Happy Birthday

Today is my campus (and my almamater's) 49th birthday

What's amazing is that by next year i had a chance to celebrate 50 years celebration. I have experienced 50 years of celebration when i was in junior high school and also in senior high school, so if i managed to celebrate next year's birthday, i would have celebrated 3 different formal institution

Can't wait for next year, it should be a big party

Waterpark

This morning, i had a plan to go to a waterpark in Bantul, just few kilometers outside Jogja with my wife and her nieces, but unfortunately one of her niece was sick and she couldn't go with us, so we postponed until next week until she is recovered.

The place is called Grand Puri Waterpark and i think it's probably one of the waterpark that has complete features in Jogja. The other one is Balong Waterpark (also in Bantul).

It's been some time since i swim, so i think it's a great chance to exercise a little bit to remove some weight

Unneeded Construction

Today, i went with my wife and her mother to have dinner together. While travelling, we went through Tugu and there was a construction in that area that causes a heavy traffic jam. I wonder what on earth did the people in the transportation department to have a construction on that area when that area is good enough and there are a lot of other areas that needs to be fixed

It was frustating as i spend almost 30 minutes just to turn left in the intersection.

Imperfections

My wife found a touching video clip from one of her friends in Facebook. It's talking about how we should respect our mate's imperfections because you will miss it someday. In this video, a wife has been given a time to give final speech for her husband that has just passed away. Instead of talking about how good he was, she told the audience about what she has been through with her husband everynight and morning when they slept together. It's quite funny at the beginning.

Despite the funny part, it gives us some inspirational moment about how we will miss those funny thing to remember our mate. You should see the video clip by yourself

Combining Classes

Today i had three classes, two on Software Engineering and one in Project Management. There was a surprise today, in which two Project Management classes (mine and other lecturer) was combined into a single room because we thought that some of the students didn't attend the class due to study tour. We were wrong!!!!

The class was so crowded and there's barely no chairs left for the students who came late, so they had to take some chairs from my original room (it's not that far away from that room) and worse thing was that the air conditioner wasn't as cool as usual because there were more people in the room. I was like having a sauna

The good thing was that everything was fine, except for the temperature. I got some picture which i have uploaded on my Facebook

No Luck With Linux Kernel 3.1 on Workstation

Yesterday, i compiled Linux Kernel 3.1 on my workstation with some big hope that it would work flawlessly. I have tried to compile Linux Kernel 3.0 since it was released and it always ended with a kernel oops at the start of boot process. It works well under Linux Kernel 2.6.39.1, so i suspected that there's a regression that blocked the new kernel to be running on my workstation at the office.

It's a HP Pro workstation. I don't really recall the system, but it has an Intel Core i3 540 @ 3.07GHz with 8 GB of RAM in total.

I'm totally clueless at this point. Can anyone give me a direction on how to solve this problem?

Ubuntu Software Center to Sell Books and Magazine

According to Canonical release announcement, Ubuntu Software Center will expand their collection to Books and Magazine besides Software (both free and paid applications). They will be partnering up with partners Pearson Technology Group and Linux New Media.

What i'm looking here is that they are going to make it profit-oriented application just like iTunes. The difference is that Apple already started this since the beginning, and Ubuntu has just started this since the last few years.

What kind of book they will be selling? The announcement said that they are going to sell “The Official Ubuntu Book”, 6/e by Benjamin Hill, Matthew Helmke, Amber Graner and Corey Burger; “Ubuntu Unleashed: 2011 Edition” by Matthew Helmke, Andrew Hudson and Paul Hudson; “The Official Ubuntu Server Book”, 2/e by Kyle Rankin and Benjamin Hill; and “A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux”, 3/e by Mark Sobell. Linux New Media magazine titles, including Ubuntu User, Linux Magazine, Smart Developer and ADMIN, will be available from $6.99 USD.

US Version Kitchen's Nightmare

After watching Hell's Kitchen, i'm eager to watch other Gordon Ramsay's TV show and this time i pick US version of Kitchen's Nightmare. I watched UK version and i'm not that interested. Probably because the episode i picked wasn't so interesting (i watched Bonaparte and D-Place so far). Things got changed a little bit when i watched the US version with Hot Potato Cafe as the failing restaurant that Ramsay tried to fix.

They showed me a great comeback as a strong family and also as a team to help themselves to struggle to defend the restaurant that they created few years ago. What shocked me is that they are planning to close the restaurant again and this time it's for real. I don't know the reason, but after Ramsay's coming to that place, everything went better and they were back in business and become one of the busiest restaurant in Philadelphia, USA.

Upgrading to VMWare Workstation 8

I have tried to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 8 in the past, but it failed with standard installation, even after i removed the previous installation. I couldn't pass the installation phase where it asked for a HTTPS port that will be used to connect to the server. It threw me an error.

Today, i found a discussion at LQ and tried Darth Vader's post and i have successfully upgraded my VMWare Workstation to the latest version, 8 using the standard installation, except that i changed the HTTPS port to 444 in order to avoid conflicts with the other applications that might be using the standard HTTPS port in 443.

The parameter i missed was --ignore-errors, so if you have installed VMWare Workstation 7 and wanted to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 8, you no longer have to remove the previous installation and just go with the new version and install it with this command (remember to use root account):
./VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.0-471780.i386.bundle --ignore-errors

The new UI is now slicker and more fancy than the previous version, but without doubt, it's the new features that i'm interested about. It's a worthed upgrade if you use all of it's features mentioned below:

• Remote Connections – VMware Workstation 8 provides a seamless way to establish remote connections to hosts running in Workstation, VMware vSphere, and VMware vCenter™.
• "Share" VMs – New in Workstation 8, users can share VMs so they can be accessed by teammates providing a quick way to test applications in a more production-like environment.
• Upload to vSphere –Workstation 8 enables users to drag and drop a VM from a user's desktop to VMware vSphere. This feature allows users to deploy a complete application environment from a PC to a server for further testing, demoing, and analysis.
• New User Interface –The VMware Workstation 8 user interface has been revamped with simplified menus, live thumbnails, improved preferences screens, and a new virtual machine library with enhanced searching. Users can now search and access a large library of virtual machines that can reside on your desktop, a server, or on another PC running VMware Workstation.
• Improved Virtual Machine Capabilities – With support for HD audio with 7.1 surround sound, USB 3 and Bluetooth devices, Workstation 8 delivers new levels of virtual machine performance. In addition, improvements to virtual SMP, 3D graphics performance and new support for 64-GB RAM allows users to run the most demanding applications in a virtual machine.

50% Discount

My friend told me that Zest Yoghurt is having a 50% discount on all item until October 30 yesterday and today, we had dinner together at Zest. At first, we didn't plan to go to Zest, but to XO at Amplaz, but due to road blocking in Malioboro for the Jogja Carnival as part of celebration of my town's 255th birthday, we couldn't go to Amplaz and we decided to hang out together and have dinner in Zest.

We ate a lot of yoghurt, sandwitches, french fries, and many other foods, but since it's 50% off, the price wasn't that expensive

Kitchen Nightmare

I have started to download another Gordon Ramsay's work on reality show called Kitchen's Nightmare in which Ramsey will spend a week on a certain failing restaurant and tried to revive it's business back in the track. It has reached it's fifth season which makes it a sucessful TV shows in US (even though it's based on the UK's version of Kitchen's Nightmare, also by Ramsey).

I will start watching this as soon as i completed the last few episodes on Hell's Kitchen season 9 where there are only few participants left in both the red and blue team as on each episode, there is one person leaving the Hell Kitchen due to their performance and failed to fight back (the spirit that Ramsey always wanted from the chefs that will be the head chef on BLT Steak in New York City).

Upgrading to iOS5

Yesterday, my uncle asked me to manage his new iPad 2. I took this chance to upgrade his shinny iPad 2 to iOS5. This is my first experience playing with iOS5.

Once i got home, i turned on my wife's laptop and start installing iTunes 10.5 which is the minimum requirement of iTunes to install the latest firmware of iOS5. I plugged the iPad and start the upgrade process, but it failed in the middle of the process, causing the iPad left in the recovery state. I was panicked before i never had this problem before with my iPad. I searched through the Apple's KnowledgeBase and later on i found out that it has something to do with the USB port on my wife's laptop.

I tried to reboot my computer and boot to Windows and prepare the same upgrade process and this time, it's finished completely and the iPad 2 is now running the latest iOS5

My special tips when performing an upgrade on iOS5:

• Make sure you have enough battery to perform the upgrade
• Make sure your USB port is in good condition
• Make sure UPS is working during the process

Good luck

Upgrading Anti Virus

This morning, i started my desktop and kinda surprised to see a X mark on my Norton Antivirus icon on the system tray. Usually a X mark is a sign for an error. It's a fact that i rarely boot to my Windows (usually when i had a mood to update the applications or i need to do something which can only be done under Windows).

I traced the error via the knowledge base and found out that my AV is outdated. Yes, it was NAV 2005 and it has been six years since then. So i decided to upgrade my NAV to the latest one which is NAV 2011. I downloaded the latest version from the website and installed it on my desktop.

Surprisingly, it detected my old NAV and removed it automatically. It needs to restart to make sure all previous files had been removed and after it came back to Windows, it starts the installation and within few minutes, it's already completed. I'm quite happy with the speed of the installation as the previous version (2005) was really painful. It took so long to complete the installation.

Afterwards, i ran the LiveUpdate to update my installation and also my antivirus database collection. Surprisingly, i got 137.25 MB. No wonder, since NAV 2011 has been released for sometime and their anti virus database keeps growing all day.

After making sure that i have completed the installation and everything is OK, i upgraded the NAV installed on my wife's laptop as well as she's using the same version as i do.

Overall, i really like NAV 2011. It's fast, intuitive, responsive, and also very detail in protecting my systems.

Honeymoon Part 2: Bali Day 2-4

I didn't really recall all of the places i visited during my trip on Bali, so i posted it as one post. I visited Kintamani, Kuta Beach, Jimbaran Beach, Uluwatu, Tanjung Benoa, Tapak Siring, and many other places that are famous in Bali.

My favorite place was Tanjung Benoa where i had my first experience of playing Parasailing. It was like i could fly even though it was only for less than 10 minutes, but it was really fun. I would recommend that you try it for once. My wife didn't dare as she was scared of height.

One thing i noted during the trip was the distance between one place to another was so long so most of the time were wasted on the road, just like in Jakarta.

Don't be surprised to see a lot of Pura (Hindu Temple) in Bali. Almost 98% of people in Bali are Hindu and they really sacred with their religion.

I had a great trip in Bali, but i would prefer to other places because i prefer to try new places.

I really wishes that Balinese people are ok since few days after i left Bali, there was a huge earthquake that struct Bali and it has 6.9 richter of magnitude

Honeymoon Part 2: Bali Day 1

Our second part of honeymoon was in Bali. We traveled to Bali after leaving Singapore. One funny thing was that i thought we had a water landing as the plane went down, but i didn't see any houses like what we had in Jogja or Jakarta or even in Singapore. I realized it later that the airport was located near the beach of Kuta and Jimbaran so it landed just off the water

We picked up by Mrs. Bintang and Mr. Komang as our local guide and driver and led us straight to the hotel so that we could take a rest. We checked in the hotel and then we went to the Kuta beach to enjoy our sunset together. It was very beautiful. Another funny thing was that Balinese people thought that we are foreigners. Some people thought that we were Singaporean, others thought it was Japanese, and many other countries

We didn't walk too much away from the hotel as we were already tired from our trip, so time to get some rest and enjoy our new hotel which was more traditional than the one we had in Singapore.

Rather short post from day one, but that's the truth. Most of our time were spent during traveling

Honeymoon Part 1: Singapore Day 4

Day 4 was our last day in Singapore and really, there was nothing special on this day as we only woke up in the morning and prepared our baggage to leave the hotel. We had our last breakfast in the restaurant and then we went back to our room to make our final preparations.

We checked out around 8.45 AM and Mr. Salim already arrived to pick us up to the Changi Airport. We arrived at Changi way too early, so we head to the duty free shop in the airport to see if there's anything we could buy. We did buy some chocolates and stroopwafel and we also enjoyed the massage chair provided for free in Changi.

We left Singapore and we went straight to Bali, our next destination for the next five days. I have been to Bali before but it was long long time ago, so i had little memory about what Bali looks like. My wife never went to Bali before so it was her first trip to Bali.

All the thing in Bali will be posted on the next post by tomorrow

Honeymoon Part 1: Singapore Day 3

In day 3, we went to Singapore Science Center and we went there via MRT to Jurong East station (it was a long trip even with MRT as we have to switch station and travel to the west part of Singapore) and then we picked up Bus 335 which dropped us in front of the building, so we don't have to take 8 minutes walk from the bus terminal.

This place was full of tricks that were based on science, not just fancy technologies and most of the elementary high school in Singapore have an annually plan to visit this place to introduce science to the students in a more fun ways. Believe me, it's a fun place and you will understand lots of new things here as every tricks has a description of how it works and why is it happening.

At the end of the trip, we visited the Omni Theater and watch Hubble show. It was really a fantastic theater and i'm sure you will love it as much as we do because it's huge and it's crystal clear. You will have a wonderful experience after visiting this place and watch the movies.

In our way back, we took the same bus and guess what? It took us more than 30 minutes to reach the bus terminal again . It's faster to walk on foot rather than taking the bus. We didn't know it would be like this as it was our first experience

After getting to the MRT station at Jurong East, we went to Chinatown to buy a BBQ pork for my mother in law and my wife's family. They loved it so much .

After that, we went to Orchard road again and we visited Kinokuniya in Takashimaya. It was a huge book store and it has lots of interesting books i wanted to read, but i didn't have time (and money to buy and read them all). If you want to search for books, i would recommend you to visit this book store and i'm pretty sure you will find what you wanted.

We reached the final day in Singapore and we prep our baggage to leave to Bali in the next day.

See you in the next post about leaving Singapore and start our journey in Bali

iOS 5 IPSW Direct Link

iOS 5 has finally revealed by Apple after 7 months of Beta period. For those who would like to download the firmware first and then perform the upgrade manually using iTunes, you can start downloading the IPSW files from links below:

• iPod Touch 3G
• 4th generation iPod Touch
• iPhone 4 (GSM)
• iPhone 4 (CDMA)
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad
• iPad 2 (GSM)
• iPad 2 (WiFI)
• iPad 2 (CDMA)
• Apple TV 2G

Since each file is bigger than 700 MB in size, please reserve your bandwidth and make sure it has been downloaded completely before performing the upgrade process

Good luck and have fun with iOS 5

Honeymoon Part 1: Singapore Day 2

Our second day was one full day in Universal Studio in Resort World Sentosa. Mr. Salim (our driver) picked us up at 9 AM and we went straight to RWS. Unfortunately, at that day, it was slightly rainy, so we were wet even before we entered the Universal Studio area. We took some photos in the front area where the spinning big globe that has Universal Studio text were located.

There are 7 areas in Universal Studio: Madagascar, Far Far Away, Lost World, Ancient Egypt, Sci-Fi, New York, and Hollywood. I would suggest that you take the left side first, starting with Madagascar and ended at Hollywood in the right side.

The first attraction in Madagascar is Madagascar: A Crate Adventure where you ride a boat and see Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria, and the penguins in action. At the end of the show, you will be surprised with a hidden photo snap. You can view the results when you leave the building.

I didn't take the Party-Go-Round, but my wife did and i only took some photos of her while she was riding. One of my favorite attraction in Madagascar was Madagascar Boogie! where all the casts in Madagascar came in real action with their funny costumes and also "Move It Move It" songs. I really like this song. Don't miss this one as you only have limited time to take pictures with them as they limited the photo session only to 10 minutes. Luckily i got a picture with the Penguins, Donkey, and Gloria.

Next area i visited was Far Far Away where Shrek and Princess Fiona took place. There are 4 attractions on this area, but the most amazing attractions were Shrek 4D Adventure and Donkey Live. As always, Singapore presented a combination between lightning, sound, air, and of course WATER!!! So get ready to be stunned by the amazing 4D adventure that you will never forget. I'm impressed with Donkey Live as the Donkey looks real. It could interact with the guests answer via the video camera installed on that place. As my wife doesn't like a roller-coaster type, we didn't ride all the roller-coaster attractions.

Next was The Lost World. We rode Canopy Flyer™ at this are and my wife was screaming loud . It was fun (at least for me) and enjoyable. I really like to play it again, but the queue line was too long. Also, this kind of attractions were highly influenced with the weather. Since it was kinda rainy at that time, so sometimes we had to wait for some time before we could play again. It's so annoying, but safety came first . My tips: leave your bag, sandals, and any other hand carry items on the free locker so that you don't have to worry about it since it's high-speed roller-coaster.
I was able to saw the WaterWorld, which is designed based on the blockbuster film, "Waterworld". My tips: don't seat in the front row unless you want to get wet

Next area was Ancient Egypt. We didn't take any attractions on this area because most of them are roller-coaster and also for kids . The same goes with Sci-Fi city. All of the attractions on this area are roller-coaster (Battlestar Galactica^®) and spinning cup (Accelerator^®)

Next was New York. The only attraction on this area is Lights, Camera. Action!™ Hosted by Steven Spielberg. He designed this and presented for Universal Studio in Singapore. Again, it combines sound, lightning, fire and water effect to create a unique experience. Please note that you will get wet if you take the first row like i did . The Rockafellas gave a US-style attraction and we watched it while resting a bit. There was also some performance by the audience which makes it more interesting.

The last one is of course Hollywood, the epicenter of Universal Studio. This is the place you will visit the first and the last time since it's the entrance and the exit way. You got a chance to meet Marilyn Monroe and also Charlie Chaplin and take pictures with them (i didn't get the Marilyn Monroe though). Please note that Charlie Chaplin guy was a little bit "naughty"

We were lucky enough to enjoy most of the show in Universal Studio. My brother in law didn't have the same experience as i did.

We also met an Indonesian couple, Yudi and his girlfriend. He came from Bandung. We helped each other to take pictures so we could take pictures with our girl.

By the end of this year, they will add a new show on Universal Studio, which is the Transformer. It should be interesting enough to see. For those who would like to go there on Haloween, Universal Studio is planning to release a special attractions called Halloween Horror Night which is only available on 21-23, and 27-30 of October 2011. Be there or wait another year

We left Universal Studio at 6 PM and we had dinner in Indonesian restaurant in Somerset. We ate nasi padang and Mr. Salim took us back to the hotel and we went on our own before we finally get some rest at night.

That's our second day in Singapore. See you in the next post tomorrow

Honeymoon Part 1: Singapore Day 1

This is the first post of two part series that will contain our (me and my wife) journey during our honeymoon in Singapore and Bali. We will focus on Singapore first and i will continue with other post in Bali later on.

We started our journey at October 3 by leaving to Adisucipto International Airport of Yogyakarta at 6 AM in the morning. Since it was early in the morning, we had no traffic jam during the trip. When we got there, we directly went to the check in station and leave our baggages since we have already checked-in using the web check-in on AirAsia's website (You will have to pay IDR 30000 if you do a local check-in in the counter ). Next, we moved on to the imigration counter and again, since it's early in the morning, we didn't have to wait too long. I only had one person in front of me, so it would take us only 3-4 minutes to complete the imigration process. Our plane goes directly to Singapore and we departed at 7.40 AM.

We arrived in Singapore around 11 AM (there was 1 hour difference between Yogyakarta and Singapore's time) and we were picked up by Mr. Salim, our local guide and driver. He had to wait for an hour since the baggage claim process was a bit late and i had to register for a username/password for WiFI in the information center. Later, i just found out that that username/password was only valid for 4 hours

Mr. Salim is a nice person. Even though he's Singaporean, he could talk Indonesian a bit since he could speak Melayu. We had no problem communicating with him. We stayed at OAsia Hotel, near Novena Square. It's very close to MRT station in Novena since it's under Novena Square, so it's very easy for us to go anywhere in Singapore using MRT station.

In Singapore, we didn't use any local tour since we have been there, so Mr. Salim only acted as our driver. He picked us from the airport of Changi and dropped us at the hotel and we go on our own.

In the first day, we only went to Orchard to take a walk and also to Chinatown to buy dinner using MRT. Something funny happened when i tried to use Google Maps in Singapore on my iPad. It gave me the opposite direction so i had some argument with my wife over this technology. I posted on Twitter and someone replied to me that i should try Street Directory instead of Google Maps. Unfortunately, i haven't had time to test this feature as i only used Street Directory to find information about places, not direction to that place.

Since my wife didn't bring her EZ-Link card, she had to buy a new one in Singapore and it costs her SGD 12 and she got SGD 7 as the balance, cheaper than previous card which cost me SGD 15 (but i got SGD 10 balance) last year. The card was different with what i got. Later on, i found out that EZ-Link produced new card and they are going to replace the old card with the new one. The old EZ-Link card will still be usable until the end of this year and if you do have one, it's time to refund the old one and buy the new one. Luckily, mine is still considered new (mine is still the blue version, but it has longer serial number compared to the six digit in the old one).

That's all for day one in Singapore. We will continue with day 2 tomorrow

Testing HDMI Cable

Today i bought a new HDMI cable in order to watch HD movies on my TV. My wife has asked me to buy this cable for a long time, and now finally i'm able to buy it after i got back from my honeymoon.

I ordered this cable from three weeks ago, but no answer from the store, so i went there after i drop my parents at the airport to leave to Jakarta and i found the last cable which was sold there, so i grab it (it was cheaper than the price they told me three weeks ago) and brought it back home and my wife was very happy to see the new cable as we could see HD movies on our TV right now

Well, it's time to test it now, so the post about our honeymoon will be postponed

I'm Back

I'm back from my honeymoon trip to Singapore and Bali. It's been an amazing week together with my wife. The Singapore trip wasn't my first time as i have been there last year, but i got a chance to go to Universal Studio and this is my first time to go there, so i had something different this time.

My experience to Bali was actually not the first time either, but i went to Bali when i was a child and at that time, i didn't have a chance to go anywhere, so let's just consider this is my first time to Bali and i enjoyed it so much.

I will start posting again by tomorrow and i will try to tell my stories on this blog starting at day 1. It will be splitted into two parts: Singapore and Bali. I think it will be a long story, so stay tune for tomorrow as i have to get some sleep right now

Happy Wedding

Today, one of my friend got married and his wedding party is 2 weeks from mine. He's also two days younger than me

I will attend his wedding party in the next few hours and by tomorrow, i will be going for my honeymoon

Packing Up

Tomorrow will be my last day in Indonesia before i departed abroad with my wife to have our honeymoon together. We will be traveling for about 7 days before we came back to Jogja. Everything has been set up and all we need to do right now is to prepare everything and make sure we don't leave something important behind and ruined our vacation together

Tomorrow, one of my best friend will have his wedding party and i will attend it. It's just about two weeks from my wedding party and we didn't plan this before. It just happened . Believe it or not, we are only two days difference according to our birth date and now we are two weeks difference according to our wedding