Nothing about Everything

There are many reasons why this is bad. First, the ability to type in a decent speed may be necessary to program fast (not necessarily to program well, mind you), at least in non-static type languages where IDE can't do autocomplete well. That means languages Java, VB, .NET (with compile time type checking) with extensive autocomplete support, doesn't need much typing speed because the autocomplete will do most of the fast typing for you. Even then, you don't usually bottleneck your productivity at your typing speed unless you are writing a lot of linear non repeating code. But in any environment where such code is necessary, typing speed will be the least of your concern. What's important is the ability to type without conscious effort so that your programming effort can be concentrated on actual programming. Assumes existing programmers in that company are competent: If typing speed limits the productivity of programmers, any framework the existing programmer...

Information on setting xen with NAT in debian lenny is scattered over the internet. One resource mention about patching some files. This guide is for people who want to do the setup with the most minimal change to debian default setup. 1. In /etc/xen/xen-config.sxp, comment (put # in front of) the "(network-script network-dummy)" and "(vif-script vif-bridge)". Comment out (erase # in front of) the "(network-script network-nat)" and "(vif-script vif-nat)". 2. Put "brctl addbr $2" after the line saying "echo $*". Then put "ifconfig $2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" at the end of the file, where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is a local static IP address. 3. Set up your dhcp server accordingly by have it listen to the interface, the default is xenbr0. The ip of xenbr0 will be automatically set to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx from step 2 above. Restart your dhcp server if necessary. 4. Run your xen image. 5. Then restart ipmasq by running /etc/init.d/ipmasq...

I thought I should write this down and let it be public knowledge before I forgot. There are many ways suggested in internet but none works for me. Install ttf-sazanami-gothic, which can be done by running "apt-get install ttf-sazanami-gothic".

Based on the information scattered here and there, if you want to use postgresql with Ruby on Rails on Debian/Ubuntu, you can use 2 approaches: The first approach based on various places and experiment is 1. Set adapter of database.yml to postgresql. 2. Install postgresql-server-dev-?.? (?.? = 8.3 in Debian Lenny). 3. Install the pg gem with "gem install pg" The above approach has been tested. Another approach based on http://www.williamchu.com/blog/?p=9 1. Set adapter of database.yml to jdbcpostgresql 2. Install the activerecord-jdbcpostgresql-adapter with "gem install activerecord-jdbcpostgresql-adapter jdbc-postgres " I don't bother to test this approach since it's using jdbc, which means another layer of complexity. But this might be useful if you use JRuby. In addition, this approach should work on other linux distro.

Since I noticed some people experienced the same problem, and the solution to this is scattered into multiple posts/comments, I'll just integrate it here. Basically if you install ruby 1.9 (or probably other versions) from source in Debian based distribution (like Ubuntu), the zlib part of Ruby won't be installed. This problem will reveal itself when you want to install Rubygems, for example Rails for Ruby on Rails. The solution is: 1. Clean up all that failed compiled files in the directory where you run "make". Just to be on the safe side. 2. Install zlib headers (zlib1g-dev in Debian Lenny) using your distro package manager. 2a. While you're at it, also install ssl headers (libssl-dev in Debian Lenny) using your distro package manager. 3. Run "./configure", "make", "make install". 4. Run "./configure", "make", "make install" again. It should work then. In my understanding, the problem is caused by Ruby...

Today almost 80% of my employees are holding a strike. The cause was pretty simple, one old employee who had a pretty bad track record was.. verbally disciplined. For whatever reason, he couldn't accept that reprimand so he told his work friends. Now, some of those friends were talented provocators (really. they were pretty good..) . I had awared of them since years ago but they behave well enough so... They coordinate a strike bringing almost 80% of them. The detail is rather sketchy since I wasn't present when the incidence happen. I'll update later. But one thing for sure, I now have a reasonable basis to fire those provocators. Yay! But now I must deal with some future consequences... *sigh*

Have you heard the story of boiling frog? Taken from wikipedia: "The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out." This blog told me about a decision of a major ISP in Indonesia to censor the controversial fitna film. Regardless of whether that movie deserved to be ban or not, I fear that this censorship is the beginning of boiling frog phenomenon. The justification for the next censorships will be more and more ridiculous that it won't take too long for Indonesia returning to a police state again.. And I do think that the censorship decision is ridiculous. Yes it is probably important to ban this movie in Europe where a majority or people in power are not moslem, because the hatred towards moslem induced by that film put many minority moslems in trouble. But in Ind...

Consider a ..hypothetical case. Due to a certain fuck up, a large national corporation used to pay P's electricity bill. Being a good honest individual he reported their mistake to their office, and offered them a payment equal to the amount they paid. They said they would contact him again. The following month they paid his electricity bill again. He reported this incident again to them, while checking whether the person he talked to have the authority to act on the corporation behalf. This time, they did send someone to him. He paid them although he only received their proof of payment as receipt, which wasn't enough evidence that the money would be properly received by the corporation. ..as you can guess, they paid his bill again on the following month. He called them again. They say they would get to him again. He waited and waited for months but no one ever come anymore. Meanwhile, he was getting so busy he totally forgot. When he finally remembered again, he didn't ...

These last days I experienced a truly ironic event.. I'll probably post about it one day. --- Anyway, today an asshole parked in front of my employees' pool car. She (I believe a she based on items inside the car) positioned it in such a way that the pool car can't get out. What pissed me was that she pulled her parking brake thus the car can't be pushed from outside. My employees must wait for her car key to move her car from inside. The problem was, they didn't know where she was and she didn't bother to tell parking attendants her whereabouts. My employees were getting restless waiting for her. They began kicking her car's tire and knocked the car to light up it's alarm, so that she can hear it and come to the car. Unfortunately, the car didn't seem to have any alarm. The night was coming. They are getting more restless while still no sign of her at all. They really can't wait no longer. Then, you know what? Together they lifted her car and mo...

Some colleagues of mine in a company taught a me a nice trick of using the below picture as my desktop background . They recognize that [Windows]+D or show desktop button responses a lot faster compared to [Alt]+[Tab]. Do you see the intention of using this trick? :-)

The woman who still loves him in all those years is pretty although her skin is not white yet. And I have a feeling that she won't be as pretty as she is right now when her skin become white-ish pale because of Ponds.. Damn consumer goods industry and their method in changing people's standard of beauty. Anyway, I don't know whether it's just me or the woman's acting is very good. I feel like I really experience her surprise seeing him hugging another woman after being separated in all these year. I feel her pain of still loving him and knowing that he is about to be married to someone else. I feel her indecision in whether to send an SMS saying that she still loves him. I feel her bitter feeling when she actually sent an SMS wishing his happiness. I feel her depression after receiving the fake SMS from his soon-to-be-wife pretending that he doesn't want to see here anymore, ever. Now, if I remember it right, all TV ads displayed since 2008 in Indonesia must be...

IMO, for the majority of heated debate on globalization, there are 2 sides of globalization that rarely mentioned together. Globalization as method of wealth redistribution, and globalization as method to capitalizing comparative advantage. In theory, if you're relatively poor because your work result is undervalued relative to world average valuation, you can benefit a lot from globalization. Once the whole world has access to your work, it will be valued higher. You will be richer. The bad side is that if you're relatively rich because your work result is overvalued compared to world average valuation, globalization will lower the valuation of your work. You will be poorer. Is this mean that people from rich country is always at disadvantaged when joining globalization? Not really. Rich countries can benefit from globalization because of the second aspect of globalization, which is comparative advantage. With comparative advantage, people can concentrate on doing what they do...

First Media is the new internet service provider in town, and it's playing a joke on me. I planned to install First Media cable internet service as another redundant internet connection. But none of the 3 locations is connected by First Media. The first location is on a major street. I'm disappointed but if they decide not to serve that street, so be it. I can live with that. The second location is on a somewhat middle size street. They actually have a connection there, but the connection ends on the building next to mine . The cosmic joke is on the third location. Almost every building on that street is serviced by First Media, except mine which is right in the middle of that street. So all buildings whose number below mine are serviced and all buildings whose number above mine are serviced, except mine ! I am feeling sour.

1. Per today (April 7th, 2007), speed of 42KByte/sec (using 3G) is still achievable. This is awesome, especially for me who is used to CBN XL 7 KByte/sec speed. 2. After I'm connected, web access is redirected to Telkomsel homepage. There I can click on package I want to choose . 3. The billing is based on time spent connected to internet, after choosing the package above. 4. At anytime in the session, I can see the time I had spent online or time left on the selected package. After each session, I received SMS stating the time I had spent. --- Update: 9 April 2007. Disconnect incidents are too many, about once every 15 to 30 minutes. Update 24 April 2008. Cbn XL unlimited 3G has been reduced to laggy 3KBytes/sec.

Overall: Pretty good. 1. In spite of 3G theoretical bandwidth of 384 kbps, CBN XL bandwidth is limited to 64 kbps (that's kilo bit per second), which translated to 8 KBps (Kilo byte per second). In practice, it's around 6 to 7-ish KBps. But early on March, it was around 20KBps according to Sony Ericsson update manager.. I guess they cut it down. 2. The connection is pretty stable. Disconnect is rare even when your 3G modem moves around Jakarta while connected.. Maybe 1 out of ordinary disconnect every 2 days. That's excluding a what seems to be a pre-programmed disconnect every 24 hours period of connection. I guess it's their method to enforce the so called dynamic IP.. 3. Sometimes it's difficult to start connection. When that happens, wait for a while and repeat. I give up trying to find the culprit (either from CBN or from XL). Some other time, you can connect but you can't resolve any website name. Reconnect until you're assigned to the correct DNS. 4....

I hate this one specific ex-officer. Based on what I gathered, ever since he lived in this one exclusive residential estate, permits involving every construction project in that area become his business. The procedure to get a permit is very bureaucratic, EVEN WHEN WE GIVE MONEY to his staffs. You really don't want to know how worse it is when we hadn't give any money yet. Even after we get the permit, we must still endure a painstakingly long procedure to have the gate keeper allow any delivery even if it's delivered using a fucking small 4-wheels truck. Such delay may cause problem in a project profit since no material means no work can be done. And this whole permit business is not even acknowledged by government. Basically, he unofficially control this area and pulling out rules from his asshole and apply them as he sees fit.

In my somewhat limited experience, vendors of materials in Indonesia, particularly in construction industry, is rather bad in complying with promised specification. There is one high profile company whose product did not satisfy advertised specification. What they did is quite scandalous given it's position as a market leader and it's name affiliation to a highly reputable multi-national company with highly significant presence in it's field.. People whose work specialize in that field can easily identify the specification change. On the other hand, although the change is visible with naked eye, it's quite subtle. I don't think I will ever realize the change if noone point it to me. Sadly, not many field worker point it to their supervisor. Maybe they they thought they don' want to complicate their daily work because of this "whistle blowing". There is another company, whose brand is very strong on the Indonesia's public eye (depending on province)...

I don't know why but this week my mood is pretty bad. Although I do get angry from time to time, I rarely explode in front of everybody. Well, not that rarely but I may say relatively rare. Anyway, a couple of days ago I cracked. I threw a fit of anger and do lots of yelling. What particular about this anger is that I don't really know whether the situation deserve such an extreme reaction or not. In addition, by being angry I lost a key advantage in doing business with them.. The event is really simple. That particular day, the quality of materials delivered to me is really pathetic. It's so pathetic that I, the one who usually tolerates many defects by allocating the materials usage so that defects become irrelevant, end up rejecting up to 90% of what they sent. All supposed to be well. Bad goods, relative to their price, get rejected. It's fair. But the supplier had the guts to talk to his friend, saying that I should not order those items if I don't know how to ...

There goes again another blog posting I wrote due to my effort to anonymized the parties involved.. Anyway, I'll just post the footnote. Footnote: In Indonesia, resolving a receivable due (by parties who do not really trust each other yet) is done by exchanging mone y or giro with invoice and/or delivery order. The seller usually send his debt collector to buyer office to do the exchange on site.

Since my comment on someone blog is still stuck in moderation mode, I decide to post it here. Mika, After giving it some thought, I still unable to find simple things that we (read: ordinary outsiders) can do to make people more prepared for flood or preventing flood. Many schemes need cooperation of people in charge, or a simply need a LOT of people. One prevention scheme I can think of that requires a lot of people is: an alarm system to notify possible floods in various part of Jakarta. It requires a comprehensive survey of Jakarta. First we identify pockets of water that happen when raining. For each pocket of water, we calculate the average height of the ground of water pocket relative to sea level. Then for every pocket water nearby this one water pocket (name: A), we identify the minimum amount of water required before water in A flow to another pocket water. Note that, we can also treat dam as pocket of water. Note also that we can consider usual places where clo...