Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

I think the internet is wonderful. Last night I listened to some (old) songs while browsing the internet for the lyrics of those songs. I knew the melody of those songs by heart, but never knew the exact lyrics. Hey, in those pre-(internet)-historic days, you could only get what's available around you. Most of the songs I knew I listened to the radio or from cassette tapes. Lyrics were limitted. You just have to listen to the songs and try to get and interpret it yourselves. And sometimes, what you think the song is all about is all wrong :D and I think that's the beauty of it. Like a few moments ago, I read the lyrics (and meaning) of a song I am listening right now. It's so waaayyy off. ha ha ha. I like my version better. I'd like to keep it (the interpretation) that way. Not knowing is so beautiful.

I just got back from Jakarta after around 4 hours trip (it should have been a 2 hour trip, but traffic was bad). I thought that I am tired by the time I got home, but strange enough I feel awake. Maybe that's because I slept on the road :) I decided to open my emails (mostly reading and deleting emails) and update my blogs. As usual, there's music in the background. It just so happen that Queen - Don't Stop Me Now is in the background. Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time I feel alive and the world it's turning inside out Yeah! I'm floating around in ecstasy So don't stop me now don't stop me 'Cause I'm having a good time having a good time ... Yeah, I am having a good time updating my blogs. You know what, if I let this to flow, I'll end up not sleeping tonight. That's not good since tomorrow I have a meeting. I guess I have to stop what I am doing right now. Okay, okay, okay ... I'll shut down my computer and hit the bed.

Holiday is over. Now, it is time to work. We must finish several tasks before we hit another holiday this week :) I hope traffic is not bad today. Not sure how many people are still on holidays though. Do you work this week? Or continue with your holiday? Lord give us strength (and make things fun) ...

As part of blogwalking, I stumbled upon a list of Indonesian blogs written in English. My eyes caught a reference to this blog (Gerakan Bawah Tanah or gbt). It was mentioned that this blog receives 10 visits a day. Ha ha ha. That low now? (It used to be hundreds and at one time, more than one thousand visit/day.) And, the interesting part is that this blog is still high on many lists, including Google page rank. Let me assure you that I did not do any tinkering with this blog. No SEO stuff. I just write stuff (and not write lately for that matter). So, this is a real blog. My only explanation (why this blog is still popular) is that this is an old blog. Meaning, it is an artifact - although, a live one. Thus, it has been (and is still) referenced by many people in their blogs. The links are still there (and alive). But, there's nothing wrong with that, right? I guess I should update this blog more often ...

For some people (and perhaps, I am included) rainy days can create a bad (gloomy) mood. How could that be? I don't know, but it just could. Btw, it was rainy the whole day today and yes you are correct, my mood wasn't pretty. So, now I am searching for the word "rainy" in my iTunes playlist. Let me play those songs! Mind as well. Carpenters - Rainy days and Mondays The Corrs - Rainy days James Taylor - Rainy day man ...

My connection is currently behind a firewall (with a user and password). Apparently, uploading pictures (photos) to facebook fails. How do I configure my system to allow uploading photos? Java configuration?

I had problems with Firefox 3.5. Many times it crashed when I tried to tag friends in facebook. (I have more than 4000 friends in the list.) Then, I decided to upgraded to Firefox 3.6 alpha 1 (code name Namoroka). It went fine. Now, it has moved to beta 2 and it crashes again with facebook. It happens frequently. I guess, I am switching to other browsers. Oh well...

Let me start by confesing that I rarely backup my Macbook. That said, I occasionally use Time Machine to backup my Macbook to an external disk using USB. This morning it failed because the disk is full. There's only 33.2 GB left on the disk, while my Mac needs 93.1 GB. Last month I bought a 1TB disk. It's a WD Mybook. It came with a nifty backup software. I actually don't use that software. I use the disk as a normal disk and just copy files and folders that I need to backup to that disk. It is a tedious task. Now, it got me thinking, which backup strategy should I use? Backup with Time Machine Backup with software that came with my Mybook Just copy files and folders that need to be backed up Suggestion?

I have just finished reading Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" book. Phew... It's a good book, just like his previous books; "Blink" and "Tipping Point". I should've finished reading it sooner but all the busy work that I've got slowed me down. I am glad it's done. (I hope you don't think that I feel reading is a chore.) Now, the next step is to pick a book from my to-read stack. Apparently, picking the next book is not easy. So, last night I took 5 books and started skimming those books. None wowed me. (Perhaps I was just too tired.) So this morning I brought another book with me. In the end I just read a few paragraphs from various book. Arrrggghhh. I should be able to pick one book and read it! I'll do it as soon as possible. I have to do it to clean my to-read stack (which is impossible since I receive new books faster than I manage to read them). Arrrggghhh...

Just found out that there is a new search engine, duckduckgo.com . And what better way to test it than searching your own name. ha ha ha. And the result is ...

Well, holiday is (officially) over. Tomorrow we're going back to school or work. It feels so short. There are so many things that I wanted to do, but couldn't get it done during the holiday. I wanted to read lots of books, papers, articles, ... I wanted to re-learn coding (computer programming). Sharpening my skills. Alas, time went so fast. I did not regret it though, since I did get some things done. At least, relaxing :) Hey, that's also important, right? Now, I am putting that things to read back to the shelf (of things to read).

I thought creativity is all good. After listening to some TED's presentation, I realized that creativity has a dark side. Once creativity has visited you, you are doomed forever. For the lack of creativity can send you to dark paths. Paths that you didn't think you will thread upon. You just have to have creativity. Gotta have... You life depends on it. I am not joking. You can find the number of (creative) people that have died because they think that they don't have creativity anymore. I didn't realize this. Now, it's too late...

[seafood lamien @ banquet, singapore]

I have not watched Formula 1 closely for a year (or two?) and was surprised to hear that there was a scandal. I was in Singapore and heard it on the news. The incident happened in Singapore last year! Whoa ... So, now, I am searching the internet for more information about this. If I understood correctly, Nelson Piquet was asked to crash his car so that Alonso would win. The thing is, I didn't know the situation. Why would Alonso win? So what if the safety car was out? What was his position at that time? Could somebody direct me to a more detailed article elaborating the situation? [A Ferari display on Orchard stree. I took this picture before taking an F1 simulator test drive, a game acutally. Ranked far below the best driver :) ]

How long can an article be copyrighted? I was looking for an article of a journal. It is published in 1971. I cannot access (download) the article from the journal's web site. This makes me think, how long does the journal have the "monopoly" of that article?

We are trying to measure the amount of resources needed to run our program, written in C. Looking here and there, I found getrusage (2). So, yesterday I tried to write a simple code: #include <stdio.h> #include <errno.h> #include <sys/resource.h> int main(){ int y[100][100]; struct rusage *resource; int x; x = getrusage(0, resource); printf("x = %d\n", x); printf("errno = %d\n", errno); return(0); } The result was not great. getrusage returned -1. According to the man page , non zero return value means it fails. The value of errno is 14. What went wrong? Anybody? Is there a better way to measure the amount of resources (memory, CPU, time) needed for a program? [Right now, I am looking at dtrace . Would it help?]

I've got (too many) presentation invitations. So, I do quite a bit presentations. Maybe, it is even my main job :) One thing people don't realize is that the amount of effort and time that I have to put preparing for the presentation. Some people think that I can use old presentations and can just wing it. Apparently, each presentation is different. I still need to modify the presentation. Some times the presentation only requires minor adjustment, other time (most of the time) I have to create a new presentation. Whether it is minor or major modification, it still takes time. The very least, I usually spend 1 hour preparing for the presentation. Tomorrow I am giving a presentation. It's a 30-minute presentation plus questions and answers. So, it's one hour. Give and take. I already spent more than two hours preparing it. Oh well ...

Tomorrow, 17 August, is our independence day. There are many events in our community to celebrate this. Mostly, they are sports, fun competition ( lomba makan kerupuk, panjat pohon pinang, anybody?) and outdoors gathering. That should be great! To bad I don't have photos :( Long live Indonesia.

I have a personal project, in which I plan to take picture(s) from the same spot. The picture looks like this. I enjoy watching the picture, the environment. It is great. Especially, if the weather is great and it shows in the picture. It sets my mood. For the last couple of days, the weather was not great. It was kinda gloomy. So, I didn't take the picture. I didn't want to have gloomy days. This morning, it is also gloomy. Sigh ... I need my sunshine. So, no picture today.

When you hurt someone, you actually hurt yourself. So, my apology to whoever I hurt. I didn't mean to do it. (I never intentionally want to hurt somebody.)

I had a quiz the day before yesterday. One of the questions was "what do you if you are bored?" One of the answers was "defrag disks" (or something like that). I didn't realize that this might be true. Yesterday I did defrag my disks :) and right now I am trying to organize (junk?) files. I have so many images (photos) taken with my digital camera and my cellphones. Sometimes to get one good image, I took multiple images. What do I do with the ones that I am not using? There are also files that I thought I might read, but not right now. (And perhaps never?) On top of that there are audio files and so on. What's the best way to back these files up? Some people told me to use DVD. I don't trust DVDs. I have had bad luck with them. Scratched a little and there goes my files down the blackhole drain. Right now I am backing up with external HD. I don't know if this is cost effective. (On top of that, I don't use backup programs. Plain copying files is

I am having a problem with Firefox on Mac OS X (on a Macbook). I was using Firefox 3.0* (forgot the exact version). Then for some reasons, the windows was displayed off the screen. For example, if I press "apple ," there is no configuration window. The screen was just clean. If I press F9 (expose), the screen appeared. So, I know it is there. But, when I tried to get into it the screen went clean again and the configuration window dissapeared (as if it moved to the top left - off the screen). I decided to download Firefox 3.5 and wrote over on top of the previous version. The problem was still there. Then, I removed Firefox from Application folder. Reinstalled Firefox. It seemed to work. But ... this morning the problem was there again. I removed again and reinstalled Firefox. It is working (so far). Has anybody experienced a similar problem? Update: if I close the lid of my MacBook while Firefox is running and open the lid again, the window appears!

I am in the middle of coding and suddenly realized that I have to solve (code) x^y mod z, where x, y, and z are large integer numbers. Straight coding, that is by multiplying x by y times before performing mod with z, is inefficient. I know that I am dealing with big integers, but my interest is in the algorithm. I am reading fast exponentiation right now, but just in case any of you know better algorithms (or libraries). I am using C language, if that's important.

I watch American Idol and enjoying the show. Most of the time. So, I watched the 2009 Finale. I was surprised with the finale. It was excellent. The thing that surprises me is the guests. I could not believe they were able to bring many stars, such as Black Eyed Peas, Cindy Lauper, Keith Urban, Lionel Ritchie, Rod Stewart, Santana, Kiss, and ... Queen! Whoaaa... I love rock music. A long time ago I even went to a Kiss concert, when I was in Canada. ha ha ha. So, I loved it when Adam Lambert sang with Kiss. When he started singing "Beth", I said to myself; are they going to bring Kiss? Sure enough, the answer is yes! I could imagine Adam singing with Kiss, though. If it's not Kiss, I'd say Aerosmith would be a good choice for Adam. In my opinion, Danny Gokey has the best vocal. Adam Lamber has the best performance. He is a star. And Kris Allen has the most commercial pop vocal today. My son said that these days people like Jason Mraz and the like. So Kris Allen was luc

yeah, ... it's time to rewire my brain ... it needs some refreshing ideas ... stuff it with great ideas ... some wild ones too ... remove sad memories ... attach happines come on help me rewire my brain [there should be a nifty tunes attached to this? :) ] [br, may 2009]

I've just visited Google.com and got the following page: Ah... It has been a while since I used Morse code. Now, let's give it a try. I put [--. --- --- --. .-.. .] in the search field of Google. The result is ... Your search - --. --- --- --. .-.. . - did not match any documents. How come there's no match? Google should provide the search result in Morse code. Ha ha ha. Any takers out there? -... ..- -.. ..

Dear Colleague, The Inaugural Issue (Vol.1/No.1) of the Internetworking Indonesia Journal (IIJ) has just been published. You can get free access to the papers (PDF) at the following location: http:// internetworkingindonesia.org/ iij-vol1-no1-spring2009.html Here is the Table of Contents: The Overhead and Efficiency Analysis on WiMAX's MAC Management Message by Ardian Ulvan, Vit Andrlik & Robert Bestak Loop-back Action Latency Performance of an Industrial Data Communication Protocol on a PLC Ethernet Network by Endra Joelianto & Hosana "Wayang Authoring": A Web-based Authoring Tool to Support Media Literacy for Children by Wahju Agung Widjajanto, Michael Lund, & Heidi Schelhowe Studi atas Prilaku Pengguna Layanan Wide Area Network (WAN) BPKP by Desi Nelvia & Rudy M. Harahap Issues in Elliptic Curve Cryptography Implementation by Marisa W. Paryasto, Kuspriyanto, Sarwono Sutikno & Arif Sasongko Hormat kami. Thomas Hardjono (MIT Kerberos Consortium) Budi

I was going to create a presentation that I have to do in two days. I've got some ideas but they are still 10% of what I needed. I need inspiration. So, I went to slideshare.net . Boy, ... it was a "bad" decision, I guess. I ended up browsing lots of slides. Just because they are awesome. How could they create great presentations? They are very good in design. Me? I have no idea what "design" is. I need a more formal foundation in this. Is there a book, web, tutorial, or something that I can use to study good designs? Please ... As for my presentation, it has to wait for one more day. Hey, I said I have two days. :)

Tomorrow is election day. We - Indonesians - will vote for the political party (ies) that will rule Indonesia. Great. But the sad part is that I don't know what or who to vote. Suggestion anybody? Perhaps it doesn't matter anyway?

I do quite a bit presentations. To make things more interesting, usually I put interesting image or photos in my slides. (I know not to over do with the images and such.) The question is where can I get good and free photos for my presentations? I see those presentations at slideshare.net and envy those great images. Aaa...

taken an hour ago at home ... that's not all. the rest? even worse ... ha ha ha

Accidentally, I found the following web site: Indonesian Village. It's an interesting site, because it tells story (and perhaps dreams) of an Indonesian Village. Check it out: http://indonesianvillage.com/

Last night I was so tired. I planned to take a short nap (say, less than 1 hour) and then worked on various things (finishing marking student papers, editing book drafts, and so son). But, I ended up having a long sleep. I did wake up one hour after started to sleep. I was going to wake up, but I thought ... another 5 minutes wouldn't hurt. Alas. Five minutes turned into an hour! After that I didn't feel like working. So I ended up sleeping for 7 hours. Dang! There goes my working hours. Today I have to sleep less. (But, the sign is pointing to a different direction ... more sleep. ha ha ha.)

˙˙˙ puɐɯǝp ɹɐlndod ʎq ʞɔɐq ˙˙˙

You see somebody. You don't like what you see, for example his/her values, attitude, and the like. You said to yourself. I can change him/her. You know what... You CANNOT! S/he must change her/himself. You cannot change somebody. Especially if that person is not willing to change.

I've just found out (my accident) that this blog was not listed in Indonesia Matters. Previously, it was listed as part of top 10. Hey, I didn't make this blog just to be a top 10 blog. So, it doesn't really matter anyway. On a side note, I just have to find time to update this blog. I've been focusing my attention on my worpress blog . Time is not on my side this time ...

I am involved in a research trying to do a packet inspection on a high-speed (10Gb) [ethernet] network. There are many issues that we have to face. First, packet drops. We are using software (tools) that requires all packets to be available before the inspection begins. Unfortunately, our network is not clean, there are packet drops. Some packets are missing. This really creates a problem for us. We could modify the software so that it does not require all packets to be available, or we could "spoof" the missing packets. The idea is that given a timeout, if a packet is not available then we just create a dummy packet. Which one is better (less difficult to do)? Second, high-speed packet matching library. What kind of library should we use? libnids? tcpflow? libpcap? Not that we are interested in inspecting the content of the packet (payload?). I guess it's something like ngrep but for the whole session (not just one packet). Sorry if my explanation is not that clear. :)

it's a brand new day, in a brand new year. first post in this blog. hopefully, we are better (in many ways) this year.