Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

Thinking what lies ahead in 2008. Talk to me my box! Photo taken by Julianto Soeroso , somewhere in Jakarta.

Actually, I just want to post pictures. I don't know what to do with many of my pictures. They're siting in my disk, doing nothing. I guess, I'll post them on the internet.

Recently - well, not so recently - I talked to a friend of mine who is now living in the States. He is an American citizen and a successful businessman. He's now thinking of investing in new regions and at the same time becoming a philanthropist. When I asked him which region he was thinking, he said Africa. Why Africa? I don't know. Can somebody enlighten me? In another occasion I met with an investor (originally he started a company and was bought by a larger company - I am not naming name here. :) ). He visited Indonesia and met with me in Bandung. He's been around in the region looking for an investment area. You know what he picked? Vietnam. In a sense I should be happy that people in Africa and Vietnam are getting investment from abroad, but I am a little sad that not many come to Indonesia. What's wrong with us? I've been living in North America for quite a while (to know some of the culture - heck, I am a bit westernized in thinking and action) and traveled ...

I cannot live without (blog) comments. I have created (too many) blog postings and I am hungry for comments. So far, I am doing okay. Lots of visitors are coming into my blogs (especially to my wordpress-blog ). But, sometimes early in the morning, I check my blogs to see if somebody has read and commented on my blogs. Many times, I found nothing. Like right now (early morning). Maybe they're all still sleeping. Ha ha ha. Or it's just I am too addicted to internet and blogs. The thing is I am craving for comments. My digital life cannot live without comments. How about yours? twitting and kronning ...

I cannot get over this song, " La La (Means I Love You) ". There are many versions, but the one that I like is Swing Out Sister's version. In my other blog, I have been musing over this song multiple times. Ah ... what one can do? I could never say "I Love You". All I could say is "La La La" ... So, to my family ... "La La La". You know that I love you all! Here's a picture taken years ago, when my kids were still ... well, kids. They're bigger, even taller than me.

My cellphone has just died recently. Now, it's in a repair shop. There's a problem. I put most of my contact numbers in the phone. The memory of my SIMcard is limited. I could only store a few numbers (under 100). My contact list has more than 100 numbers. I did backup the content with the software that came in with the phone. The problem is, I cannot seem to run the software without the cellphone attached to my computer (through USB port). The program waited for the cellphone, which obviously not there. It's in the shop! Damn you program! All I wanted to do is run the backup / sync program and do a quick lookup of an address. I couldn't do it. I should have exported the contacts to a plain text or some sort of standard format. Is there a standard address book / contact format that is supported by major cellphone vendors (Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson)?

It's official, the internet - and more specifically blog(ing) - is efficiently wasting my time. I spend too many hours in front of my computer creating blog posts or reading blogs of other people. I have not read newspapers more than six months, perhaps close to a year if I count subscribing to newspapers but didn't read them. Do I need professional help? ;-)

I like to study in a (little) noisy environment. For some (strange?) reasons, I feel that I am getting more if I do my work in public places. At home or places, where it's quiet, I am thinking of sleeping all the time. Ha ha ha. So what do I do? Well, I usually head down to Starbucks in Ciwalk or Bandung Super Mall (BSM). Yeah, many friends tease me of too much Starbucks (and not going to traditional coffeeshops). The thing is, I am not only looking for the cofffee alone, but I also want the environment. In those Starbucks premises, I could read books, reports, presentation materials, and other stuff. I got my reading "work" done. Here's an example of a photo taken at Starbucks Bandung Super Mall. Yup, an iPod is with me all the time. So, Starbucks lovers, if you're in Bandung you'll feel at home. There are plenty of Starbucks outlets. By the way, I don't work for Starbucks. I hope they'll give me a free supply of coffee latte for this endorsment. Ha h...

This morning (and tomorrow), I am giving a presentation on IT Outsourcing. We looked at the landscape - looked at Wipro, Infosys, Tata, trend in China, (call center in) Phillipines, Vietnam, and what not. We evaluated why companies outsource (their IT). There was a question about Indonesia's postion in IT outsourcing. Well, we are not know in the world (yet), but there are some IT outsourcing companies. (I happen to run a small one :) ). We're in a different league, though. We then have the following chart to show our position: (The text is in Bahasa Indonesia. I just took a snapshot of the page.) In terms out positioning, I believe that Indonesia should focus on the "art" portion of IT. We are very different with the rest of the pack in terms of art (and taste?). At least, that's my gut feeling. (I rarely wrong. ha ha ha.) There's a longer story about this focus, but I have to find more time to write it down. It is easier for me to tell it in front of people....

Looking around at planet terasi , I found a link to IP's posting about top 100 Indonesian blogs . What's this? I headed up to the list . I found out that this blog is listed number 9 along with my wordpress blog (listed at number 8). Interesting. Two of my blogs (out of a dozen of them) were listed. I don't know the formula they use for the rank, but it's quite interesting. I noticed that there's something interesting. In my wordpress blog ( rahard.wordpress.com ) the rank in technorati is 10 millions, meaning it doesn't count(?). Hmm... that blog is actually more popular than this blog. Maybe I have to register the blog in technorati? Or, it's just technorati is not friendly with wordpress.com blogs? I am not sure (and I don't care). As long as my readers still visit my blogs and happy with them, I am happy. Apparently I have to claim that blog. It's done. But, for this blog, I have to claim by creating a link to: Technorati Profile I hope it work...

Room for two, please. Are you expecting someone else, sir? No. But, why room for two? I don't want to be alone. I want to be with my consciousness. You don't need room for two for that one sir. Have you ever been with your consciousness? No sir . There you go. Here's your room for two, sir.

One of the things I like about Discovery Channel (and their "friends") is that I can learn other culture. Like this morning. I watched a story about South Africa. I am trying to understand their struggle (as a nation) and how their future is going to be. Looking at their limitation and how they are trying to progress gives us hope here in Indonesia. Our resources are much better then them, but how come we (Indonesia) are not thinking ahead. Many people think about themselves. I am not talking about them as individuals, but also as families. Not many people think about the future of the nation! I am sure there are people like that, but they are just powerless or they are swampped with their daily lives. (Maybe I should say "we", instead of "them" since I am part of them myself.) We forgot to think what our nation will be in 10 or 100 years ahead. Film or story like the one I've just watched is needed to renew our interest in building our nation. Are you...

I wanted to write this earlier in this blog, but did it in my other blog . Anyway, friends from MyCERT (Malaysia Computer Emergency Response Team - now known as CyberSecurity Malaysia) visited us in Bandung. Whoa! This is a surprise to me. I knew that they had a presentation in Jakarta, but I didn't expect them to come here. I wanted to meet them, but I had to give presentations (in three days, straight). After my presentation, I took a travel car back to Bandung. Arrived in Bandung, I took a taxi cab heading home. In front of the gate, a car pulled over. A bunch of guys came out from the car. There they are ... Time to take a picture first :) So here it is, a picture of Malaysian and Indonesian techies (white-hat hackers?) Thanks guys for visiting us. Next time I'll visit Kuala Lumpur, I'll give you a call. In the mean time, let's do a follow up with collaboration between us.

Andika pointed to me that it seems there's a change in PageRank algorithm (or something). Our blogs have been degraded. Andika's went from 5 to 1, while mine went from 5 to 3. Anybody knew about this? I am just curious. That's all. I won't do anything about it. Hey, I am writing this blog not to get ranks, but to contribute (something) to the readers. I know I have been busy writing my opinion (more like rants - ha ha ha) elsewhere. Anyway ... [update: for some reasons, mine went back to 5. will look into andika's.]

Going through my old cassette tapes, I found this old gem. London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Choral Society play some classic rock songs. The title of the album, sure enough, "Classic Rock". Take a look at my tape. It's almost 30 years-old! It's actually my uncle's tape who lived in our house during part of his university live. I believe he bought it in 1978 or so. At that time, all of Indonesian tapes are copies made from vinyl records. Intellectual property rights was not an issue back then. So the label of the tape is actually a local label. The "cover art" is actually a photo, cut to the size. As time goes on, it "melted" and sticked into the plastic cover. Maybe it's the humidity that made it worse? I don't know. I can't barely read the text in the bottom. The quality of the tape is good actually. I can still listen to it, but I rarely played cassette tapes these days. I can only do that in my car. I listen to music through ...

For the last couple of days, I've been relaxing in Singapore. First, it was Hari Raya. I went to the Indonesian Embassy to pray Iedul Fitri. It was an experience for me. When I was in Canada, I went to Eid prayers with the Muslim community there, which was mostly non Indonesians. This time, it was mostly Indonesia, but I know nobody there. Then I went to a party in Tampines, organized by an Indonesian community. My family and I took MRT there, but was caught in a heavy rain. We took shelter in Tampines shopping mall (forgot the name). It was not that long that the sun replaced the rain. We went to the gathering and met some people whom I knew (and gained some more friends). That was yesterday. Today, I started the day by swimming in the hotel swimming pool with my son. It's a nice and small swimming pool. The view from the top of this hotel is not bad. I took a picture of the surrounding area after swimming. Here it is. Clean and organized! And now ... it's time to explore ...

I've got more emails and news about bad news between Indonesia and Malaysia. To be exact, there was a news about RELA (not sure what that is) that goes out after Indonesians in Malaysia. There were incidents where they hit Indonesians, rob, and do horrible things. I cannot even write this is my blog. I am so sad and frustrated. What's going on with Malaysia (and Malaysians)? What did we - Indonesian(s) - do to deserve this? I thought there should be less boundary between Indonesia and Malaysia. But ... What's going on there, bro & sis? You know, more Indonesians now feel that they are offended by Malaysians. I can tell you that this bad feeling is increasing. This is a bad publicity towards Malaysia. People are now creating various calling names, such as "Malingsia" (it's a short of "maling" [thief] "siah" [you, Sundanese]), and worse.

I am starting to use Shelfari dan Goodreads to store my book collection. It's not up to date yet, but now I can put my books there. I used to put my collection in a local internet database (koleksi.mania.or.id), but it's gone now. Now, is there a similar social network site that I can use to store collection of my audio CDs , cassettes, and MP3 collections? Now, I am not thinking about uploading the content (like MP3), but just entering the list. I would then could see collections of other users, just like in a regular social network site. Just maybe last.fm would hear this? Any recommendation? On a similar situation ... I write a lot of articles and give a lot of presentations. (And I mean a lot.) Now, I would like to record the title of my presentations (articles) and even give the presentations (articles) away. Right now I edit the list manually. You can see it in my web site ( budi.insan.co.id ), in the articles and presentations section. It's a pain to do it manuall...

I was going to write an article here, but I ended up writing it in my other blog which is usually in Bahasa Indonesia. It's about the recent tension between Indonesia and Malaysia. I added Singapore to it just for the fun. Well, it's not just for the fun. There is a reason to it. Go down there and read the article yourself. It's here rahard.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/malaysia-and-indonesia-and-singapore Tell me what you think, here or there. Creative discussion, please. No insults or things like that. Keep it clean, people.

Here's the deal. I want to write a program that capture my Yahoo! Messanger (YM) chat in a text file. Basically, a command line chat program. I could have a listener program, which listens my chat partner's responses, and a writer / talker / sender , which sends my text to YM server. The idea is a mix of dsniff 's msgsnarf and Pidgin 's finch . Once I can separate the text, I could do so many things (like write a Tcl/Tk wrapper around them building a new GUI, or send them to a web-based program like Meebo, or ... many intersting things). Now. I need suggestions. Should I write it from scratch? (Probably using perl or C. Which perl module should I use? I've been neglecting perl for quite a while. I am rusted. I also notice that there is a libpurple library in C. Should I use that one, instead?) Or modify existing program(s)? Which one? (I just found out there's a program called ari-yahoo on the *BSD port. It's an old program and uses yahoolib . Is using ya...

My notebook is acting. Actually, it's a loaner. I installed GNU/Linux Debian. It still has its default MS Windows, though. Anyway ... it is acting up, hangs, unpredictable. Sometime it would stay up for more than 1 hour, 2 hours, or more, but other time it would hang in 15 minutes. I suspect it has a problem with RAM. Now, how do I test it (to make sure that it is a hardware problem, not a software / OS problem)? Any suggestion? Is there a Linux program that can (stress) test the hardware (mostly RAM)? Now, I took one of the RAM chips (which I suspect is faulty) and keep it running under Debian. It has been up for more than 1 hour.

Arrrggghhh... I have not had a chance to watch English Premier Football League (EPFL). The reasons is that Astro (a satellite TV operator here) took an exclusive license to the English Premier League and I am using Indovision (Astro's competitor). EPFL is no longer available in my TV. Grrrr... Now this. Jose Mourinho, Chelsea's coach, is out. I've just read it in a newspaper. It is still not clear to me what's the fiasco all about. Anybody? Chelsea is my favorite team. Definitely Mourinho's departure will effect Chelsea performance. They have had a tough time last season. They don't need this. Argh. What can I do? Switch team? Not yet!

I have just downloaded and installed Flock 0.9.1.0. I expected that it should be a lighter version of Firefox. It does start faster (at least that's how I feel), but then when I open many sites (blogs) in several tabs, I can feel it's crawling. I don't know what's happening. It doesn't do that with Firefox. So, I am a little dissapointed with Flock. How's your experience?

Here's a picture of me and my students taken during Forum Rektor Gathering at Institut Teknologi Bandung (my university). [Foto: Aji Heriadi] I played guitar in a band and the students performed traditional music and dances. Good things. Our traditional culture is well and alive, with young persons! Well, what's the future? Can we preserve our traditional culture in this digital age? What kind of performance will come out of this? We'll see. I am excited with this; Indonesia Digital Culture. Hmm....

I used to blog at modblog.com. It died. Then users from modblog (modblog addicts) flocked to efx2.com. And now ... efx2.com is down! I don't know what happened to it. Does anybody know what's going on? Now, we're scrambling to find each other. The thing about modblog and efx2 is that users visit each other. It's a community thing. I don't know why, but you can sense it is there (which is not happening in other blog services). Anyway ... efx2 users, let's unite. Update: efx2 is now up and running, but with different software. Now it uses wordpress. The domain is now efx2blogs.com. My blog is now at budi.efx2blogs.com .

Sometimes I feel like I am trapped in rocks and hard places. I am an Indonesian, definitely an Eastern culture, but, I began mature in a Western society (Canada to be exact). I am glad I had the chance to see the best and worse of both worlds. I am trying to pick up the best of them, but it seems that best is not good enough. What does "best" mean in another culture? When I tried to do something, sometimes the result is not what I expected. Rejections! It's not the content, but how I did it that created problem(s). It's a cultural thing. There's a clash of culture in my body ...

It's hot ... Nowadays, Indonesians are angry at Malaysia. A few days ago, an Indonesia was beaten by Malaysian Policemen. The victim was in Malaysia on a Karate competition. He was a referee in the competition. He was accused as an illegal worker (eg. construction worker?). The beating was unbelievable that he was hospitalized. It's a miracle that he didn't die there. I recieved an email another story. Again, this was about Malaysian's Police brutality against Indonesians. (But, as a side note, somebody also told me that they did the same thing to Malaysians!) How could Malaysians do this to us, Indonesians? I just cannot imagine. I love Malaysia and Malaysians - I have many Malaysian friends - but this incident has created some doubts for me. Could somebody in Malaysia enlighten me? (and bring our trust and love back?) A more complete story is available here (but it's in Bahasa Indonesia): http://rfirmans.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/wasit-karate-internasional-asal-ind...

Yesterday, I watched a movie called "Singapore Dreaming." I didn't know what to expect since I know nothing of Singaporean movie landscape. One thing I had in mind when I decided to watch that movie is that I want to know how Singaporeans live. The movie is a about the lives of a Singaporean family. Granted this is just a movie, but I could see little things that are true to Singaporeans. Like a mother who scolded her son because he got 95 in his exam (while others got 100). Singaporean is like that, I think. Yes, living in Singapore is stressful. Then, on the radio there was a story about maid abuse. The family is an ordinary Singaporean old couple, living in public housing. They have a daughter and a son (who is coming from the States, he studied there) and their family. It was about hardship, about how to keep bread on the table, but also about wanting to be rich or better living. I want to tell more, but it'll just spoil the movie. You've got to see it yoursel...

Today, 17th August 2007, is Indonesia's Independence Day. We celebrate this with different things. In Jakarta, there is a formal ceremony. Here, around my place, the kids were celebrating with a parade. It was a simple parade, but they loved it. Kids wearing different costumes walking around the blocks. Other pictures are available in my other blog . Happy birthday Indonesia!

Yesterday I had to watch what I eat. My family and I went to Pascal Hypersquare food arena. I ordered "tempe mendoan," "baso tahu," and "martabak San Francisco." Sorry no screenshot. I forgot to take pictures. In the evening, I didn't feel that good. No, I was not sick, but just didn't feel alright. Maybe it was because I ate too much (with that kind of food). ha ha ha. So, there was no dinner for me. Just fruits. ... ouch! There's a saying that goes something like this; "When I was young, I could not afford to buy (fancy, expensive) food. Now I have the money to buy, but I am not allowed to eat that food (because of age / health)." What can you do?

Blog is like a Tamagotchi . It will die in despair if it is not visited, updated, dan commented by the owner and visitors.

Last week I talked to somebody and she was furious about one thing, that is being called "Indon". Apparently, she does not like to be called "Indon" by Malaysians. Ha? Yes, Indonesians are often called "Indon" in Malaysia and apparently that term is considered harsh to some Indonesians. (Appart from Indon another term that is commonly used there in Malaysia is "Bangla", for people from Bangladesh. I don't know how Bangladeshi feel about this.) To be frankly, I don't feel the insult of "Indon" (in Malaysia) or "Indo" (in Singapore). It's just a name. Maybe I am just too insensitive? I don't know. How about you (if you are an Indonesian)? To our friends in Malaysia, please don't call Indonesians "Indon", since some people are offended with that term. Peace ...

People are raving about biofuel. Experiments and even commercial implementations of biofuels are available now. Then, there's a problem. Somebody sent me an email. It says that CPO is used to make biofuel, but it is also an ingredient to make cooking oils. Now, people are more interested in exporting CPO to countries outside Indonesia. This creates a higher price of cooking oil. I don't know whether the above story is accurate, but definitely the price of cooking oil is skyrocketing in Indonesia. I guess, that above scenario is possible. If it is true, then biofuel is a recipie for (price) disaster in Indonesia. What do you think?

After seeing my (gig) pictures, Jay - a friend of mine, gave me a stage name: Funkmaster Webmaster . ha ha ha. It's actually a good name. Although, I am more into Rock! than Funk! Webmaster, that I am. I should (am going to?) use that name for my stage name ...

What does it mean (take?) to be an Indonesian? Do I have to speak in Bahasa Indonesia to be an Indonesian? Do I have to act like other Indonesians? Tell me. Please. (Is nationalism that important? I don't know.) A few years ago, when I was still living in Canada, I had a similar conversation with a friend of mine, but at that time we were discussing "being a Canadian." I think it was tougher because the similarities between Canadians and Americans. (I know that Canadians don't like being associated with Americans. Ha ha ha)

I was in a discussion with some friends and we ended up discussing languages, especially English. Now, the question is who "owns" the English language? (I cannot define what "own" means in this context.) The Englishmen? How about the Americans? In my experience, Indians (the Asians, not the Native Americans) usually are better in using English. They usually pick words that are not commonly used (daily by people on the street). It's interesting. I could not generalize this, but that's just my experience. Yours could be different. Okay, it's just a light discussion (that goes to nowhere). Forget about this ...

Why is there a wave of " oneliner applications "? What I mean by "oneliner applications" are applications that print one line of your message. Okay, they are not limitted by one line, but you know what I mean. You can use this application to set your status, show your emotion, show what you are doing, post a URL, and so on. Examples of these applications are: jaiku twitter status in your Yahoo Messanger (YM) shoutout in friendster ... is ... in facebook mood in moodmill and many more I've been using those applications (or feature in application) for quite a while and it is getting annoying since I have to enter text to those application individually. There should be one application that can control them all. I enter the text and it gets distributed to those oneliner applications. Hmm...

What's with these numbers? It's odd. Well, years ago it might be considered odd, but now ... it's so hot. As a side note, how come there's no minor revision ? I have not heard Web 2.1. Should I make Budi Rahardjo 3.1? (It reminds me of Windows 3.1. Ha ha ha.) Who (what) is going to claim 5.0?

As mentioned in my other blog entry (guess which one, ha ha ha), I spent the whole Sunday morning at home doing nothing. Well, that's true for the morning. In the afternoon I still slugging in my bed, but this time with two books (H. Gardner's "Five Minds for the Future" and Michael Heatley's "The illustrated history of the Electric Guitar") and a notebook (to watch a DVD movie and surf a little - like to JSOP's blog ). It has been a while since I have time like this. Usually, I always buzzing around doing many things. This time, I am enjoying every bit of it. It was a ranning little outside. The sound of water hitting puddles of water on the grass is so beautiful. It reminded me of a song, "rhythm of the rain" played instrumentally on a piano. Ah. What a beautiful world God has given us. I am going back to read those two books ...

I've been reading articles that basically say " Linux got it wrong and Mac OS got it right. " That's kind of obvious, isn't it? (I own an iBook and Linux on many computers.) Now, I am looking for articles that say " Linux got it right and Mac OS got it wrong. " Ha ha ha. As a start, can somebody point me to the statistics of the number of Linux vs Mac users? I would have thought that the number of Linux users exceeds the number of Mac users. (Meaning Linux got it right.) No? More specifically, I would love to hear what Linux has done right in terms of usability.

This is another story of my trip to Singapore . My family dan I decided to go to Singapore this weekend. We decided to take the route through Batam island. Our trip started from Bandung . We took GA-Citilink flight from Bandung to Batam. The flight was full with family and people on holiday. Some schools, private ones, in Indonesia have started the holiday. The flight was smooth. We arrived in Batam and took a taxi cab stright to Batam Center , where they have ferry or speed boot to Batam. The fare was Sing$ 14 returned (both ways). I think there’s a Sing$ 3 tax. We also had to pay “fiscal”. It’s some kind of tax for Indonesians leaving the country. The fiscal is Rp 500 thousands. If we leave Indonesia from other places, such as from Jakarta , the fiscal is Rp 1 million. It’s quite expensive, really. That’s the most expensive component in our trip. We arrived in Singapore at Harbour Front. The place was packed with people. Apparently, several speed boats arrived at the same ...

As I said earlier, I wanted to write more in this blog. Alas, there's a new distraction. I joined Asia Blogging Network . I started to blog there. They even gave my own space there ("Art & Tech"). It's going to be more difficult for me to write in this blog. Hmm ... I would write serious stuff there, but more personal stuff will be written here. That's the plan. Let's see if I can stick with the plan.

I was reading comics at phdcomics.com . Ha ha ha! The comics are so true and funny. They brought back memories of my grad school years. Ha ha ha. Well, you have to be there to understand the joke. Grad school years are so cruel. One thing I noticed in the comics is that the "actor" (the PhD student?) has a beard. You know, it occured to me that I had a beard when I was doing my PhD and so did my friends who were also doing PhDs. Wierd. Is this a commond thing? The comic is so acurate in that sense. You know, I've never met a person who had no problem doing his/her PhD. Hmm... It's something to think for those who want to enter grad school. Now, I am on the other side of the fence. Ha!

Gadzillion years ago I had a web site called "The Ultimate Indonesian Homepage." Okay, okay, I was exagerating. It was not gadzillion years, but it was a long time ago. It was in early world wide web year when even Mosaic was not born yet. The web site is aimed at people who are looking for information about Indonesia. At that time there were little information about Indonesia. I thought the web could help tourists or visitors to find information about Indonesia before they go there. It was a simple web site - heck, the biggest excitement was flashed text, ha ha ha - but it was a good one. It was even listed in some books. After I went back to Indonesia, I still managed that web site with different domain name. At the end, with the help of Chandra Liem, we settled with myindonesia.org. I was not too busy, so I had the time to update the web. Remember that there was no content management system at that time. So I had to code the web site in HTML directly. Hah. Now, time has ch...

I've been neglecting this blog. It's not intentional. It's just that I've been focusing my energy, time, and thought to my other blog (the one in wordpress ). There, I write dailly. Many times I write more than one blog entries in a day. The lack of update in this blog is just a casuality. Then... I notice is that I am losing my English vocabulary. Oh, man! I don't get to use my English as much I wanted to. I can use English in my daily activities but I consider this rude. Why should I talk to Indonesians in Indonesia in English? Wierd, isn't it? I should use Bahasa Indonesia. Not that it is not uncommon to mix-and-match languages. I've seen people use English and Bahasa Indonesia in a mix-match fashion. I don't like it. I don't know if they do it (mixing the languages) unintentionally or they just do it to show off. I said unintentionally because it is possible. I happened to do it many times in the past. English words, phrases, idioms and such jus...

(I was going to write this in my other blog - one that's focused on my music stuff - but it was very slow. In fact, it didn't come up. The problem is connection on my end. I decided to write it here. Sorry for the out of flow.) This morning I decided not to jog but sit down in front of computer instead. What a bum. I do have a reason (if you can call it a reason). I decided to play around with some music stuff. This and that, I ended up viewing Aerosmith DVD, "You Gotta Move". I've got this Aerosmith DVD for quite a while and didn't have a chance to view it. I was too busy doing many things. So, this morning I decided to view it. Damn! It is great! There are two things that make me excited with this DVD. First, the shows that were recorded were excellent. You can see the audience was excited and so am I! There are shows that just suck. You don't feel the energy. This one, you can feel the energy. It's like trying to explode. Man, I just want to have gi...

Here's a picture of me presenting ... myself; "Budi Rahardjo - version 3.0". What's new in this version? Well, the main feature is an independent BR. He could be himself. The other "feature" (or bugs), I think BR is more concurrent. He gets bored easily. Here's an example what BR does at one time: Playing with music (here's playing with his new audio mixer) Reading books on guitars. He's learning to play guitars and trying to understand the various gadgets. (The magazine shows one of his guitar heroes, Alex Liefson of Rush. Inside there's Rothery of Marillion and much more.) Reading books on technology, science, business, biographies. (Here's the "iWoz" book, a book about Steve Wozniak.) On the notebook screen is "chuck", a music programming language. He's just reading the document and has not started programming in it. Before that he was playing with audacity and jokosher using his GNU/Linux Ubuntu. Playing around...

The meaning of some cities to me. Yogyakarta, city that gives birth to me Bandung, city that gives me life Winnipeg, city that turns me into a grown up man Jakarta, city that gives financial support to me

There are too many things (activities) that depend on me. So, when I am unavailable things go not as smooth as expected. Sometimes, they went haywire. Well, what can I do? I have to clean this mess. I am still responsible for these. It's not that I want to control everything. On the contrary, I like delegating things to other people, but they are not up to the par. I know that sometimes they (the ones who are getting the tasks) are overwhelmed (by the things that they have to do). Yes, some of the tasks require hard work, smart work, persistent, and closed ears (and eyes?). That's what I did and do. Other tasks are perhaps too easy that they are ignored (or put off). I've got to clone myself, but I've got to clean this mess first. Phew ...

I've been using OpenOffice 2.2 in my GNU/Linux Ubuntu 7.04. My impression is that it is so buggy . Importing Power Point documents takes forever (well, close to 5 minutes). I thought it was a specific Power Point file and specific to my notebook, but I saw it also happened to a friend of mine (on a different notebook and with a different file). So, it is not an isolated problem. When I tried to save the particular PPT file to OO format, OO 2.2 crashed. Of course, when I tried to recover the file ... it took forever. There was also an occasion where my OO session crashed and it tried to open Writer. This problem didn't happend when I was using OO 2.0. Should I revert to the older version? Or, is there a cure for this problem?

A few days ago I met a person for the first time. When we shake hand he said, "You are an entrepreneur, aren't you?" How did he know? Somebody must have told him. He said that he can see it in my eyes, my moustache, and beard. Ha ha ha. I think he's joking. But, at another time and place, a person told me that I am perfect as a teacher just by looking at my face. He didn't even meet me. He just saw it in my picture. Huh? Is he serious? Now, question is, "Can you really tell one's character just by looking at one's face, or even a picture of the person?"

This is not about java programming language, it's about my habit. I tend to write something in one shot and forget about it afterwards. I rarely go back to edit (or even read) what I have been written. Is this a bad habit? I don't know. One thing I know is that I have many unfinished articles or even books. They have been in draft stage for years. I want to finish them, but I don't like reading it again. I want to rewrite them from scratch. Well, some of them have more than 100 pages. I don't feel like rewriting them. The funny thing is, occassionally, I write something more than once. Ha ha ha. I guess it is okay since most of the time I write them from different point of views. All I can say is ... "Hmm... I think I wrote something similar a while back but cannot remember where I wrote it."

I've been using 30gigs.com email service for quite a while. I use it for non-sensitive / non-critical emails. At first, the interface was too clumsy. I don't know what kind of application they used, but it was cumbersome and took a long path to navigate. Then, in the middle of operation, they changed the application, without notification. I think they are using horde right now. Now, I have to learn how to use the interface. It is still confusing. On top of that, some mails (actually a lot) are missing. Good thing I didn't store critical emails there, but I would assume that somebody must have done it. Changing system in the middle of operation or services is not a good idea. It's a scary thing to do. They are too brave to do it. Cavalier? Or, maybe there is something serious that made them do it. They had to do it? The thing is, what about us - the users?

In another blog, I wrote my obsession with time . I wanted to write a similar thing about distance . Nothing came up so far. And " everything in between "? Well, is there anything in between time and distance? I am not so sure. They are different kind of animals. They are not comparable, aren't they? But, there could be a relation between time and distance. As time passes, distance can grow or shrink. Distance can be a function of time. It's a complicated higher-level function for sure, but it's still a function of time. Let's see if it works the other way around; time as a function of distance. Mathematically it's possible, but what does it mean? I am just mumbling. Think harder!

Every so often I found an interesting TV series. Last time it was numb3rs . This time is Heroes . Okay, I don't want to tell you all about Heroes. Heck, I am still trying to digest it. If you want to find out more about it, go search the web or wikipedia . You'll find details there. I don't want to spoil it here. It's about several persons who have beyond human capabilities; like a person who can fly, a person who can paint (like painting picture of writing a comic about) the future, a person who can stop time (and go back in back), and so on. These persons don't understand why. They are also connected in a wierd way. It's just so interesting. The thing I like about this series is that it is full with surprises. It's so creative. Creepy, but creative. I wish I can write stories like the writers of this series. Hmm... You know, I wonder if my life is actualy as interesting (or as complicated) as theirs.

When I started this blog, there were not that many Indonesians writing blogs. (By the way, I am not considered as part of first generation Indonesian bloggers. Maybe second generation?) I didn't know how many Indonesians were interested in blogs. So, I decided to write my blog in English. Since there were not that many Indonesian blogs, this blog even considered to be one of the top 10 blogs in Indonesia by Tempo magazine. (I didn't know that until somebody pointed out that to me. I didn't subscribe to that magazine.) Time has changed. Now, there are many (too many?) Indonesians writing dan reading blogs. Since then I have created many (this time I am sure ... too many) blogs. I have more than a dozen blogs. Most of them are written in Bahasa Indonesia. Sure enough, my Indonesian blog(s) - particularly rahard.wordpress.com - has more visitors compared to this blog. (I don't have an exact statistic for this blog. The statistics feature is what I like about wordpress.com...

Lately, my activities have been ... music. Here are pictures of me playing music on an event at the university. It was Sunday morning at Sarana Olah Raga ITB, Bandung. There are other pictures, but you can just see them at my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/budi_rahardjo/ You know, I am going to do more musical stuff this year. Watch me ...

Last week I had a chance to participate at the 8th Asia Open Source Software Symposium in Bali. I am just a participant in that event. In this event I met with Niibe Yutaka, a Debian developer from Japan. (He's on the left in the picture.) Well, since I am a Debian user, we had a chat. A day earlier, I was wearing Debian T-shirt and somebody thought that I am from Debian. Whoa. On a different note, he said that he contributed to the japanese (version? extension?) of emacs as his "night job." Ha ha ha. I told him that I am a "vi" user. Ha ha ha. We are from different "editor religion." [For those who are not familiar with the joke, here's a little brief story. Most old UNIX users had two camps of editor: vi and emacs . We joke to each other. Nowadays, there are better[?] editors, but I still use vi. Even on my MS Windows computer, I use vi (or vim , to be exact). It's just a habbit.] Niibe asked me why there's no Debian developer in Indonesi...

I have just finished reading " iWoz ," a book about Steve Wozniak. Tell me, you know that name right? Okay, for those who don't, Steve Wozniak is the cofounder of Apple Computers with Steve Jobs. Woz is the actual guy who built the Apple computer. This is a book about an engineer and his dream. He did do something about his dream, though. He made it come true. There are many great "lessons" in the book. I really like his view on many things, such as (engineering) ethics. He is an engineer's engineer. Anyway, you have to read the book yourself. There are some things I don't like about the book, though. For example, there some things repeated many times in the book. It is not exactly repeated, but it was said before. Or, maybe because I did read many Apple books before so some of the facts are already known to me. (There are some things new to me, or to most readers.) Or it's because I am an engineer and he's an engineer. Having said that, I still ...

Last Friday afternoon was a great one for me. I finished marking all my student papers. I just have to signed the grade forms, which I did that afternoon. There was a lunch and informal meeting attended by many faculty lecturers. I didn't take notice of what being said. Hey, I was there just for the food and a little chat with some people. Three students were looking for me. Two of them wanted recommendation letters from me and another student (Architecture student!) wanted to discuss about tech bulidings. After that I decided to go to a music store. As I drove the car to the store, I noticed that I took the long way there. (It sounds like Supertramp's song, "take the long way home".) I chose longer streets but less traffic. I didn't mind. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the ride. I went to the music store, looked at some guitars, basses, amplifiers, mixers, and stuff. While I was looking at some guitars, a person came to me. He said, "You're Budi, right?...

It is getting more and more difficult for me to access this blog. I don't know why. I've tried to update this blog for the last three or four days, but could not even get the login prompt! If this is the case, then nobody will be able to access this blog. Even if they can access this blog, the content is already out of date. The thing is, this blog has been listed as 1 of 10 popular blogs in Indonesia last year by Tempo Magazine. Granted, at that time there were not that many blogs. Thus, this blog stood out. But these days there are better blogs (don't you think?). I even write more often in my Indonesian blog instead of this one. Is this a sign of fading out? I hope not, but if you find this blog is less updated you know the reasons. I still want to write in this blog though. I have to write this fast, worrying that I could not even publish this entry. (I should try one of those off-line blog editors. Suggestion?)

I was tired (from working with my computer, trying to mark students papers) and wanted to take a nap for a few minutes (but taking a book with me???). I put my iPod on and listened to a song. And then, bam, ... I just got the urge to write something down. Here's what happened in my head. You know, I want to play this song live in a performance. (I was listening to "She's so young" by The Pursuit of Happiness.) In fact, I should write a list of songs that I want to perform and just do it. It is possible now since I did two gigs last month and there are several venues waiting for me. If I write the list in a piece of paper, it might be gone. (Well, it happened several times. I lost my to-do list.) I should just write it in my blog. Perhaps even enlist people to get help in the performance (like getting a band). I had to get up and started to work on my computer again. Damn you blog!

I like to tell my students to save their money and go abroad, just for a short vacation. It's not that there is no place in Indonesia worth to go visiting, but there is a very good lesson abroad. For example, when I did my research for Bandung High Tech Valley, I went to Silicon Valley, Malaysia Super Corridor, India (but have not gone to Bangalore yet), and Singapore. I want to smell the coffee in these places. First of all, you can see how other people live. True you can learn this from reading books, blogs, or watching television, but being there is different. There are so many things that cannot be captured by all of these. For example, for political reasons or (media) company's policy the writers cannot write bad things about the object they're talking about. When you go to these places, you can see things for yourself. You can see how clean/dirty the place is, how un/friendly people are, how things work in these countries, and other things. Second, when you interact w...

Today (4th Jan 2007) is the first day for me to work after a long holiday trip with my family. I think this year will be a busy year for me. Of course, I hope it will be a good year for all of us. Let's start the things to do for today: 3 simultaneous meetings in 2 different cities (I can only pick one - the most important) 3 project reports to review (picked only one, the one with tomorrow as the deadline... ha ha ha) 3 article requests from magazines and newspapers (deadline to short, declined) 2 articles to read (related to the report tomorrow, ... ah no time to read! will ask for review) 2 student thesis to review (will do that tonight) (too many) student papers to mark (will do that this weekend) 1 music practice tonight (... hmm, tempting; but I guess I have to decline) ummm... what else? So, readers ... brace yourself. I am going to move full steam ahead ... Ready, Set, Go!