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Backing up personal (junk) files

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...

Problem with Firefox @ Mac

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!

Looking for efficient algorithm to solve x^y mod z

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.

American Idol 2009 Finale

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...

Rewiring my brain

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]

Google and Morse Code

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? -... ..- -.. ..

Internetworking Indonesia Journal (Vol.1/No.1) published

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...

Wowed by slideshare

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. :)

Vote for who?

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?

Free Photos for Presentations?

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...

what a mess (cabling and stuff)

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

Indonesian Village

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/

Tired ...

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.)

Can You Change Somebody?

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.

Gone from indonesia matters

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 ...

High-speed (10Gb) Packet Inspection

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. :) ...

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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.

No (2009) resolution

I've given up on making yearly resolution. I don't know why. Perhaps, it's because I've never really tried to put real effort ini making the resolution (and making it happens). It's just something I wrote (randomly?) at that particular time. So, this year (like the year before), there's no 2009 resolution for me. How about you? What's your new year resolution? What? None??? this screen has better resolution.. . :D