Lazy

These days clearly one of the laziest days living in Madrid. Everything ends up in front of computer screen, in a hope of solving and write up the solution.

Finally I decided to walk around, in a hope of finding a chicken soup for my lazy soul. Even though not really exactly what I needed, I found some auto critique for myself. I saw how people have to work hard. Really hard in fact, a waiter at 11 pm, stay outside, in a cold weather, on his 50s or even 60s. A teenage waiter, preparing chair, table and utensils. A little girl helping her grandma selling second hand books. An old man gathering trash looking for valuables. A man crawling into a supermarket trash for edible expired food. My God, I must thankful for how lucky I am.

Thankful

It's a really simple word, but it has a really deep meaning which is very hard to grasp, moreover to be applied on a real action.
OMG, forgive me for forgetting the meaning of this word.

coq au curry

Math is always a fascinating subject for me. Particularly the one related to proof and type theory that coined out in curry howard isomorphism. Strange somehow, that I could graduate from bachelor in informatics without knowing this theorem.
My curiousity grows even wilder when I work around people who acquintance with this and using incredible tool such as Coq. It's so cool! Then I dig further into this. Let's see what can I learn from this curiosity.

hiding menu on xournal

Before shorten menu

Two rows of toolbar while working with xournal on small screen might be difficult. They consume too much space. Xournal manual point out how to hide these toolbar.
check your ~user/.xournal/config. It can be generated by saving preference.
Then edit the value of this line:
shorten_menu_items=toolbarMain toolbarPen hbox1
toolbarMain for top toolbar
toolbarPen for below top toolbar
hbox1 for status bar


After shorten menu

I got these values from xournal.glade of the xournal source code as pointed out by xournal user manual. The lines on xournal.glade are:
widget class="GtkToolbar" id="toolbarMain"
widget class="GtkToolbar" id="toolbarPen"
widget class="GtkHBox" id="hbox1"

on freedom of expression

This time I deeply regret 15-M manifestation in Sol. Their direct engagement with Catholic World Youth Day teenager is really unacceptable. What did they do before these event was finally held?

In my opinion it is a really bad impression among happy teenagers who travel across continent and ocean leaving their family just to visit Madrid and meet the Pope.

Here's the situation on 23.00 of the second day of the JMJ event in Puerta del Sol. Really strange compare to the day before on the first day where hundreds if not thousand of young teenager around the world gather there with their country flags or region and various Catholicism apparels.

Clearly, ones freedom is limited by other's freedom. Respect.

oil on lens

Camera lens indeed has sophisticated mechanical parts. As other mechanical devices, lubrication is an essential treatment. However it doesn't mean that a lens needs lubrication.

Here is a severe example of the impact of a drop of oil on the aperture. The aperture mechanism is using a very light force. Therefore a small inhibitor will affect its functionality. The aperture blade is so light and designed with such kind of matte surface, apparently to prevent any glare. Therefore the oil fill the matte texture of the blade, and the cohesive forces between blades increase, so they are harder to move. Finally the diafragm cannot be changed.

I wonder from where did the oil come from? Apparently it came from the melting grease. But still I'm unsure, it may also came from silly human action.

on being unproductive

I feel that in these several recent days I've done nothing meaningful. Stuck in something and made no progress. Just feel horrible somehow.

If this situation would be continuously going on, I think I just merely waste my precious time of the most productive period of my life.

Instead of insisting to move forward, and get stuck, I must step backward, strengthen the foundation and then make a leap jump. Reading some 'ancient' seminal papers is a really good idea. Last time I learnt about a shocking vulnerability exploit. Though it is merely a simple problem on the surface, a deep observation led me to broad fields in computer science. From assembly, memory structure, into security policy. It refreshed and also taught me about the basic knowledge a computer engineer should have.

on being present

It is very common that people plan to do something big if they were having secure income or certain wealthiness. They think that money is the panacea.

In fact the existence of this intermediation is undermine their own real power. Economically speaking, man in the middle always takes an amount of profit in every transaction. Therefore they undermine the immediate value in their skill, knowledge, and wisdom. They undermine their presence!

I think people should value their presence more than anything else. There's no substitution for being present.

In today technology age, presence doesn't always mean physically at the same place though.

education

Another entry about this. Inspired by last speech of BKPM chief in our embassy. Quite glad to know a high level officer who has a far vision on education. In fact he found a foundation on this vision as well.

I hope similar vision can flourish across my country, meanwhile a very bleak view of pseudo-educated people is so apparent, people who have only diplome without outstanding skill or knowledge.

And Rendra's poem "menghisap sebatang lisong (1978)" suddenly strucks my mind.

Dignity of a nation

Terrible news storm Indonesia about execution by beheading of a domestic migrant worker in Saudi Arabia(KSA). Public anger sparks and then soon our cripple government issued illogical excuse on how it could happen. Government irresponsibility even so apparent when the officers blame each other just to secure their position. Marty the foreign minister even gave a totally lie statement that KSA apologized for not informing the beheading. This claim immediately denied by KSA. What a shame! I wonder how dare Marty was to lie about other country formal statement.

The shame story did not stop there. Government gave very slow response, that instead of real action to give immediate protection to other workers, the president formed a commission of taskforce and a decree to halt migran workers export starting on August. A faster reaction was given by KSA, they stop issuing working visa starting from July.

Where's our dignity as a nation? It is really a pity to have cowards as our representatives.

Weak leaders may affect many aspects of citizen life. Mostly in negative sense, particularly when engage with foreign interest. A terrible example occured in WW2 where French navy was slaughtered by British one. They actually were friends, but due German occupation of France, and Britain must secure their land from sea invasion, Britain must compromise strong French navy. Unfortunately French admiral did not react immediately. They engaged in northern africa sea and thousand French navy died. If french admiral were a confident man, he would order his men to surrender so then they could fight back Germany, side by side with British.

Si, somos indignados!

Kintse Eme

This movement started on May 15 as a continuation of other smaller movements initiated by young people in response to their bleak future due to unemployment. They named themselves as young people without future who have no job, no house and no fear.

Even though so far I didn't see any clear objective of this movement, clearly we can observe many positive impact of this movement. The best of it is it raised young people conscience. Conscience about future, hard work and struggle. Unlike previous generation, these young people were grown in booming wealth easy life society, following this country joining EU.

Personally I was quite amazed with their effort to manage this movement, meanwhile often their life is about party, alcohol and even drugs. These youngs successfully gain support and inspire other across the country and even abroad. Apparently their peaceful and sympatic actions give positive impression to the people.

Particular to the nucleon of the movement in Sol, I observed an interesting development of a social system. On the first days, people were unorganized, as it was a spontaneous action. Then it becomes more organized by the establishment of assemblies, commissions and more structured 'command center'. Afterward some social norms were also established. For example the assembly suggested the prohibition of alcohol, that followed by beverages street vendors. They also gave critiques to the society, news services, bankers and politicians.

Nowdays the movement has been translated to neighbourhoods, and the regular meeting is called "people's assembly". Their sound and propaganda is not as loud as in pta Sol, but their voice has arrived in the congress and government.

june afternoon

It has been a tough week last week. However it was also a cherish one, because my paper was accepted :)))). Even though it was not the first, since it summarized more than one year of fully dedicated work, I have a huge sentimental feeling of it.

It was the brightest afternoon of the year in Europe, but I felt that I was somewhere in southern hemisphere, suffering of winter solstice, experienced the darkest evening of the year.

One thing I do learn, among other stuffs, is realizing that love is always beautiful, and I must nurture it to make it even more beautiful.

Is Hawking right?

Following his latest book, Stephen Hawking faces many protests and event condemnation from religious groups. Basically he stated that the universe is created from nothing, not by any trancendental power as religious believe.

In my opinion these religious people are just too reactive. Sometimes it even worst, they challenge Hawking's knowledge with their ignorance and conspiracious statement. This kind of action will only makes people laugh due to its baseless supports and then raises doubtful feeling about religion, particularly among young thinker. This is definitely dangerous!

Therefore I suggest a proporsional and less reactive counter to Hawking's knowledge. A preacher who doesn't even know Newton law in physics, should not give any 'scientific' counter argument. Just revisit the foundation of faith, that there is some trancendental matter that cannot be reasoned.

But, is actually Hawking statement based on solid theory? I don't know, the reporter might be spun, or misinterpreted his intention.

Furthermore does the solid theory violates religious values? I don't think so, though it clearly againsts certain interpretation. For example in the holy Quran, God only said (yes, I'm a devout religious) that human was created from soil or universe were created by Him. There's no further explicit explanation on how it was done. Therefore any theory can emerge in between, including Hawking's one.

How about Hawking's theory? According to other theory there are still loopholes in his theory. Moreover even if it's correct, it won't negate the existence of God.

We should not think of being so important, so God created human in a way such as a child creates a clay statue. Instead it would like process where an engineer creates a CNC machine to shape the raw clay, but God must be better than that. Instead, He created an advanced mechanism to create human by creating the source of the caused of these entire creations. For example, for creating human, God merely creating this universe with its complete rules of interaction among its elements, where at certain point this interaction will create living element and so on and so forth so finally human is created. But the probability is so small! Don't be so naive, do you think just because we think the system is very complex so God cannot ensure a 100 percent accuracy?

What about the universe? I think similarly. Clearly, it is ridiculous to think that that the planets and sun are created in the way we make meat ball or dumpling. Since clearly I'm not smarter than Hawking, instead of proposing my own speculation, I think it is better to use his. The way God created the universe (or multiverse) might coincide with Hawking's theory. But instead of it started from the big-bang, God provided a sufficient condition to make it happened. Definitely He even created an earlier phase of all these thing, e.g. the cause of cause of the caused ... of the cause of the cause of big bang. With His 100 percent accuracy, voila here we are.

Socialism and religion

20th century was the bloodiest witness of the emerge of socialism, and also its conflicts against other ideology. As a new ideology, socialism values often conflict with old values, particularly corrupted religious values. We have to emphasize the word corrupted because many opinions say that pure religious values should not violate pure socialism values, so does my opinion.

Socialism values will change society class structure. The ones who are on the top clearly will not let this change happen. They use people religious sentiment to provoke hatred about socialism in society. The most lethal provocation is the accusacion that socialists are atheist and anti-religion. Unfortunately this provocation was taken by communists under Commintern organization, though in its 192x congress Tan Malaka gave opposite statement. Commintern's stance to bring religion as enemy put socialism in religious part of the world in danger. Indonesia is an imminent example of atrocity against socialism, particularly communism. Guevara's war in bolivia was also got obstacles from accusation that communism in Cuba annihilated church and catholics institution. A Bolivian soldier, who was apparently a devout religious, ask him about the existence of religion in Cuba when Che platoon captured by Bolivian army. It showed how useful this religious propaganda for tackling socialism.

However in many places, socialism in its political form, communism, promoted bloody movements against religion as well. These actions were lethal suicide for socialism itself. Even a small incident got an enormous amplification due to religious sentimentalism, that turned out to be used to accuse any socialist. Many pure socialist movements became victims of this generalisation of accusation. Even sometimes a non-socialist movement which is merely related to socialist one might get the accusation as well. The fall of Spain second republic maybe a good example of this case. How Franco's fascist power with the assistance of Hitler's Nazi exterminated the Republicans was directly or indirectly fueled by the same sentiment. Some communist promoted atrocities in many ways, from executing jesuit priest, burning churches and even trying to destroy Gaudi's sagrada familia in Barcelona. The impact was horrible. Any communist or accused as communist was shot dead across Spain, regardless their religious view, some fled abroad. Unfortunately those people were knowledgeable persons. This might be a good explanation for Spain retardation for the next several dozen of years. Yes if we turn to far east we'll find the similar case in Indonesia. Unfortunately there's no such kind of european union to accelerate the development of Indonesia just the way it happened in Spain for this last 15 years.

It is such a contradictory that a country which has "keadilan SOSIAL bagi seluruh rakyat Indonesia" in its nation philosophy became so anti-socialist.

For the first time, I emerged the kernel of this opinion in room 9009 around 2003-2004.

inflation

More than 10 years ago GusDur raised public employees salary 100 percent. Apparently with 10 percent inflation each year, after more than 10 years the actual value of public employee salary is lower than 10 years ago before the salary was increased.

Let's see this illustration,
since the inflasion is 10 percent per year, so each year the actual value of the salary is merely 90 percent of the previous year. So in 10 years the actual become
a is amount of salary before Gusdur
b is salary after Gusdur raise it
c is current value of salary.
b = 2 x a
salary value of one year after raised
s1 = 0.9 x b
salary value of two years after raised
s1 = 0.9 x 0.9 x b
salary value of n years after raised
s1 = 0.9 x ... x 0.9 x b = 0.9 ^n x b
so after 10 years
c = 0.9 ^10 x b = 0.35 x b
since a = 0.5 x b thus c is less than a,
thus it is lower than actual value before GusDur raised the salary. To conclude it is not better if it not worse than the value in new order era.

It was pretty unproductive last month! There were three potential entries that in very slow progress. Or is it a sign that I was doing something more productive? :D

basic table in latex

Here is a quite basic plus table creation in latex

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|}  \hline
& & &\multicolumn{5}{|c|}{Internalsinl}  \\ \cline{4-8}
ID&Art&Test&         aa1,12bb&aa1,100bb&aa1,1ujbb&aa1,1uj0bb&aa1,1ujbb $\cup$  \\
&          &           &       &       &        &         & aa1001,1uj0bb \\ \hline
Axd &Thi s time &Ex spr & hjtp & hjtp & hjtp & hjtp & hjtp  \\ \cline{3-8}
&fora frica &Vale & 80 & hjtp & 1xd2& 6d44& 628r \\
& os bam b &   &  &   &    &     & \\ \hline
Dxd &Waakaka &Expqr & xd2 & xd2 & xd2 & xd2 & xd2 \\ \cline{3-8}
&euey eee &Valy & xd6 & xd6 & 4x8 & 1f16& 1g12  \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

• First line {|l ....|} determines the column, possible value "l/r/c", and without "|" means without vertical line
  
• "&" separate each item in column
  
• "cline" line on certain column
  
• "hline" horizontal line entire column
  
• beware of the number of "&" on each line,
  
• every line ends with "\\"
  

anthropology 101: javanese

Freshly from Obama’s Young Mother Abroad , "bitter" stuff about javanese though :D.
I shall not give any comment... time will reveal the truth

"And how Indo­nesian men like women to be easy and open abroad, but when you get to Indonesia, the parents are there, the family is there, you have to behave. You have to be the little wife. As a wife, you were not supposed to make yourself visible besides being beautiful."

“Don’t you know that you don’t argue and you don’t discuss with a Javanese person? Be­cause problems don’t exist with Javanese people. Time will solve problems.”

45 minutes

This time measure often drag me into trouble. Often I thought that 45min is merely 30min plus few minutes, then I take it easy. Finally when the time exceeds a bit of 45min, it sounds like 1 hour, damn I'm late for 1 hour. From now on, I must think that 45min is a quarter to an hour instead of a quarter pass 30min.

Why inlander business rarely survive for generations?

Recently I develop my thesis on this matter. Mainly it is caused by the failure of hard working culture. In other word, the failure of parent to educate their children. Moreover it is rooted on the concept of ownership and trust. Parents cling their property so hard as private, so instead of giving responsibility to outstanding person to handle the company, they would hand it to their son or daughter, regardless their competence. This situation is worsened by the nature of distrust in the society, in which it is forcing people to hand their business to their close relatives only. Last but not least is the cripple law enforcement. These whole things construct a chronic insecurity, put people hopes in question and then in the end people draw a pragmatic conclusion, to secure their life and their family they have, reserve wealth and fortune for generations.

The culture of showing wealth or to be considered as successful person based on the appearance also contributes to the way how children get educated. Society view of success and happy people without considerinq the process to achieve them will influence the children's mind. In the end children will suffer of hardworking deficiency syndrome.

Future

Unemployment rate among young people in this country is really scary, 42 percent. I wonder how the future of this country will be. Education is quite good, but vacancy is too low.

I think this is a picture of an unsynchronous connection between education and industry. This case somehow negate my claim that education should neglect market demand. But I'm sincerely sure that I'm not wrong, that's how education should be, the system in this country just has not met requirements to reach that point. Apparently they havent woke up from euphoria of economic blooming just after this country join european union. Maybe I should agree with my professor statement that it is not about the education, it's about economics. But somehow the system is correllated right?

Today I went to a going to be liquidated computer shop, which tries to sell whatever they have. Even though I never like this shop, somehow I feel sorry to them. How will the future of the employees be? I could feel their sadness, but they tried to be as professional as usual.

The view on second hand shop also depicts the same thing. A lot of professional production tools sold. Guess it is a sign of what. Even they sold their working equipment, how can they work?

Last week there was a demonstration of young people for a demand of certain future. A crowd of young 20-30 year tried to raise people conscience about what really happen and what it will be.

Oyama

Just seen this brand again on my way along Manzanares river, after a very long time. So it should be a good brand. When I was child my parents bought me an oyama bmx. Unfortunately this bike had pretty bad fate, immediately the accessories were broken and scratches everywhere. I think it was a bad idea to give a brand new good bike to a child who didn't know how to ride.

Engineer, be or ...

A very bitter writing on how american's best engineer offsprings are kidnapped by bankers and financial institutions. I think it occurs in my country as well, obviously. We've invested a lot to our best engineering students. Aagh, you can read the article for the details, "Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Into Finance".

Moreover unlike in US where best schools are private university, in my country best universities are public, thus the operational is burdening taxpayers. That's why we should feel more guilty than those American students. I've seen some friends who stick on engineering field, but apparently they are less fortune than the ones who jump into financial institution (at least from general people point of view).

Once we have short conversation with friends in the lab, then someone came up with a beautiful statement "If you're tired of being poor as researcher, you can go to those 'finance companies'".

Revolusi dunia arab

Saya turut bangga atas kebangkitan negeri-negeri arab melawan pemimpinnya yang dzalim. Anehnya ada saja pandangan yang mengatakan kalau aksi mereka adalah provokasi atau ditunggangi oleh yahudi dan amerika. Anehnya lagi pandangan ini disampaikan oleh sesama muslim yang cukup berilmu.
Tega-teganya sesama muslim berprasangka buruk kepada saudaranya yang sedang menyabung nyawa berjuang melawan penguasa yang dzalim.

Masih teringat dua minggu yang lalu ketika jumatan di masjid Estrecho, seruan doa untuk Libya yang disambut dengan "amin" yang mampu membuat saya merinding, menggetarkan sanubari.

Learning math by writing program

A bright idea grab from a talk below. In general he is questioning the mathematics curriculum in this computer age. One suggestion is instead of teaching students to have magnificent skill being computing machinery, it would be better if students are taught to develop that machinery by writing a computer program.

However there is a question left, how we can teach student to have skill for solving basic problems that usually solve without any tool. I feel somehow there are something can be learnt by learning this skillful calculating machinery that might develop our understanding in other field of knowledge.

modest

Just lost important entries on my pda! Apparently a pair of AA batteries can last for two months in this m105.

In today's modern society, it is very rare to see women in modest dress. Even in muslim society, fully veil covered young women still often reveal other part of their body for the sake of up to date fashion.

Few days ago I saw two mormon LDS women missionary on the train. They are young, in the beginning of twenty, wear long skirt, modest dress, just so beatiful. Even thogh I don't agree with mormon religious teaching, as Catholics also consider that it is cult, I really admire their modest dress code. I wonder how hard to live those way of life in this so secular society.

I rarely saw mormon women, but I often saw the young men. They wear modest dress code as well, formal suit, with tie, helmet and bicycle. Here is a movie about this young mormon men during their missionary journey, in comedy plot though, the best two years.

Some Jewish orthodoxes also have modest dress code, here is an example. A good example of humble language, instead of harsh and arrogant that we often see in many religious places.

U or V

It has been long time I curious about latin words that have no 'u'-letter. I wonder how 'u' and 'v' are interchange. Finally I got the clue after I learnt Italian pronounciation. Italians pronounce 'v' exactly as 'u' in today's languange. Therefore 'u' can be eliminated just like in old latin alphabet. A concise example is the word 'university'. By pronouncing it as 'uniuersity', it will sound almost the same, thus since latin doesn't have 'u', it is written as 'vniversity'.
Apparently the same argument applies to 'y' and 'i', Yves, Ysabel and so on.

last edited:24 March 2011

young man

It was in a city bus in nothern Italy. A twenty something man with his at most 10 years old brother. Apparently come from low class Italian family. On a very short time stalking, I really admired them. A very touching moment of heartbreaking conversation. How the the little brother reluctantly left his brother, and how the big brother advice him to hurry go to school and tell him that he must go for working. Wisdom is everywhere.

Woman

A touching scene of Bjork's movie last night, "dancer in the dark", made me realize how tough women are. Her child asked her "Why do you keep asking me stupid questions?". I feel really angry and sad to hear that. Angry for the rude question and sad for it somehow resembled myself. Suddenly a really deep sorry clung me. So bad I've treated the woman who always loves me unconditionally.
Forgive me God, forgive me Mom.

A tiny present in women's day.

last updated: 24 March 2011

citation

Nashiruddin Al-Albani. Here is the wiki entry. I shall not give any opinion about his relation to wahabbism or his teaching and judgement on hadits that are considered to be valid for centuries long. I shall only remark his very good and strict understanding of 'sanad' to comprehend Hadits.
He used very strict scientific approach to examine the validity of hadits. Since hadits is not 'provable', its validity depends on the credibility of every person who are listed on citation. Their honesty, ability to remember or even morality are measurements of their credibility.
Al-Albani re-discovered that there are many well known hadits which do not have credible citation path, so these hadits are considered as weak or even fabricated. This finding left a great legacy to give citation on every occasion when a hadits is told, so audiences can examine its correctness by themselves.
The notion of citation also closes the opportunity of miraculous twisted religious teaching. But it opens opportunity of ordinary people who have knowledge to argue with 'holy' people. Using the help of technology, this act is even easier, therefore single interpretation that might be twisted can be avoided. Everybody will be able to contribute and argue logically, regardless their background knowledge. However it may ignite reluctancy to people who think that ordinary people CANNOT interpret religious teaching. Only the ones with broad knowledge are allowed to do that. Agree with that, however when these 'knowledgable holy' people issue a decree that has no valid citation or cannot be inferred from valid citation then this kind of decree should be simply rejected.

India

This country is really incredible! Behind a such kind of a country there must be incredible people.
Anywhere you go visiting education or research center, very probably you'll find Indian. This achievement is impossible unless they have a top notch education system.
Amid the very diverse culture, religion and civilization, India steadily grows and overcomes her problem. Having billions of population, one can argue this number of smart people might be merely a matter of probability. Moreover there are uncountable problems there. However this statistics is somewhat too good to be compared against other developing countries.
India has many good universities, which are scattered in various states. Then each year many of their alum go to university abroad, and some of them are the best university. Still this is not the picture of India education in general, which is pretty bleak actually. However they already have many university graduates as locomotives.
Despite bleak education quality, India succesfully educate her people about equality, and merit system. The result can be seen on goverment cabinet composition, which is full of professional with various race and religion background. Apparently these people are the ones who drive India to the bright path. Unlike the case of less mature developing countries, India elites succesfully ditch their personal greedy interest and put their people and future interest on the first place. I argue that this implies the people who vote them as well. Instead of vote and install political clowns, they pick up professionals graduated from famous major university around the world. Democracy and education must go in parallel to get this effect. Without education, democracy will only be a stimulator for destruction, because it will only give opportunity to cunning politician to represent and rule people who do not have any idea how important their votes are.

retrospect

Akhir-akhir ini sering mendengarkan kuliah singkat beberapa peneliti dari berbagai bidang ilmu komputer. Sangat menarik, membuka wawasan dan sangat mengesankan. Namun jika mengingat kondisi tanah air hal semacam ini hanya membuat sedih saja. Ingin rasanya menjadi seperti mereka, namun sepertinya tidak mudah lagi, mengingat keterbatasan background knowledge yang dimiliki, dan berbagai hal lain yang sepertinya merupakan pembenaran akut atas berbagai kemalasan dan kegagalan.

Ketika kuliah S1 saya cuma mediocre yang harus rajin konsultasi kepada para master untuk bisa dapat nilai baik, sehingga saya tahu betul betapa cerdasnya teman2 saya yang lebih pintar. Andai mereka berdiri di depan ruangan seminar menjelaskan penelitiannya, atau duduk mendengarkan kemudian setelah seminar saya bisa tanya mereka seperti masa kuliah dulu. Kadang saya berharap alangkah beruntungnya jika nanti anak2 kita dididik teman2 kita yang cerdas2 itu dan negeri ini dipimpin oleh mereka. Sayangnya dunia nyata tidak selalu menghargai kesetiaan para pencinta ilmu pengetahuan. Tuntutan kebutuhan dan lingkungan membuat mereka harus bekerja untuk Boston, McKinsey, accenture, E&Y, Total, Chevron dan sejenisnya. Walaupun ada pula yang spartan tapi jumlahnya tak seberapa. Beruntung jika jika spartan ini dari kalangan berada, tapi rasanya terlalu berat jika mereka dari kalangan masyarakat biasa.

Mungkin dengan program semacam ini bisa menghibur teman2 yg cerdas ini walaupun cuma sekedar sebuah foto mereka di depan menara eifel atau pisa di profile jaringan sosial. Membuka harapan bahwa kecintaan mereka pada ilmu yang mereka tekuni ada yang menghargai. Siapa tahu nanti mereka akan mewarnai lembaga2 akademik/riset dunia dan 10-20 tahun lagi memanggil adik2 kelasnya untuk bekerja sama, seperti yang dilakukan orang-orang India dan Cina, dimana 20-30 tahun lagi adik2 kelas itu bisa jadi anak2 kita.

PalmOS

First time I learnt to write program on non-pc machine was on the last year of my bachelor degree, using palm sdk. Nothing special except the input output that must be done through strange GUI interface. I used emulator that claimed to be exact emulation of the real hardware. In old Linux distribution this emulator known as pose, but it no longer exists on new distribution.

Now I have the real Palm gadget, with PalmOS v3.5.2. There are some resources that show how to install linux on it, but I don't want to dismiss the graffiti, though unnatural it is just so cool.
I think I should write a fun stuff on this platform again. The problem is the dead link of the development tools. From this exploration, I learn a notion of cross compiler. Really interesting.

I think I wrote a lot after having this cool historical gadget.

Good Bye Lenny, I've got squeeze

last updated: 1,2 May 2011

Hopefully Squeeze will solve problems on my lenny, yes indeed.
Installation was done smoothly. Faster booting and shutdown. At first there are still problem with brightness and touchscreen to work together, but lenny trick on manipulating grub loader works perfectly, and anything else just perfect. Even sleep and hibernation features that were unsolved in lenny, now work flawlessly.
Now my laptop is just like an expensive laptop should be.

1. Warning: probably terrible bug on my BIOS. The touchscreen does not work unless it is in working state in windows. Weird no?
   
   My computer arrived with windows XP professional installed. I don't want to remove it because I want to be able to play some oldskool game during my happy university life. Once I boot my windows sometimes the touchscreen doesn't work. Then I have to reboot it and by chance it work. Before I boot my linux, I have to make sure that the touch screen is working state in windows.
   
   Rumour says that there are bugs in Windows Vista related to the BIOS, then the BIOS manufacturer accommodate this bug and change the correct implementation of the BIOS into something wrong.
   Yup it is definitely an ill fate design.
   

   Update: I was wrong. It was caused by additional input device that shift the device numbering N on /dev/input/eventN. However the BIOS rumour is not wrong.

New PDAs

Last week I bought a Palm m105, and today I bough another one, a Handspring visor which was released earlier. They have the same operating system, PalmOS v3.x though different minor version.

I prefer visor appearance that looks modern, like today high-end pda-phone. But both hardware is almost the same, Motorola dragonball 16MHz, infra red and stylus. However I feel m105 has better response, maybe the newer version OS is faster. The power is provided by 2 AAA batteries that are easily found. Though apparently consume more power, visor can preserve its state, when the batteries are removed for short time, unlike m105 that will lose its state once it lose the power.

The m105 was completely new, came with all inside the package box, except the box itself. Meanwhile the visor came with nothing, so I can only use the IrDA connection to communicate with computer.

Paragraphs above are written on Handspring visor which has larger screen, but there is something missing there, note pad, that gives possibility to draw scratches. However I tried to install a third party drawing software. It worked, but I haven't figured out how to transfer the artwork to a pc.

The connection scheme is visor-m105-pc. The m105 uses serial port, so I have to provide usb to serial converter for my laptop which doesn't have serial port. Fortunately my friend gave me one, great! It cost more expensive than the PDAs both. I also eye an apparently usb infrared extension in the 2nd hand shop, it's cheap, but my mean mind still reluctantly agree.

classical music

Recent years my interest on this genre grows drastically. From listening, buying the record and even watching the live concert. A pity that I cannot play any piece of them. In fact I cannot play any musical instrument. Maybe someday learning violin would be very sexy. Just the way I thought when I used to see young people with cool musical instruments around Claudio Monteverdi conservatory.

In my opinion, maybe the easiest pieces to enjoy are Canon of Pachelbel and Air of Bach. Once you listen to them you will fall in love. However this time I'd like to share a peaceful composition of Brahms, under direction of Karajan.

ins dtx and sty

Often when we need an extra package on latex we get a zip file contains *.ins and *.dtx. I just learn today that those files will create the *.sty and the documentation.
First run latex on the *.ins (mainly for creating the *.sty) and then run *.dtx several times (mainly for creating the documentation).
More explanation is here.

Graffiti

Graffiti(1) is an old handwriting input method from Palm. Very fast and accurate, though unnatural. Probably this is the best input method for handwriting, at least a newly released version for Android has just been released.

It maybe a very nice example of an awful impact of a patent infringement. The lost of Palm over Xerox in this case forced Palm to ship its gadget without Graffiti, instead they are shipped with Graffiti2 which is less intuitive. It caused outcry to Palm fans, who have been well trained with Graffiti. Furthermore it might be the cause of the plummet of its market.

second hand market

Nice thing I found in europe is good quality goods in very cheap price. Yes it's not new but it is really ok if you have taste of quality and hi-story. This place is not merely for buying and selling, but it's also a meeting point for hobbyist and collectors.

Second hand market is such a museum, but you can buy what you like. By curiosity I almost always visit this market every week, and everytime I go there I can always find something new. It's not always the case that I bought something because I need it, often merely because of curiosity, incredibly nice price or hi-story. Nice price is the most important here, though it leads to consumerism, but I've been euro wise, so I think it is time to be cent foolish now :D.

Recently I found that there are second hand shops as well. They offer better and somewhat cheaper produtc than the market. Best thing of shop is you don't have to bargain. However in market there are many human interest sides that may enrich our life,

Ebay or any online shopping site become uninteresting, though sometimes I use them for price reference.

Written on 10 years old Palm m105, you can guess from where I got it.

mutt

It's not about the mail client!

It was a long struggle to compose a non computing stuff dan end up in a month without posting anything.

Though I had lived in this country in 2008, but I felt in that time the homeless phenomenon was not as apparent as today. I think the economic downfall is the culprit. The economic crisis has triggered social crisis. Today homeless can be easily found in any corner of the city. Fortunately unlike other countries in this continent, this country is pretty warm. Criminal cases and homicides soar in daily news, unlike two years ago when the death of a child became a national issue for months.

Actually the first time I had awareness on this matter was when I visited Verona. We walked around Piazza Erbe, then spotted a nice looking antique building nearby and went there. I saw several homeless there. I wanted to take some pictures, but I just didn't dare to. Suddenly a man shouted and point out to the homeless sleeping there, "This is a living monument of Italy". [He was shouting quite loud so the sound awoke the mutts.]

I thought this only occurs in the poor Italia regions, but in the richest part, this phenomenon occurs as well. I realized it in several last months I lived in Italia. Every time I went home from Trento by train and passed by the small park in front of the station, I saw a group of homeless gathering nearby a car which served meals for them.

Even though the GDP of this country is higher than Italia, actually it is more prone to trouble for it has no strong economic foundation. Economic growth was merely bubble made by construction industries, and now this bubble explodes. It merely has very few strong manufacturing sector as economic support, even though the agricultural is very good for the nice geographical position. Apparently the very long military dictatorship was the culprit of the flaws of economic foundation.

The explosion of the bubble triggered other supporting sector to collaps. The trickle down effect is enormous. Slow but sure the ecomomic contracted, it triggered layoffs, non-performing loan, the plummet of purchasing power, and one of the result of their chained reaction is forcing the people to live on the street.

Everybody in this country is actually covered by social security plan. But the amount which they are received does not guarantee for living properly. It depends on the calculation of how long they actually have ever worked. Even entrepeneurs also get this coverage. They have to report their income and pay monthly social security installments. Sometimes you might notice a small business that apparently unable to cover the daily living cost. Some people suspect that actually they eye for the social security benefit in their retirement age.

Generally the social security benefit will be given after certain year of retiremement age. Therefore until someone reach that year, they cannot get the coverage. It is a pity when somebody have no job but haven't reach the retirement age. There are chances where they'll wait the arrival of this retirement age by being homeless. Recent newspaper draws 4.231.003 people being jobless, it is roughly 10 percent of population. However there is a more scarier figure with regard to the number of jobless among young people. Hopefully the situation will be better soon, so it doesn't bring more people to live on the street in the future.