a computer geek's blog

Game of Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 09:47:00 +0000

It has been a while since I wrote my last post and losing my internet connection (followed by losing the enthusiasm of writing). Anyway, here I am trying to write something again and it's going to be something fun, yups: it is about a game, to be precise: games.

A friend of mine posted this video about a game called: Crayon Physics Deluxe. I took a peek on it, and fell in love at the first sight. Crayon Physics Deluxe is a puzzle game where we have to solve a problem (mostly to guide a ball to a star) using physics rules, kind of remind me of the old-nice Incredible Machine which I played a long time ago. However, the difference (and the most interesting part) is that Crayon Physics Deluxe allows the user to create objects freely using a "pen" and transforms them into world objects which automatically follow the physics rule. Take a look at this cool video on their website:

It looks like a very nice game, but I'm not a type of guy who's willing to buy something just because it looks nice :) I tried to get more information and trial version of the game which eventually leads me into an another game called Zany Doodle, which luckily offers a trial version of the game. I tried the game and enjoyed it very much even though I only use a normal mouse instead of a touchscreen (which I believe will increase the game experience heavily). Moreover, I found out that the Crayon Physics Deluxe is actually originated from the free game Crayon Physics which is developed by the same person. However, the free Crayon Physics is nowhere as good as its paid counterpart, not even better than the free trial of Zany Doodle since it cannot create objects like a triangle or just a random line.

Should I say anything more? Just download the Crayon Physics here and the free trial of Zany Doodle here. Enjoy!

Scour - A Social Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:59:00 +0000

Scour (currently in beta) is another web 2.0 hype tagged as "social search engine" intended to give user more authority to determine results from searching process. Scour aggregates result from Google, Yahoo, and MSN and combine them with the votes from users to decide the order of the results. Besides voting, Scour also allows users to leave comments for every search results. Sounds like another Digg? Another worth mentioning feature from Scour is the reward system. Users will get a certain number of points for every search or another contribution they make (voting, commenting, inviting friends). After several thousand of points, users are able to convert them into a visa gift card. While this pay-per-search idea is nothing new, I wonder if the social part of Scour will able to keep them surviving in the next few years given the fact that they will probably have to compete with Google (Google is developing their search engine with a similar idea to Scour, I bet without the reward system).

I have tried Scour for around three days now, and I'm sure they want to improve on several things (it's a beta anyway). Currently the results are limited to 3 pages no matter what keyword I use to do the searching. The search results are also lack of highlighting (updated: not anymore!). They have also included a browser-integrated search bar, which is good for me since I want to try it without having to change the way I use Google. However, every time I click on a search result a frame appeared in the bottom of the page which allowed the users to give vote or comment on the result (this frame didn't appear when I tried to open the search result on a new tab instead of clicking it). This might be a good way to encourage users to participate in the voting/commenting activities, but I found it a little bit annoying. Hopefully they will find a better way to do it.

Family Tree Builder

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:44:00 +0000

1. I have a big family which keeps on expanding
2. I live far away from most of them
3. I have terrible memory (being old and things like that... you know)

Those are my top three arguments why I sometime (or often) forget about things related to my family. Some examples: the date of my parent's marriage, my brother in law's birthday, or even the name of my one year old cousin. Now I'd like to say goodbye for all those fake arguments by introducing a geeky way to keep all family-related information in a sophisticated way: Family Tree Builder.

Family Tree Builder is a genealogy software (for Windows only) which can be downloaded for free at http://www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder. I like this software a lot, especially since it offers some nice features such as: integration with myheritage.com (allows me to share and let others review the information on the web, though without capability of multi-user editing), photograph for every family member (and events), event reminder (birthday, marriage, etc), and also possibility to input unsure information for date (i.e. birthday around January 1982).

Blogger Wish List

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Amanda celebrates Blogger Buster's birthday by arranging a nice competition to suggest some new features for Blogger. As a Blogger user myself, I couldn't careless about it, especially since it comes with a really nice incentive ;) Okay, so here are my thoughts about new features that should be implemented:

1. Give option to show only snippet of posts with "read more" button

...or using the Blogger term: "Show excerpts of my posts, with links to the full text". This is the most important feature that I think should be implemented ASAP by the Blogger team (other than in-post comment, which already introduced in Blogger Beta). This feature will allow me to show more posts in the front page and let the reader to pick the one he/she interested in instead having to scroll all the way to the bottom page and check for previous posts.

2. More variety of widgets

I realize that some really useful widgets are missing in the Blogger, especially "Top Commentators" and "Top Posts". Top Commentators should display the most active commenters in the whole blog along with a link to their blog (as an incentive for supporting the blog by actively commenting it). Top Posts could be based on number of comments, traffics, or (even better) by popularity of the post decided by several criterias such as comments, traffics, number of links, digg, technorati, etc. Another widgets that I could think of are "Recent Posts" and "Recent Comments" (It is possible but with limit of 5 entries only). Emm... am I asking too much here? :D

3. Possibility to create additional pages

I would love to have a special page for author, links, and archives. Yes, it is possible by applying some sort of hacks but still I prefer to have it as a explicit feature.

4. Shows "possible related posts" by category or content

One of the best way to keep the reader stay in our blog after finished reading a post is by offering them to read another related articles. It is very nice if related posts are shown in relation with the content but related posts by category is also good enough for me.

You can also suggest a new feature directly to the Blogger team here. I'm waiting for the good news! ;)

The Limit of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:46:00 +0000

I always crazy about sci-fi futuristic movies. Humanoid robots, machines vs men (with the help of Arnold) wars, or robots taking over the whole earth and keeping men as batteries. Simply love them. Most of those movies introduced the existence of highly-intelligent machines. Sometimes they are shown as having a human-level intelligent, in other case they are even better. Well now the question is: is it even possible? To what extent the development of so called Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be?

Back in 1960 something, experts predicted that in 20 years machine would be capable of doing everything human capable of, which is often called as "Strong AI". With respect for those AI experts, we are now in 2008 and it's not even close. Strong AI is proven to be much more difficult and complicated to achieve. This misprediction has caused AI experts being addressed as a “liar”, and consequently being forced to changes the direction of AI research from “Strong AI” into a more short-term, specific domain of problem, which is called "Applied AI" or "Weak AI". However, the dream of “human level AI” will never cease, and debate about it is always interesting to follow.

There has been a great discussion about whether human level AI is likely to be achieved by a mere symbol processing like what most weak AI commonly use. By applying a huge collection of formal rules and in addition, scaling up processing capabilities and storage capacity, and there we are. This opinion is greatly opposed by some experts. As current system lacks of something that is called “understanding”, “minds”, “conscience”, or other things which is related to mental states. The argument based on the idea that there is something more than just behavior to call a machine have an intelligent comparable to human. For example, let say that a machine capable of translating English to French. Even if the machine did it correctly, it is arguably incorrect to say that the machine actually “understand” English (or French).

But who need minds anyway? Intelligent is all about behavior, and it alone is enough. To see it from a different perspective, I (and my ignorance) have a trouble to imagine what “minds” and “conscience” are. Are they just some terms used to express something unexplainable? Or perhaps it just simply does not exists from the very beginning?

I have a nice discussion with one of my friend about this matter, and his view is somewhat different from what I expect, but nevertheless very fascinating to be followed. His first thought is that, even if human are capable of doing it, creating a machine with human level intelligent is unnecessary. Life is difficult enough, why would you like to increase the competition among human by introducing some humanoids? Other thing he expressed is that there is no way human will be able to do such a thing. An inventor would not be able to invent anything equal or beyond itself, as human is not God.

p.s: I am not an AI researcher nor expert in this field. Just someone who has an interest in it.

Internet Time Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:45:00 +0000

Remember my post about Google and Yahoo From The Old Time? You didn't think that I made those screen capture from long time ago, did you? Well, in fact I didn't. Going back in time is surely not possible, at least not for now. Luckily, a website called Internet Archive WayBack Machine allows us to blast to the past and surfing through the Internet in the past. The idea is simple, it crawls web pages and puts them into archive. Obviously, it's not possible to archive every single web site running out there, but their attempt is quite incredible. Up until now, they claimed to have around 85 billion web pages archived from 1996.

You could access the WayBack Machine directly from the website or use the button for browser by drag-and-drop this link: Wayback to your browser toolbar. Enjoy the past.

New Blog Name and Domain

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:23:00 +0000

Today is quite a day for me and my blog. I decided to change my blog name from a programmer's thought into a computer geek's blog. The reason is because the old name is not so relevant with the content of my blog. Thus, instead of focusing in programming-related post, I can freely put anything as long as it has something to do with computer *wink*.
The domain is also changed. I used to use a subdomain from blogger habsq.blogspot.com, but then a friend of mine (yes, even a computer geek has friends) told me that it is better to use a domain of my own. Finding the right name for my blog is quite painful experience. Most of the name I thought has already been registered, especially because I prefer to have a .com or .net extension which sounds much cooler than those with .us or .info for example ;) Ultimately I decided to use the name www.geekyblogger.com which doesn't sound too bad, don't you think so? I used NameCheap to register and it's quite cheap since I used a promotion code “ROSEMONTH” (thanks to Qiqinofa). So, please be nice to me and update your bookmark will you?

I will keep my hosting in blogger until I decide that I really need my own hosting for this blog. For now, enjoy my blog!

Modifying Google Translation Button to Open Translation in New Tab/Window

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:38:00 +0000

The translation button from Google has proved to be very useful in most situation (by me), especially since the language detection was introduced. However, I feel that there is something lacking. The problem is that the translation generated replaces the current active window/tab while sometimes I prefer to have another window/tab open. The translation button itself is a JavaScript, so we can play with is just a little bit. Here is the original code for translation button (I use the code for translation into English):

javascript:
var t = ((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection()) || (document.getSelection&&document.getSelection()) || (document.selection&&document.selection.createRange && document.selection.createRange().text));
var e = (document.charset || document.characterSet);
if (t!='') {location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text=' + t + '&hl = en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e;} else {location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate?u=' + escape(location.href) + '&hl = en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e;};

In order to make the translation to be opened in a new window/tab, we just have to make a bit change in it:


javascript:
var t = ((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection()) || (document.getSelection&&document.getSelection()) || (document.selection&&document.selection.createRange && document.selection.createRange().text));
var e = (document.charset||document.characterSet);
if (t!='') {var myWindow=window.open('http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text=' + t + '&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e,'Translation','')} else
{var myWindow=window.open('http://translate.google.com/translate?u=' + escape(location.href) + '&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e,'Translation','')};

If you hate this kind of stuff, just drag and drop the link below to your browser toolbar:
Translate to English

I hope this is useful. Please let me know if you have a better idea. Obviously, any questions are welcome.

edited: thanks for the suggestion

ScribeFire: A Must Have Firefox Addon for Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:43:00 +0000

For the last two years I blog with mostly the same procedure. Open a word processor, write my article, find/create related pictures/videos, collect all required references, login to my blog account, copy-paste my article, format my article, upload/link images/videos, and publish it. Every blog-writing-cycle requires an enormous browsing, tab-switching, and some boring stuffs.

I finally change the way I blog after two years of blogging, and its all thanks to ScribeFire. ScribeFire is an addon for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser (which just reach the third version, in case you don't know) that let us to enhance our blogging experience. ScribeFire integrates the blogging capabilities with the browser. Posting, editing, and categorizing posts in your blog could be done much faster than usual.

Some reasons why I really love ScribeFire are:
1. I don't need to login or open any web site just to start posting
2. ScribeFire split my browser display which allows me to write and read website in parallel
3. Copying links or pictures is as easy as drag and drop
4. Works on multiple blogs
5. Compatible with many blog services, including blogger and wordpress
6. Creating links to my other posts (which I did a lot) is very easy and fast
7. Compatible with Firefox 3 ;)

So, are you a blogger? If yes, don't miss this great stuff!

Wireless Sensor Network and Intelligent Transportation System

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:17:00 +0000

This is the third article related to Intelligent Transportation System. You can see the first and second article first if you like to.

It is widely known that knowing the position and speed of the vehicles on the road network in real-time is one of the major challenges that vehicle control and traffic management applications are facing [2]. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is considered as a potential technology that might be useful as an infrastructure component of an ITS since it received significant attention in the last decade and successful research put them in the forefront to answer this challenge [2].

A wireless sensor network is a collection of nodes organized into a cooperative network. Each node consists of processing capability (one or more microcontrollers, CPUs or DSP chips), may contain multiple types of memory (program, data and flash memories), have a RF transceiver (usually with a single omni-directional antenna), have a power source (e.g., batteries, solar cells), and accommodate various sensors and actuators. The nodes communicate wirelessly and often self-organize after being deployed in an ad hoc fashion [1]. It is an infrastructure comprised of sensing(measuring), computing, and communication elements that gives the user the ability to instrument, observe, and react to events and phenomena in specified environment. The environment can be the physical world, or a biological system [3].

Currently, wireless sensor networks are beginning to be deployed at an accelerated pace. It is not unreasonable to expect that in 10-15 years that the world will be covered with wireless sensor networks with access to them via the Internet. This can be considered as the Internet becoming a physical network. This new technology is exciting with unlimited potential for numerous application areas including environmental, medical, military, transportation, entertainment, crisis management, homeland defense, and smart spaces [1].

Some typical applications of Wireless Sensor Network are tracking, monitoring, and controlling. In a typical application, a WSN is scattered in a region where it is meant to collect data through its sensor nodes. Existing and potential applications of sensor networks include, among others, military sensing, physical security, air traffic control, traffic surveillance, video surveillance, industrial and manufacturing automation, process control, inventory management, distributed robotics, weather sensing, environment monitoring, national border monitoring, and building and structures monitoring [3].

Key Technology

The basic functionalities for WSN depends on the application, which in this case is ITS. There are several type of sensor parameters, including: physical measurements, chemical and biological measurements, and event measurements. In ITS, the most important features are the vehicle states, which includes position, speed, direction. Other possibility of feature is classification, for example: is a vehicle in traffic a car, a truck, or a bus? Some possible sensors for ITS includes magnetoresistive, light, pressure, and video (visible or infrared).

As for the transmission part, there are several wireless transmission technologies available. WSN can use some wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wireless LAN, WiMax, and 3G. The requirements of communication are related to the implementation of ITS. Some properties that have to be put into considerations are: range of communication, data throughput, and power consumption. In term of range, 3G covers the longest range, continue by WiMax, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth and Zigbee. Theoretically all those technologies are useful for ITS, however it is all depend on the topology and implementation of the system.

ITS typically does not involved a high data rate communication, however if the system requires a responsive, real-time communication then using ZigBee is arguably not very suitable since it data rates is as low as 20 kbps. However, it is designed to run several years on a single set of batteries [3]. Bluetooth offers approximately 1 to 3 Mbps and Wireless LAN have a maximum data transmission rate of 54 Mbps, but none of them as energy-efficient as ZigBee.

Each sensor node needs an operating system which capable of controlling hardware, provides hardware abstraction, and fill in the gap between application and hardware. TinyOS is one of the de facto standards of operating system designed specifically for WSN. It component library includes network protocols, distributed services, sensor drivers, and data acquisition tools. TinyOS’s event-driven execution model enables fine-grained power management, yet allows the scheduling flexibility made necessary by the unpredictable nature of wireless communication and physical world interfaces [3]. Some of its advantages are [3]:

It requires very little code and a small amount of data
Events are propagated quickly and the rate of posting a task and switching the corresponding context is very high
It enjoys efficient modularity

[1] California PATH. Vehicle Platooning and Automated Highways.
[2] J. Sijs, Z. Papp, P.P.J. van den Bosch. Vehicle Motion-State-Estimation Using Distributed Sensing. 2007
[3] Kazem Sohraby, Daniel Minoli. Wireless Sensor Network. 2007

Firefox 3, Download it Tomorrow!

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Mozilla announces that Firefox 3 will be available on Tuesday, 17 June 2008. Since Mozilla aims for record-breaking, we can help them by downloading Firefox 3, tomorrow... yes tomorrow! Don't forget it! ;D

related post:

Spread Firefox | Download day 2008 (external link)

Google and Yahoo From The Old Time

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:52:00 +0000

Ever wonder how Google and Yahoo looks like years ago?

Here they are:

Google (1999)

Yahoo (1997)
Notice that Google has removed the "!" while Yahoo still keeps it. It also quite funny to see how Google feels that it is necessary to explain "Why use Google" :)

Creating Thumbnails from a Video

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:15:00 +0000

Usually when you want to share a video, people often ask for screenshots. Sometimes it is better to give several small thumbnails rather than just one big screenshot. This simple tutorial will tell you how to do such thing with ease.

First, you will need the Media Player Classic (MPC). It is a free software that you can get from sourceforge. If you are using Windows XP then you just have to download it here.

Now you already have the MPC, follow these instruction:

Extract the zip file and run the mplayer.exe
Open the video you'd like to use as a source
Click on File -> Save Thumbnails

On the dialogue box, specify your output filename and type (jpg or bmp). You can also specify the number of thumbnails you want to make by setting the number of rows and colums. You can also specify the witdh of the output file.
Press Save and leave everything else to MPC
Now you have your thumbnails

Important note:

If you get the error message "Get Current Image Failed, hr = 8000ffff", do this following:

Click View -> Options
Open Playback -> Output

Change the DirectShow Video from Overlay Mixer to anything else (I have tried VMR7 windowed and VMR9 renderless and it's work perfectly)
Click OK
Restart your MPC

Why Linux? Why Not?

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:37:00 +0000

The Linux Operating System (or should I say GNU/Linux) obviously has become a quite popular alternative to Windows. This site describes 24 advantages of using Linux compared to Windows in a quite eye catching fashion. While some minor point such as "get a great music player" or "keep an eye on the weather" might not be absolutely true, however I mostly agree with most of the description. The information provided is clear, pretty objective (it even mentions some reason why you should stick to Windows), easy to understand, and (this is why I like it so much) simple-yet-deep-enough. Em, am I being contradictive?

captured from http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/

If the list is not long enough then I will suggest you to check another 101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows (even though so far it's only 54)... and NO, I'm not a fans of Linux or whatsoever. In fact, after read those articles (and some counter articles) I decide to install Linux on my computer today!

Automated Highway System (AHS)

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:43:00 +0000

One of the most exciting part of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is Automated Highway System (AHS). AHS is a way to reduce the congestion in highways. The idea is improving traffic flow and safeties by applying intelligent and automation in driving system. Autonomous control of driving tasks was considered to substantially improve the traffic flow.

The most interesting feature of AHS is a concept of group of vehicles arranged in a relatively small-fixed distance called “platoon”. Platooning is possible when every vehicle is equipped with intelligent and automation which allows smooth merging, lane changing and splitting maneuvers in a way that is advantageous to the highway performance.

platooning (taken from: www.its.go.jp)

Since platooning enables vehicles to operate much closer together than is possible under manual driving conditions, each lane can carry at least twice as much traffic as it can today. This should make it possible to greatly reduce highway congestion. Also, at close spacing aerodynamic drag is significantly reduced, which can lead to major reductions in fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. The high-performance vehicle control system also increases the safety of highway travel, reduces driving stress and tedium, and provides a very smooth ride [California PATH].

As mentioned above, an AHS requires every vehicle to be both intelligent and to some extent, automatic. This is where the Intelligent Vehicle (IV) takes its role in AHS.

IV is considered as a new technology for obtaining a more efficient driver-vehicle operation. It is meant to improve safety, operational efficiency, and convenience while driving. An IV system senses the environment around the vehicle by using sensors and strives to achieve more efficient vehicle operation by assisting the driver or by taking full control of the vehicle. Obviously, the ideal system for AHS is where the IV has fully autonomous system. In other words, the systems should remove human intervention from the control and therefore take the entire control functionalities of vehicle operations.

Brainstorming: Designing an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:31:00 +0000

Growth in congestion, as well as the difficulties in constructing new infrastructures has lead into a research in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). The advances in sensing technologies, computer hardware and software, etc are also become additional motivation in this field of research. Automatic Highway System (AHS) is one of the most interesting topic. Its main idea: platooning is believed to be able to improve highway throughput without having to ignore the safety but instead improving it.

It is widely known that knowing the position and speed of the vehicles on the road network in real-time is one of the major challenges that vehicle control and traffic management applications are facing. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is considered as a potential technology that might be useful as an infrastructure component of an ITS since it received significant attention in the last decade and successful research put them in the forefront to answer this challenge. WSN itself is an exciting technology with unlimited potential for numerous application, including tracking, monitoring, and controlling.

A distributed paradigm is the most suited approach to implements an ITS. While it is naturally distributed (spatially) and consisted of various components, which may range from several to thousands number of components (scalability issue), it is also relatively complex. Not to mention that by distribute the implementation accordingly, a certain level of reliability could be achieved more easily. Dynamic components in ITS are implemented as agents. Instead of rely heavily in modeling the process, agent-oriented paradigm offers a higher abstraction compared to the object-oriented paradigm. Agent is an autonomous entity that behaves according to its perception of the environment and its knowledge. In most cases, one agent is not enough to form the expected system. Therefore, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) is required.

Since there is no formal method to test a distributed system, the only way to do it is by using a simulation. An engine that capable of simulating any dynamic behaviors is required. Using multi-agent approach as it concept, a researches is allowed to decomposed a big system into intelligent entities with specified behaviors. In a traffic system problem domain, some entities could be considered as agents: car, driver, traffic controller, etc depending on the modelers themselves.

The simulation of an ITS system might not be complete without the introduction of human behaviors. However, human behaviors may vary for each individual or culture. Investigating the difference in culture might be interesting not only in describing the human part of the system but also to parameterize some characteristics of controllers.

Setting up an FTP Server Behind NAT (Network Address Translation)

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:34:00 +0000

Before starting, I assume that you have enough knowledge about FTP, active and passive mode in FTP, and NAT (Network Address Translation).

My home LAN (Local Area Connection) is consisted of several computers connected to The Internet via a router with a single IP Address, therefore obviously NAT is required. With NAT, there are two types of IP Address, local and global address(es). The computers in my network use local addresses which are only recognized inside my network. On the other hand, the router uses both address, so that it is possible to reach the router from local network or from the internet. I want to use one of my computer as an FTP server that can be accessed from outside my local network. The problem is that with only local address, the computer I used for FTP server couldn't be accessed from outside the local network.

In active mode, client is the one responsible in opening ports for data transmission. However, in passive mode (which is more popular), this responsibility is taken care by server. This is a similar problem from the previous one. The ports which are opened by the server are only available for those in the local network since it is using a local address.

Solution: Port Forwarding

In order to make the local FTP server available for anyone connected to the internet, a port forwarding must be applied to the router. For active mode, you just simply add port 21 (the default port for FTP) and forward it to the FTP server address. For passive mode, the same thing also have to be applied. In addition, several other ports are also need to be opened for data transmission.

Example:
I'm using the very common router (LinkSys WRT54GL) with local address 192.168.1.1. I want to open the port 21 and another ports from 60000-60050 for data transmission (this is actually up to you, pick anything above 1024). Open the router's interface from browser: http://192.168.1.1. Open the Application & Gaming -> Port Range Forward and fill in as follow (192.168.1.100 is my FTP Server's local address).

FTP Server Application

Another important thing that you need to do when using passive mode is setting up the FTP Server application itself. I think most of the FTP server application supports the usage of FTP server behind NAT. I'm going to use the free FileZilla FTP server as an example. In order to make the FTP Server works, you need to let it know about its global address. If you have a fixed address then you just have to tell the application about it, otherwise you will need another tool to retrieve the global address such as the one provided by FileZilla: http://ip.filezilla-project.org/ip.php.

To set up the FileZilla FTP server, open the Edit -> Settings menu and choose "Passive mode settings". If you have a fixed IP address (like in my example is 202.169.1.1), fill in the "Use the following IP" field, otherwise (or if you're not sure), just tick the "Retrieve external IP address from" and fill it with "http://ip.filezilla-project.org/ip.php". Tick both "Don't use external IP for local connections" and "Use custom port range". Fill the port range with the same range that you have filled in the router settings.

Echochrome: Not Just Another Game

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:32:00 +0000

Even though I'm not a real gamer, I still like to follow the development in the game world. From what I see in the recent years, the development of games is a bit stagnant. It's true that in matter of graphics we have been experiencing an incredible improvement. However, the types of game doesn't vary as much as I expected. A death in creativity?

If you also have a similar opinion, then you might be interested to know this game: Echochrome (Mugen Kairou). It is a game developed by SONY for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3. Echochrome is a puzzle game involving a figure traversing a rotatable world where physics and reality are affected by perspective. What seems to be a impossible path is made possible by rotating the camera to the right angle. A hole will not have any effect when you cover it with another object.

This game based on OLE Coordinate System developed (an engine that determines what is occuring based on the camera's perspective) by Jun Fujiki. This engine made it possible to constraints movement not only by 3D coordinates but also by the position of camera as well.

Take a look at the trailer below and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do :)

Computer Technology, Now and Twenty Years Ago

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:50:00 +0000

With or without us realizing, the technology has been improving significantly over the past 20 years. One of the most significant changes can be spotted in the improvement of computer technology. Computer nowadays has better performance, smaller size, and bigger capacity. On top of that, the improvements of computer technology make it possible to lower the cost of computers. All of those lead to many unimaginable capabilities of computer.

Before 1980, the idea of “computer for everyone” was considered as a very unlikely, if not an absurd idea. However, keep in mind that most of the advanced technology we have today started from a mere dream. It was IBM who made it possible by introducing the first computer intended for home usage, called “IBM PC (Personal Computer)” in the early 1980s. It is true that before IBM, several companies had already attempted to release a personal computer, but none of them shared the similar popularity as IBM PC. Since that time, the computer technology started to grow immensely.

In 1987, Intel introduced the first 32-bit processor 80386 which is the third generation of processor. During the next 20 years, the development of processor has been quite outstanding and nowadays we are quite familiar with the multi-core processor known as the 8th generation of processor. To practically compare the third generation processor and the 8th generation processor is virtually impossible, however, it is still possible to compare those two using a measurement of performance in MIPS (Million Instruction per Second) scale. The 80386 processor had the processing capability of 8.5 MIPS while the high-end processor introduced in 2006, Intel Core 2 Extreme is working at 57,063 MIPS, which is 6713 times faster. It is not even necessary to mention that there exists a prototype called “Intel Polaris” capable on working in 1,800,000 MIPS just to show that there is significant improvement in processor’s performance.

The capacity of computer has also been increasing rapidly. In approximately 20 years, hard drives (common non-volatile storages for computers) has evolved from a fifty two-foot diameter disks holding only five MB (5,000,000 bytes) of data to today’s drives at the size of 3.5 inches wide capable of storing one TB (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) or more. Moreover, the development of “flash memory” made it possible to have an even smaller device with decent storage capability. The smallest flash memory available commercially called microSD is only at 15mm x 11mm x 0.7mm, or about the size of a fingernail. Despite its physical size, it can store up to 8GB of data (around 1600 MP3 or 13 movies in VCD’s format!).

The most popular Operating System (OS) in the world, Microsoft Windows had only started in 1985. The first two unsuccessful versions of Windows were nowhere near the Windows we know today. They were barely called Operating System because they were merely extensions to the console-based MS-DOS and inherit the latter’s flaws and problems. The later version of Windows called the Microsoft Windows 3.0 scored a significant success. It was capable of running multi-task applications thanks to its new memory management. Another significant improvement was its user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface), making it possible for the PC users to enjoy better interface that previously only be enjoyed by the more exclusive Apple Macintosh users. The latest version of Microsoft Windows is called Vista that was released in 2006 as a replacement for Microsoft Windows XP. However, despite many new exciting features introduced in Vista, many people still reluctant to upgrade their system.

Computer technology may have changed a lot, however, the same thing may not necessarily true for human. Since 20 years ago, some programmers have been keeping on developing a certain useless and troublesome programs called computer virus. It is a program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. If anything different about developing virus 20 years ago and now, then it should be the motives. "The most significant change has been the evolution of virus writing hobbyists into criminally operated gangs bent on financial gain" said F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen. Unfortunately, “This trend is showing no signs of stopping".

Google Translation Now With Language Detection

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:51:00 +0000

It is a bit surprising that only 3 days since I post about Creating a One-Click Web Page Translation Button, Google Translation now includes another cool feature: language detection. So, instead of picking source and destination language now you can just select the destination language and let Google decides the source language. You can update the translation button here. You might also notice that the number of supported languages has increased quite a lot. The number of possible translation also increased drastically from 31 pairs to more than 500 pairs!

Sharing Internet Connection using WiFi (Windows XP)

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:13:00 +0000

Here is the situation, you have two (or more) laptops (or PC) with WiFi capabilities. You don't have any router, switch, hub, or whatsoever. Just a single Internet port enough for one of your computer. Don't be worry, because you still can share the Internet connection by using ad-hoc network.

First, you need to pick one of those computers as a "server". Connect it to the Internet using the usual way. Next, open Control Panel>Network and Internet Connections>Network Connections. Open the Wireless Connection Properties. Change tab to Wireless Networks then click Add... button. Under the Association tab, input your Network Name as you like. Clear the The key is provided for me automatically check box and select the This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network check box. Fill in the Network Key along with the confirmation with a 13-digit password and then press OK. Press OK once again to close the dialog box. Now you have finished with the first computer.

For the other computer, check for available wireless network. Usually a notification balloon will pop up and you can just simply click on it or just go to the Network Connections, right click on the Wireless Network Connection and click on View Available Wireless Networks. Select your network, and click connect button on the lower right corner. Input the Network Key and press connect once again.

If the first computer is using a PPPoE connection to gain access to the Internet don't forget to allow other computers to use it. You can do it by accessing the Network Connections, then open the properties of the connection. Open Advanced tab, check the Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection and set the Home networking connection to Wireless Network Connection.

In my experience, this network is not very stable. Not really sure what is the cause, but still good enough for a temporary solution.

Free Softwares and Games

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:34:00 +0000

These website offers free softwares and games for (almost) everyday. The offer are just for one day, but they will offer something else in the next day. Pretty interesting to check.

Give away of the day

Game give away of the day

Creating a One-Click Web Page Translation Button

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:09:00 +0000

For someone like me who live in a foreign country with unfamiliar language, a translation tool is everyday necessity. My favorite tools for web translation so far are Google Translation and Altavista's Babelfish. However, I feel a little bit uncomfortable when using them in my usual way. It is because the process is too long and not straightforward.

Usually the sequence of web translation is like this:
1. Open a website with unfamiliar language
2. Copy the website's URL or the specified texts to be translated
3. Open web translator tool, paste the URL or the texts
4. Translate it

The sequence is not natural, what I really want to do are:
1. Open a website with unfamiliar language
2. Translate it (or select some texts and translate it)

I tried some extensions for my browser. Mostly the extensions are too sophisticated and complicated, while what I need is just a simple tool. After a bit of searching, I found that Google actually have the tool that I need, and it is very simple. Just go to here (I'm using English as my base language) and you will see this:

Drag the translation button you need to the browser's toolbar. Now you have the translation button. To use it, you just need to open a website and click the translation button, or select some texts before do so.

Portable Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:15:00 +0000

Are you working with several computers? Do you have some favorites application that is not available at your workstation? Do you have problem on installing your software because you don't have the priviledge to do it?

If you at least have one question answered yes, you probably will like portable applications. Portable Applications is just like another applications, except that they are... portable. It is designed to fit on your flash disk, iPod, external drive, or whatever. It involves no installation at all, no set-ups, no registry changes, and no whatsoever. Imagine all your favorite software in a single flash disk, you can pick any PC to work with, and still you have all the applications you need.

The applications are vary from Operating System to games, which virtually means that you have everything there. You can use Notepad++ for your editor, XAMPP for web developers, GIMP for image manipulation, FileZilla FTP Client, the amazing Mozilla Firefox, a complete OpenOffice suite, and many other things. You can check out the list of portable applications on wikipedia or on portable applications website, and yes, there's still a ton of applications that aren't on the list. You might want to check out the portable applications suite as well, a package that includes a set of commonly used applications.

Since Portable Applications are usually a modification from its conventional counterpart, it is only possible for applications in open source license. Commercial licenses in general won't permit any redistributions. Free applications with commercial license on the other hand permit redistributions, but not modifications. So most of the time you will find portable applications as a free, open source applications. Not bad at all.

Altough I'm not working with so many computers, I still found that portable applications are very useful. Its characteristics (not require any installation, leaving almost no "footprint") are remind me of a old-good days of the famous Disk Operating System (DOS). No installation required, and even if there is, most of the time it is just the same as copying a bunch of files to harddrive and that's all. Even uninstalling is just a simply files removal. No traces left. A clean and simple solution. Just love it.

Image taken from: http://portableapps.com/
Inspired by: http://brahmasta.net/2007/03/14/aplikasi-portabel/ (Indonesian)

Google Analytics, a Tool for Bloggers and Webmasters

noreply@blogger.com (Ismail Habib) — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:53:00 +0000

At my early days of blogging, I had a doubt whether there are some people over there actually read my blog. Thus, if that is the case, how did they know about my blog, where are they come from, and what did they read? I think this is quite common questions for blogger or webmaster.

Google Analytics answers all of those and even some more unthinkable questions. It provides a nice package of web analytics including:

number of visitors and pageviews
bounce rate
average time spend on your site
percentage of new visitor
location of visitor
source of your traffic
detailed information about content
keyword used to reach your site
and many many many more

It wrapped nicely by google with a simple but nice interface (considering the number of features you get) and on top of that it is absolutely free! Are you using adwords? Then this tools also might come in handy, even though I don't know exactly how it works since I don't use adwords (yet). You can even customize your own goals in your blog/website. I believe those features will fit really nicely for a blogger/webmaster who really want to improve their website, or for people like me who enjoy playing around with statistics of my own website ;) Hey, I got a visitor from Moscow!

You can even put more than one website into this webmaster tools, as long as you really own them of course :) Google Analytics require us to put a tracking code into our blog/website (yea that is obvious).

If there is something lacking from Google Analytics then it must be because it updates the statistics on a daily fashion. For me, it is not that important to have a real-time statistics. However, a daily updates still seems too long. Let's just wait if Google is willing to give a higher update frequency. Meanwhile, it is still very useful and fun.

a computer geek's blog

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