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

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