requires Flash).

I stayed on Princess room which was very large and it can hold up to five person with two extra beds (actually it can be more than just five, but we were only five). From the window, you can see the surroundings of the hotel which makes it very nice view in the morning.

Royal Senyiur has a Facebook and Twitter account, but the Twitter is not updated anymore i guess.

On Sunday, i went back to Surabaya and then heads back to Jogja with a train (it took about five hours) and it was very cold. Thanks to my girlfriend who brought the small blanket which i can use . It was a very tiring schedule and i hope i don't get sick since today, my classes starts again.

I'm Back

I know i stated that i will post something on my blog when i'm home after having five days trip to Surabaya, but unfortunately, i can't do that today. I'm too tired to do all the work as there were non stop activities since this morning (trip back to Surabaya for about 1,5 hours and then go all the way to Jogja another 5 hours by train).

Pending Indonesian Linux Member has been activated, all my important emails has been replied. I guess i will take a break for now and hopefully i can post everything tomorrow

Linux Portable

You might have seen a lot of LiveCD-based Linux distribution nowadays. But do you know that Linux can also be used in a flash-disk and being a portable Linux distribution that you can carry on everywhere you like?

Take a look on LinuxPenDrive to see lots of tutorials about how to make your flash disk running Linux

* This is a scheduled post *

Audio Software on Linux

Linux lacks of Audio Software? Think again as Linux has many great Audio Software and what's best is that most of them are open source and free. You will find some popular application on the reviews, such as Amarok, Banshee, Audacity, Hydrogen, but you will also find many applications that you might never heard before.

Without further ado, check this reviews (it says 15+ on the page URL, but actually it contains more than 30).

* This is a scheduled post *

Why Linux is Better

Some people asked me "Why would you use Linux?, Isn't it a difficult operating system?" Sometimes, it's hard to convince them that Linux is easy to use (this is my personal opinion, so it's objectable), but people do believe that Linux is more stable and secure than Windows.

For those who have the same questions from other people, ask them to visit this site: Why Linux is better. It lists every pro/cons of using Linux so that people can compare and see why Linux is definitely better than Windows

* This is a scheduled post *

Out of Town

I will be leaving out of town for few days, so as usual, i will leave this blog for few days, so don't expect to see updates from this blog starting today. I will try to post on Twitter or Plurk though, so you can follow me on Twitter or add me on my Plurk account.

Indonesian Linux Forum member will have to activate their accounts manually via email as i can't activate it for you when i'm out of town.

If you do happen to send me an email, i will try to reply it as soon as possible, as i still bring my mobile phone which i can use to view and reply emails, but not all of them. I will reply important emails only.

See you

Opera Mini 5 Final Released

After using it's Beta version, now finally Opera has finalized their Opera Mini browser and released it as Opera Mini 5. I have just upgraded my Opera on my Nokia E71 and it's blazingly fast. It will start with a white-based background splash screen, which is nice. The interface is very similar with the Beta version, so for you who have used the Beta version will have no problem using this final version.

It supports multi-tab feature like what you see in many modern browsers, so you can open many pages at once, even though i rarely used this feature (i used this a lot when using a normal browser in my desktop or laptop, but not in my mobile phone).

For complete features of Opera Mini 5, visit Opera's Feature Page

Linux Kernel 2.6.33.1

The first stable release for Linux Kernel 2.6.33 has been released by Greg from SuSE. The announcement is not yet available, nor does the package, but it will be available soon. It will take one or two hours until the package is available for public consumption.

I just upgraded to 2.6.33 just now and less than four hours, the next Stable kernel has been released

Template Designer

Blogger now has Template Designer feature where you can use a template provided by Blogger and customize it by yourself. Right now, they only have minimum number of templates, but i believe it's just a matter of time before they add more and more templates to the system.

Unfortunately, it's only available only in Blogger in Draft, a place where new features for the next Blogger will be tested by testers around the world. If you want to test it, logged in to Blogger in Draft and you will see it on the Layout menu. You will see a new link called Template Designer and from there, you can start modifying your layout.

Have fun with Template Designer

Check the YouTube video below:

Another Rubik Cube

I just bought anoter Rubik Cube from Mefferts. This time, i bought a nice Skewb Cube black with Fluorescent stickers which costs me around USD 18 (i took free shipping, so i didn't have to pay additional charges).

Why would i took this? Because it's interesting, even though it's listed as two stars meaning it's not that complicated. A 5x5x5 rubik professor gets a five stars, but i can finish it without having any problem, so more stars doesn't mean it's more complicated

Let's hope it will arrive safely at my house faster than previous item which took about three months before it arrived at my house (due to International New Year and also Chinese New Year holidays)

Enumeration

This morning, i taught about Enumeration in CEH class. I used Windows 2000 for the target as it exploited null session vulnerability existed in Windows 2000 which can be used to see users, shares, and many other computer information via NetBios.

According to several resources, null session exploits only works in Windows 2000 and not found in newer version of Windows, but when i tried it this morning, it still works in XP and 2003.

You may read this article for more information about how to restrict anonymous access for NULL session and it's implication (most security countermeasures have side impact for convenience).

English Language

Since few semester ago, i started to change how i make my material. I started to use English language instead of Indonesian for my material. There were several reason to do this:

1. Some statement will lost it's meaning or become ambiguous when translated to Indonesian
   
2. English phrases are often shorter than Indonesian
3. To practice English (for me and for the students)

Some students didn't have problem with this, but the rest complained at the end of the semester when they were asked to give feedback about how a lecturer taught for the whole semester.

I'm a little bit surprised to see that they were having problems with English language, even though it's being used in most of the textbooks that are used in the class and also they had some basic English training since high school (or even elementary school now held an English or Chinese class). I don't want them to get spoiled, so i asked them to read the English version (the original version, not the translated version), since sometimes first problem did appeared when we used the translated version.

Come on guys/gals... you are a college students, no longer a six years kids anymore. Grow up and be realistics. If you can't even learn English, how will you survive in the real world where language become a critical element of success?

One Down, Two More

I'm done for this week. What i mean is the mid test. The students has taken the mid test yesterday and today and what's next is to marks them. This is the hard part, since there are so many of them.

Today i have finished marking the first assignment and now two mid test course are waiting for

Heavy Rain

There was a heavy rain at evening. I was at my campus during the rain and the sound of the thunder was so loud. The students were having their test and suddenly the light goes out and ten seconds later, it went on again.

This morning, i watched Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief. The story is almost the same what i experienced in the evening, lots of water and thunder, except that there are no fire at all

OpenSSH 5.4 Released

OpenSSH 5.4 has been released today and this is a major upgrade. It will be listed on several mirrors shortly, so it's better to wait for local mirror to catch up with the update.

This version will disable SSH Protocol 1 by default, so if you are still using it (it's a bad decision), you will have to enable it explicitly on your sshd_config configuration file. Another protection is all SSH Protocol 2 private keys will be protected by AES-128 instead of 3DES algorithm. You can get this when updating your passphrase or creating new keys.

Read the full announcement and visit the official website to get it.

Getting Slow Again

Today, i experienced a slow Internet connection again. I believe it's related to rain which caused the connection got dropped very low. When it stopped, it's getting normal again.

Google + DocVerse = Better Office Interoperation

Google has announced that they have acquired DocVerse (announcement), a small team of talented developers who have worked towards MS Office files in the past. With this collaboration, Google Docs will have better interoperability towards MS Office files (doc, xls, ppt).

I believe Google's idea of having a cloud computing environment are getting closer and closer to reality. Many of their applications are ready for production use and many individuals or companies has started to use them. I can't wait for the next update of Google Docs after this process.

No wonder if Google has been nominated as one of the best company in the world. Their ideas are fantastic, just like Apple who achieved the same nomination.

PHP 5.3.2 Released

After long development time, finally PHP 5.3.2 has been released by PHP Team, following the previous stable version 5.2.13. The Changelog gives you a detailed changes in this release (which as usual, contains many fixes along with any security fixes).

I'm compiling it right now and since it has been patched to work with libpng-1.4, i shouldn't get any problem compiling this version on my Slackware

Slackware-Current on Laptop

OK, now my laptop has been running Slackware-Current, except that it still uses the old XOrg Server packages, due to problem with the KMS (i hate this). I have installed the kernel module which will enables me to disable the NVidia Card since it's not yet supported (GPU Switching). I hope it will be available on Linux Kernel 2.6.34, which has been started by Linus few days ago by releasing 2.6.33 and that means opening a merge window for 2.6.34.

I also compiled a new kernel 2.6.31.12, since i had problems with 2.6.31.7. It has a very low performance on copying files to another flash disk on EXT4. When i saw the Changelog for 2.6.31.8, i realized that this version has a lot of bugs in EXT4 file system, so i decided to get the latest one for 2.6.31.x version. Why wouldn't i go straight to 2.6.32 which is newer or 2.6.33 which is the latest? Based on review, 2.6.32 suffers more EXT4 problems, so i decided to avoid it. While for 2.6.33, it's too early to use that (even though Slackware-Current has started to use it for the default kernel stock currently). I will wait until -Stable release has been released by Greg.

Catch Me If You Can

Today, i used an old movie called Catch Me If You Can to educate students how dangerous social engineering can be. In this movie, Frank W. Abagnale has demonstrated how effective a social engineering attack can be. He can be a pilot, a doctor, and also a attorney general before he was even 19 years old.

I hope the students get the idea and able to avoid being a victim of a social engineering attack in the future

Exam and phpBB

On Tuesday, i teach 3 classes in a row, making it one of the busiest day in a week (besides Thursday). But the worst is not over yet, as i have to do other things when i came home (after i accompanied my girlfriend to Amplaz tonight). I have to make a mid test questions for two classes and also upgrade Indonesian Linux Forum engine to the latest phpBB which has just released this morning.

Luckily, i have managed to finish both of them on time, so it's time to get some sleep before another busy day tommorrow

365 Conspiracy

Today i read a new novel which i borrowed from my colleague called 365 Conspiracy. It's written by Gabrielle Lord. This novel will be published monthly and it will be ended on the 12th series on next December. Yes, it's a monthly released novel which will bring Cal's adventure to life as he has to struggle for 365 days to find the truth about his father, his family, and his destiny.

The third book will be available by the end of this month, so stay tuned with this novel. Too bad it's a very short novel. I finished reading the first edition less than two hours. It costs about IDR 31.000 for each series, so it will cost you IDR 372.000 for one year (12 editions).

It says that this novel will be brought to movie edition as well, just like Harry Potter and many other novels.