A few days ago I met with my cousin who’s still in his early days at university. He’s a nice chap, socialize quite a lot, and it’s hard for anyone not to like him. We talked about a lot of things, and in the middle of it, the topic changed to FPS (First Person Shooter) games.

He mentioned a day when he played in a gamecenter, when suddenly others gathered around him in confusion. Somebody then commented, “Why the mouse movement is inverted? It’s very confusing”.
He had the “invert mouse” settings enabled. He started to observe the others, and realized, that today, nobody uses this setting.

We laughed until it hurts. Then I vaguely remember that when he’s much younger, I’ve sneaked them (him, his brother, my brother) to my office, and we played Quake I multiplayer together. It was a load of fun — and since I played it with “invert mouse” setting enabled, so did he. From then on, he played FPS games with the “invert mouse” setting enabled.

I commented about a game I found in their computer, I think it’s called True Crime. Tried to play it, but the game has no “invert mouse” setting. My aim was totally screwed up because of it. We laughed again.

The whole conversation reminded me about a proposal we made for Sampoerna. In 1999, the Indonesian Quake II community was approached by Indo-Ad about the possibility to do a multiplayer gaming competition for their client, Sampoerna. We gathered and quickly submitted a proposal. I was not able to further followed it up because I already moved abroad, but I think the plan didn’t go forward.
Before that, I was also approached by Indosat on the possibility to create online game community and events. I have had meetings with their contact person, but then I had to move to United Kingdom, and the talks stopped.

I took a quick look around my backup - and turned out that I still got that proposal for Sampoerna. So [ here it is ] for your enjoyment, a blast from the past.

Sudah beberapa lama ini kami dikejutkan dengan Hobury, minuman sehat (bukan minuman kesehatan) yang laku dengan sangat cepat. Padahal harganya termasuk cukup mahal - Rp 6500 untuk kemasan botol plastik 350 ml.

Beberapa kelebihan Hobury dibandingkan dengan minuman-minuman lainnya :

1. Tanpa bicarbonat, tanpa pemanis/cita rasa/warna buatan. Natural 100%
2. GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) free
3. Mengandung spirulina, kiwi, madu, klorofil
4. Dalam kemasan yang praktis dibawa-bawa

Apakah Hobury akan menjadi pendobrak munculnya niche / pangsa pasar baru, yaitu minuman sehat ? Bisakah menjadi pendobrak yang selevel dengan kasus Pocari Sweat ?
Sebelum Hobury, sebetulnya minuman sehat juga sudah ada. Ada produk minuman lidah buaya hasil kerjasama MQnet dengan Universitas Indonesia (Kavera), ada minuman tradisional (sirih, kencur, dll), dan lain-lainnya. Tetapi, selama ini belum ada yang grafik penjualannya melejit seperti Hobury.

Apakah Hobury adalah trend sesaat, atau bukan? Mari kita saksikan bersama-sama.

Just tried installing Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server (Dapper Drake) on Virtual PC 2004, and the installation screen was messed up. It shown only a portion of the installation screen.
Here’s how to fix it:

1. When booting up from the CD, you’ll see a menu. Press ESC there, where it’ll tell you that you’re about to switch to text-mode. Choose OK

2. You’ll see a prompt like this : boot:

3. To continue, just type this: install debian-installer/framebuffer=false

4. Press Enter, and the screen should show up OK on VirtualPC 2004.

So far so good. Hope it helps.

note: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server doesn’t install a GUI desktop (gnome/kde). If you need it, just type : sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
(need internet access and properly set-up /etc/apt/sources.list file)

Para ilmuwan kini telah berhasil membuat daging buatan yang bisa dimakan

Komentar pertama saya : uhhhhh…. *muntah*

Tapi tidak diragukan lagi, dengan berjalannya waktu, maka bisa jadi daging buatan ini menjadi lebih bagus, bergizi, sehat, enak, dan murah daripada daging betulan. Tapi, saya akan tetap berusaha untuk tidak memakannya
Biarlah para astronot pada misi ke Pluto saja yang memakannya, he he.

btw; bagaimana kalau di dalam Islam ya mengenai daging seperti ini, apakah halal, atau haram ?
Thoughts ?

Last Monday until Tuesday I went to Sukabumi in a family event, also in relation to school holiday. We got ourselves a nice villa in the middle of nowhere, and started enjoying the break. The kids were running around and screaming as loud as possible. The parents enjoyed the gentle mountain breeze… until,

Suddenly my phone rang, and then came the news about the death of my client’s main server. The resulting crisis needs to be handled immediately.
The on-site staff unfortunately are not knowledgeable enough to handle this situation. And it takes too much time to go back to Jakarta.

So I quickly opened my laptop and try to connect to the Internet using my Pro XL subscription. The signal was pretty weak, only about 3 bar. Then I remember, that if I changed my phone’s orientation, sometimes the signal’s strength will change. So I started looking for the right place to put the phone, and finally got full signal when the phone was placed pointing to the corner of the room.
Don’t ask me why, I was just happy that I got full signal. Internet access became pretty fast, enough for me to access the office remotely.
I’m still quite surprised by the signal’s strength, considering my location. Thanks XL.

I quickly worked to restore the services originally hosted on that server. The main one is the company’s ERP - with the available backup, I managed to get it up and running again in another server.
Then I started looking to resurrect the dead server.

Unfortunately, the dead server seems to have its motherboard fried. With help from a friend, my staff managed to secure a SCSI card, plugged it into another server, plugged the SCSI hard drive - and voila, it runs. That temporary server booted from the SCSI hard drive just fine. Debian detected that it’s now on different server, did a few auto detection, and then everything runs as before. Every single bloody thing. Even when the servers are totally different - different motherboard, memory, processor, etc.
I can’t help but to fell in love again with Debian.

So I turned off the services on the other server, and redirected the users to the server running on the original hard drive. My staff then sent the dead server to the vendor for repairs.
Expecting a sad ending? Thankfully, that’s not the case here