Vacation is Almost Over

It's already two months since May and that means my vacation is almost over and new semester on the edge, starting next month (August 26). While it's should be vacation, but i'm not really in vacation since i have been appointed as a coordinator for this year's YKFS service learning program. It really consume most of my time during the program.

After YKFS was completed early this month, my next task is focusing on the procurement and also preparing for next semester. We had lots of meeting in the office and so far so good. Everything is under control.

Next week, we will have one full week of holiday due to Eid al-Fitr, starting on Monday (August 5) until Friday (August 9), but i will extend my vacation until August 14 since i have already planned for this trip long before the announcement. With only two days left before a long holiday, i should start preparing for the trip and this year, i have a new member joining our trip: Alysia, my baby girl. It would be a challenge for me as i have to prioritize her over anything else. I had to make sure her need has been fulfilled first before ours :)

Playing With Proxmox

In the last two days, i have been playing with a new toy called Proxmox. It's a Debian-based Linux distribution used to provide virtual environment. I wanted to test this product so that i can use it to help students for their final project when they need additional resources.

So far, i have a fully working Proxmox 3.0 and also i have successfully installed a Slackware64-14.0 as the first VM client and it's working well. I had a problem of configuring it so that the client is able to access the Internet, but it has been sorted few hours ago. I might be able to use this VM client as my new build machine in the future.

It's a free product and easy to use. The default installation will take all of your hard disk, so make sure you have no data inside it, since it doesn't ask for manual or custom partition layout.

Just in case you have trouble, don't forget to check their Wiki page

Android 4.3 Released

Google announced the availability of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean to public and it has powered the new Nexus 7 tablet and soon other devices as well (Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices across the world).

Some new features on this release:

• OpenGL ES 3.0 — Game developers can now take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and EGL extensions as standard features of Android, with access from either framework or native APIs.
• Bluetooth Smart — Now your apps can communicate with the many types of low-power Bluetooth Smart devices and sensors available today, to provide new features for fitness, medical, location, proximity, and more.
• Restricted profiles — Tablet owners can create restricted profiles to limit access to apps, for family, friends, kiosks, and more. Your app can offer various types of restrictions to let tablet owners control its capabilities in each profile.
• New media capabilities — A modular DRM framework enables media application developers to more easily integrate DRM into their own streaming protocols such as MPEG DASH. Apps can also access a built-in VP8 encoder from framework or native APIs for high-quality video capture.
• Notification access — Your apps can now access and interact with the stream of status bar notifications as they are posted. You can display them in any way you want, including routing them to nearby Bluetooth devices, and you can update and dismiss notifications as needed.
• Improved profiling tools — New tags in the Systrace tool and on-screen GPU profiling give you new ways to build great performance into your app.

More detailed information about this new version can be seen at their platform highlights, API Overview, and DevBytes Videos. Google also released Android NDK (r9) and also Android Support Library (r18).

You can get started developing and testing on Android 4.3 right away, in Android Studio or in ADT/Ant. You can download the Android 4.3 Platform (API level 18), as well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Library from the Android SDK Manager. 

Apache OpenOffice 4.0: New Release, New Logo, New Features

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 is finally released after so long of development took place between 3.4.1 and 4.0. It has new logo as a result of  many design iterations, collaboration among talented designers and a contest where 40 logos were rated by over 50,000 users.

It also has LOTS of new features such as :

• New sidebars (contribution from IBM Symphony)
• Interoperability Improvements to MSO Documents
• DrawObject Improvements
• Picture Crop mode
• New Charts and Functions
• More Language Supports

See the rest of the features on their Release Notes.

Go get them on their Download Page

LibreOffice 4.1 is Close to Final

LibreOffice 4.1 is getting closer to the final version as they are now in RC3. If there are no showstoppers, this RC3 will be used as the base for the final version. The upcoming 4.1 will be the sixth major release in two and a half years, and comes with a nice set of new features.

Since this will be a major release from 4.0, the features are huge and here's some of the highlights:

1. Rotates image on Writer
2. Embed font in your documents (Writer/Calc/Impress)
3. More charts option in Calc
4. New Formula in Calc
5. Photo Album in Impress
6. Query Properties Dialog in Base
7. New Elements docking windows in Math
8. Export charts to SVG, PDF
9. More migration from Java to Python in Core modules
10. Support for legacy Mac word-processing documents
11. Many improvements to Microsoft OOXML Import and Export filters as well as for the Microsoft Office binary file formats and the RTF format 
12. Completed the port to gnumake
13. Support for PowerPC and older Mac OS SDK has been dropped
14. More Java and UNO API has been deprecated or removed
15. Performance improvements on all components

YKFS V is Over

International Service Learning - YKFS V is finally over after the HK team depart to Jakarta and then followed to Hong Kong at around midnight. It's been a great work for the past 3 weeks in Banjaroya Village and the strong bond between both students will be reminded even though they are separated.

We have prepared this program for some time along with the HK coordinator and staffs via email. There has been a lot of changes since last year, but we hope that the changes are for the best interest for both parties and it seems the changes i proposed does work as intended and gives us more advantages rather than disadvantages.

I must admit that it wasn't the best service we can do, but i have done my best to make sure they are enjoying the trip in the village and also having the best farewell party in the end of this program.

Thank you to all HK staffs and students for this year's YKFS. Hopefully we can meet again next year in the next YKFS or we can visit HK someday in the future :)

YKFS V Is Almost Done

Lately i'm just simply to busy at work related to the service learning in which i was appointed as the main coordinator. I had to act as the finance officer as well, so it's quite tiring as i had to travel Jogja - Banjaroya several times a week, especially in the last few days since we are nearing the end and lots to be done here.

At this time, we are working on the banner and the final report which will be handed to the head of the regency on Wednesday. The deadline should be on last Friday, but somehow the students missed it and we had to work extra hard yesterday to collect them and revise it again and again. At the end, i didn't complete all of them and there are 2.5 reports left to be done. Hopefully it can be completed today and we can send it for production later.

Well, that's what keeping me busy these days along with managing all Slackware-related stuffs since -Current is now moving again with pretty big changes such as inclusion of KDE 4.10.5 and Linux Kernel 3.9.9 among other changes.

Happy Original Anniversary

Twelve years ago, i asked my friend (now become my wife) to become my girlfriend at the church and she replied YES. That was our first official journey to create a bond of love between us and it lasts for ten years before we got officially married last 2011.

Although we now have our new anniversary during our wedding, we still celebrate our first anniversary, because without the original anniversary, there won't be any wedding and there won't be Alysia who has now joined our family and she's now six months old.