Downgrading PageRank

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.]

Old tape: Classic Rock

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 my computer or iPod. I guess I have to find the digital version of songs in the tape.

Want to know the content? Here's a picture of it.



I took the sleeve out. You can see that there's no cover art, because it sticks in the plastic cover. :)

Take a look that those songs. Those are great classic rock songs. Can you identify them?

The songs are great and London Symphony Orchestra did a great job playing those songs. I remembered I used to listen to this tape to create a soothing environment while studying. You gotta have it.

Relaxing in Singapore

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 Singapore again. I brought my notebook with me to find Internet access. (Wireless@SG is great, although sometimes it is slow. I am still grateful though.) Well, it's time to eat lunch now.

We went to "Ramen Ten", a nice halal Ramen restaurant at Far East. They serve ramen dan sushi. This is one of our favourite restaurants in Singapore. Everytime I go to Singapore, I always eat there.

More bad news with Malaysia - Indonesia

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.

Social Network for Audio CD collections

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 manually. Is there a site (or a program) that I can use for that purpose? Or, should I write my own program for that?

Maybe there is a database program that I can use to record the articles & presentations and generate an XML output. From this output I could add header, footer, and menus through CSS. Hmm... Hang on. Before I start rolling my sleeves, I should check if somebody has done this. Any pointer?


Related links:

• My Goodreads shelf
• My Shelfari shelf
• My Last.fm info
  

My Take On Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore

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.

command line yahoo messanger

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 yahoolib a good approach? Or should I go through the jabber route? Then, use this one: jarl - Perl/Tk jabber client.)

Any pointer is welcome.