Moved!

Posted on October 29, 2007
Filed Under Sidenotes, Internet, Multimedia, Wordpress, Daily Notes, Software | Leave a Comment

Okay, life must go on, right? So with the spirit of Sumpah Pemuda and the recent festive of Pesta Blogger 2007. I officially announce that:

I have moved my blog here!

It’s just around the corner, not very far away.

The reason? Well you can say that I’m getting bored with Wordpress and I want to try something new. But trust me, I won’t move it anywhere else in the future, I will use patvandiest.com as my main blog, always. I promise you that!

So please… please update your bookmark, I will forever graceful if you do that. But if you are reading my blog through my Feedburner account, worry not, I will automatically update the link. That goes to my other social networking related link.

I won’t delete this blog, though. I will keep it as past archives of my writings.

So, sorry for this inconvinience. I hope you don’t mind. See you at my other room.

Sincerely Yours,

Patrick Gerard van Diest
www.patvandiest.com

Right-Click Refresh

Posted on October 1, 2007
Filed Under Daily Notes, Software | 1 Comment

Went to Robby’s house last night. It was my first time there. I ask him to turn on his PC, since I want to copy one of his music collections. The funny thing was after it went to the desktop screen Robby goes to this ritual that some (or many) of us subconsciously do while waiting to do something. It’s the Right-Click and Refresh ritual.

Yes, if you want to know the detail its click your right mouse button then when a drop-down button appears you chooses the “refresh” option (only in Windows system by the way).

What it is with this ritual I mean? Even I do this once in a while. Usually, we do this when we ready to do something on our desktop, but couldn’t determine what the chores are. The level of addiction to this practice is separate by the frequency of the click. Robby is deep into addiction, he can do this twice in one second. Boy, that was fast.

Tell me, do you like doing this funny activity too?

The New Yahoo Mail

Posted on August 29, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Daily Notes, Software | Leave a Comment

Last Monday the news of Yahoo cut off its “Beta” tag on its Mail features were coming in. Herewith Yahoo finally released their crash-test dynamic web apps that were introduced back in September 2006.

I haven’t been using my Yahoo Mail account for ages now. Ever since Gmail came to town, the ever-so-static Yahoo Mail weren’t appealing no more. Yesterday I give it a go once again. Okay, much have change in its new interface, kudos to Yahoo for that. It seems the dynamic of AJAX has enclosed the entire page to make Yahoo Mail looks shiny and much more interactive.

Yahoo Mail interface

The first thing that comes up was the “Outlook-Style” panel in the Mail interface. The interface was consisting of three parts the left part, the reading pane in the middle, and the not-so-important banner ads pane in the right side. This is the thing that irritates me so much. That huge banner ad spends ¼ parts of the pages that’s located at the right side. I mean this is too much, you can’t expect a lightweight AJAX web-based e-mail when you had that big banner. Why can’t they put a couple of related ads there like what Gmail did?

One of the much talk about features on this version of Yahoo Mail was the text-messaging service. So basically now you can send a text-message to your friend’s cell phone right from Mail. Unfortunately I can’t try this nifty features since it’s only applied on certain countries such as U.S, India, Philippines and Canada. I’m not sure when it can be use globally.

The integrated RSS reader that they provided (can be accessed by clicking the “All RSS Feeds” link) weren’t good enough. You can choose feeds that you want to subscribe by browsing their Editor’s Pick and Recommendation. But I’m having difficulty to add an RSS feeds of my own since it’s seems that they only gave a search field for finding a certain sites. And they don’t provide categorization on their RSS Feeds either. So it wasn’t good enough feature.

The integrated instant messaging feature combined their famous Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Mail. It’s a bold move, but I’m happy with this idea, since I’m rather sick with the stand-alone application of Yahoo Messenger and have turn to solutions like Pidgin or the web-based Meebo.

These IM features were rather concealed. You have to click the “Contacts” link; from there, it will show your contact list. To start chatting, you have to change your Status (located at the upper left of the page) to “Available”. Then you must click the yellow avatar on the contact that you want to chat with. This process is rather daunting for a newbie. The interface are similar than the real Yahoo Messenger but the feature are basic. Don’t expect many features of YM to show up there. So I think this integrated IM is handy when you want to chat to someone straight away from e-mail. But don’t use for day-to-day activities.

All in all, though all those nifty AJAX feature will certainly makes Yahoo Mail back in web-based mail business, the performance are still lack of that in Gmail. I personally still believe in Gmail and its interface is the right gun for me. No Yahoo, your “Unlimited Storage for e-mails” weren’t convincing enough to make me switch back yet. You got to give me something more special than that.

But worry not, Yahoo. You’re still the number one web-based e-mail service that is use in Indonesia. Right, people? :)

Safari on Windows: A Rather Brief Review

Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Wordpress, Software | Leave a Comment

I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time now. Yes, I’ve missed the Safari going Windows hype. I’ve only try this Safari for Windows about two months now. Though the first month I literally neglected it, since it’s just crash randomly on my PC. Last week after they announced another update for the browser, which promises “better stability”, I decided to try it again (yet still in beta).

Okay I had a love at first sight moment to it’s font anti-aliasing feature. I only found this kind of rendering on Mac system. So looking at the beauty on PC is such a joy. But other than that, shame on you Safari.

They claimed that they are faster than on handling JavaScript, but other says different thing. The sudden random crashes were less, but still happen occasionally. Oh yeah, they don’t provide session restoring. So when your Safari crashes when you open five or so of your important webpage, don’t expect it to comeback when you start another instance.

Faster page loading? Yes, if you compare it to Opera. But with Firefox, I don’t see any difference. Back to JavaScript function, I find it very buggy on different websites. Some AJAX features on some website were not working at all, prove for that: JavaScript drop-down menus were off limit.

The proxy setting options is strangely disabled. So it follows the proxy from the Internet Option setting on Control Panel (which clearly set from the Internet Explorer setting)

Well you can read a full-blown review of Safari 3 here. For me the problems are irritating and I won’t use it for a day-to-day production browser yet. Now I use it for reading feeds and blogs since I love the anti-aliasing rendering. Other than that, though I expect a lot from this browser, it’s just not quite ready yet.

PS: Been trying to use Safari for my wordpress wysiwyg editor to write this post but stuck since it doesn’t provide any necessary (important!) text editing button. It just disappear magicly on Safari. Oh well, back to ScribeFire for now

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!

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.

Google Gears

Posted on May 31, 2007
Filed Under Internet, Daily Notes, Software | 2 Comments

I’ve been using Google Reader for reading feeds in these past few months. Formerly I’ve used Feed Demon. The reason that I switch from a stand-alone to web based feed reader was simple I want a simple access to my feeds anywhere I want.

However, one of the weak sides of using a web-based feed reader is in its performance. Relatively speaking. Google Reader would probably excel for those who happen to have a reliable, fast or steady internet connection. In here (read: Indonesia) where Internet connections are still expensive and unreliable, Google Reader usage were not so comfortable yet. But I can live with it, somehow.

This morning when I opened the Reader, I notice a new link at the upper right corner of the homepage. It’s Google Gears, the application that enables user to read feed offline. Without any hesitation, I install it.

Google Gears provided one installation file that requires the closing of all browser windows. Yet the installation failed with this message popping up:

Then what they say was true:

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

Store and serve application resources locally

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

This is an early release of Google Gears (BETA). After installation, please pay attention to the warning dialogs and grant access only to websites that you trust.

Does anyone have the same problem as I am?

That Time When Ubuntu was Number Two

Posted on May 28, 2007
Filed Under Linux, Daily Notes, Software | Leave a Comment

My ass would probably be kick because of this by some Ubuntu zealots. Fine, I only want to write what I think without any bias. Yes, I used Ubuntu for some time. Nevertheless, I’m not a blind fanatic with it.

One of the interesting news on this past month is when Ubuntu declared not the number one distro in Distrowatch’s Page Hit Ranking.

Ubuntu, the over hype distro of all-time getting ass kicked by PCLinuxOS. So what? Sometimes we had to understand how it felt to be number two. How it felt down there…

But what is this has to do with us, I ask? Nothing! Nada! None! Would you change your lovely distro if it drop rank in Distrowatch? You wouldn’t, right? Therefore, this fact is somewhat meaningless. This kind of things happens and in my opinion, this means nothing at all.

Yet there were people who uphold Ubuntu with every breath they take. I felt sorry for them. Ah… the great religion war, you sure know what to expect…

Okay that was that. For now, Ubuntu has return back to its throne to be number one in Distrowatch. Don’t know what will happen in the upcoming days or months, well just wait and see…

In the meantime, let me go back to my Etch…. (wtf?)

keep looking »