Moving Forward

The past
... has been dragging us

Let us
... move forward

I am not saying that the past is not important, but sometimes it keeps us from moving forward. Bad experience in the past, dark history, and what not, are important. I am not saying that we should forget them. It's just that we have to be brave enough to embrace the future.

The (bright) future, ready or not, ... here I come!

How about you, folks? Are you ready?

BFS Generation

There are two ways to explore the wealth of information; "Breadth First Search (BFS)" or "Depth First Search (DFS)." In BFS, if you find a new branch of information, you jump into it. In DFS, you dig down deeper before you branch out.

It seems that older generations tend to explore knowledge in DFS fashion. They concentrate in a subject and explore that particular subject deeper and deeper. They become experts in their particular fields.

Younger generations tend to explore things in a horizontal manner or BFS. They explore things in parallel and have no patience to explore deep. They like to open (too) many windows while browsing, jumping from one window to another in an BFS fashion. They become generalists, with a breadth of knowlegde.

Are you a DFS or BFS generation?

Related article: "How the Google generation thinks differently"

Not Excited in Reading (Certain) Books

I am reading a review of a book a few minutes ago. At the end, I came to a conclusion that it was a good book but with too many words. The reviewer was not too excited describing the book. In another place, I found a more raving review of the book. It's a best seller book in Indonesia. (I am not going to give the title. :) )

I've got the book but for some reasons I have not started reading the book. Don't ask me why.

There's also another book (different author) that is a best seller. It even became a movie. That, also, did not excite me. I've read a few pages then gave up. Many people said that the story is good. I just couldn't read it.

What's wrong with me?

I have some possible answers. One, I have to wear glasses when reading now. I hate it. I love reading lying down. And, those glasses are just in the way of reading. This is why I read less books these days. The stack (of books to be read) is getting higher and higher.

Next possible answer. I don't want to read mainstream. I want to be different. So, I don't read those books for the sake of being different? What a pitty, right? Well, it doesn't have to make sense.

Last. Maybe, my taste is just different. That's it. (ha ha ha ... trying to find justification.)

(pretend to be) somebody else

I was pretending to be somebody else
so that you like me
I am so sorry ...

Now, if that was said to you, ... would you forgive? and forgotten?

There's one thing that I just don't understand. Why would you lie in the first place? You should give me more credits. I am not that shallow.

[posting was inspired by the suite life of zack and cody]

Looking For A Simple MIDI Sequencer

I am looking for a simple MIDI sequencer, something that looks like "Band in a Box" (a product that I had a long time ago). Preferably a free one.

The idea is that I can select a rhythm pattern (say, rock, pop, jazz, or variations of them) and then I can enter chords by typing their name (say, "C" or "Dm" or "CM7" and so on). After that I can play the composition.

Actually, I need this for my guitar practice. I have melodies in my head that I need to practice. Or I have some ideas (melodies) that I want to try and make modifications of them. To do so I need a rhythm that I can play over and over again.

After that, I also need a program that can convert (render) the MIDI sequences to MP3.

Any suggestions?

Net-heavy Applications

I hate myself for having a slow internet connection. All these new, web 2.0, applications are heavy in network usage. Facebook, plurk, and the like. Perhaps they already use smaller images or objects, but there are plenty (too many) of them. This makes it hard for bandwidth beggars like me.

Arrrggghhh ...

I am being left out by the world ...
Would somebody help and rescue me? (Write apps for slow bandwidth users like me.)

Popularity of Futsal

In Indonesia, futsal (I don't know the definition - a small indoor soccer game?) is sooo populer. Everywhere you see, there's futsal being played. Futsal courts(?) are always booked. I guess, if you want to invest, there's the place to do it.

Is this just in Indonesia? Or is futsal a world trend these days? How about in your area?


[a picture of our INDO CISC team]

Right now, I cannot play futsal because of an injury from previous match (in a local league). I was the goal keeper and somehow feet landed into my right body (ribs). Ouch! Grrr. I cannot play now. I hate it! I want to play again as soon as possible. Let's see if I am able to play next week. I already missed one game.

What's with twitter

I've been having a hard time logging into twitter.
Does anybody know what's going on with this service?
Should I go back to jaiku.com?
Or use Indonesian's kronologger.com?

cannot twit...

The Strength of (Encryption) Algorithm

How do you measure the strength of an encryption algorithm?

So far, I have not found a complete reference on this. There are some references and they refer to different things, such as randomness, avalanche effect, diffusion, or anything that is related to how different the output if the input or key is very similar.

Another issue that is important is the key space. The larger the key space and the more complex the algorithm (big Oh?), the more difficult an algorithm is broken by brute force attack.

Another lead says that you have to go through cryptanalysis to measure the strength of an encryption algorithm.

Anyway, I am still searching. Let me know if you have more references.

Toto World Tour 2008 in Bandung, Indonesia

Actually I have written a more complete review (including lots of pictures) in my other blog, but unfortunately it's in Bahasa Indonesia. Just in case you're interested, head down to
http://rahard.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/toto-live-bandung/

In short ... it was a greaaat... show!

My nephew told me about the show around one month before the show. He's a Toto (more specifically Lukather) fan. I am a Toto fan also. I remembered during my undergrad school I had a band and in our first gig, we played "Hold The Line". Ha.

I bought two VIP tickets for me and my wife. It was Rp 200 thousands (or US$10) a piece. Very reasonable price! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

A week before the day, a friend gave VVIP tickets to me. I took them and gave my tickets to a friend who came from Jakarta with his wife, just to see Toto. (Look guys, that's how popular you are.)

On the D-day I went to the venue with my wife. We were supposed to have special seats in the VVIP, in he Telkomsel (sponsor) section. But seats in that section were already taken (by bozos ... ha ha ha). The organizer appologized and tried to find other ways to no avail. Finally, one guy said, why don't let them go to the balcony. So up there we went. No chairs, but there were tables and lighting stuff. This, apparently, was a place for journalists to take pictures, videos, and such. The organizer kept appologizing for the place. I said, no need to appologize. I like it this way. I don't need chair. This is a rock concert! I loved it!

A few minutes later the show opened. This was great. We didn't have to wait.



They kicked it out with Gypsy Train. It was a slow start, in terms of crowd involvement. The crowd was polite. They gave applause from their chair. In the end everybody was flocking the front stage. That shows how great the show was!

Here are some pictures




More pictures taken from the show are available here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/rahard/TOTOLiveInBandung
I took the pictures with pocket camera. The quality is okay, considering it is a pocket camera. You can see the excitement of the crowds and the band!
Does anybody know Toto management? I'd like to contribute my pictures to them as a token of appreciation of their coming to my town. Let me know...

A note ...
You guys should come back to Bandung. You saw us - great bunch of crowds - right? If you want, I can personally take you on a city tour. I don't know how tough it is, given your popularity ... ha ha ha. Bandung is a nice city. Just drop me a note if you like this crazy idea.

(I am) a Clean Sheet

I am a clean sheet
... ready to be written
... or even torn apart

Watching Cars Again

This is the n-th time I watch "cars" (the movie). Actually, I was just watching "cars" (and the making) in Disney Channel. It was fun. I think that was the second time I watched the same programme (the making of cars, or some sort). I still loved it. When you love something, things can be illogical. he he he.


The thing is, they (Pixar) is really searious when making movies. The jokes and moments are excellent. [Maybe I should give some examples. I'll do that later on.] They're really serious about it. At the end of the movie, where they're showing credit, you'll see lots of disney movies but modified for cars. For example, there's "toy car story" (which is a clip of "toy story"-like movie but the actors are ... cars). ha ha ha.

On top of that there are messages that inline with my views (on certain topics). They're kinda validating my views. ha ha ha.

Anyway, I've got to watch it again. ha ha ha.

Tagging and category (in blog) do not work

Recently, I've been writing many things in my blog(s). I used to write things related to information technology (IT). It is not exclusive on IT, but IT is the main theme.

Now, I am writing different things; live, music, poems, business, religion, and much more. (I don't think I will write about politics, though.) When I write about different things, I use category (a feature provided by the blog provider - eg. wordpress.com) to indicate the type of my articles. I also use tags or labels to add some keywords and also to indicate the content of my articles.

This, apparently, is not good enough.

There are people who complained that they only want to read (my) articles that are related to IT, for example. Filtering based on category / tag / label is not good enough.

On top of that, my blogs are aggregated in many sites. Those (aggregator) sites take all my articles. They don't filter the articles based on the type of the content. So, in an IT aggregator site, they also see my poems and my articles about life.

One possible solution is to have multiple blogs. Each blog is dedicated to a certain topic. I have taken this road. I have more than a dozen blogs and most of them are active. (No, I am not kidding. I write a lot.) Again, my readers don't like this approach. If they want to read my articles (not specific to a certain topic), they have to jump from one blog to another. They don't like this (obviously).

I use planet to agregate my own blogs - called PlanetGBT - (thanks to Priyadi for providing the service). But, it is still to "complicated" for my readers. On top of that, I use multiple blog providers (wordpress, blogspot, multiply, ...) to host the blogs. Sometimes readers must have accounts in those providers to give comments. This is another problem. They don't want to create more accounts. Having one blog account is (confusing?) enough for them.

Complicated, eh? One thing is clear; tagging and category don't work as expected.

I am still going to write many things in a blog. Yeah, I will get (more) complaints for this.

New Guitar

I wrote it elsewhere, but I think I should post it here too. I just got a new guitar, my 4th guitar. It's a Gibson Les Paul-look like. It's actually a Greg Bennett guitar. In the store I was toying between two guitars. One is a Fender strat-like and the other one is this.

Finally, I decided to take this guitar just because I want to experiment with the humbucker pickup. My other guitar, a Yamaha, has single coil pickup. I was told that single coil pickup is good for clean sound and it does. But my playing style (and sound) is more suitable to this guitar. We'll see how it goes.


I am going to give it a try in a gig next month.

Welcome, my new guitar.