Fajar Nurdiansyah

Quote of the Day: Satoru Iwata

2015-07-13T14:14:00+00:00

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”

### – Satoru Iwata

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Yapap

2015-04-26T22:34:00+00:00

Walini tea plantation, April 2015.

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Cosmic Queries: LightSail with Bill Nye

2015-04-23T08:30:00+00:00

Bill Nye on software:

Making the hardware is one thing, but it’s really, it’s the software. That’s what take people a long time to get it to really, actually, works.

You can get it to almost work right away, but almost work is a lot like not working.

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Harfat

2015-02-04T10:34:00+00:00

Harfat aka Harun Fatima peak, October 2014.

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Why are some people so good at persisting?

2015-01-07T08:30:00+00:00

Very nice story:

But in 1958, at the age of 48, this entrepreneur finally hit on an idea that eventually became a company worth 700 billion dollars on the Tokyo stock exchange.

Momofuku Ando invented instant ramen noodles. Ando’s story is an inspiring tale of perseverance. And yet, I know most people reading this discount the tale: Ando possesses a willpower most of us will never have. We might be a little inspired by Ando, but we can’t possibly imitate his perseverance.

But, I don’t think that’s true. Ando’s story goes much deeper than that.

Added the book to my whishlist

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Pak Ade

2014-12-29T12:34:00+00:00

Wakatobi, November 2013.

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Hermit Crab - Raja Ampat

2014-10-31T12:34:00+00:00

Harapan Jaya, Raja Ampat. October 2014.

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Wayag - Raja Ampat

2014-10-29T12:34:00+00:00

Wayag, Raja Ampat. January 2014.

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Sawa Island - Wakatobi

2014-04-15T12:34:00+00:00

Sawa Island, Wakatobi. November 2013.

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My current wallpaper

2013-09-25T12:34:00+00:00

This is what I currently use as my wallpaper

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Sumur Tiga, Another View

2013-08-20T12:28:00+00:00

Another view of Sumur Tiga beach. This time from the top. August 2013

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Sumur Tiga

2013-08-20T12:28:00+00:00

Sumur Tiga. August 2013

Sumur tiga is a sunrise facing beach in Weh Island. This picture was taken after sunset.

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Pasumpahan Island

2013-06-26T12:28:00+00:00

Pasumpahan Island. April 2013

Neighbor of Pagang Island, the water is almost green instead of blue. No coral in this side of the island.

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Pagang Island

2013-06-25T13:28:00+00:00

Pagang Island. April 2013

This is Pagang Island in Padang, West Sumatra. A tropical island with blue water, white sandy beach, and plenty of coconut trees is probably not what you have in mind when planning a vacation to Padang.

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Quote of the Day: John Siracusa

2013-06-18T13:35:00+00:00

“After a certain number of years, programming becomes much less about correctly instructing the computer and much more about clearly expressing your intent to the humans that will read the code later–including yourself in six months”

### – John Siracusa

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Tidung Island

2013-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

One fine morning in Tidung Island

Located 20 Kilometers of the coast of Jakarta, Tidung offers a clean beach with unspoiled nature just a few minutes away from the metropolitan city.

It literaly is a breath of fresh air, especially if you arrive after departing from Muara Angke.

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Quote of the Day: Kyle Clements

2013-05-07T15:17:00+00:00

“The best way to get to the truth is to post something that’s wrong on the internet, and hoards of people will come in and correct you”

### – Kyle Clements

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Iboih Inn Pier

2013-02-10T16:17:00+00:00

A panorama shot of the view at the Iboih Inn pier. Blue water, clear sky.

If you speak Indonesian, you should read my better half series on her blog about the place.

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Where the Water is Blue

2012-12-27T22:36:00+00:00

A very beautiful bay in Lombok. Forgot to ask the name of the place. November 2012.

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Freemantle

2012-11-06T08:26:00+00:00

Freemantle. May 2011

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XKCD: Click and Drag

2012-09-19T16:59:00+00:00

This is awesome! You can’t stop scrolling because there’s just too much stuff to uncover. Just how many hours of productivity are lost today because of this?

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Quote of the Day: Roger Cicala

2012-08-21T21:27:00+00:00

“But age and maturity do not always arrive at the same time”

### – Roger Cicala

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Happy Fence Friday

2012-07-20T20:32:00+00:00

Labuhan Lalang. July 2011

In flickr there is this group where people only post picture of fence. On friday.

You can find just about anything on flickr. I think that is one of the thing that made the internet loves them.

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Freemantle Railway Station

2012-07-16T20:53:00+00:00

Freemantle Railway Station. May 2011

Another perspective corrected photo. I’m not happy with the distortion at the left side of the image. You can clearly see that the clock is not round. But hey, for a photo that weren’t shot with a tilt-shift lens you can accept a little distortion right?

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An iPad Lover's Take on the Nexus 7

2012-07-16T20:18:00+00:00

MG Siegler over at his apple¹ column at Techcrunch:

Again, the fact remains that the Nexus 7 is a great device. Not a great device graded on some weird curve where we pretend that Apple products don’t exist — but a great device, period. The $199 price point is just icing on the cake.

You have to give credit to Siegler for posting a fair review for an Apple competitor product. And all this talk about Jelly Bean being almost as smooth as iOS make me want to grab one myself.

Seriously though, the post has an apple tag. ↩

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Vim Creep

2012-07-13T14:05:00+00:00

When you really care about your tools, you write a prose. This is one about a text editor.

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Perspective Control

2012-07-10T23:37:00+00:00

Wesley Church in Freemantle, Perth . May 2011

This is the same photo that I have previously posted here, but this time I learned how to correct perspective in Photoshop. I like that the building doesn’t looks like it’s about to fall over.

I might do another repost of this photo when I learned how to correct the flares. It is distracting.

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Top of the World

2012-07-09T13:19:00+00:00

My Friend Febry at the top of mount Batur. July 2011

This is the same photo that I posted previously, but this time I’ve learned how to do perspective control in Photoshop. So the building doesn’t looks like it’s about to fall to the back side.

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The Camera You Have With You

2012-07-01T22:07:00+00:00

Marco Arment will be using his DSLR more and iPhone less:

Because as fun as it is to share iPhone photos conveniently on Instagram, that can’t be my only photography: I also need some photos that won’t look like shit when I look back on them in the future.

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Everlasting Road

2012-06-04T20:45:00+00:00

Green Bowl Beach, Bali. May 2011

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Quote of the Day: Andy Cummings

2012-05-28T10:31:00+00:00

“An instrument without a musician is merely silence”

### – Andy Cummings

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Morning in Situ Gunung

2012-04-28T17:30:00+00:00

The morning light at Situ Gunung, Gede Pangrango National Park. April 2012

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PHP: A Fractal of Bad Design

2012-04-11T08:30:00+00:00

If you ever found yourself in a debate with someone about the merit of PHP, just refer them here.

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How Many Gallons of Gasoline Would It Take to Charge an iPhone?

2012-02-09T07:36:00+00:00

When asked why that’s the case, Bill Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president for Corporate Strategic Planning, often starts the discussion using this fact to put it in perspective:

“All of the energy concentrated in one gallon of gasoline is enough to charge an iPhone once a day for almost 20 years.”

And that is why ExxonMobil predict that by 2040, about 90 percent of the global transportation fleet will still be powered by liquid petroleum fuels – that is, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

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Quote of the Day: Mark Zuckerberg

2012-02-02T13:19:00+00:00

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

### – Mark Zuckerberg

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Why Are Software Development Task Estimations Regularly Off by a Factor of 2-3?

2012-01-30T22:39:00+00:00

Is it the developer’s fault? Is it a management issue? Bad methodology, or lack thereof? Or is it ingrained in the nature of the process?

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Quote of the Day: Inhae Renee Lee

2012-01-27T13:19:00+00:00

“Two small jumps are better than five giant leaps over three haystacks”

### – Inhae Renee Lee

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A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

2012-01-24T20:58:00+00:00

My favorite:

1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

And this:

1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall’s forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall’s monitor isn’t random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

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A Design Primer for Engineers

2012-01-18T07:55:00+00:00

Rands¹ on design:

But you keep hearing this word. More importantly, you hear the urgency behind the word. You hear that choosing to design a thing is an important thing to do and the person saying it is also important, so you nod vigorously while silently thinking, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about and I’m pretty sure neither do you.”

Not his real name actually. The real name is Michael Lopp. ↩

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The New Web Typhography

2012-01-13T14:41:00+00:00

From the company that brings you Kinect and Metro UI. They really got their design team sorted out.

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Annoying Twitter Bot Is Annoying

2012-01-11T15:59:00+00:00

People don’t like being wrong, and this bot really take advantage of that. The responses are hilarious.

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Morning in Muara Angke

2011-12-27T17:08:00+00:00

Muara Angke, Jakarta. December 2011

With the awful stench and miserable sky, it’s the exact opposite of the tropical beach you’d expect to find in Asia.

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Quote of the Day: Louis CK

2011-12-23T07:45:00+00:00

“I never viewed money as being ‘my money’ I always saw it as ‘The money’ It’s a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.”

### – Louis CK

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Quote of the Day: Dave Trott

2011-11-16T14:09:00+00:00

“Sometimes the best thing that can happen to you is not getting what you want”

### – Dave Trott

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Reader Redesign: Terrible Decision, or Worst Decision?

2011-11-02T16:15:00+00:00

Brian Shih:

When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer “stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading”? Congrats, here’s your prize:

The Google Reader team is taking a lot of heat for the new redesign, and you can’t really blame people for complaining. The new Reader really feels like designed by someone who’s doesn’t actually use the software.

While waiting for an updated version I use this stylesheet to make it usable:

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Quote of the Day: Lemony Snicket

2011-10-21T16:41:00+00:00

“People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter–it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices”

### – Lemony Snicket

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Signs That You're a Bad Programmer

2011-10-20T22:41:00+00:00

A note to myself: avoid doing stuff mentioned in this article.

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Quote of the Day: 0x12

2011-10-19T16:19:00+00:00

“The dividing line between stupid and brilliant is usually determined retrospectively”

### – 0x12

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Dropbox: The Inside Story of Tech Hottest Startup

2011-10-19T15:22:00+00:00

Nice insider story at forbes about Dropbox early days. Apparently Steve Jobs tried to acquire them before starting iCloud.

Also an interesting read is Drew Houston’s ycombinator application.

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This Old Dark Machine

2011-10-13T20:16:00+00:00

He said he’ll come back. October 2011

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Dart; or Why JavaScript Has Already Won

2011-10-13T11:51:00+00:00

Peter-Paul Koch:

JavaScript is already there. On a couple of billion devices.

I agree with him. But as they say, it’s essential to keep those people who know a thing can’t be done from bothering the people who are doing it.

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Program This

2011-10-11T13:55:00+00:00

When Call of Duty doesn’t seems that challenging anymore, or when you finished all those side quests in Assassin’s Creed, try this. It should keep your brain in great condition.

Program This is a site designed for the everyday code junkie who’s caught between great ideas. It is designed to feed off your boredom, and allow you to perfect your craft when you just can’t think of something to program.

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Quote of the Day: Ross Snyder

2011-10-05T14:46:00+00:00

“if you’re doing something ‘clever,’ you’re probably doing it wrong”

### – Ross Snyder

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Bitbucket Now Rocks Git

2011-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Git users now have the choice of using Github for public projects (a la Twitter) and Bitbucket for private projects (Google Plus). I think that is how most people are going to use it.

A big advantage for Bitbucket users is the ability to have unlimited private repositories for free. This means you can store every line of code you’ve ever written in one place without paying a cent.

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An Offering to the Heaven

2011-09-29T21:43:00+00:00

Canang sari offering at Blue Lagoon beach. June 2011.

This is called canang sari. If you ever visit Bali, you will find a lot of these. It’s an offering to the Gods, a way to say thank you, a prayer to the heaven.

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Pupuan's Terasering Subak

2011-09-26T19:56:00+00:00

Pupuan paddy field panorama, September 2011

A typical paddy field in Pupuan, Blimbing. In Bali, paddy field use a unique irigation system for terasering called Subak: > Subak is the name of water management (irrigation) system for paddy fields > on Bali island. For Balinese, irrigation is not simply providing water for > the plant’s roots, but water is used to construct a complex, pulsed > artificial ecosystem. Paddy fields in Bali were built around water > temples and the allocation of water is made by a priest.

Subak is more than just a way to get water to the rice in the field. It is a ritualized system and has been preserved from the late eight century.

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Chrome Updates is Working

2011-09-15T10:25:00+00:00

A screenshot of Kendo UI framework download page:

Notice how the Chrome browser just say Yes on the browser support, without any version number? That is the result of their break neck release pace.The users don’t talk about version number anymore. It’s irrelevant. And that is the direction Firefox is taking with their every six weeks Rapid Release.

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Quote Of The Day: Scott Adams

2011-09-14T18:45:00+00:00

“My philosophy is that losers have goals and winners have systems”

### – Scott Adams

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Wesley Church Freemantle

2011-09-14T18:31:00+00:00

Wesley Church Freemantle, May 2011

An old church in the old city of Freemantle, Perth.

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Quote Of The Day: Lance Ramoth

2011-09-13T18:17:00+00:00

“You are not an automaton, so don’t think you can work like one. Procrastinate and don’t feel bad about it…you’ll get things done.”

### – Lance Ramoth

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My Father's Camera

2011-09-09T18:31:00+00:00

Fujica MPF105X and X-Fujinon 55mm f/1.6

The battery is dead but the mechanical shutter still works. After a clean-up I’ll go buy a roll and play with it.

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Git Is Simpler Than You Think

2011-09-09T17:58:00+00:00

If you want to grok git, this piece by Nick Farina is very nice:

And because of Git’s explosive popularity, it’s a total Emperor-Has-No-Clothes situation. If you’re anything like me, you probably wondered why you were the only stupid person on the planet who didn’t intuitively get Git already. Even the beloved Github, though unaffiliated with Git, is much the same: as overwhelming as it is awesome.

Go read them at his blog. His great writing style make this post the most readable explanation of git I’ve read so far.

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Quote Of The Day: Steve Jobs

2011-08-27T15:24:00+00:00

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me”

### – Steve Jobs

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If You Have a Lens Hood, Use It

2011-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

In a moment of weakness, this photographer forgot the basics and left the lens hood unused. Mt. Batur, 2011.

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Quote Of The Day: Kyle Baxter

2011-08-15T18:20:00+00:00

“We can’t make superficial analysis of other people’s success and expect to have their success, too”

### – Kyle Baxter

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Death to the noreply Mailbox

2011-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Joss Crowcroft on the noreply mailbox practice:

Hey asshole, what if I want to reply? It astounds me that in 2011, startups and companies are sending out automated emails with noreply email addresses. It basically says to the recipient:

“I’m not interested in hearing from you by email, regardless of whether email is better or easier for you. I just don’t respect you enough to take the risk that a dozen people might reply and insult me.” […]

So I’ve given you my email address. I’ve given you the permission to contact me directly, via the medium I check more than anything (nasty habit, I know.) And this is how you repay me?

Maybe this make sense for big company like google. Their employee to user ratio just doesn’t scale. But I don’t understand why would a start up eliminate the chance to listen to their users.

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xkcd: Password Strength

2011-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Randal Munroe: > Through 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use > passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to > guess.

Perhaps we should stop using the term ‘password’ and start using ‘passphrase’

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Quote Of The Day: Ben Horowitz

2011-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

“Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly”

### – Ben Horowitz

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Quote Of The Day:Tom Preston-Werner

2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

“When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure’, not ‘wow, I sure felt safe’”

### – Tom Preston-Werner

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It Just Doesn't Work

2011-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Harry McCracken writing on Time’s Technologizer column:

The fact that companies can fix bugs by pushing out upgrades turns out to be a powerful temptation to ship incomplete products. (It’s a little like having a college professor who lets you change your answers on an exam after you turned it in.)

If only college professors were as nice as product managers at technology companies.

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Chile Goverment Hacking Their Economy By Importing Startup

2011-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chile goverment are importing startup to their countries, offering equity-free seed capital of USD$40,000. Free as in beer. They only ask that you move to Chile for 6 months, bootstrap your company there to inspire local business:

In exchange for investing in you and your idea, we need your help to:

Change the way local entrepreneurs perceive risk and reward, success and failure. With the objective of promoting long term and permanent change in the local environment, we want you to help stimulate and promote changes in the Chilean entrepreneurial culture by organizing local events, presentations, workshops, and classes in order to transfer your knowledge and global vision.

Increase the overall amount of business operating in Chile in order to positively impact job creation and overall economic growth. We believe the mechanism of Start-Up Chile is one of the best and most tangible vehicles that will drive Chile’s economic growth in the next decade, catapulting the nation into more advanced economic status, bringing access to better education, higher health care standards, and an overall better quality of life for its citizens

These are some really forward thinking on the goverment part, and looks like its working!

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In Praise of Captions

2011-07-28T17:45:45+00:00

Mike Johnston on photo caption:

Captions are how photographers become more than camera operators, how we are honest or deceptive, how we become thoughtful. If you’ve not been in the habit of captioning your pictures (or giving them descriptive titles), take a few minutes sometime and jot down the “stories” behind a handful of your own pictures. It might be an instructive exercise.

Captioning is the hardest part in my photo workflow.

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Shit Photojournalists Like: Camera Bags

2011-07-28T12:30:46+00:00

Ask any photojournalist about their bag(s), and their eyes will take on the far-off gleam of a parent describing the birth of their first child. Chances are the photoj in question will have one, two, or maybe even three bags to suit their needs. An outsider may be puzzled by the fiendish bag hoarder, but we know better. […]

Their names are so exciting that you can’t help but dream of them. The Speed Demon. The Slingshot. The Urban Disguise. With so many compartments and interchangeable partitions, they ooze pure sex appeal.

I’m not a photojournalist, but I think he’s talking about me. Guilty of owning three camera bags.

Also:

That awkward moment when you own one of those National Geographic bags and someone asks you if you work for them, to which you reply, “No”

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MS Camera Codec Pack: Free Alternative to FastPictureViewer Codec for Windows 7

2011-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

doc_prefix: mscameracodecpack

If you want to see the thumbnail of the RAW (NEF, CR2) files from your DSLR ¹, the only choice was to install FastPictureViewer codec.

They discontinued the free version of their RAW images codec but don’t worry, Microsoft step up to the plate and released their own codec pack. It support a whole bunch of cameras, unfortunately still no support for camera using the latest sony sensor: Sony a55, Nikon D7000, Pentax K-5.

Or open the file using any standard image viewer. ↩

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Sunrise in Batur

2011-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

The hunt for sunrise. Mount Batur summit, 2011.

The thing with sunrise is that they are nothing special. Afterall you can see them everywhere, everyday — unless you live in Greenland. It all just seems so normal.

Last week I went hiking to mount Batur and the sunrise was anything but normal. The way the sun peeks behind the clouds, with shining golden light clearing the mist down in the valley of kintamani, made me realize: sunrise is beautiful. Or is it Batur’s sunrise?

This picture was taken last week with my friends from Mitrais photography club (MTPC), after 3 hours hiking.

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Quote of the Day: If You Can't Afford Two

2011-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

“If you can’t afford to buy two of it, then you can’t afford it”

### — neoprene_guillotine

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Quote of the Day: Life is Too Short

2011-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

“Life is too short to remove the USB safely”

### — Anonymous

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Google Singleton Detector

2011-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

What was once an often-used design pattern is now being looked at as a less than desirable coding practice:

The problem with singletons is that they introduce global state into a program, allowing anyone to access them at anytime (ignoring scope). Even worse, singletons are one of the most overused design patterns today, meaning that many people introduce this possibly detrimental global state in instances where it isn’t even necessary. What’s wrong with singletons’ use of global state?

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The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

2011-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Lukas Mathis on capacitive buttons:

I think phones have capacitive buttons for the same reason laptops have reflective screens, and TVs in stores have their brightness and contrast turned all the way up. It looks really cool when you see it in a store, and you don’t notice how screwed up it really is until after you’ve already bought it.

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Kutuh Village Seaweed Farmer

2011-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

morning harvest at kutuh village

I Wayan Wirawan, has been a seaweed farmer for 10 years.

He used to harvest the seaweed in 50 days cycle, but with current weather harvest time has not been very predictable.

Weather swing is now normal in Bali. In a middle of a day with clear sky you can get rains coming out of nowhere.

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Project Eden

2011-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

css: published/style.css title: Project Eden doc_prefix: projecteden

There’s a new startup accelerator in Jakarta called Project Eden:

We are a pre seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. We are experienced technology and investment entrepreneurs with passion to support Indonesia local start-up ecosystem. Our start-up and support process accelerate the route from planning, beta, monetization plan to sustainable success.

We are completely transparent and totally committed to helping your startup succeed. To help you get there, we offer:

We match your current monthly salary on your previous job.
Worry no more on making your dream come true

You’re Still The Boss.
You get to keep majority equity. We take minority.

Complete Focus.
All the legal, finance and admin stuff is taken care of, so you can focus on your product.

Refine And Optimize.
We provide continuous advice for business, UX, marketing and brand through us or our partners.

Inspirational Community and Workshop.
We hold monthly un-conferences so everyone can share and learn.

Fund raising.
We will be responsible of matchmaking the love ingredient of your business objectives with our network of investors

Insightful mentors.
Startup will have access to network of our mentors and guess mentors from various field ranging from technical, design, UX, marketing, financial and distribution

Great news, but without knowing how much is this small equity they are asking, we can’t really know if this is a great deal. For comparison, ycombinator usually ask 2-10%. I guess we will found out after their first event in 9 July.

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Why is European broadband faster and cheaper?

2011-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

css: published/style.css title: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? doc_prefix: why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper

A nice article from engadget about why is European broadband faster and cheaper (emphasis mine):

Not government spending. The UK’s administration hasn’t invested a penny in broadband infrastructure, and most of the network in the Netherlands has been built with private capital. (The city government in Amsterdam took a minority stake in the fiber network there, but that’s an investment that will pay dividends if the network is profitable – and the private investors who own the majority share of the system plan to make sure that it will be.)

The game-changer in these two European countries has been government regulators who have forced more competition in the market for broadband.

I think our goverment have one a great job pushing the price of mobile call/text down. Time to do the same thing to internet connection.

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Why Can't Android Have A Smooth UI Animation?

2011-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

css: published/style.css title: Why android can’t have smooth UI animation doc_prefix: whycantandroidhavesmoothUI

Last week I had the unfortunate experience of trying out an iOS device. Unfortunate because it leaves a bad aftertaste knowing what I’m missing with my android phone. ¹ The thing is slick. Every animation is buttery smooth and the browsers doesn’t stutter at all when scrolling.

This isn’t the case on android smartphone. If you never try iOS, android animation will be passable, but try playing with an iPhone for a few minutes and it will totally ruin the experience of your perfectly good android. It is guilty of the greatest sin of animation: low framerates. A few minutes of googling revealed the main issue: Android doesn’t use GPU to draw UI to the screen. Instead, all this graphic heavy job is done by the CPU.

This is logged as issue 6914 in android official issue tracker. Last time I checked, 1732 people starred this issue and based on their feedback, even high end smartphone like Galaxy S2 with dual core processor suffer from “laggy and choppy UI”.

A member of android dev team, Romain Guy explained on the thread why android can’t have GPU accelerated animation in the UI and browser:

This is something we’ve investigated a couple of years ago already and that we revisit regularly. Of course we thought of using the GPU, but there are non-trivial issues on many Android devices (a G1-class device for instance supports only one OpenGL context at a time, which would prevent you from using any OpenGL based app like games or augmented reality apps.) In our past experiments we even found many cases in which using the GPU was slower than normal rendering.

New devices might allow us to overcome the past limitations that made GPU support a not-so-good solution.

The “choppiness” and “lagginess” you are mentioning are more often related to heavy garbage collection than drawing performance.

On Jan 26 Romain closed the issue and marked it as released for android 3.0. It still doesnt run perfectly smooth but great progress nonetheless. Knowing how adept the devices manufacturer is on releasing android updates, I don’t expect my phone to ever run this version. The latest version promised for LG Optimus One is Gingerbread, promised to be released on May 2011. Almost 2 months ago. Still no news.

/endrant

An LG Optimus One P500 running Android 2.2.2 Froyo. Obviously a budget, low end android device, but a very capable one. The spec should be comparable to the iPhone 3GS. ↩

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The guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday post his side of story

2011-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

The rise of bitcoin, an electronic payment system that touts itself as “the first decentralized digital currency” has been the talk in tech scene in the last few weeks. With the latest market crash the system credibility has been questioned. Today, the guy who took advantage of yesterday crash post his side of story protesting Mt Gox decision to rollback yesterday trades.

I’m Kevin and I’m the guy who bought 259684 BTC for under $3000 yesterday. I really wanted to keep this as quiet as possible, but I don’t feel I can anymore. Here’s my side of what happened.

The whole spectacle is rather amusing. They are learning about why money is handled the way it is. Looks like I’m not building bitcoin mining farm anytime soon.

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A Film Romance With Nikon F80

2011-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Afternoon in Blue Lagoon. Nikon F80, Tokina 11-16mm, Kodak Colorplus 200

I’ve been playing with film camera since I bought an old Nikon F80 camera at a local online shop. I thought it would be a cheap and easy way to experience full frame photography. It turns out to be not cheap nor easy.

First the price. The camera itself is a cheapo. I got it for IDR 525K. It looks very cheap if you compare it with a digital full frame camera like Nikon D700 which goes for IDR 19.000K now - 2011. You can get 36 film camera for the price of one digital camera. But once you factor in the film price, processing and scanning, which is 65K per roll (36 exposure), the film camera pay for itself after 11000 exposures. I’m sure that wouldn’t take long if you live in Bali. The place is full of photo opportunity. With my first camera I got to 23K exposure under 1 year.

A walk in the beach. Nikon F80, Tokina 11-16mm, Kodak Colorplus 200

Now about that ‘easy experience’.

I think I might have taking for granted all the convenience of digital photography. Using film you can’t get the instant feedback like digital. If you messed up, you can only know after you have the film processed and scanned.

The hardest part is when you took a picture that you think will turn out to be a great shot, but you still have a few exposure in the roll. In this few last exposure please fight the urge to just shoot random stuff just so you can run to the photolab and scan the film.

Waiting for the lift. Nikon F80, Sigma 24-70mm, Fujifilm Superia 200.

Family bike afternoon. Nikon F80, Sigma 24-70mm, Fujifilm Superia 200.

It may not sound like it, but I actually like the Nikon F80. It teach me some basic exposure knowledge like the sunny 16 rule. Or knowing that to get a nice backlighting effect on a sunset I will need 1/100 at f2.8 exposure. The scanned film result is also hard to simulate on digital. I still can’t get the same tone and texture using lightroom and photoshop. So I guess I’m going to keep shooting film, despite the high price and effort.

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Quote Of The Day: Mark Suster

2011-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

“The problem with success is that it’s often disguised as hard work.”

### – Mark Suster

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Kuliner Penutup 2010

2011-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Akhir tahun 2010 kemaren cuaca di Bali sangat tidak karuan. Karena jalan-jalan ga mungkin, jadilah hari terakhir di tahun 2010 diisi dengan acara makan- makan.

Cwie Mie Malang

Brunch hari itu dimulai di Cwie Mie Malang, sunset road. Ini restoran yang baru dibuka, sepertinya cabang dari cwiemiemalang.com. Descripsi di situsnya sendiri seperti ini:

Cwie Mie adalah salah satu produk makanan yang aslinya memang dari Malang. Lihat saja dimana-mana, Cwie Mie Malang menjadi satu kesatuan tagline di rumah makan yang menjual Cwie Mie.

Setelah dicoba, ternyata rasanya mirip-mirip dengan mienya Mister Baso, dengan harga yang lebih mahal :P

Cwie Mie Ayam

Cwie Mie Katsu. Iya, katsunya cuma segitu.

Untuk satu porsi Mie seperti di atas, harus ditebus dengan harga 26 ribu rupiah. Lumayan mahal untuk penggemar Indomie seperti saya. Porsinya juga ga bikin kenyang, tapi tempatnya lumayan bagus.

Kondisi Cwie, tempat lumayan.

Banyak dekorasi-dekorasi unik.

Bisa dilihat di foto, tempatnya bagus. Tidak seperti Mister Baso cabang Galeria yang tempatnya polos seperti warung. Di sini ada banyak ornamen /pernak-pernik yang secara tidak langsung membuat makanannya terasa lebih enak dinikmati.

Oenpao Sunset Road

Karena brunch di Cwie Mie Malang rupanya masih belum cukup untuk perut kuli ini, terpaksa sorenya kembali cari makan lagi. Pilihan kali ini jatuh ke restoran Oenpau yang baru dibuka juga di jalan Sunset Road.

Kondisi Oenpau dengan sofanya yang empuk

Oenpao ini adalah restoran franchise makanan asia, di Bali katanya sudah ada 4 cabang. Cabang sunset road ini sepertinya yang paling baru. Furniturenya masih terlihat baru, pengunjungnya juga masih sepi. Tanggal 31 kemarin cuma terlihat 4 meja yang ada tamunya. Jadi berasa eksklusif :)

Menu di Oenpao ini ada berbagai macam chinese food. Ada dim sum, ayam/bebek charsiu dihidangkan dengan nasi hainan atau mie kuah, dan banyak jenis lain lagi yang saya lupa. Kemarin cuma pesan ayam charsiu dan ayam katsu dengan nasi hainan. Ayam katsu, menu pilihan bagi orang yang lapar dan malas mikir.

Roast Chicken + Nasi Hainan, Oenpau.

Siomay Ayam Oenpau, siomay buat yang ga doyan ikan

Chicken Katsu + Nasi Hainan, Oenpau

Penyajian makanannya bagus. Simple dan elegan. Satu porsinya sekitar 25 ribu rupiah. Jadi masih lebih murah daripada Cwie Mie Malang. Juga lebih mengenyangkan :D

Anggia mejeng di backyard Oenpau, lokasi narsis strategis

Sehabis makan, tidak lupa foto dulu di backyardnya Oenpao. Tempatnya bagus, kalau lokasinya di tepi pantai pasti lebih bagus. Sayang ini di tengah kota.

FlapJaks

Perut sudah kenyang, tapi mengingat malam tahun baru pasti begadang sampai jam 1 malam, tidak ada salahnya asupan gizi ditambah dengan dessert di FlapJaks. Hitung-hitung sebagai asuransi kalau-kalau terjebak hujan di jalan (cuaca memang sedang tidak kondusif).

Kondisi FlapJaks, ga dapat tempat di dalam.

FlapJaks yang disantroni kali ini adalah FlapJaks yang baru dibuka di Mall Bali Galeria. Hattrick! Dalam sehari bisa mengunjungi 3 tempat makan yang baru dibuka. Ending yang lumayan bagus untuk tahun 2010.

Karena sudah agak kenyang, saya pesan makanan yang kelihatan paling murah kecil di menunya. Mushroom Creamy Pancake. 32 ribu rupiah. Dessert yang lebih mahal daripada menu utama.

Mushroom Creamy Pancake, FlapJaks

Mushroom creamy pancake ini krimnya sangat terasa. Mirip-mirip dengan spaghetti panna e fungi di warung italia. Krim kental aroma keju yang lezat.

Waffle Crispy Fruits, FlapJaks

Kalau waffle crispy ini mungkin lebih mengandalkan eskrimnya kali ya? Ga sempat nyicip makanannya Anggia.

Strawberry Capernish + Bokeh

Untuk minuman, sebenarnya saya tidak begitu suka dengan rasa strawberry, tapi setelah dilihat di menu, minuman yang paling bagus buat difoto cuma ini. Alhasil saya pesan Strawberry Capernish ini: soda + strawberry + sirup? + lime? Lumayan juga rasanya. Dengan perut kenyang begini, hari terakhir tahun 2010 saya lewati. Mudah-mudahan 2011 bisa lebih kenyang :P

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Buku Ini Aku Pinjam

2010-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Buku Ini Aku Pinjam.

Nothing interesting lately, & so I just took pictures of the mundane stuff in my room.

The book is “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. Its a science book - winner of the Aventis prize for science books 2004 - but Bill manage to write it with a witty and engaging style that your curiosity will force you to keep on reading, at least until you finished the chapter you’re on.

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Brahminy Kite -- Elang Bondol

2010-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

Brahminy Kite - Elang Bondol

Named for the river Indus and distributed from India (where it is held sacred) to Australia. A bird of coastal areas and a scavenger, feeding mostly on carrion. Mews like a cat.

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Sometime I Think Life Is Like a Lime

2010-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Sometime I Think Life Is Like a Lime

[a witty remarks goes here, or in your comments]

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I'd Like Mornings Better If They Started Later

2010-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

I’d like mornings better if they started later

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Ghatotkacha's Horse

2010-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

That is not a foot and mouth disease infected horse

One of the horse from gatotkaca monument located at the center of road intersection, on the northeast of Ngurah Rai International Airport

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I've Been Good

2010-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been good right?

Another black and white photo that should look good with the blog new theme. If you are reading this on an RSS reader, you really got to check it on the blog. White background just doesn’t give this image the same feeling that I’m aiming for.

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Hening di Mengening

2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Hening di Mengening

I just changed the blog theme yesterday and I think this image will fit nicely with the theme. Whaddayathink?

Btw, I’ve added a nice retweet button up there right next to the title. Feel free to click it ;)

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Daily Snap - Clean and Simple

2010-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Using the new Photoshop CS5 you can very quickly 'fix' imperfection in an image. Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before and After version of the image. It may take a while to load and may not appear on RSS reader.

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Nightly Snap - Bagaimana Caranya Foto Di Pantai Kuta

2010-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Kalau pernah ke pantai Kuta pasti tau bagaimana ramainya pantai Kuta siang hari. Jadi gimana caranya biar bisa foto-foto di pantai Kuta tapi tanpa turis sama sekali? Biar seolah-olah itu pantai jadi private beach?

Pantai Kuta

Skenario yang mungkin ada 3:

Bayar semua orang buat menyingkir dari pantai. Semuanya. Turisnya, pedagangnya, life guardnya, tukang parkirnya, pokoknya semua orang. Biayanya pasti gede tapi cara ini lazim dilakukan produser film untuk mempersiapkan set film. Resiko: Jatuh Miskin.
Tunggu Hari Raya Nyepi. Tiap Hari Raya Nyepi satu pulau Bali pasti bakalan sepi. Ga bakal ada orang di pantai Kuta. Yang ada cuma pecalang. Resiko: ditangkap pecalang.
Foto malam-malam. Bukan malam biasa tapi malam bulan purnama. Diusahakan terangnya bulan purnama bisa jadi pengganti matahari. Resiko: gelap, pantainya jadi ga keliatan kaya pantai kuta.

Karena skenario pertama ga mungkin dilakukan (miskin), dan yang kedua musti nunggu Nyepi (kelamaan), yang paling memungkinkan tinggal skenario ketiga. Nah ini contoh hasilnya:

Boker

Boker bareng

Mau pipis

Legaaa

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Daily Snap - Grass Bokeh Sunset

2010-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Grass Bokeh Sunset or is it Sunset Bokeh Grass?

This picture was taken with Jpeg Basic Small setting on my camera - the lowest quality setting. I was playing with time-lapse feature the other day and forgot to set it back. When I realize it was on the wrong setting, the sun had already set.

Ken Rockwell the Jpeg shooter will no doubt tell you that it doesn’t matter what the quality setting are. But when you only gonna be there once, you’d want the best quality you can get right?

Moral of the story: “Alway remember that you are forgetful”

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Menunggu Senin

2010-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Still Waiting

Ada yang tau jenis anjing di atas apa ga? Kira-kira sama ga dengan Hachiko? Kayanya anjing-anjing jenis ini setia banget menunggu ya.

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Belajar Portrait

2010-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Model Mayhem Labuan Lalang

Another black and white image for my blog new theme. This one was taken with my new AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens. I love the lens. Its sharp, fast, and very light. The only drawback is it won’t autofocus on my camera body.

My Nikon D5000 doesn’t have the built in motor required to turn the focusing screw in this lens. So all my picture with this lens is manually focused. Its not that hard though, theres a built in electronic rangefinder that help you focus. The focus ring also rotate much more longer than my AF-S lenses so getting a precise focus in manual mode is much more easier.

Oh, the portrait model? He was the parking officer in Labuan Lalang, the port to Menjangan. I had a light chat with him while waiting for my friends to sort out out transport.

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Spam on Gmail

2010-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

This whole time, I’ve been very careful with my email. I never gave it out easily, never register to any shady website, never displayed it in public space, I never risk my email. Why? Because I love my current email. This is my professional looking personal email. You know, the one using the firstname.lastname@domain.com format. It’s not those embarrassing old email addresses like cute_babe@yahoo.com or neo_cool@hotmail.com kind of email (which looks cool back in 2000, the ‘matrix’ age). I love this email address and I don’t want it to be ruined by the spam, so I take precaution when giving it out.

Do you know that Gmail have this nice feature where you can have unlimited aliases for your email address?

Using an address alias

Gmail doesn’t offer traditional aliases, but you can receive messages sent to your.username+any.alias@gmail.com. For example, messages sent to jane.doe+notes@gmail.com are delivered to jane.doe@gmail.com.

You can set up filters to automatically direct these messages to Trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, or forward to another email account.

I’ve been using this trick for awhile now. For example, when I register on vimeo, I use address+vimeo@gmail.com. At wordpress I use myemailaddress+wordpress@gmail.com. Its bit tiring, especially when I forgot the password for those site, I have to guess what plus word did I use when registering. Its usually the domain name, but sometimes its not.

This morning I found out that my precaution is paying off. I got this email from josnke@rosyvalley.com claiming to be from the best drug store in Canada. Off course gmail spam filter correctly identified it as a SPAM, but still, its very annoying. I always check my emails first thing in the morning, and spam email is not fun (I check my emails every morning while having breakfast, reading about a d*ck enlarger drugs really kills my appetite). Now I have to waste more time checking the SPAM folder for any false positive. Because even gmail spam filter is not perfect.

I was ready to say goodbye to my spam free inbox until I checked the email details. Turns out it was send to myaddress+seesmic@gmail.com. Wow! I never thought seesmic would stoop so low as to sell my contact information to spammer. A quick googling reveal that they’re not that low:

Over the weekend, we were informed through Twitter that some users received spam to their email accounts specifically used for the TeamSeesmic newsletter. After working directly with certain users - collecting and assessing the information - we contacted our email newsletter provider, Aweber, to help us investigate and address this issue.

Yesterday, Aweber released this statement on their blog:

http://www.aweber.com/blog/uncategorized/data-compromise.htm

In essence, Aweber was a victim of vulnerabilities, and the issue was limited to areas where subscriber email addresses were stored for all their clients.

Hm.. Okay. Seesmic is not guilty. What about my email? Well, simple. I just create a new filter with this rule:

If sent to myaddress+seesmic@gmail.com move to trash

There. Done.

PS: This post have been sitting for a while in my draft folder, somehow I forgot to hit the publish button :P

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Building Cheap, Emergency Gaming Computer

2009-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

This post is a part of series post I write to cover my experience in building a cheap, emergency gaming computer.

Building a gaming box is not that hard, given you had enough budget. But for a broke, cheap ass guy like me, the current top of the line gaming PC is simply unaffordable. The only choice left is to build a cheap ass PC as a temporary rig, and hopes that sometime eventually, I can save enough money to upgrade it.

So first thing first: Processor. My previous processor is an AMD Athlon 2400+ and an AMD Athlond64 3000+. Never had an Intel processor. Not because I’m an AMD fanboy, no sir. I chose AMD because the price per performance ratio of these processors, at the time of buying, is sweet. Now for my new processor,my target is a sub-$100 processor. The processor that quickly pop up in mind was Athlon64 X2 7750 (again, not a fanboy :P). But after doing a little research on current processor available on the market, Intel E5200 quickly grab my attention.

Here’s a couple review I’ve found on the processor.

techgage.com review of E5200:

The fact is, the E5200 is an $80 offering, and at that price, it’s about $30 less-expensive than the E7200, which it competed nicely with. Being a Pentium model, it lacks the SSE4 instruction set, and comes bundled with less cache, but as we’ve seen, that makes little difference in the majority of tests. Where those two adjustments will make a difference is with multi-media specific scenarios, especially those that use SSE4 when available.

tomshardware.com review:

Clocked at 2.5 GHz with 2 MB L2 cache and running on an 800 MHz front side bus (FSB), this dual-core 45 nm Wolfdale doesn’t offer the same stock performance as the Core 2 Duo E7300 used last month did, but currently at a $43 cheaper price, it offers tremendous value and performance for the overclocker on a budget.

Reading all the professional reviews above, I still had a doubt. After all, I never had an Intel processor before (Okay maybe I am a little bit fanboyish). But after reading customer review (nice reviews they have there) at newegg, I’m sold. Yes, its no quad core. It’s just a dual core running at 2.5GHz. But 70$ for a processor that can run at 3.32GHz on stock fan and voltage (In case it’s not evident enough… that’s a 50% overclock) is awesomely cheap! So for me, E5200 it is.

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Live Without PC

2009-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

My PC is broken. No PC means I have to put up with what they show on the television. So what do you expect when you turn on the tv on prime time? SINETRON!

Wikipedia’s definition of Sinetron: > Sinetron is a limited-run television soap drama in Indonesia. The word is a portmanteau of Sine, short for cinema, and Tron, short for electronic. Sinetron are essentially soap operas in miniseries format. While most English language soap operas can continue indefinitely, almost all Sinetron run for a predetermined duration. They usually air five or six days a week and run for an average of 120 episodes.

Some of the longest soap opera i can find on the net:

(The) Guiding Light (1952-????)
> at more than 15,000 episodes (and still going), it is also the longest-running non-news program in U.S. television history.
As the World Turns (1956-????)
> After more than 13,000 episodes, the world is still turning, and this soap is still going strong.

Wow! See that? And here I though sinetron have an absurdly long duration! No people, no, sinetron is the most sensible form of soap opera! So next time you think sinetron is soo bad because of the long duration, think again!

PS: Yes, I do consider soap operas as the lowest form of acting. But they’re funny because they suck :P

PPS: I don’t blame the actor/actress though, it’s the director and the scriptwriter responsibilities :D

PPPS: And yeah, don’t forget the producer! Punjabis, I’m watching you!

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Telkomsel Flash

2009-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Telkomsel Flash speed today is 25KBps. It used to get no higher than 15KBps. Don’t know why, but lately Telkomsel connection has been awfully good to me ;)

Maybe its because the other customer switching to Indosat M2? Well anyway, glad I’ve stayed with Telkomsel :)

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