A classic dilemma of a currupted country

I am working on a "high tech" controlling system for transportation system in Indonesia, yet the government doesn't seem like interested to invest as much as the research required. The main reason is extra cost on maintenance and/or operation. To increase the ticket fare is not solution in this case, seeing that most of people who uses the public transportation is common people with little food and home. So here we go, facing a dilemma. On one side, implementing the system guarantees the safety on traveling, but on the other side, who cares about safety when stomach cries for food?

One way to rise the economy of a country is to use more technologies, but to do that, they need a healthy community. It's not too difficult to get a family healthy, but the question is how to get hunderd of thousand of families healthy. Thus each of family tries with their own "power" to get a better life by do rights and (some/most of them) wrongs. If only the ticket fare was paid each time a passenger uses the service, and if only half of the money of the paid ticket didn't serve private needs of individual, i think it would already solve more than half of the problem.

Will Indonesia be able to take the step?

Indonesian Blog

For my 3-month internship in Jakarta, we have created an extra blog called hari-ini. Hari-ini means today in Indonesian. In that blog you can also find some pictures about all around us. Maybe i can give back the good impression on Indonesian after all bad news that you hear outside the country.

Rusty, the labrador with 69.8kg

Poor Rusty (or lucky?). He got fed too much by 2 UK brothers, which now were found guilty under court process. Look at him saying: "No more food, can't take it anymore". I wonder why dogs can not say no to food. Most of them will just eat and eat and eat.

iPhone

It's finally there. No comments. Watch TV, read news, it's everywhere.

A short shot

Funny how time flies. I was looking forward to this 1 week off from work and now only couple days left before work starts again. It's a good sign. A sign that i enjoy life. But why does life is so short when i am enjoying it and so long when i am in deep shit?

A dilema that everyone has. Stuck on it or work it out. I am learning.

Text processing service from google

Very nice. I am on the stage of writing report about my internship while i am still doing it. A couple of time i wrote part of the my paper at work and at the end of the day i have to send it over to home in case i want to work more on it. The problem is if i forget to send it over like it happened a couple of time, i stuck the whole weekend without it. It's a risk, but Google Docs&Spreadsheet is my answer.

Google Docs&Spreadsheet offers possiblity to publish your work on internet or collaborate it with someone else. The text processing service has basic editing functions, but if you know html good enough the code is editable. Spelling check function is very useful. The spreadsheet has basic math functions. Practical.

Again another good example of AJAX.

Thanks giving

Yesterday was thanks giving party in our apartment. Nothing special. All went like always. Very calm with a lot of eating, talking and laughing. We played board game and a free style game from Gregory. This year however, is not so merry as previous years. Celebrated it with only few good left friends of Mindy. It has been my 4th thanks giving ever and would probably carry on the culture even without Mindy :-)

Happy thanks giving everyone!!

Weekend activity

Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt's

Righto, bei stern.de findet ihr Anfrage über eure Kenntnisse von Bier. Ich denke einige von euch wird es interessant findet. Von 12 Fragen hatte ich die hälfte (50%) richtig erraten. Nicht schlecht für eine Frau, nicht war ;)? Also wer kann mich überholt?

My blogging personality

I've been wanting to blog this for a while. It's just hard to find a little weeny of time lately.

I am not sure if i am really that kind of blogger that's stated below, but my inputs are 100% correct. Why don't you guys try it and reply on my comment field. It might be fun to know your blogging personality too.

My Blogging Type Is the Private Performer

Your blog is your stage - with your visitors your adoring fans. At least, that's how you write with your witty one liners. And while you like attention, you value your privacy. You're likely to have an anonymous blog - or turn off comments.

What's Your Blogging Personality?

Blaugh

How to Overcome Writer's Blog?

Where's The Secret Of Life?

Internet As An Application Software

Things like this that keep me overwhelm from the invention of website technology. It's amazing what internet offers you from day by day. Stuff like flickr, del.ic.ious, digg and of course blogs are still a very astonishing concept to me. Nowdays, based on web 2.0 philosophy and AJAX-powered social software, it's possible to have a reliable web based application products, such as:

1. calendarhub - online calendar,
2. basecamp - project management and team collaboration,
3. writely - web based word processing and
4. voo2do - advance task and priority management

would prevent users from purchasing expensive, annoying, non-opensource words product from microsoft. Honestly, you should walk through the 4 links i put above and live to see what internet has to offer.

A website that attracks my attention at a moment is scrapblog. I found it very cool. You could just drag and drop pictures to a arbitrarily position, change background and create different decorations for your picture album. Take a quick tour and get experienced. You can also view scrapblog from somebody else over here. Let me know if you guys uploaded pictures on scrabblog, maybe you will win the contest that they have now and then. Well scrapblog uses makromedia instead of AJAX, but it works perfectly fine on IE.

Headset Free VoIP

Attention! for those who are having long distance relationship here comes the good news: Jajah presents a free calling service between landlines. This works for some countries only but some big ones such as Germany, France, England, America, Australia and more. Special features about this VoIP service are no installations needed and headset free. It works through your normal telephone set. However, freecall is only possible under some circumstances (of course, who doesn't see it coming). More about it can be read here.

VoIP service has a huge market to break if and only if someone could get right. Funnily enough, no one gets it right. There's always a hassle to always be infront of the computer, installing and plugging stuffs. Too much trouble for some people. Another thing is the calling rates are not cheaper than any calling cards or from somekind cheap providers like the one from http://www.billiger-telefonieren.de. I am very exciting to see what improvement comes next from the VoIP world.

Playboy slaps Indonesian's government on face

Following my previous entry on friendster.com about pornography in Indonesia how Indonesian's government tries to rule nudity by preventing womanfolk from wearing a certain outfit and would actually punish them by put them in jail or put charge of an imposible amount of money, i would like to introduce Playboy Indonesia.

Good news is, i don't think the rules are going to be implemented extreemly like they wanted to. Not sure how far they would go, but this issue is still under consideration. I argued strongly in my high school mailing list and as a result, those who in favour of this bullshit were the "boys" (boys will be boys). They say the rule is for women sake, but to me it's more like to protect men from getting excited by women.

The original idea came from a "playboy" religious singer, who by accident sitting in the parliament. Yes, he's a religious singger with alot of stories him cheating his wife. Roma Irama saw this Inul girl dancing hotly on a stage and got excited. The next day, Inul got exposed and phornography regulation launched.

Well here's another thing. Playboy magazine just opened up in Indonesia. What a perfect timing? I personaly 100% approve it, for the sake of rebel against pornography as Criminal Code. 2 Indonesian's models posing for Playboy have been arrested und the magazine is facing trial. This is what happen when government tries to educate morality, when they them self isn't educated. The following article: Legislators & Police Back Playboy Indonesia’s Asinine Critics is a good reading material. Written in a non-bias way. Not like mine.

David Hasselhoff new music video

I am suppose to be working hard for my coming exam, but instead i wrote 3 posts today. This one is necessary, can't help it, i just have to blog it. You won't believe this german old time superstar staring "Night Rider" - a car superhero-like tv serie and "Baywatch" - the most popular tv serie with half naked sexy woman runing, brought out now new music video.

I've never been his fans nor following his career progress, yet i know he was crap on singing before he was famous from acting. Not sure either if the song is new. Doubt it somehow. It's very oldie. Now you are currious, aren't you? check this out: Jump in My Car.

ps.: don't forget to turn on sound on you computer and hopefully, you have a good internet connection.

Lord of The Ring Orgy

You know the way they said LoTH is gay, check out this video. Extreemly funny, especialy for those who had been joking LoTH. Notice that the only different made was the voice. Enjoy.

The fled of Potter from NY

The woman who gives us Quiddich, Dementor and "The one who can not be named" has written partly of the last serie of Harry Potter. J.K.Rowling had a special treatment to pass the security staff at NY airport to travel back to London. She refused to be parted from her one and only copy manuscript. The article can be found here: Pre-Flight Potter Power

Me as HP "maniac" had goose bumps when i read that she had last HP partly written. On one side, i don't want it to end, but on the other side, i'm not sure it's gonna stay interesting if it goes on and on. Harry is now in his 7th grade and decided not to join Hogwarts after Dumbledore's death and intended not to go back to the Dursleys.

Two characters are issued to die in the last HP. I hope it's Lord Voldemort. Maybe that's what make me interested to HP, because J.K. Rowling dares to let important characters die. I couldn't believe when she let Sirius Black dies and stun when Dumbledore dies.

Can't wait to read the last HP. May she take her time to contribute the best of her work. I don't wanna read any crap and for that i am willing to wait longer.

Little hints from apple world

Days passed, months flew, it's time for new entry. A lot of things happened lately. Got to travel a lot on the weekends, started my internship for about a month now and exams every now and then. My life has been treating me well. I've got nothing to complain apart from the fact that i am still a poor f***ing student. You know low budget, hardwork. But i guess i have got to enjoy it.

Luckily (or not?) i don't have to take part on apple battery exchange program this year. I've done it last year tho, but i thought it would be nice to get new battery every year. On the other side, i know that nothing is wrong with my battery.

I read something about Apple improved iPots. Steve Job who used to against iPot-Video is now crazy on improving it. Here are some of the improvements that i found interesting:
1. Battery life time extended from 4 hours to 6.5 - nice.
2. Instant searching - very nice.
3. Games - alright.
4. Lowered the price to $249 for 30GB - Yeah sure, still too expensive for me.

Another update from apple is iTunes. It has now that album cover feature that would flip like one of those old-time giant cd player machine. That way, you see what comes next and what are after. To read the full story, check out this website: Live from the Steve Jobs keynote its showtime.

iTV (coded name) is out next year. With this slim piece of hardware you can hook up your TV with iTunes and play dvds you just bought through iTunes. Well i guess, you'll need a pretty decent TV to be able to hook iTV.

Binary clock

As stupid as it is, it is still something i need to post. Yeah who would bother to watch binary clock? it took me quite sometime to figure out the real time. I found this on google personalised start site and found it interesting.

So this is how you look at it. The last 2 columns are second, the next 2 are minutes and the first 2 are hours. Second (sec.) column is switching oftenly up-down, 1-0. The right side of sec. column goes from 0-9 in binary and the left side goes from 0-6 in binary. In other word, as soon as the right side of sec. column reaches 9 in binary, the left side adds its current number in binary or goes back to 0. The same concept applies on the minute and hour, which are respectively dependent on sec. and minute.

On this case the time above shows: 16:13:05.

Friendster awarded patent on social networking

Yep, how nice. Congratulation Friendster.com. On this site, i've been blogging the world for the last year. Originaly it's a community website. The blog feature just existed not too long ago (considered the existency of web 2.0). The full article can be read in techcrunch.com