Duren Sawit Art & Culture Festival

YKFS is the annual program conducted by UKDW (Duta Wacana Christian University) and ANU (Australian National University) and it has been running for three years. This year, another university is joining up and that's Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It's a service learning program and the goal of this program is empower local communities in certain area. This year, Banjaroya village gets selected by the commitee. The students will try to learn from the local communities throughout 10 hamlets spread across Banjaroya village and contribute something back to them.

One of the group in YKFS IV (Yogyakarta Kampung Field School) which is located in Duren Sawit is going to held an arts & culture festival on July 8. This is one of their activity that tries to empower local communities around Banjaroya village, especially in Duren Sawit hamlet. This event will be a collaboration of the three universities.

The festival will start at 10 AM and finished around 5 PM.  There will be some entrance fees which is around IDR 120.000. It's not that expensive because it also includes transport fee, local lunch, map of the area, students guide to beautiful sights.

It will have several art performances:

• Jathilan
• Punokawan
• Gejog Lesung
• Shalawatan
• Cokekan
• Children traditional dance
• Karawitan

Graduation Day

Tomorrow is a dream day for some of my students. They will be graduated and got their bachelor degree after spending 4 years+ in UKDW. So many tears and efforts has been spent during these years and now it's where their journey should restart for their new environment, new challenges, new colleagues, and new life within the new place.

Good luck for all of you and wish you luck. Best wishes :)

Coming Back to IRC

I haven't been to IRC again since few years ago, but i will try to join IRC whenever i have some spare time. Actually i have known IRC since senior high school because at that time, IRC was one of the most popular technology among students, including me. I even learned to make my own scripts at that time.

My comeback to IRC was because one of my friend mentioned me on Twitter that someone was looking for me in #slackware channel. I started XChat and joined the channel and they were asking if i'm the same Willy as the one mentioned on the article in OStatic. We had some chat before i got disconnected because i was surfing using an unstable WiFI connection.

Anyway, i will start coming back to IRC again and i will probably be on #slackware only, so if you want to meet me there, find willysr on #slackware at freenode server.

Slackware 14 Approaching

Even though Slackware 14 hasn't been officially released (but we are getting closer by each day), but most people are glad to hear that Slackware are still alive and now getting ready to roll a new version after more than one year of development.

There are still several things to be tested and included before a final version will be marked as gold release, but most basic toolchain are now set in place and we will now move on to libraries and applications that are included in the Slackware. Most of the applications and libraries are already being upgraded to the latest stable version (it doesn't have to be the latest version though), but we are still looking some others who will be included soon enough.

I think it's going to be another big release just as past releases. Even if Slackware doesn't have a fixed schedule release plan, it's still interesting to see the oldest maintained Linux Distribution comes to another big milestone: Slackware 14

Conflict Resolution

Today, i visited one of my supervised group in Slanden and i was told that there was an internal conflict within the group due to differences in their approach to conduct the field school program. I realized that sooner or later, there will be a conflict and it does happen on my group.

Luckily, i'm able to talk to the students and solve the problem in no time. Let's just see whether the approach i have taken to solve this problem is effective and they can resume their work on this program in the next few days.

It's been a tiring days since i have to go from northern part (Kaliurang) to western part (Kulon Progo), and then heading back to north to drop my colleague and then went south to go back to my house. I need some sleep now :)

My Busy Week

This week will be another busy week even though there are no class yet to teach. Today and tomorrow, i will be in Kaliurang for one and a half day faculty meeting in Puri In Kaliurang. At Tuesday evening, i will be in Kulon Progo for another discussion session for YKFS IV program.

At Wednesday, i will be one full day at campus for final project (thesis) presentation. There will be three students under my supervision who will go present and defend their thesis. On Thursday, i will attend a department meeting for one day and on Friday, there will be another discussion for YKFS IV program (it's scheduled on Tuesday and Friday).

Online Certification Preparation from uCertify

I have posted several posts about uCertify certification in the past (you can see it here, here, here, and here). Since then, they move forward by featuring an online prep kit which is available at http://learn.ucertify.com. This new system has a benefit over the traditional system, which is accessible for all platform, not limited to Windows only.

Here are some highlights of this new system:

• Complete location and device independence: Available online 24x7 or go mobile (supported on all major Smartphones and tablets)
• Digital book integrated with images, videos, audio, quizzes, flash cards, assessments, assignments, study notes and much more
• Powerful Analytics to track and gauge learning effectiveness for students, teachers and school administrators
• Self-Study or Teacher/Mentor assisted learning
• Student-Student & Student-Teacher Collaboration tools
• Customizable roles and access for students, TAs, teachers and administrators
• Simple, yet powerful teacher portals to customize courses, pre-assessments, tests and assignments
• Hassle free, highly available and scalable hosted solution

The study notes are very valuable resources to prepare yourself for the final examinations. They have been arranged so that it's nicely viewable on every devices, including smart phones, so you can learn and prepare yourself anytime you have some free time and Internet connection. They also provides videos to help you learn some topics visually.

Preparing for certification is now becoming easier, thanks to uCertify

Here's a screenshot from my PMP prepkit

Next Android Release: Jelly Bean

Google has confirmed that the next release of Android release will have a codename Jelly Bean. It's another food naming after Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and Ice Cream.

This is kinda surprising as Google will held Google I/O event on June 27, but they have announce it today. Looks like Google has more plan to announce in their annual Google I/O event next few days.

Need Opinion About ICS Update

I wanted to upgrade my wife's phone to the latest Android: ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich), but one of my ex student told me that ever since his phone got upgraded to ICS, he often experienced a slow response when typing text message and the only solution is to reboot the phone.

Does anyone can confirm about the pros and cons about ICS upgrade? Is it worthed or not? I have read many articles, but i need is testimonial from users who have upgraded to ICS on their phones, not by pointing to many articles that can be found on the Internet.

VirtualBox 4.1.18 Released

A new maintenance release for VirtualBox has been released. This release brings stability fixes and regression fixes from previous version:
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed VERR_REM_VIRTUAL_CPU_ERROR under rare conditions after the guest has been reset (bug #5164 and others)
• VMM: fixed host freezes with 64-bit guests on 32-bit Linux hosts (bug #10528)
• VRDP: added a workaround for rdesktop clients not properly updating the screen size when minimized
• AHCI: fixed a rare bug which can cause a guest memory corruption after the guest storage controler has been reset
• NAT: another attempt to fix crashes under rare conditions (Windows hosts only; bug #10513)
• Mac OS X hosts: addressed issues running Leopard / Snow Leopard (bug #10631)
• Linux hosts / Bridged Networking: fixed the problem with device driver unloading on kernels 3.2.18 and newer due to an invalid reference counter (bug #10624)
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 3.5-rc1 fixes
• Linux Additions: the guest content was sometimes not properly updated (bug #9887)
• Solaris Additions: installer fix for X.org Server 1.11 and 1.12

Final Day

Today is the last day of my grand mother ceremonial and tomorrow, we will send her to her final destination where she can rest forever. It's been a long day and we were so glad that most of our family members has joined us in this important day for our family. Even Ivan, which is staying in Australia made it to go to Jogja even though he didn't bring his wife and new child, Reuel. I wanted to meet him because i haven't seen it since he was born last year.

It's been a busy day and now we should take some rest before another journey awaits us tomorrow

Deleted and Restored

This evening, i got an unpleasant email from Blogger saying that this blog has been deleted due to violation of Blogger's TOS about SPAM. I was shocked to hear this since this blog has been operating since 2004 and i never had this kind of problem since then.

I searched for their support page and i saw that we (owner of the blog) have a right to request a review to Blogger staff if we have our blog got deleted (or disabled for precisely) for few weeks and if we don't respond, they will permanently delete it. I clicked on the Restore button and tried to asked the support staff to reinstate this blog and in the next few hours, it has been restored back and i'm back on writing and updating again on this blog.

Thanks to Blogger staffs who reinstated this blog. I know it's just a glitch on the automation system that tries to improve user experience by scanning a lot of blogger account out there that are violating their TOS. I hope they can learn from this mistake and improve their scanner even better in the future.

Welcome AUS and HK Students

Most of the students from ANU (Australian National University) and all of the students from PolyU (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) have arrived in Jogja to start their International YKFS Field School 2012 in the next few days. We just had a nice welcome night by now.

They will attend the field school in Banjaroya Village, Kalibawang district in Kulon Progo regency for the next three weeks and they will try to study the local behaviour and cultures, and to share what they are capable of to support the tourism of the surroundings area.

It's the first ever YKFS event that has three universities joined up together. Previously, we only collaborate with ANU for the past three years and now PolyU joined up. Who knows there will be more universities joining next year.

Good Bye Grandma

This morning, i was woken up by my uncle at 1.30 AM and he told me that my grand mother has passed away. She has been battling with her stroke for the last few months and now it's time for her to return home and reunite with my grand father who have passed away long before her in Heaven.

May God forgive all her sins in the past and accept her in His hand. God Bless You Grandma and farewell. We are proud of you!!

NVidia New Short Lived Branch

NVidia has released a new branch of it's Linux NVidia driver 302.17. This version brings a horde of new features and bug fixes compared to the 295.59 which was introduced few days ago.

Here's the highlights:

• Made nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder consistent with the RRSetOutputPrimary and RRGetOutputPrimary RandR requests: changes to either nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder or RandR OutputPrimary will be reflected in the other.
• Fixed an interaction problem between RandR 1.2, ConstrainCursor, and panning that prevented panning from working properly.
• Fixed a bug that caused RandR RRNotify_CrtcChange events to not be generated when switching between MetaModes with the same total size but different layout of display devices. This bug caused some window managers to not update their layouts in response to switching same-sized MetaModes.
• Added support for desktop panning when rotation, reflection, or transformation is applied to a display device (either through RandR or through the MetaMode syntax); panning would previously be ignored in that case.
• Added an "EDID" property to RandR 1.2 outputs. This property contains the binary contents of the connected monitor's extended display identification data, which allows applications such as the GNOME display properties dialog to query information about it.
• Fixed a bug that caused audio over HDMI to not work on some GPUs after querying the RandR configuration (e.g., `xrandr -q`).
• Added the "nvidiaXineramaInfo" X configuration option to report the layout of multiple display devices within an X screen. This is enabled by default. When disabled on X servers with RandR 1.2 support, the NVIDIA X driver will report one screen-sized region. When disabled on X servers without RandR 1.2 support, no Xinerama information will be reported. For backwards compatibility, the "NoTwinViewXineramaInfo" option disables nvidiaXineramaInfo.
• Added the "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" X configuration option as a replacement for "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder". For backwards compatibility, "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" is kept as a synonym for "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder".
• Added the "nvidiaXineramaInfoOverride" X configuration option as a replacement for "TwinViewXineramaInfoOverride". For backwards compatibility, "TwinViewXineramaInfoOverride" is kept as a synonym for "nvidiaXineramaInfoOverride".
• Fixed a bug that prevented the use of some SLI Mosaic topologies.
• Added the "MetaModeOrientation" X configuration option as a replacement for "TwinViewOrientation". "TwinViewOrientation" is kept as a synonym for "MetaModeOrientation", for backwards compatibility.
• Added support for calculating the physical size and DPI of each RandR 1.2 Output using the EDID Detailed Timing Description.
• Fixed a bug that prevented a workaround for the invalid EDID in certain AUO laptop flat panels from being applied, leading to an 800x600 desktop repeated several times across the screen.
• Fixed a bug that caused the link configuration of DisplayPort devices to be reported incorrectly in nvidia-settings.
• Fixed a bug that caused OpenGL programs to leak file descriptors when calling exec() on themselves.
• Fixed rendering corruption at the start of new X server generation.
• Added X driver support for RandR 1.2 and RandR 1.3. See "Support for the X Resize and Rotate Extension" in the README for details.
• Extended the MetaMode X configuration option syntax with the following new attributes:
"Rotation" : specifies the display device's rotation
"Reflection" : specifies the display device's reflection
"Transform" : specifies a 3x3 transformation matrix to be
applied to the display device
"ViewPortOut" : specifies the region of the mode in which to
display pixels
"ViewPortIn" : specifies the size of the region in the X screen
to display in the ViewPortOutFor example, "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select { Rotation=left }".
See "Configuring Multiple Display Devices on One X Screen" in the
README for details.
• Removed the "TwinView" X configuration option; the functionality it provided is now enabled by default. Previously, the NVIDIA X driver only enabled one display device for an X screen unless "TwinView" was enabled. Now, the NVIDIA X driver enables, by default, as many display devices as the GPU supports driving simultaneously. To limit how many display devices are driven by an X screen, use the "UseDisplayDevice" X configuration option.
  
• Added a "CurrentMetaMode" attribute to the nvidia-settings command line, to query and set the current MetaMode.
As an example, these two commands are equivalent:
xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x1024 --pos 0x0 --output DVI-I-3 --mode 1920x1200 --pos 1280x0
nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode= "DVI-I-2: 1280x1024 +0+0, DVI-I-3: 1920x1200 +1280+0"
• Removed overscan compensation configurability from NV-CONTROL and nvidia-settings. This can be configured, with finer granularity, through the ViewPortIn and ViewPortOut MetaMode attributes.See "Configuring Multiple Display Devices on One X Screen" in the README for details.
• Altered mode validation such that for digital display devices the X driver only allows, by default, modes which are reported in the EDID. Previously, the NVIDIA X driver allowed other modes, but implicitly scaled those other modes to one of the EDID modes. Now, only the modes in the EDID are validated and the X driver does not do any implicit scaling. Any desired scaling can be configured explicitly through the new "ViewPortIn" and "ViewPortOut" MetaMode attributes. See "Configuring Multiple Display Devices on One X Screen" in the README for details.
  
• Removed Flat Panel Scaling configurability in nvidia-settings. Any desired scaling can be configured through the new "ViewPortIn" and "ViewPortOut" MetaMode attributes.
• Hotplug events (specifically, the RRNotify_OutputChange RandR event) are now generated when display devices are connected and disconnected from the GPU. Many desktop environments automatically
  resize the X desktop in response to these events.
• Added display device name aliases, such that X configuration options that use display device names can refer to a display device by one of several names, including the RandR Output name for the display device. The X log reports the list of aliases for each display device.
• Updated EDID parsing to include more complete support for EDID 1.4 and more recent versions of CEA-861.
• Removed the "Rotate" X configuration option. This was used to statically rotate the X screen. Its functionality is replaced by the "Rotation" MetaMode attribute and RandR 1.2 rotation support. See the README for details.
• Removed the "RandRRotation" X configuration option. This enabled configurability of X screen rotation via RandR 1.1. Its functionality is replaced by the "Rotation" MetaMode attribute and RandR 1.2 rotation support. See the README for details.
• Removed support for the following NV-CONTROL attributes:
NV_CTRL_GPU_SCALING
NV_CTRL_GPU_SCALING_DEFAULT_TARGET
NV_CTRL_GPU_SCALING_DEFAULT_METHOD
NV_CTRL_DFP_SCALING_ACTIVE
NV_CTRL_GPU_SCALING_ACTIVE
NV_CTRL_FRONTEND_RESOLUTION
NV_CTRL_BACKEND_RESOLUTION
NV_CTRL_OVERSCAN_COMPENSATION
NV_CTRL_FLATPANEL_BEST_FIT_RESOLUTION
• Improved rendering performance for RENDER bitmap text.
• Enabled the OpenGL "Sync to VBlank" option by default.
• Added a new option, --restore-original-backup, to nvidia-xconfig. nvidia-xconfig creates a backup of the original X configuration file when modifying an X configuration file that does not appear
  to have been previously modified by nvidia-xconfig. This option restores a backup of the original X configuration file, if such a backup is found.
• Expose the following additional FSAA modes via NV-CONTROL, nvidia-settings, and through X visuals and GLXFBConfigs:
16X multisample FSAA on all GeForce GPUs
Coverage sample FSAA on G80 and above GeForce GPUs
32X multisample FSAA on G80 and above Quadro GPUs
64X multisample FSAA on Fermi and above Quadro GPUs
• Enabled conformant texture clamping by default in OpenGL.
• Removed support for the GVO Clone mode NV-CONTROL attributes:
NV_CTRL_GVO_DISPLAY_X_SCREEN
NV_CTRL_GVO_X_SCREEN_PAN_X
NV_CTRL_GVO_X_SCREEN_PAN_Y
• Added a new, higher resolution icon for nvidia-settings.
• Updated the NVIDIA X driver's handling of X configuration options that affect an entire GPU, not just a particular X screen running on a GPU (e.g., "NoPowerConnectorCheck"): for such X configuration options, the X driver will now honor the option on any of the X screens configured on the GPU. Prior to this change, the NVIDIA X driver only honored such options on the first X screen configured on a GPU.
• Added a checkbox to nvidia-settings to control the texture clamping attribute. When the box is checked, OpenGL textures are clamped according to the OpenGL specification. When it is unchecked, GL_CLAMP is remapped to GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE for borderless 2D textures.
• Removed the "Display" and "X Screen" tabs from the "X Server Display Configuration Page" of nvidia-settings, and added a new "Selection" dropdown menu for selecting X screens or display devices. This makes it easier to select X screens/Displays that are hidden.

Happy Birthday Memshrink

Thanks to the Memshrink initiative that was announced one year ago, Mozilla Firefox has gained a lot of improvements regarding their memory management. Today, Memshrink is celebrating it's first birthday and you can see what has been accomplished during this one year of hard work and efforts from a lot of people on Mozilla Blog.

I'm happy to see that Memshrink effort has paid of. As you can see, Firefox now uses less memory consumption compared to previous versions and they are still working on further optimization and fixing memory leaks as we speak. Even though there are definite plan in the future, Memshrink project will try to even further polish Mozilla memory management and thus, users will get more benefit in the future.

Thanks to the initial creator and to the world wide contributors. Happy Birthday

Opera Browser 12.00

After two months of running Beta version, finally Opera finalize their next major upgrade, Opera 12.00. Lots of new features are introduced on this new version, including:

• Out-of-Process Plug-ins
• 64 Bit version for Mac and Windows
• Themes (just like Firefox's persona)
• Address Field Enhancement
• Full Hardware Acceleration (experimental)
• RTL support
• Windows and Tabs API
• Web Spesification Support
• WebRTC
• HTML 5 Drag and Drop
• CSS3 Animations and Transitions
• DNT (Do Not Track)
• Paged Overflow
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing

What are you waiting for? Go Get Them now :)

KDE 4.9 Beta 2

KDE team has just released KDE 4.9 Beta 2 to public. It's the last Beta release before they entered RC release on June 27 and July 11 and finally a final release on August 1. See their scheduled plan for KDE 4.9.

What's inside KDE 4.9 Beta 2? I'll just take it from KDE's official announcement page:

• Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is continuing to make its way into the Plasma Workspaces, the Qt Quick Plasma Components, which have been introduced with 4.8, mature further. Additional integration of various KDE APIs was added through new modules. More parts of Plasma Desktop have been ported to QML. While preserving their functionality, the Qt Quick replacements of common plasmoids are visually more attractive, easier to enhance and extend and behave better on touchscreens.
• The Dolphin file manager has improved its display and sorting and searching based on metadata. Files can now be renamed inline, giving a smoother user experience.
• Deeper integration of Activities for files, windows and other resources: Users can now more easily associate files and windows with an Activity, and enjoy a more properly organized workspace. Folderview can now show files related to an Activity, making it easier to organize files into meaningful contexts.
• Many performance improvements and bugfixes improve the overall user experience, making the KDE Applications and Workspaces more productive and fun to use than ever before.

WWDC 2012 Results

It seems that most of the speculations about what will be presented in WWDC were true. There are iOS 6 Beta releases for developers and sadly there's no iPad 1 support for this version, new Mac Book Pro with Retina display which is awesome, but comes with high prices as well, New 3D Maps, Facebook Integration, Much Improved Siri and it's coming on the new iPad, and the announcement of OS X Mountain Lion release schedule on July and pricing which is set to this Summer and it will be USD 19.99, 10 bucks lower than previous OS X Lion release last year.

But, it's not Apple if they don't bring new and exciting features that are not yet speculated by a lot of people, such as Passbook, FaceTime over cellular, New Calling Feature on iPhone, better Email interface, iCloud Tab on Safari, and iOS 6 Guided Access on Accessibility.

I really like the new specs for the new Mac Book Pro. They have integrated most of the bleeding edge components for their latest product and i believe that Apple can use this baseline for the next three years or probably more. It's now based on i5/i7 Intel Processors, 4/8 GB and up to 16 GB of memory for the Mac Book Pro with Retina Display, All Flash-based architecture for storage, starting from 512 GB up to 768 GB and optionally 1 TB of classic HD, Intel Graphics 4000 or NVidia GeForce GT 650 with Kepler Technology, MagSafe power port, USB 3 ports, HDMI, and many others. They even managed to compact the size of the casing. It's trully amazing.

No New Feature in Flash Player in Linux

Adobe has stated that they will not release any new features in Flash Player for Linux starting 11.3 and right now, they started to release 11.3 for Windows and Mac, leaving Linux users to 11.2.x releases which only started to receive security bug fixes only.

Meanwhile, the open source version of Flash Player, named lightspark is progressing nicely with their latest release with a bunch of new features:
The key features of Lightspark 0.6.0.1 include:

- Enable RTMP sup­port by default, requires librtmp
- Fixed sup­port for IEvent­Dis­patcher imple­men­ta­tion pat­tern
- Improved seri­al­iza­tion robust­ness
- Improved matrix han­dling
- Imple­ment string and name­space pool­ing to reduce mem­ory con­sump­tion
- Proper sup­port for pri­vate name­spaces
- Improved sup­port for fonts
- Sup­port LLVM 3.1
- Fix full vol­ume issue when PulseAu­dio flat vol­umes are enabled
- Ini­tial sup­port for AIR desk­top appli­ca­tions
- Sup­port for www.bbc.co.uk video player

No iPad 1 on iOS 6?

There has been a speculation about the future of iPad 1 on iOS 6. It's said that Apple will left iPad 1on current iOS and will not let iPad 1 upgradeable to iOS 6 according to the beta build leaks on Chinese forum. Even though it's not yet confirmed, it's a pity (if it's true) to leave iPad 1  because basically the big difference with other iPad products is not that much.

I think the hardware is the biggest difference and that's why Apple thinks that it might not be sufficient or comfortable enough for the users if they are pushed to iOS 6 which i guess will bring new features to the iOS and it may burden the devices.

WWDC 2012 Speculations

Just days before Apple is holding a WWDC 2012 which will be held in San Francisco’s Moscone West where all Apple fans and users will be invited to see what has Apple done so far and what kind of surprises will Apple give to their users.

Some speculations has arisen and some are true actually. The first one is the introduction of iOS 6. It's reported that iOS 6 will be the base for the next iPhone 5 if it's truly coming out. I don't know what new features will be introduced in this major update.

The second one is the update of Mac Servers which hasn't been updated for two years. Some people thought that Apple is not paying attention to the server products and are focusing only on desktop and mobile areas, but that could change in this WWDC. The hardware needs to be upgraded and i guess i7 is the perfect choice for the new Mac Server.

Apple is also preparing to cut it's dependency to Google Map service by developing it's own Map service and it's reported to be 3D Map, not just ordinary map. Apple has been acquiring companies that focused on 3D maps since few years ago and i think this is the perfect time to introduce what they have been working so far.

There might be Facebook integration into the iOS just like Twitter when they released iOS 5. This would make people become more social on their iDevices because it's fully integrated on iOS.

9to5 has a detailed article about WWDC 2012 roundup. Check it out for more detailed information about what will be introduced in WWDC 2012.

mintBox: Mint in a box

LinuxMint, a number one Linux Distribution based on DistroWatch has done a great job in providing a very nice operating system that appreciate their users by making Linux Mint a better distribution that it's parent: Ubuntu Linux.

Now, in conjuction with CompuLab, they are going even further by presenting a mintBox, Mint in a box. This device has everything you need for your daily activities.

Here’s an exhaustive list of its extremely rich I/O:

• Dual-head display HDMI + DisplayPort
• Digital 7.1 S/PDIF and analog 2.0 audio, both input and output
• Gigabit Ethernet
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + BT combo with dual antennas
• 2 USB3 ports + 2 USB2 ports
• 2 eSATA ports
• Bay for 2.5” SATA HDD
• 2 mini-PCIe sockets / 1 mSATA
• Serial RS232 port

The mintBox is available in two versions.
mintBox Basic ($476 + shipping, duty & VAT):

• 250GB HDD
• APU G-T40N (1.0 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6290 – 9W)
• 4GB RAM
• Flat metal case
  

mintBox Pro ($549 + shipping, duty & VAT):

• 250GB HDD
• APU G-T56N (1.65 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6320 – 18W)
• 8GB RAM
• Ribbed metal case

10% of each sale goes towards Linux Mint, so if you want to help Linux Mint, you can buy this product.

Last.FM Compromised

After LinkedIn get compromised and their user's password gets released on the wild, now Last.FM is having the same breach. The leaked information are unsalted MD5 hashes. At least one million of these hashes have already been cracked and the clear text passwords have also been posted on the internet.

If you are Last.FM users, i would suggest you to change your password ASAP.

Visiting Hamlets

This morning, me and some of my supervised students on international field school went to the hamlet that the students will live in for the next 30 days for our pre-initial observations. Some of the students went there using motorcycles and i decided to use my car because i have to make sure that car are able to get there because the luggage of the students will be brought by car anyway.

It took some time to get there because we got lost due to a variety of tracks available and the guide that we got from one of my students were different with what we got when we asked local people there. I guess not only there are so many ways to Rome, we only have a lot of ways to reach Slanden and the surroundings hamlets.

In our way back, we tried alternative route and it seems that it's quite far, but the road was smoother and less curvy. We ended up having lunch at Jejamuran, a local restaurant which is famous of it's mushroom menus.

I think it's a great trip even though we had to ask so many people to get to the destination :)

International Field School

This year, i had a chance to become a supervisor of the International Field School called YKFS. This is the fourth year and this year, we add another university and it's Hong Kong Polytechnic University besides ANU (Australian National University) which has joined this collaboration work since few years ago.

It's my first experience of being an international supervisor and i hope this could add another experience for me. I can practice my conversation as well with the international students.

The International students will arrive two weeks from now, but the local students will start their initial observations starting next week before they will start collaborating with the International students a week later.

SiriPort Blown Away

I upgraded my SiriPort to the latest version and it blown away my iPad since when i rebooted, it goes to infinite loop mode and i had to restore the whole system just now. I don't know why, but the main website has been changed to the default Lion Server at the time i had that problem.

For now, i have restored all the configuration and application back to my iPad and probably i will stay away for Siri.

Installing Installous 5

If you have been using a jailbroken iDevices, then you might have been familiar with Installous, a great tool which offer applications outside the Apple AppStore. The reason why people would install Installous is that they can find a third party repository in which some of the applications can't be found on AppStore due to strict policy of Apple.

Other reason for using Installous is to have a trial version of a software without buying it first, something that it's not possible in AppStore. When you wanted to download an application (even for trial), if it's a commercial app, you would have to pay for it. Installous can solve that problem by enabling you to download the same software but from third party repositories.

Right now, Installous has been upgraded to Installous 5 and it brings some new features such as:

• Added BitTorrent download support
• Support for iOS 5 notifications
• Better filehost compatibility
• Bug-fixes and optimization

As usual, if you wanted to get Installous 5, you must have your devices untethered jailbroken first using Absinthe or any other jailbreaker tool available on the Internet. Next, you add this repository into Cydia : http://cydia.hackulo.us/. Let it download the list of packages and reload the list and then, you can start searching for Installous 5.

Here's some disclaimer about the use of Installous:
Downloading and installing cracked apps are illegal. We don’t support or promote piracy in anyway. This article is purely for informational purposes only. The whole purpose behind cracked apps is if you would like to try an app before purchasing from the App Store. It is expected that you either delete the app after testing it or purchase it from the App Store. Please give credit to the author of the apps who have spent hours, days, months making and testing the apps to make sure the users gets the best experience when using their applications.

Pro Git

I have been using GitHub to manage my SlackHacks repository and so far, i don't have problems with it. Probably it was because there's only one person working on this repository.

I set up another repository to work on a project and this is where i learn that GIT is way superior than Subversion for doing branching and merging. Even though it's quite complicated in the beginning, but finally i'm able to learn some basic skills to handle multiple sub work at once.

One of the best resource that i can find to work with GIT is Pro Git which was released by Apress and it can be downloaded for free in form of PDF, Mobi, or ePub format. This book has been translated into several languages as well, including Indonesian.

Firefox 13 Final is Ready

Mozilla has finished working on Firefox 13 and marked it as Final, even though they haven't announced it officially and give some time to mirror site to fetch the latest version from their FTP server and also to Linux vendors to build a customized package for their own distribution.

If you can't wait that long, you can just go to their FTP Server and download the suited version according to your platform. Please note that you will have to download the whole package instead of downloading a delta. If you have used a binary version of Firefox previously, i would suggest to wait and use the Automatic Updates mechanism built in into Firefox. This way, you won't have to download the whole build, but only the delta, which is smaller in terms of size.

If you are curious about what's new on this release, check the Release Notes

Touch : The Gyre

Unlike the previous episodes, The Touch wasn't airing last week, so this week, they are releasing two episodes at once and for the first time, they will have the same title: The Gyre. This is the continuation of Martin Bohm's effort to seek more information regarding his son's ability to predict things with sequences of numbers and also to protect him from the same organization that did the same thing to another girl, Amelia and probably the one who killed Arthur Teller.

This is the only western TV Series i watched currently. Any other good western TV Series i should watch?

Welcome June

It's June already and time ticks so fast so that most of us didn't realize that we are already going through almost half of this year and we only have six months left before we will come to 2013.

When we are busy with our job, sometimes we didn't even realize how fast time goes by. It seems that 24 hours a day is never enough.