wiputra.com

Despite owning a blog and a domain, I don’t write here that often. Not as often as I want to, anyway…

Life at Mitrais absorbed most of my time and made me drowsy even during the evenings, the supposedly resting period. Well, I had refused to rest, actually. I just *have to* find some ideas and keep them developed, even during off times. I want to build something that I can contribute back to the community, like perhaps a music sheet compiler similar to LilyPond (in fact, I am planning to rip out the source code of LilyPond and modify it so it produces a numerical notation instead), but outputs numerical notation instead (strange that numerical notation is only found in parts of Asia, mainly China and Indonesia. Canadians know how to read such a notation, but they claim they’ve never seen anything like it – I guess they are more used to the usual international notation, the 5-line staff). Anyway, the target publishing date is moved from mid-year to perhaps the end of 2009, if luck is upon me. If not, then perhaps 2010, or 2011, or “when it’s done”…

Moreover, weekends are usually filled with so many activities that are so-called ‘routine’, like exercising, to recovering from regular sleep deprivation. Lately I just don’t know where the weekends have gone. I just don’t feel that I’ve had a weekend for a long, long time.

After giving a presentation to YKIP and YKIDS-sponsored students on Information Technology last night (a planned presentation that turned disastrous because of a technical negligence that I’d rather not comment further on) and returned home and crashed for 8 hours straight, I realize that now, more than ever, I need to get more sleep…

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html

Google launched a new tool in its Gmail that can stop you from sending emails you later will regret!

Knowing that late Friday and late Saturday nights can be very lonely for some, this Gmail engineer (possibly one of those people too, otherwise how could he come up with this idea?) made quite an innovation to prevent Gmail users from sending emails while they are drunk.

Brilliant and innovative indeed.

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No, I’m not talking about that kind of shopping where I’d go to a mall and spend a whole month’s salary there. Nobody does that except women who need better men in their lives (Women, please date geeks. You won’t regret it.).

This kind of ’shopping’ can potentially be more evil than that. It is when we are early in the design stage of software development, and there is nothing technical that has been decided whatsoever.

So you ask, what should I begin with? Should I code from scratch? Should I use a framework? If I use a framework, which one should I use?

Considering the number of software frameworks out there (even Apache alone has dozens of them… and at least three for database management alone) it is possible that we might spend weeks, even months, just trying them out. In the meantime, the client keeps paying us, and we are unaware that they are watching us unhappily, as though we are sucking their money out of them without giving anything in return.

So what do we do? How do we get around this issue of ‘eternal shopping’?

I guess we should set some time to play around with a framework or two, and then get on with our lives. An application may not be better if we write it from scratch. It may not be more efficient, and it may not even be as maintainable. But there is one thing that we can do with the software we wrote on our own that we can not do with a framework.

That one thing is…… if it doesn’t work well enough, throw it all out and start again.

What do you think?

A Note as a Result of Pondering about the Nation

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I’m spending this whole week back at home in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Just one and half years ago, there were some malls in Jakarta. Today, where only one mall stood before, there are often two or three buildings now. The central district is becoming more and more like Singapore’s shopping district Orchard Road.

I often wonder why these malls were built. If you go into one, you will find that most of the stores already have branches in other malls or shopping centres. These are the multi-national clothing lines such as Bebe, Yves Saint-Laurent, well, you know the package better than me, I’m sure, as I don’t often walk into these stores to look around, let alone buying!

What I’m trying to say is… why the need for so many shopping centres? Why build in the already strapped-for-space Jakarta, when the more remote provinces don’t get to enjoy as much prosperity?

Having been living in Denpasar for more than a year, surrounded by modest people and dedicated myself to serving God at a growing local evangelist church, I am appalled to see these malls. Why don’t they invest in something that can give children more education, instead? And not just for the rich, but for everyone else. Why is this not happening?

There can only be one basic reason: The people don’t care about each other. Why should they care, anyway? The identity of this nation is so vague and dissonant; people who could afford to build and spend would rather leave and not return.

They say that Eastern people are more family-oriented, more social, more religious. I think that’s a load of crap. I think Eastern people are a lot more self-centred than their Western counterparts, especially those who live in the metropolitan areas and other areas fortunate enough to receive the gift of laissez-faire. What’s worse, a lot of Eastern people claim to be religious, yet they do business tricks, abandon partners, dig women, steal (both small and large scale), talk behind other people’s backs, and do all other stuff considered as “sin” on a daily basis.

I think the next Indonesian leader should stop worrying about how to pay off debts and building the so-called “facilities”, and focus on how to return the self-esteem of the people. KPK (the anti-corruption agency) is a great step towards that goal. But it’s still only a small step out of the long journey that this nation will have to endure.

To succeed as a country:

• The people must be granted free-flowing information (Radio and TV are the easiest to penetrate illiterate people, but Internet is the richest and contains the most material)
• Educated ones should be encouraged to go to the more remote areas and tell the more isolated people just how vast the possibilities are
• The people in the government should really stop spending their money on call girls (they’re really just glorified prostitutes… come on, you proclaimed to be religious… don’t abuse the trust of the people!)
• Developers should start looking at other, less-developed areas to develop in… and invest long term goals
• The Research and Development (R&D) of agriculture ministry should be the next to spend most of the government money, second to ministry of education

I know these are tough, and probably not that many would be willing to make such a sacrifice. After all, people only live once…… there have to be some sacrifices made……

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So without realizing, I have entered myself into the so-called world of freelancing. We were going to be a company, but I guess even after six months running with no income, the funds are starting to run low.

I’ve found survival in the land of freelancing. I’m getting myself into WordPress customizing – it’s a software for blogging, by the way – although I do use other CMS packages too, depending on the job. Different from most WordPress freelance designers out there, though, I customize their template AS WELL AS their functionalities. I add scoring meters, drag-and-drop, and other functions. I customize the front end as well as the back end. I can also turn WordPress into some crazy application that cooks eggs on the web, if the customer desires it. LOL. Kidding.

But yes indeed, they say starting up a new business is not for the faint hearted. If you’re not comfortable with running your life on a budget, or are going to have problems popping up if your bank account is not replenished by the end of the month, then starting a new business is not for you.

But I believe the rewards will definitely justify the costs. I haven’t let go of the education gaming concept. It’s a legacy that I am going to make, no matter how hard and twisted the path is.

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Just out of curiosity, I googled up “Gado Gado UBC” and there it is… on the top of the results page, the brainchild of the eight pioneers, now flourishing in its sixth year!

http://www.gisau.org/

It’s a happy occasion to see that our brainchild continues to grow on strong, though it makes me sad that I can no longer be a part of it. Viva Gado-Gado UBC! Viva Indonesia!

P.S. A big salute to the other seven guys and gals who have been largely forgotten by the current mass of Indonesian students in Vancouver, and are scattered everywhere today (some stayed in Vancouver but never run into each other, some moved east, some moved south, some returned home). We hold that special title, that even though there were dozens, even hundreds of others who were involved, we were the core. We changed the world, big time, and I am proud to have shared such a privileged title with the seven of you.

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I have created three new subdomains out of my wiputra.com server. They are:

http://dot-y.wiputra.com
http://dot-u.wiputra.com
http://view-and-project.wiputra.com

At the moment, these links merely redirect to their blogspot.com counterparts. I am going to install a multi-blog engine and import the posts later.

Thank you for viewing.

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I admit that I’ve had numerous occasions where an old flashback tune (particularly from the 90’s) rushes back to me. In many cases, it ended up with me scouring all over the Internet for an MP3 track. In most cases, it took up hours and hours of persistent searching, from the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Live) down to the questionable LimeWire and other P2P networks.

In particular, I can’t get enough of the Indonesian pop songs that were popular around that era. Having been abroad for more than a decade, I simply would have missed the opportunity to see most of the video clips. Back then MTV was unheard of in Asia (let alone MTV Indonesia), and Internet was still confined to a minority of the academia. My only source of pop music was the casettes that either my friend or I bought, and later on, r a g e on ABC, and frequent visits to CD & record stores.

In addition to the tracks, hunting the data on the singers is seriously painful. For example…

• Jessica Jay – Broken Hearted Woman
  This singer was responsible for a series of reggae hits in Indonesia. I’m not particularly fond of the modern-reggae-dance numbers, but I admit, I did ask my parents to buy me a reggae CD compilation. (Come on, I was 14 and stupid at that time!). I searched for that CD but couldn’t find it, so I went on the Net for hours, but couldn’t find anyone who owned it, nor could I find her website or any pointers at all.
  I think my frustration was shared by a number of other people. Check out this blog entry: http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/sharethemusic/?p=115
• Ali Campbell and Pamela Starks – That Look in Your Eyes (open on Youtube)
  I had largely forgotten about this song until I rediscovered it in 2004. I think it was popular at around the time UB40 was still an international super-hit, and I heard it only once, but I remember the tune so clearly that I just had to search for it.
• Merril Bainbridge – Walk on Fire
  While I was in Jakarta for a 1999 break, I heard this song played multiple times over a radio. I searched for its album at local CD stores but couldn’t find them. I asked for a friend in Australia to send it over to me, but it never arrived. Finally I went over the Internet and after about two or three years of searching, I found a guy who was kind enough to have it emailed to me. I had lost my MP3 collection multiple times since then, but in 2006 I rediscovered the track again when I heard it on a Vancouver radio.

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With the advent of Youtube, many video clips of the old classics pop out of nowhere. This may at last satisfy those occasional urges to find those tunes that you have heard in your head for a while.

For me at least, the “rediscovery” happened a few times, including:

• Kahitna – Andai Dia Tahu
• Dewa 19 – Cinta kan Membawamu Kembali
• Boy Meets Girl – Waiting for a Star to Fall
• Seiko & Donny Wahlberg – The Right Combination
• Many earlier KLa Project songs
• etc.

It’s simply amazing how easily we can forget and yet recall at a later time through some kind of train of thought. Please share your experience with me if you happen to drop by.

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PS: Perhaps it’s also a good thing to compare music such as this and this… with today’s standard. Today’s pop music is seriously appaling. What happened to the world of innocence and peace that were once offered?

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Three days after switching to a subscribed Telkomsel Flash account, the Internet is unreachable once again. I thought about switching to Flash because of its cheap unlimited plans, but I guess when something like this is offered, then masses of people will think the same way.

The result? Telkomsel Flash gives an unreliable service, most likely as a result of being overcrowded and insufficient infrastructure to cater to the demand.

Even before the days of my subscription, I’ve experienced some pain using it. They sell one-week plans for non-subscription accounts, and I just happened to buy one that week. The very same day, though, the network became inaccessible, and that lasted for five days. FIVE DAYS! So I could not use something that I have bought until the last two days of its existence. (And the last two days happen to be my busiest days so I had no time to go online. Great, I just wasted a sizeable sum of cash.)

I’m writing this article to remind myself and everyone who bothers reading this: Cheaper rarely means better. For quality, there is always a premium to pay, and even though the premium slowly decreases, people who attempt to push it too much will make other people suffer, and in turn, probably return the suffrage to themselves at a later time. Gold and silver always cost a lot.

I hope this time the downtime won’t be as long as the last time. Otherwise I’d spend a few hours, or perhaps even days, wondering why I subscribed to Telkomsel Flash in the first place.

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I guess I still need the Zoundry Raven, Mozilla Thunderbird, HTTrack, and a bunch of other software supporting offline work.

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I was startled and unimpressed at how close I was from getting a massive electrical shock. Two months ago, I had bought a 15-meter (50-feet) power extension cord that has a housing that can store the cord when not in use. A few days ago, it suddenly stopped working. Naturally, I unplugged all the power plugs drawing power from it, and then proceeded to pick it up.

Suddenly, the cord lit up like a welder and “BOOM!” less than a second later. The building had also become dark; the main fuse was down. A few minutes later, the lights came back on, and I saw that the cord had been split in two from the mini-explosion.

Imagine the experience: You are holding a tube of fireworks, you light it up, but you hold it in your hand.

Post-mortem of the power extension cord revealed that the quality of the power cord is sub-standard. The cord is so thin; it is probably more suitable to transmit audio signals than to carry power load. How could this be?!

No wonder there are so many house fires out here. Imagine power lines around our houses being this fragile. (And also imagine living in a hut made of wood chunks, planks and sheets for its walls and galvanized steel for its roof – a typical poor family house in many developing countries.)

It’s amazing how people out here in Asia prefer CHEAP instead of WORKING WELL, LONG LASTING, or SAFE TO USE. Cheap seems to be the number-one criterion. Any item can work well, last long, or be safe to use, but if it’s not cheap, then it’s not going to sell well.

I hate to break it, too, for I am usually an endorser of “cheap” and “DIY” (do-it-yourself). But sometimes for functions we hardly have time or passion for (try finding someone who LOVES trying to connect to the Internet), then perhaps it’s best to take CHEAP out of the equation.

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Looking back a few previous articles, it turns out some of my writings are more review-like than for programming purposes. I have decided to separate these entries and create a new container blog for them.

I therefore present to you .µ (read: dot-myu)!

It is available in Blogspot and WordPress flavours:

http://dotmyu.wordpress.com/
http://dot-u.blogspot.com/

They have different layouts, but their contents are exactly the same. I tend to like Blogspot better because I can manage all of it on one Google dashboard, but Wordpress user interface is simpler and therefore better.

While I’m at it, I might as well mention all my other blogs:

http://dot-y.blogspot.com
Technical notes, intended for those who are in the IT field, particularly programming – it recently earned a rating of 8.1 on Blogged.com! Thank you Blogged.com!

http://dotwhy.wordpress.com
Same entries, just different site, for those who, for some strange reason, can’t access Blogspot

http://yogihw.multiply.com
Manual mirror from .Y and .µ at Blogspot, updated once in a while

http://view-and-project.blogspot.com
My less technical and more personal notes – also mirrored on Facebook notes

http://yogihw.blogs.friendster.com/view_and_project
I don’t write here any more, but some older entries, largely personal, are still archived here

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It has been 3 full months and a couple of days since I (along with everyone else) got the termination letter from my employer. To say that life has been easy is misleading. Even to date I keep questioning myself why am I even pursuing this venture. The only reason valid enough is that I get to train to run a software business.

Strangely enough, being posted in Bali has its own business advantages. The island is small and everyone bumps into each other on a daily basis, so local news travel relatively quickly even without the help of standard media.

On a more personal note, I am somewhat happier here than I have been. It may be attributed to the overall relaxed atmosphere in Bali. I am able to spend some time to write off some of the things I could not find the time for while working on the previous project. Things like setting up the blogging network, writing tutorials and reviews, and generally writing about computer, technology, and more personal matters (such as this entry), to keep myself abreast in both IT and written English.

For us developers, though, it is more like the swimming swan analogy: We may look calm in front of other people, but deep inside we crank ourselves on the highest possible gear. We constantly keep looking out for new possibilities and where to steer this big company to.

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Living in Bali is no substitute to living in a more developed nation, though, as this Live! Science article suggests.

http://www.livescience.com/health/060227_happiness_keys.html (The Keys to Happiness)

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I am always drawn towards projects with a lot of entertainment value to it. Such is a project that I am currently active on. But other challenges like this always spark my interest, even though I don’t really have time to spend on them:

http://www.codeproject.com/script/Awards/Conditions.aspx?cid=274 (Star Trek Game Authoring Competition)

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Just for fun, I ran into this article when I was reading the online newspaper. This might be a good checklist of traits for you to ponder and reflect upon, to see if you’re going to be one of those rich boys sooner or later. But, although it’s targeted for men, I think women who have these traits are also desirable. The article is in Indonesian though; if I have time to spare, perhaps I’ll provide a translation later.

http://www.kompas.com/read/xml/2008/07/01/09151349/15.ciri.pria.berbakat.kaya

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