Meeting Relatives

Today i went to my grandma's sisters to greet them (it's a Chinnesse tradition where younger people have to come to the older people and greet them. Most of them are done in the Chinnesse New Year Celebration, but it will be a good one if you do it regularly). At noon, we had a ceremony and then followed by a lunch together at home. At 4 PM, we went to the train station and got back to Jakarta. The train was 30 minutes delayed from the departure schedule, but it came to Jakarta faster than i expected, so it's even.

I better get some rest, since tommorrow, i will go to work again and do some regular activities, such as coding, reviewing, analysing, and bug tracking and fixing. This also ends my January blog entries.

First Time in Ci Walk

I began my journey to Bandung with the train at 9.30 AM and we got there at 1.30 PM (it's kindda late, since it was rainning, so sometimes the train has to reduce the speed in order to prevent a slip). We were picked up by a driver and he took us to my uncle's house and we had a lunch there. At 4 PM, i got my first experience hanging out in Ci Walk (Cihampelas Walk), it's a place where teenagers usually go there to hangout, watch a movies, shopping, or eating in some places. The place was quite nice, but not as big as a mall. It's like an Orchad in Singapore, of course smaller in size and price list. We had some talk there for some time while drinking juice and also some cold ice moccachino in Chinamoon (Please correct me if i did some typo on the name). After that, we got back to my uncle's house and had some chats with the other and then we picked up my other uncle in the train station and we drove to Sandy's place where we will spent our night there.

Driving in Jakarta

Today i had my second change to drive a car in Jakarta. I had to go to Pondok Indah Mall II to get some gifts for my auntie in Bandung which will have a ceremony in Tuesday for her new house. We will go to Bandung at Monday and we will be back at Tuesday (i know i will be tired, but at least i can have some fun there). So i drove to PIM and went shopping for about three hours with my sister and then we go to my place to get some clothes, since i had no preparation to leave to Bandung, since i didn't know that on Monday, we will have a day off (it was announced at 5 PM and i already packed everything and bought my laptop and also my clothes early in the mourning). We came back to my auntie's house at 9.30 because we had a traffic jam and i was kindda confused because i never drove in Jakarta at night before.

Hangout

Today i went to several mall around Jakarta with my sister and her friend, Dino. First, we went to Plaza Semanggi to play billiard in Gillian. I was totally outscored. It was normal, since he had a routine schedule to play with his friends twice a week, while i don't have one. Mostly i go to pool place at Saturday with Adi and Budi. After playing billiard, we went to Plaza Senayan to buy something for Dino's friend. I also bought a valentine card for my girlfriend. After taking Dino's friend back to his apartment, we went to Plaza Indonesia to play bowling for about two games in eX, a nice place to hangout where most teenagers came here at weekend. Next, we went to restaurant to have dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend. After having dinner, we split up, because Dino had to go to another place to play billiard again with his friends, and we went to my cousin's friend and we had some talk there and finally, i came back at 11.15 PM.

So for today, i have visited three new places that i have never been there before, Plaza Senayan, Plaza Indonesia (eX), and one sea food restaurant. It was one full day of hangout. Tomorrow is a chinnese new year celebration and also Markus will be leaving to Deutch for three months. I hope he had a wonderfull and safe trip until he arrives at the expected destination.

Gaim 2.0 Beta 2

Gaim has released another version towards their 2.0 version, Gaim 2.0 Beta 2. It this beta version, the user interface section has been upgraded and become smoother, though there aren't any major changes on the default window (as you can see in the screenshot). The status picker is now smaller than the one in the first Beta version and it's readable now.

One thing that makes it simple is that it can logged in with many accounts, for example, i can activate my MSN and Yahoo account both in one window, so i can see all of my friends just by using 1 application, Gaim. It will make my memory consumption smaller than before. You can see my screenshot of using 2 accounts simultaneously. In the upper section, it's my MSN's contact, while in the lower section, it's my YM's contact.

Gaim also enables us to set the privacy settings, which doesn't exist in the 1.5 version. We can start logging in invisible or available just as the default setting. It's great to know that the feature has been implemented.

One note, Gaim 2.0 Beta 2 hasn't include video nor voice support (from gaim-vv development), but it will be implemented in the Gaim 2.0 Final version (let's hope it will be). For now, just enjoy Gaim 2.0 Beta 2

Gidic

There is a new Indonesian project on the Sourceforge's project site, called Gidic. It's a simple offline English-Indonesian and Indonesian-English dictionary application. It's available for free and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It has already support for audio pronounciation, so it's suitable for those who wants to try to learn the pronounciation of Indonesian/English words.

It's almost the same as my project at my office, which also has some pronounciation features using TTS (Text to Speech) engine, but with different language (Deutch). I would like to give a big applause to I Wayan Suryadarma who made this application and i hope it will bring benefit to Indonesian and other people who want to learn Indonesian/English language. In the project website, it's noted that he needed some help to improve the application, which are categorized :
* Software Developers [new code, fixes, etc...]
* Editors [manuals, articles, dictionary editors]
* Artists [Icons, images, splash, voice record]

Anybody interested??

Blogger's Status

I just logged in to my Blogger account and there is a notification about a possibility of outtage in 25 of January. Then i saw a link to Blogger's status page where all the notifications about Blogger is written there. From there i saw another link which i haven't visited again for a long time (Blogger Known Issues). I saw that Blogger has been improved very well up to now and they have many major problem (mostly related with browser compatibility). I hope they will fix all of them and add some new facility, such as advanced search, undelete deleted comments, import from other blogging tools, etc. Go Go Go Blogger.....

Uploading Photos

Today i'm uploading my girlfriend's photos at her account at Friendster. She took them while she was at Singapore, Beach, and some other places. I also added a new URL for her account at friendster. It's simpler than having to remember her User ID. I hope i can finish all the process today, since she sent me some pictures and they are big in size.

Celebration Party

Manchester United finally can celebrate their winning match against Liverpool which ended with 1-0 victory due to Ferdinand's header in the end of the match (90'+1). The match was kindda borring at the first half, since MU was totally trapped by Liverpool's midfielder. Nistelrooy and Rooney couldn't even shoot a ball. It suddenly changed in the second half, where MU was starting to strike back and they started to attack Liverpool by substituting O' Shea with Saha.

They ended their 0-0 score at the end of the game, when Rooney was fouled and then Giggs take the free kick and deliver a great curve ball to the penalty area. That's the time when Ferdinand had a header on it and Reina couldn't keep it out of his net.
Three minutes later, the celebrations comes true. Manchester United have defeated Liverpool and their run.

Read the match report at ESPN

Super Sunday at Old Trafford

There will be a great super sunday match between Manchester United and Liverpool at Old Trafford. Both team have a different situation. MU was very inconsistent in the last 2 weeks, while Liverpool has won most of their last matches, but still no one can predict how the match will be, since football can't be predicted as simple as that. Sometimes, all the predictions can be wrong.

MU has lost some of it's player because of injuries, but still, they are big club and they want to make their fans happy, since they have lost 1-3 to Manchester City in their last derby match. This will be a good time to have a celebration party at Old Trafford

New PHP Packages

I recently found out that PHP has released an update to their packages, PHP 4.4.2 and PHP 5.1.2 which fixes some bugs and update some libraries. I just download it but i didn't bring my flash disk right now, so i'll just save it for today and i will copy it tommorrow. Let's hope this package fixes your problem (if you develop a web-based application)

Code Review

We had a code review today and i'm the author for this session and i got a lot of defect that should be fixed as soon as possible, while maintaining the bug as minimum level, since i have to rewrite most part of the code and now we have to deal with other module that should be finished today :(

Slow Connection

Today, the Internet connection is very very slow, even for local connection. I think there's a problem in the server, because we can't update the bug tracker located in our server. It took some time (or probably time out). Let's hope tommorrow will be better

Finding and Fixing Bugs

All i did today was finding and fixing bugs in three different modules. It was a lot easier, since we use BugTracker.NET to track which one is open/close bugs. Before we use this, we have to write each bugs found and we should finish it as soon as possible, since more bugs are coming in.

I have talked with the creator of BugTracker.net also about the features, and he replied it quickly. I have also added some new query to the application for my own need and now it's published, so everyone can use it.

It's Not Solved Yet

I tried to upgrade to the latest kernel available from Slackware's repository, 2.6.14.6, but still the problem occured. It always hangs up after starting the hotplug services. When i revert back to 2.6.13, everything goes fine and it will boot smoothly. It was strange, since i used the same gcc version, same /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file, and others, just a different kernel version. I suspect that the kernel itself is the trouble maker by not supportting one or more modules or the hotplug services. I need to add some modules to the /etc/hotplug/blacklist so it won't be loaded, but i don't have this kind of experience for now, so i'll start by investigating /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to find out what modules which might be the main problem.