Parted Magic 6.0

The latest parted magic 6.0 is now officially released and it has several interesting components such as better hardware detection (due to newer kernel), removal of kernel modules, udev, and firmware which is now moved to initramfs, nice graphical boot menu is now removed and replaced with a favor of a very basic one

Since it incorporates quite big changes, they issued a major upgrade, so that's why you see 6.0 release instead of 5.0.x series.

Here's the complete updated components: cryptsetup-1.2.0, lvm2-2.02.84, nwipe-0.03 (downgraded), util-linux-2.19, linux-2.6.38.2, udev-165, btrfs-progs-20110327, glibc-2.13, jfsutils-1.1.15, usbutils-002, xfsprogs-3.1.4, squashfs-4.2, simpleburn-1.6.0.2 (downgraded), busybox-1.18.4, memtest86-4.20, ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2011.4.12

Download it now

New Hash Function from Google

Google has just announced a new variant of Hash Function called CityHash.

Here's what the project's description taken from their site:

CityHash provides hash functions for strings. The functions mix the input bits thoroughly but are not suitable for cryptography. We provide reference implementations in C++, with a friendly MIT license: city.cc, city.h. To download the code with svn use these instructions.

CityHash64() and similar return a 64-bit hash. Inside Google, where CityHash was developed starting in 2010, we use variants of CityHash64() mainly in hash tables such as hash_map.

CityHash128() and similar return a 128-bit hash and are tuned for strings of at least a few hundred bytes. Depending on your compiler and hardware, it may be faster than CityHash64() on sufficiently long strings. It is known to be slower than necessary on shorter strings, but we expect that case to be relatively unimportant. Inside Google we use variants of CityHash128() mainly for code that wants to minimize collisions.

As usual, Google's approach of speed is so incredible. They have a lot of scientist working in Google and two of them (Geoff Pike and Jyrki Alakuijala) has just created another cool product.

15 Top Paying IT Certifications

If you are looking for IT certifications, you should pay attention on this article: 15 Top Paying IT Certifications. It should give you a brief summary of what IT industry is looking for currently. What amazes me is that CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) is still on 14th position.

Here are the list along with the salary (approximately)
1. CCDP: Cisco Certified Design Professional ($107,878)
2. ITIL Expert Certification ($107,092)
3. PMP: Project Management Professional ($103,570)
4. CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional ($100,735)
5. CCDA: Cisco Certified Design Associate ($97,995)
6. CCNP: Cisco Certified Network Professional ($97,296)
7. ITIL v2 Foundation & ITIL v3 Foundation ($96,128 & $93,250)
8. CCNA: Voice ($92,837)
9. AIS: HP Storage Works ($91,158)
10. AIS: HP ProLiant ML/DL/SL Servers ($87,332)
11. VCP: VMware Certified Professional ($87,151)
12. CompTIA Project+ ($87,057)
13. APS: HP Blade System Solutions ($86,554)
14. CEH: Certified Ethical Hacker ($86,053)
15. MCDBA: Microsoft Certified Database Administrator ($84,683)

Finally, Long Holiday

I will have one week of long holiday starting next week due to Easter day. I really need a long vacation due to personal matter that i have to finish. Let's just hope that most of it will be completed by next week so that i can solve other things i have to take care of.

Meanwhile, i will be busy on this week. Every evening, i have to attend a course from 5 PM until 8 PM until next Friday, so i will be mostly away.

Despicable Me Parody

I really loves Despicable Me, especially the yellow minions saying BANANA!!!! They are so cute. I even downloaded the mini series of Despicable Me which only less than 10 minutes long, but it was really really funny. I watched it with my fiancee few months ago and i couldn't stop laughing after watching it.

I just found another parody about Despicable Me, but it was single-played by one man, but he can turn into other person. Very nice and as always, very funny

Picking Up Photos

Usually, when i took some pictures, i never think about how much pictures i took since i have enough space on my memory card (2 and 8 GB is more than enough for me). When i went to Singapore and China, i didn't even fill up the 8 GB and that already contained more than 500 pictures.

Last Tuesday, i had a photo session and i got 398 photos and i have to pick 45 out of it . Picking 45 out of 398 is so hard since i think there are a lot of nice pictures in it. I have to sacrifice some photos just to get the best of it.

Echofon Firefox 2.0 Beta 2

Echofon, my favorite Twitter client has posted development update for Echofon Firefox 2.0 which is now on Beta 2 phase. They have integrated many feature request by many people and one of the most requested feature is the old UI. It seems that people doesn't like to change much so they bring it back the old Panel mode from Echofon 1.x.

So far, the new panel mode only works with Firefox 4.0, so if you are using Firefox 3.6.x or below, probably this is a good time to upgrade to Firefox 4.0

The full changes in Beta 2 are:

• Added "Panel Mode" (works with Firefox 4 only for now)
• Added menubar on window mode with several keyboard shortcuts
• Added spell check and suggestion in the context menu of the compose text area
• Added "Popup tweet while Echofon window/sidebar is open" and "Always open a link in a new tab" option
  
• Echofon follows "Open new tab in background" settings to open links
• Click Photo View to open its original photo page
• Do not open Photo View if user clicks a photo URL (Photo View will be opened only by clicking thumbnail)
• Fixed an issue that unread border doesn't appear in certain case
• Fixed an issue of missing tweets
• Fixed an issue that retweet function doesn't work
• Fixed an issue that mute settings disappears after user restart Firefox
• Fixed an issue that default keyboard shortcut is conflicted with Firefox 4 on Windows
• Fixed several other minor issues

If you are interested in trying this beta version, download it from their Beta page

Addicted to Defender Chronicles

Few days ago i downloaded Defender Chronicles from AppStore and lately, i have been quite addicted with it . I played it few hours a day and i enjoyed it.

Basically, the game is like tower defence. You have to defend your kingdoms from Orch's invasion by putting a defender such as Archers, Knight, Mage, and so on.

What makes me enjoyed the game is to find the perfect strategy to get the perfect score and unlock the next level of the same area (there are four levels and one hidden level only if you managed to beat the last level with perfect score).

KDE 4.6.2 Released

KDE 4.6.2 has been released as part of monthly updates after they released 4.6.1 last month. This is the third release in 4.6.x series and it's considered as a safe upgrade to all people as it doesn't introduce new features, but instead they offer bug fixes and translation updates.

One interesting news is that they pick a nice codename for KDE 4.6.2 called Congrats which is dedicated for GNOME project which released their major release GNOME 3.0 on the same day as KDE 4.6.2 release date. It was officially announced on their web page.

The ChangeLog gives you all the changes on this release and it's not really particular interesting as there are no new features at all. Their focus right now is on future KDE 4.7.x release which is aimed on this year as well. Many new features are already being planned to be included on this release and it should be another great release from KDE project.

We shall wait and see about that later on

Special blogger contest

Are you a blogger and you like to win an iPad 2? The Dealy is creating a nice contest for Bloggers around the world called Special Blogger Contest and the grand prize is an iPad 2.

All you have to do is to write about this contest and spread it out to the world and let them know by sending an email to contest@thedealy.com just like what i did on this post.

If you live in US, you can join another contest called badge contest by placing contest badge on your blog. Please visit the contest page for more detail. Unfortunately, i'm not in US, so i can't participate on the second contest.

What is the first price for badge contest? It's quite interesting:

• Choose your 10 dream cities from Dealy´s cities
• Enjoy free flights and hotels
• Enjoy 3 free Dealy Deals per city
• That's right, all free!

The second price is another iPad 2 and the third price is 10 people * $100 worth of deals in your city (also available in US only)

Collaboration Service

My group has been using Chatroll for our discussion on the web, but lately, Chatroll often had a problem or maintenance session and if that happened, we would lost all of our archives, so in the end we would not be able to see what has happened yesterday or few days ago.

I thought it would be easier to set up for a mailing list, but after i created the list, not many people like to join. It's a bit complex situation here

Do you have a suggestion on a website that offer similar service like Chatroll which is free?

Google Motion Become Reality

While Google is trying to make some fun by introducing Google Motion at April Fool Day few days ago, these interesting features are implemented seriously by people from a group of post-doc students at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies (represented by Evan A. Suma) by using Microsoft Kinect sensors and their own version of motion detection algorithm called SLOOW (Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving) and Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST)

Below is the video which is uploaded on YouTube to demonstrate how it works:

FireBug Caused Slow Performance

If you ever think that your Firefox is getting slower and slower, you might need to see Firefox's effort to improve performance by measuring add-ons on their gallery. They have published the list of add-ons which adds more load to Firefox's load time.

Quite shocking, Firebug adds 75% of the load time in Firefox 4, so your system will get slower when you enable FireBug. As you probably know, FireBug is one of the best add-on for Firefor for web developers besides Web Developer developed by Chris Pederick. But in the other hand, it also makes your Firefox becomes slower since it tried to load so many things in the background for debugging purposes.

If you are not a developer, then i guess you don't have to install this, even though you will miss a lot of goodies inside FireBug. Everything always has a trade-offs.

Change Management

I have been working on my private project and lately, there has been a lot of changes which happened unexpectedly thus requires changes, both major and minor. I'm getting used with it and guess what? It's now part of my daily life to see all changes.

In fact, our life is full of changes, even for ourselves. We changed, you changed, everybody is changing all the time. Good becomes evil and vice versa. It's just part of our daily life, so bear with changes and all you have to do is to face the changes and make the project happen

Now i realize how important a change management is

Passed The Test

Last month i was sent by my office to took a training in Jakarta about goverment procurement procedures. I have to say that i had no confidence about it since i'm not familiar with it and it got nothing to do with my basic skills. I wonder what makes me to be sent to this training

Anyway, i went to the training with two of my colleagues for three days and took the exam on the last day. Honestly, i didn't have any target at all at the day i finished the test, because in my opinion, the questions was so ambiguous. You can have a lot of perceptions about it, so i was kinda worried that i might failed.

One month passed and today, the results was announced. I was surprised to see my names was listed on the announcements, since only those who passed the exams are listed on it. One of my colleague pass the test also, but the other one failed to pass. We have 58 passed out of 79, which i think is quite good percentage compared to other places who held the similar test.

I was so relieved to hear that i passed the test. The certification lasted for four years, so i don't have to take those test again in the next four years

PS: This is not an April Fool posting