Migrating Server

Yesterday, i moved one of my server on my campus to another ISP (we used two ISPs) because the other ISP had a hardware problem and they couldn't fix the problem within acceptable time frame (it's number two biggest ISP in this country ). The strange thing was that this server is still accessible from outside, but unable to connect to other site.

Since this server hosts several important sites, i had to react quickly and moved the server to the other ISP and since then, i have to wait for at least 24 hours for the DNS entries get propagated around the world. Right now, they are back to normal business and i can start updating my repositories back again

Reading Novels Again

Thanks to one of my student, i got a chance to read novels again, something that has been my tradition over the last few years, but i haven't had time to do it again this year (mostly this semester due to my super duper busy schedule).

The novels i got from her are Heroes of Olympus and The Son of Neptune, from the famous author Rick Riordan who also made Percy Jackson Series in the past. Percy Jackson Series consists of five books and one of them has made it into hollywood and more to follow in the future.

There are some other novels that i would like to read:

• The Warlock (Michael Scott)
  
• The Enchantress (Michael Scott) coming soon on 2012
  
• Inheritance (Christopher Paolini)

Hopefully i can finish it before the end of this year

Upgrading Linux Kernel

I usually never upgraded my kernel using a minor release lately, but i'm gonna make an exception for Linux Kernel 3.1.1 since i hate the message of scsi: killing requests for dead queue filling up my dmesg. This message came of so often just after i upgraded to 3.1.1. I didn't see any fixes on Linux Kernel 3.1.2, but i'm hoping that it will be fixed in 3.1.3 (i haven't had time to read the changelog anyway).

Anyway, this probably will be my last kernel compilation for this year and i'm looking forward to see Linux Kernel 3.2 shinning up on 2012

Untethered Jailbreak Perhaps?

For those who have waited long enough to postpone upgrading to iOS 5 since there isn't any confirmation about untethered jailbreak yet, well, there's a good news for you. One of the key member of Chronic Dev Team, Joshua Hill, a.k.a p0sixninja has announced that he's going to post something interesting tonight and most people believe that it will be the announcement of untethered jailbreak for iOS 5/5.0.1.

The first tool that will be equipped with this kind of jailbreak will be greenp0ison, the same tool i used for my first attempt on jailbreaking my iPad.

The article is still being edited before the final phase and it should be out by tonight (Indonesian time)

Let's hope it's the real deal

Google App Inventor Review

Android and iOS are two of the most dominant players in phone market. Both combined can take more than 50% of the phone market users. What makes them great? The community. Yes, it's the community that makes them growth over the years. People build applications for both Android and iOS-based devices and put them on Android Market and also Apple AppStore.

You can be one of them since Google and Apple opened up their SDK to developers. All you need is the study them and start building your applications and put it on their online store to be published for public. As for Android development itself, Google has created a very nice application called Google App Inventor which enables users to create Android applications from any platform (unlike Apple which is limited to Apple product users since the only tool able to build is by using XCode).

Ralph Roberts has created a very nice book called Google App Inventor and this book requires no prior experience of building Android applications. It's a perfect companion for those who wanted to learn about building applications targetting Android-based devices. It will show you how to build Android applications step by step using easy-to-understand examples and by the end of this book, you will utilize all the features available on most Android-based devices, such as GPS and sensors for your applications. Basically, it gives you all you need to know about using Google App Inventor to create magnificent products.

This book is available in Amazon, but if you want to buy the eBook version, you can visit PacktPub. You can get more discount if you buy both version (printed and ebook). Oh, for certain countries, you will also get a free shipping cost. Sounds a great deal.

While Google App Inventor development will be closed this year, in the future, it will be shifted to MIT Center for Mobile Learning and it will be ready by next year (there will be some period of time when you can't access the system during the transition), so don't worry that you will loose all what you have created using this very nice application.

If you wanted to learn about Android development, this is the first book that you should get

Online Medications

Health is #1 wealth, that's what some people said and i believe it's true. Even though we have lots of money, but if we are sick, we can't enjoy the money we earned and only spending it for medication and treatment in the hospital. Therefore, we must stay healthy.

On the individual level, staying healthy is not the work of healthcare professionals. Though online health science classes are available, but most of staying healthy is really common sense. Eating vegetables, drinking water and getting sleep are the bare minimum to stay healthy, but if people actually do it, then it makes a big difference.

In Indonesia, buying a medicine would require the patient to go to the nearest hospital or drugstore, but in some countries, you can buy those medicine online via websites that offers online transactions. One of the famous one is canada online pharmacy. Even though it's Canadian-based, it ships the medicine worldwide, so you can sit and relax at home while waiting for the medicine to be delivered to your place. If you pick the correct site, you will get a cheaper price for the same products, which is a good reason why picking up a good site will give you more benefit.


Since there has been a lot of Internet Pharmacy Emails, you
should be careful of picking the website that offers this kind of services

Puss in Boots

I just came back from watching Puss in Boots with my wife at Empire XXI. While everyone is still busy watching Breaking Dawn, i decided to watch Puss in Boots first because the queue is so short and the studio was only 50% filled, so it's quite spacy.

I found this movie quite boring for the story, but it was funny enough, especially when puss showed his big, innocent eyes like this (it's a dog, not a cat, but you know the idea). I'll give this movie as 7/10 in overall

It All Came to an End

Yes, everything will come to an end and next week will be the end of this semester and in another two weeks, the students will go battling with their final exams and then they will have a Christmas and New Year holiday until mid January 2012 where new semester awaits.

Practically, i have no materials left to explain. I will use final week to explain the past materials and also conducting quizes to evaluate them

Using Google Hangouts

I just tried Google Hangouts today with my friends and all i can say is i'm impressed with it's performance. I tried to have a conference video chat with two other people and the quality of the conversation is superb. All i need is to download Google Talk Plugins and connect a mic and a camera (opsional) and that's it. I can launch Google Hangouts and invite some people to connect with.

Even though Google+ is not too successful in terms of number of users compared to Facebook, but i guess Google Hangouts is another success story of Google for providing an easy way for their users to have a better means of communications meadia over the Internet.

I will try to use Google Hangouts more in the future

Disabling User Login

I maintain one of the server in my office and that server is often being used as a hosting for some students's assignment (especially web-related assignment). Since each assignment has their own deadline, i have to limit the access for the students so that they couldn't update / upload any new files after the deadline.

So, i created a very simple bash script which uses passwd command to disable an account and set the time the script is to be executed by cron. Here's the simple script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/passwd  username -l

let's say i name it lock.sh. All i need now is to set this script as executable and then add the time to crontab and it will be executed at the time defined.

Basically this command will add a character "!" to the shadow file so that user will not be able to login (because the password will be incorrect) and it's easy to solve my problem. If i need to reinstate that username again, i can just issue /usr/bin/passwd username -u and voila.... it will be able to login again.

Cryptography Class

Professor Dan Boneh will start his online course on Cryptography in mid January 2012 and it's offered for free since it's an online class. You can start signing up right now and they will send you further information when they are ready to held the class.

Besides cryptography, there are several other classes offered:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Game Theory
- Software As A Service
- Technology Enterpreneurship
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Processing
- CS 101
- Probabilistic Graphical Model
- Design and Analysis of Algorithm I

see the link on the bottom of the page in the cryptography class

happy studying in 2012

VMWare Workstation 8.0.1 Update

VMWare Workstation 8.0.1 is now released to provide maintenance for the previos 8.0. One of the most important for most people is the addition of Ubuntu Linux 11.10 as the supported guest operating system and also bug fixes along with memory management improvements.

Highlights of VMware Workstation 8.0.1 functionality include:

• Graphics performance and compatibility enhancements.
• Improvements in creating and using shared virtual machines and remote virtual machines.
• Ubuntu 11.10 is officially supported as a guest operating system.
• Disk and memory management issues have been addressed.
• Many customer-reported issues have been resolved.

The following sections list the resolved issues in VMware Workstation 8.0.1.

• Windows 7 guest installation failed after powering on the virtual machine with the error A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now.
• VMware Tools failed with the message VMware Tools unrecoverable error.
• VMware Tools failed to start in Fedora 15 guests.
• An Ubuntu 11.10 guest crashed with a signal 11 error if you installed or upgraded VMware Tools.
• On hosts with Nvidia GeForce and Quadro video cards, some of the clouds in the Unigine Heaven Benchmark application were drawn solid black.
• Easy Install did not properly function on Ubuntu 11.10.
• If remote virtual machines were open, you could not shut down the Windows hosts.
• When transitioning from Full Screen mode to Exclusive mode, the Full Screen toolbar sometimes failed to hide.
• Host memory reservation restrictions on Windows hosts are more relaxed in VMware Workstation 8.0.1 than in previous versions of VMware Workstation.
• CD/DVD mount Linux.iso failed while installing VMware Tools in Ubuntu 11.10 guests.
• The AltGr key was not working in an Ubuntu guest in Unity mode when the host and guest keyboards were both set to a layout that contained the AltGr key.

According to Release Notes of VMWare 8.0.1, this is a free update for 8.0 users, so just go and download the latest update

TeamViewer 7 Beta

I got a news from TeamViewer because i used their product about the upcoming TeamViewer 7. It's still in Beta version, but i see some interesting feature in this release. Here are some of the new features in TeamViewer 7:

• File transfer is even faster and easier
• Multi-Monitor-Support
• Save connection settings per computer
• Performance improvements
• Instant meetings
• Schedule meetings
• Up to 25 participants
• Voice over IP conferences
• Mobile participation on the road

Please visit this page if you wanted to try out the newest Beta version. Please note, it's not yet considered stable for production environment, so use it on your own risk

No Internet, No Updates

For the last three days, i have been accompanying my wife at the hospital since she was hospitalized and for that, i didn't have time to update this blog since i have no connectivity at the hopital at all. All i have is my cellphone and it wasn't so comfortable updating a blog from cellphone, so i left it behind.

She was diagnosed to have diarrhea and have to be infused and have a total bed rest, so i accompanied her during these three days. I have to cancel one of my class at Thursday because she was rushed to the ER

Anyways, she's fine now and she's back to our house. Time to push some updates again onto this blog

OpenSUSE 12.1 ISOs

Since OpenSUSE 12.1 has been released few days ago, i have downloaded the 32 bit DVD ISO and since then, i continued with 64 bit version, but i got a top priority event, so i had to postpone downloading the 64 bit version.

Today, the download process of 64 bit version is now completed and it has been placed into the proper location. It's now located on our ISO Server.

Enjoy our latest ISOs: OpenSUSE 12.1

Publish Post

OpenSUSE 12.1 Released

Following several Beta and RC releases, finally the final version of OpenSUSE 12.1 has been released by SUSE team. This brings all the work from many people from the past eight months after their previous release.

What's the biggest change in OpenSUSE 12.1?

• Linux Kernel 3.1
  
• Support latest version of KDE 4.7 /GNOME 3.2
  
• OwnCloud implementation
• Go programming language support
• systemd integration
• SAX3 improvements
  
• Integration of Snapper into the zypper package manager
• Many more

I will start downloading OpenSUSE 12.1 ISOs and hopefully they should be available on our UKDW ISO Server as soon as possible

Sea Games Euforia

Right now, most Indonesian people are focusing on Sea Games which is held in Jakarta and in Palembang. It's a regional sport event which is held every two years and this year, the host is Indonesia.

Since 1991, Indonesia has never won the title and it's time to get the title it back from Thailand, which is the defending champion. Currently, Indonesia is leading at the top of the table with quite a big gap from the second position (Thailand), and i hope it continues until the end of the event and we could be the winner again.

Go Indonesia Go

Now It's My Flash Drive

Last week, i forgot to bring my laptop back home and today, when i got home, i realized that my flash drive is not here and i left it at the last class . Let's hope it's not gone. It's only 4 GB of flash drive and it's already broken at both sides so that i have to apply a tape for both sides anyways. I do have other flash drives at home, but it' still so valuable for me.

I will ask the officer to reserve my flash drive early tomorrow morning before the first class is held. Hopefully they arrived on time before someone took it from the class

Watching Movies Again

I finally had a chance to go to the movie theather and watch Johny English Reborn. I didn't have any plan to do that today, but when we arrived at Plaza Ambarrukmo, we suddenly have this idea and we were committed to do it, so be it

It was a very funny movie (as always and expected from Rowan Atkinson). It successfully reduces my stress level I picked the correct decision by picking this instead of The Adventures of Tintin. I think Tintin will also be humorous, thanks to the Captain Haddock's behaviour. Oh well, let's leave it for some other day

Finding my Laptop

I forgot to bring my laptop yesterday and i left it on my office. Luckily no one took it and it's still in the place where i left it before, which was in my room and it's locked. Today, i went to the office and took it back to my house.

It's a simple example how a simple things could turn into a nightmare if we are so careless about our items. Please be carefull of your belongings, mostly people close to you

New VPS Server

One of Indonesian Slackware Community member has generously given me a new VPS server that can be used to host the Indonesian Slackware Community web site. We just talked about 1.5 hours ago and i have my server set up, up and running well. He has given me a complete access to the server and i can install anything i need. So far, i don't really need too much, since the web site will be using Planet Planet application to feed the updates from every member's blog.

One more thing, it's up and running on top of Slackware

Big thanks to Michael Daranto for his donations

Windows 8 Developer Preview

Yesterday, i got a Windows 8 Developer Preview DVD, thanks to PCPlus. It was sent to me because i wrote articles to them and one of the bonuses that they give to the buyers of PCPlus is the DVD. Unfortunately, i don't really use nor interested in Windows development, so instead of throwing away the DVD, i gave it to my students and they really like it.

I will do the same in the future by not wasting any gifts that was given to me and use it for educational purposes

LibreOffice 3.4.4 is Available

This week is full of updates. Not only Fedora 16 gets released, but also bunch of others, such as Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8, and probably the last update that i got recently is LibreOffice 3.4.4.

Here's the announcement i got from the PR of The Document Foundation

LibreOffice on stage at the Libre Software World Conference in Zaragoza

The Internet, November 9, 2011 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.4.4, an improved version of the award-winning free office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux. LibreOffice has recently won InfoWorld's BOSSIE Award 2011 as Best of Open Source Software, and the Open World Forum Experiment Award of Most-Popular Software.

SUSE's Andras Timar, who manages the LibreOffice localization effort, says, "Thanks to the contribution of Michael Bauer, a volunteer who took the long-time-abandoned Scottish Gaelic translation and produced a complete UI localization in just a few months, LibreOffice 3.4.4 adds yet another native-language version, bringing the total to 105. This shows the unparalleled value of copyleft licenses for end user software, as LibreOffice is now the most-important office suite when it comes to protecting cultural heritage worldwide, especially when the number of native speakers is not sufficiently attractive for large corporations to devote localization resources to."

Today, TDF and LibreOffice will also be on stage at the Libre Software World Conference (LSWC) in Zaragoza, where Jesus Corrius - a deputy member of the TDF Board of Directors - will keynote about "TDF: the home of LibreOffice". LSWC is the most-prominent free software event in Spain, and the presence of a member of the TDF Board of Directors is a testimonial of the efforts that the project is devoting to developing a large and diverse Spanish-speaking community, in which each local community in Europe and the Americas can grow and thrive within a single global project.

LibreOffice 3.4.4 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

Change logs are available at http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/tdf/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-release-3.4.4.1.log (fixed in 3.4.4.1) and http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/bugfixes-libreoffice-3-4-4-release-3.4.4.2.log (fixed in 3.4.4.2).

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-cj.

Fedora 16 Released

Thanks to the hard work of the Fedora community and Red Hat, Fedora 16 is now officially released and the ISOs are spreading through mirror sites world wide. Lots of interesting features are incorporated inside this release, such as

• GRUB 2
• GPT Support
• GNOME 3.2.1
• Linux Kernel 3.1
• KDE 4.7.2
• XOrg 1.11.1
• and many more (see H-Online or Fedora's Release Note)

My ISO Server right now already had the Fedora 16 DVD ISO (x86). The x86_64 and Live version are still on progress at this time. You can start downloading the ISO from this url http://iso.ukdw.ac.id/fedora/

UKDW NutZ 4.0

One year has passed since UKDW NutZ 3.0 and this year, we held the same event for the fourth time and again, we collaborate with Ubuntu-ID community for this event. This event is also meant for ORP (Oneiric Release Party) since Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Oncelot) was released last month. It has been written on Ubuntu Indonesia Wiki.

Besides Ubuntu-ID, we are also collaborating with Indonesian Blender community where the captain of the community (Hiza Ro) will give a talk about Studio Animasi Murah dan Legal (Cheap and Legal Animation Studio) and it will be based on Ubuntu or UbuntuStudio. There will be another speaker (Faisal S Nggilu) that will talk about Cloud Computing in Ubuntu.

Please register yourself as this is a limited event and there will be 100 seats only

Dae Jang Geum

I just came back from having a dinner at Dae Jang Geum, another Korean restaurant in Jogja with my wife. There was an event held in that place and we came as a representative from my wife's mother since she is still in Bali right now and couldn't attend the event.

This restaurant previously was also a Korean restaurant called Arirang, but somehow it was closed and now it has came up again with a new management, owner, and also in a new brand called Dae Jang Geum. The place has quite a big space and i think it can hold up to 250 people.

It's been a long time since i tasted Korean food and i think the food here is much better than in Sila, another Korean food which i didn't really like. It seems my tounge is not so friendly with Korean food

Relaxing at Waterpark

Last week, we were planning to go to Grand Puri Waterpark, but we postponed it since my wife's niece was having a cold and she couldn't join us. Today, she has recovered and ready to rock, so finally we spent our time from morning until noon at Grand Puri Waterpark.

Since today is also a big day for Moslem people, the waterpark wasn't as crowded as it used to be. When i arrived there, we were the first guest . Some of the employeers were just arrived when we got there. The place is nice and big enough to hold around 250 people in the same time.

We enjoyed most of the facilities first since no people there, so no queue at all. It's like our own private place and we loved it. Unfortunately we forgot to bring our camera, so we didn't take any photos at all

Which place should we visit next week? Gokart maybe? Who knows....

More Attempts on Linux Kernel 3.1

I'm still trying to compile Linux Kernel 3.1 on my workstation after several attempts had failed in the last few days. I'm still curious why on earth the new Kernel won't work on this machine and the last version of the working kernel is 2.6.39.x series.

I even used the configuration i have on my desktop at home and used it as my reference to build the kernel on my workstation but it keeps failing. I suspect there has been a default value changes in the new kernel that caused it to behave strangely. I copied the configuration used in ArchLinux, but still no luck

My next attempt is to compare the configuration i have with the previous working configuration. I'm trying to match the configuration, but let's see how it goes later on

Easter Egg in Google

Google is full of surprises with their easter egg in almost all of their products. The latest easter eggs found in Google product is in Google home page itself. Try to search using these two keywords

• Do a Barrel Roll
• Tilt

Barrell Roll is 360 degree maneuver conducted by airplanes like what we saw in a lot of classic video games and also in military.

Tilt is a term used when you play pinball in Windows. You can shake the machine in order to avoid loosing the game by tilting, thus shake the machine so that the ball won't go into the hole.

These two definitions are being used in the Google home page and it will exactly do what it has been told. Try for yourself

Change of Schedule

Suddenly, my schedule for this week and next week become suddenly full. I have to attend several activities held by my students and also my office and i received the notifications today

Starting by next Saturday, i have to attend 2 seminars, one of them is Fastrack Wireless Hacking held by NetClub students club i'm their supervisor and the other one is the green environment seminar held by my students for their assignment for my subject Project Management.

At noon, i have to be at Bopkri Dua to become a speaker as part of my campus promotion event and i will not get the material until tomorrow .

Next week, i have to become a tutor for Linux class for NetClub club. As the supervisor, i haven't done so many activities with them lately due to my busy schedule and also my wedding activities last month. Now, they asked me to give one small tutorial about Linux in front of the new students of class 2011. I don't have any other reason to deny their requests, so it's pilling up on my schedule queue.

Oh my....

GMail New Look

For those who haven't logged in to their GMail account, please do so now and you will see another change of look by GMail designers. It's actually been leaked to public since last week when one of the video that is used as the advertisement was uploaded to YouTube. Since then, people have wondered when will the updates being rolled out and their wish is now come true. Google has released this new look on most users.

What's the big change actually? Well, there are some big changes described on GMail's New Look page such as :

• Cleaner and more modern design with more themes being included
• Improved conversation view
• Customization in display densities
• More control on the sidebar (you can now drag to your desired size)
• Improved search filter (and also filter creation from this box)
• Easy switch to contact, task, and mail
• New toolbar design

Overall, i'm not too impressed with these changes, mostly with the control on the sidebar. I know it's useful to be able to resize the height, but the idea of automatic display of the labels in the sidebar is not a good thing for me. It gives surprises and why would you hide it anyway? If i wanted to see the messages that has certain labels, i would have to point out my cursor into the label area and wait for a second to load the rest of it.

iOS5 Battery Drainage Fixes

For those who have upgraded or uses iOS5 and having problems with your battery, then you might stumbled with the same bug everyone experienced. Apple engineers are working to fix the bug, but meanwhile, you might be able to solve this by following these steps (taken from FreakGeeks)

Step 1: First of all, head over to Settings.app on your device, then Location Services and finally tap on System Services. (Settings > Location Services > System Services)
Step 2: On that page, at the bottom you will get a toggle switch to turn OFF/ON “Status Bar Icon.” Switch ON that toggle to test, is something going on your device? Definitely, something going on!
Step 3: Now, heads over to the main part of the tip, at the same page you will get “Setting Time Zone,” all you have to do is a toggle it OFF, and check the status bar for the icon, is it still there? Well not!
Step 4: That’s it! Now enjoy the new battery life of your device on iOS 5.

That's it. Piece a cake right? Yup.. the bug was due to Apple software tried to keep tracking the location of the device for the auto time zone setting, which cause continuously using the GPS service of the device, and considerably it draining device battery. By turning off the feature, hopefully you will regain your long lasting battery