Slightly Injured

Posted on June 26, 2007
Filed Under Bicycle, Movies, Daily Notes | Leave a Comment

I twist my left arm the other day. This is the part of me where I should remember to back down a little bit. I have not crash or had a bicycle bails before this happened. My guts were way up high before then. I guess now I should think twice before trying something rather insane in the future

This is how it happened. Last Saturday, I went cycling to the forest of UI with the guys at the office. At one stop, I had to try a steep slope that I thought was jumpable. Me and my overly guts wins that time, but the experience had to stop me. I fell hard on the ground.

It’s been three days now and I think I have recovered from it little by little. However, that was a hilarious yet important experience for me because you wouldn’t know how sharp a knife is without having cut from it first, would you?

Moreover, this injury makes me realize that sometimes we forgot important things in us until we lose it. I’m right-handed, but I value my left arm now more than ever. We need something or someone to support our main things, I need my left arm to support my right arm, as do Batman needs Robin to fight crimes (this was quoted from the time where Tim Drake becomes the new Robin), even Jerry needs Dorothy to complete him (Jerry Maguire, 1996)

Aah, here I am with my oh-so-philosophical times…. screw it…I’m tired, I need to crash home and get some sleep. It has been a hectic day…

PS: You can check Dodi’s blog for more of that UI experience.

Wordpress Permalink Pagination Problem

Posted on June 18, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Wordpress, Daily Notes | 3 Comments

Had a problem with the Wordpress engine of this blog. Yesterday, I notice that Google Webmaster’s tools report a number of “Page Not Found” errors on my site. After a quick look, I found out that this error related to the malfunction of the Permalink features of Wordpress. It seems that Wordpress would present you a 404 error when you want to navigate through another page in the category archive. The pagination doesn’t seem to work.

I’ve done my research to find a solution, The Codex gave some information on how to deal the bug, but it’s not working. So I try other methods, nope… not quite fixed, I even try to hack the code, but failed, because it differs from the Wordpress version that I used. Furthermore, I have try to deactivate all of the plugins just to find out in the end that it has no effect whatsoever. The problem still persist. Ah well, I’m tired…need to sleep now.

So, anyone had the same problem as I did? and did you find any solutions for it? Please do share it here…

Monitoring Your Bandwidth Usage

Posted on June 17, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Daily Notes, Software | 10 Comments

Speedy, those words brings pros and cons to the people of Indonesia nowadays. They were the pioneer of relatively cheap ADSL connection in Indonesia courtesy of Indonesia’s biggest telco company, Telkom. In the country where Internet were synonyms to slow and expensive, Speedy arise as a savior for the needs to connect to the Internet for some.

Speedy has two service methods that they provide. Quota based and Time based. In quota based, you’re giving the choice to pick a service based by bandwidth quota. In time based, you will be charged based by the time you spend using Speedy (much like a dial-up based ISP’s).

But it has its downside. Some Speedy user reports that Telkom deceived them with its Speedy bills. The problem was the lack of transparency Speedy provides regarding the details of bandwidth consumption that the user use (particularly for quota-based users).

I myself use the so-called Personal Package where I can use one gigabyte of bandwidth every months. They charge Rp 500/MB of over quota bandwidth.

I share this connection with my old man downstairs. Though he hardly ever use it, still I’m a bit comfortable by the reports. So I occasionally use a bandwidth monitoring tools to keep an eye of the bandwidth that I use every time I connected.

In Linux, using Gnome, we can monitor our bandwidth consumption anytime using the Network Tools. Just go to System -> Administration -> Network Tools. In the Network Device drop-down menu, choose the appropriate interface that you use in connecting to the ADSL router (e.g., mine using the network card “eth0” Ethernet Interface).

The information that you must pay attention is the “Interface Statistic”. Add the number from “Transmitted bytes” and “Received bytes” and you will have the amount of bandwidth that you use in a particular connection.

Well this is a rough method that I use as a precaution from bandwidth over-quota. I believe there are more graceful and simple method that we can use. Any suggestions are very welcome!

Hi! I’m a Movable Type Newbie…

Posted on June 14, 2007
Filed Under Linux, Daily Notes | Leave a Comment

These past few days I spent time learning about Movable Type (MT), that newly open-sourced blogging framework based on Perl. The plan is to use it for one of my blog project. I’ve heard about the tricky installation of MT beforehand that made disconcert to some. But that’s the fun of learning, right? You do the hard stuff so you can learn something from it. So that’s exactly what I usually do and this goes to MT as well.

First, I install it on my local home box and quite frankly, it was not so difficult after all. I only had to do some usual stuff like changing database name in its configuration file. Better yet, you can do it via a wizard file (mt-wizard.cgi). Though different from Wordpress, MT is heavily base on Perl and you have to put the executable on the cgi-bin directory.

After playing it around on my homebox, I then try it on the live server yesterday. Right after the upload and database setting process has finished something peculiar happens. The process stuck on one of the installation page. That’s just great, another headache. I found a similar solution by googling. However, I still had the error after I implement it. Okay, after a couple of tries finally I found the answer. As stupidly as it may seem, I haven’t upload some of the files and directories to the appropriate place in the server. Doh! So that’s why…

Then the installation went smoothly, but since it was working hours, I have to stop for a moment. Am planning to tinker with it much more tonight. Will keep posted about this MT thing in future post.

From Jakarta Bersepeda to StarDict

Posted on June 13, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Bicycle, Daily Notes, Software | 1 Comment

Here’s a couple of things that happens in this past three days of my life:

The part where I enter The Matrix

Finally, after buying a 20 meter network cable, my home box (deathstar) has officially connected to the cyberspace(cyberspace?? wasn’t this a mid-nineties term). By stretching the cable and plug it to the ADSL router on my father’s room, I have manage to browse the internet using my newly Etch (Yes, I now use Etch and No, I haven’t got the time to blog about the switch,yet. Sorry…).

The part where I went to see the old Jakarta

I participated in the “Jakarta Bersepeda” fun bike event, an event where all of bicycle enthusiast can partake in a touring around some of the landmark of Jakarta. By taking the route from Monas – Medan Merdeka – Harmoni – Gajah Mada – Glodok – Balai Kota and vice versa, all of the cyclist were enjoying the experience (based from what I see and I experience myself), if you want a more complete report of the venue, please visit Dody’s blog. Personally it was okay, though it was so clear that the event had an implicit “sponsor” message in it. Knowing that in a couple of weeks there will be an governor election in Jakarta, and somehow “incidentally” one of the candidates were present and opening the event that day. LOL

The part where I found a good dictionary

The truth is I’m not very good in English. I learn English via movies, books and sitcoms (don’t ask, a long story). Yes, some formal education were there, but mostly I learn from experience. That’s why sometimes I needed a dictionary to help me find an appropriate word that I need. After googling for awhile I found out about StarDict. This GTK 2.0 based application is suitable for finding the right words swiftly. It’s a lightweight program. One thing though, this application does not include dictionary database. But not to worry, StarDict provides it for user to download in their website. There are many dictionaries available there, even an Indonesian – English dictionary. StarDict is very helpful indeed.

Ocean’s Thirteen

Posted on June 10, 2007
Filed Under Movies | Leave a Comment

Ocean’s thirteen, the third installment of a professional con men saga. I always love this series. If I had children I want them to be as smart as Danny Ocean. He is the best thief in the world. This Ocean’s trilogy shows us you don’t need blood and violence to get cash (lot’s of cash), you only need your brain (and someone who will invest to your operation too)

Ocean’s Thirteen sets right after Ocean’s Twelve left off. The guys are back to Vegas to settled the score to a powerful hotel owner who hurt one of them (Reuben). They cast are all there (except of course, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones, I don’t know why they refuse to play in this).

If you’re following the series you’ll notice that in this movie, the team’s understand each other like they have the same mind or some sort. They’re more professional with what they do. The methods are more firm and the executions were flawless.Face it, these guys do the best when it comes to con jobs.

Overall, this is a nice movie for all of you who like genius storyline. The jokes are still there, but I don’t know, the plot are kinda “been there seen that”. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the same stuffs in the previous two movies. Because sometimes I kinda knew what would happen next in some of the scene. It lack of creativity, lack of surprise factor. But it’s Danny, everybody loves Danny Ocean and his gang. They play it clean. This time they play it for revenge but in a special kind of way, because like the tagline says “revenge is a funny thing”.

image via About

“New Music From Indonesia” Podcast

Posted on June 6, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Multimedia, Music, Daily Notes | Leave a Comment

Equinox DMD is a company that distributes full track digital music downloads to the iTunes Music Stores. They emphasize on indie or less mainstream Indonesian music. They’re one of the pioneers of Indonesian first podcast with their "New Music From Indonesia" show (sponsored by Djarum).

The podcast consist of interviews with various people in our music industry (especially the independent ones) about various things regarding to the Indonesia’s music scene. The host, Jason Tedjasukmana has done great job on discussing topics that are very interesting. You can subscribe to that podcast free in iTunes Music Stores

from the beginning; CHIP has built a relationship to distribute the weekly podcast via its CHIP DVD. They even managed to do a live podcast last year on Indocomtech 2006. This is one of the means of CHIP to introduce and promote podcast technology to Indonesian people.

This is a good thing for us. It shows the world that Indonesian artists were as good (or sometimes even better) than their foreign compatriots. We now have the medium to promote our music to the world. Kudos to Equinox DMD for doing a great job.

PS: This post related to the old idea of mine to build a music blog consists of interesting artist that I listened. I am currently lining up the pieces for that blog. So stay tune for updates regarding the blog.

The Lost…

Posted on June 4, 2007
Filed Under Movies, Daily Notes | 1 Comment

I have three TV series that I love the most, one is Heroes the most popular TV series these days. Next is Prison Break, I just love Michael Scofield and his master plan on escaping. And the last one is the now forgotten Lost.

A couple of months before Heroes shock your TV scene, Lost was the big thing. Now it seems that people were somewhat bored with it and with all the Heroes hype cloaking up our TV, Lost looks like… kind of lost.

But not for me, Lost still had it; I love their hangovers and twisted storylines. Last weekend I stayed up late to watch the third season right where I left it a couple of weeks ago, from episode 10 going through the season finale. Now, haven’t you all seen it? So much mysteries have resolved, yet Lost has not finished. I wonder what will come next season since many things has resolved in the end of last episode? Okay let’s keep that question asides for some time until the next season arrive (February 2008 to be exact).

Jimmy resigned as of last Thursday. It’s shocking news for me. Jimmy is one my dearest friend here in CHIP. He is one my mentor here. We did great things together. I ask his guidance if I had technical trouble and I had certain belief that he would help me. I never wrong. You would always help me, Jim.

But I respect his decision. You have to be rational with life. I know Jim, that working in here is paradise, but sometimes paradise isn’t enough. Well, maybe for you, but for me it still is enough, yet…

We lost one of our dear colleagues. Life will never be the same again here in CHIP without you Jim, something just missing. Nevertheless, we will learn to deal with it.

Then so long my dear friend. However, this is not goodbye. You will always come here now and then, and the “business” of ours would always continue. But, I will miss your morning noodles, your FC Barcelona and the morning and late noon lovely music. Thank you for all the memories….

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