Akbar From Linux To Windows XP November 6th, 2007
I have been using Windows XP full time for two weeks. It’s been so long time since I was Windows XP full time user. Maybe it has been four years. I have to tell you again that I am forced to use Windows XP because Linux does not support HSDPA USB Modem ZTE MF620. Somebody will say it’s my fault that I bought unsupported hardware. But sometimes you just don’t have luxury of choice. I move to a new place. I live in apartment which does not have internet connection. So you must find it from outside. The only practical solution is to use 3.5G wireless internet connection. Using cable based internet connection is not practical because I plan to move from this apartment. Using cable based internet connection means long term customer. Using parabola based internet is semi-practical. I don’t feel safe to put the parabola outside apartment. You can not move parabola as you like. Using 3.5G wireless internet connection only needs a small modem. Just plug to your computer then you can surf. It’s the most practical solution at this time with my condition. The only provider for this connection gave me the unsupported modem in Linux. Very nice.
Read the rest of this entryMoving To Bali October 21st, 2007
At last I can write this post. This post is about Bali. I am in Bali right now to live. Bali is my dream living place. I always want to live in Bali since third year of my colleague time (the second time I visited Bali). But the desire always been put off by many reasons. One of the reason was I have been framed to think that I must spend my all life in Jakarta because Jakarta has many programming jobs. Most of my family and my friends live in Jakarta. In Bali there is no one. Uhm, there is actually. One of my friends live in Bali. Why do I want to live in Bali? I fell in love from the first time I visited Bali. The beaches, cultures and etc. You name it.
So… There were one thing and another that burned my desire to leave Jakarta. Jakarta was getting crowded from time to time. Beside that I want to live alone without my family. As programmer I need ideal environment to work. My living place in Jakarta was an environment which had many interruptions. I could not stand on it anymore. Jakarta has been not a good place to live. And there were personal reasons too.
I landed my feet in Bali on 18th September 2007. For the first ten days I traveled around Kuta and Legian. Then I accompanied my friend coming from Jakarta to visit many places in Bali. Yeah, fun times. At that time I lived in my friend who lived here. After about ten days I moved to small apartment in Denpasar. Almost 3 weeks, I lived here without internet connection. I must walk about 200 metres to internet cafe in order to use internet connection. All I did at that time was learning programming, reading novels and planning my life in Bali. On 18th October 2007, I got HSDPA USB modem from Jakarta. My sister in Jakarta subscribed 3.5G internet account. So I use internet using her account. It is the only way to use internet here in my apartment without cables. Using internet with cables means asking problems. With 3.5G internet, you don’t need cable. Just plug the modem and you are ready to use internet.
But unfortunately, I got ZTE MF620 modem not Huawei modem. Huawei is supported in Linux but ZTE is not, at least for this time. That means I must use Windows XP to work as programmer. I have to accept this condition. I must be pragmatic. For two days I have setup my Windows XP environment so I can feel comfortable. I installed Thunberbird (replacing Evolution), Notecase, MediaMonkey (replacing the music player in Linux which the name is forgotten by me), TortoiseSVN (subversion), VirtuaWin (virtual desktops on Windows XP), Common Lisp. I upgraded Vim too from 7.0 to 7.1. But there is one thing I can not do in Windows. Developing Wallpapoz. But fortunately there was someone from Mandriva offering help to develop Wallpapoz. The plan is I will give him access to Wallpapoz repository tommorow.
Now I am ready to work as programmer.
Happy Birthday To Me June 1st, 2007
Two hours more (local time) then I will be 23 years old. Happy birthday to me. I got beautiful presents. First, I have released a new version of Wallpapoz (0.4) after more than a year since the last release (0.3). I am very happy with this release. This release seems make a lot of people happy. Many people send me emails telling Wallpapoz is a nice program. The numbers in Wallpapoz page in GnomeFiles.org tell it’s true.
The second present is I finally got web hosting which support rails. Today I installed Mephisto (Rails blog software). Previously I used Wordpress. But I want to hack Rails project. Mephisto is a very ideal candidate. You use software that you hack your self. Wow, that’s cool!
This morning I celebrated Vesak day. It was a nice occasion. Chanting, meditating, listening to the speech, and the most importantly for me, gathering with people who share the celebration. After that there was balloons releasing ceremony. Each balloon carried wishing (for peace, I thought) written in small card tied bellow the balloon it self. What made Vesak so special today is it could be the last Vesak I celebrated in Jakarta because I plan to move to Denpasar this year. Why would you want to celebrate Vesak if you don’t live in Jakarta anyway? This is the third present.
Before my birthday, I already got three presents. Do you want to add presents for me?
Happy birthday, Akbar. I love you so much.
Ok, I Write Blog Now August 26th, 2006
After vacumming my website (akbarhome.com) for a long time, I decided to put real content now. I use wordpress. I don’t have time to make a custom blog or a custom personal site. I tried that couple months ago. I was very consuming time. I have better thing to do. I decide to write blog regularly because writing is important for me as human, programmer even if no body gonna read my blogs. For me writing is therapy. What will I blog? I will blog mostly about programming things. Beside that, I will blog about life. Beside blog, I will put my portfolio here. I will write articles & tutorials and hope somebody will get benefit from my writings. My website will be the place to put my current and previous projects.
I always enjoy reading other’s blog, especially Steve Pavlina, Steve Yegge, Joel, etc. But I always thought writing blog is wasting time. There are many ways to spend time better that blogging. I change my mind. So I write blog now. I have many topics or ideas to put in this blog. I wonder if my blog will be monoloque. That must be sweet.