Yearly Archives: 2017

Chuck Norris Facts – Science Version

General

:: Chuck Norris counted to infinity… Twice.

Chuck Norris knows the last digit of pi.

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, Chuck Norris can actually roundhouse kick you yesterday.

Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks don't really kill people. They wipe out their entire existence from the space-time continuum.

Human cloning is outlawed because if Chuck Norris were cloned, then it would be possible for a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to meet another chuck Norris roundhouse kick. Physicists theorize that this contact would end the universe.

It is scientifically impossible for Chuck Norris to have had a mortal father. The most popular theory is that he went back in time and fathered himself.

Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.

It is believed dinosaurs are extinct due to a giant meteor. That's true if you want to call Chuck Norris a giant meteor.

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

Chuck Norris’ roundhouse kick is so powerful, it can be seen from outer space by the naked eye.

Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that's why there are no signs of life there.

Scientists have estimated that the energy given off during the Big Bang is roughly equal to 1CNRhK (Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick)

Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

Thousands of years ago Chuck Norris came across a bear. It was so terrified that it fled north into the arctic. It was also so terrified that all of its decendents now have white hair.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed… unless it meets Chuck Norris.

The chemical formula for the highly toxic cyanide ion is CN-. These are also Chuck Norris' initials. This is not a coincidence.

Aliens DO indeed exist. They just know better than to visit a planet that Chuck Norris is on.

We live in an expanding universe. All of it is trying to get away from Chuck Norris.

The Manhattan Project was not intended to create nuclear weapons, it was meant to recreate the destructive power in a Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick. They didn't even come close.

Chuck Norris' pulse is measured on the richter scale.

Chuck Norris can sneeze with his eyes open.

Earth's emergency defence plan in case of alien invasion is Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris can split the atom. With his bare hands.

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HTI – Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, Mengajak Untuk Memberontak

General

:: Di sebuah grup Whatsapp pernah ada kawan yang menyatakan bahwa HTI adalah kelompok pemberontak. Nampaknya ybs mendapat kesimpulan tsb antara lain dari artikel terlampir ini : http://web.archive.org/web/20140722222518/http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2014/07/21/hti-seru-militer-ambil-kekuasaan-untuk-tegakkan-khilafah/

Diserukan kepada para jenderal yang beragama Islam, untuk melakukan kudeta (mengambil kekuasaan) – dan lalu menyerahkannya pada HTI.

Dan kemudian ditebarkan janji-janji manis, bahwa Khilafah ala HTI akan menyelesaikan semua masalah yang sudah ada selama bertahun-tahun dengan mudah saja.

Bahkan dengan #sombong menyatakan, bahwa akan mengalahkan Israel hanya dalam waktu 1 hari.

Walaupun fakta sudah membuktikan, bahwa bahkan berbagai peperangan yang dilakukan oleh Rasulullah saw sekalipun kadang butuh waktu berhari-hari. Apa mereka mengira mereka ini lebih baik daripada utusan Allah ?

====
Sifat pemberontak seperti ini bertentangan dengan sangat banyak perintah Nabi saw, untuk taat kepada pemimpin.

Ini adalah antara lain sifat kaum Khawarij, seperti yang dipaparkan oleh imam Hasan al Bashri :

—
Seorang lelaki dari kaum khawarij mendatangi Hasan Al Bashri rahimahullah, si khawarij ini bertanya kepada beliau,

"Apa pendapatmu mengenai khawarij?"

Hasan Al Bashri menjawab,
"Mereka adalah para pencari dunia."

Lelaki itu berkata,
"Mengapa engkau berkata demikian, tidakkah kau tahu bahwa salah seorang di antara mereka itu rela berjalan (untuk memerangi penguasa yang tidak adil) dengan tombaknya hingga patah tombak tersebut, ia bahkan pergi meninggalkan keluarga dan anaknya."

Hasan Al Bashri berkata,
"Coba jawab pertanyaanku mengenai penguasa ini, adakah dia melarangmu untuk sholat, menunaikan zakat, haji dan umrah?"

Lelaki itu menjawab,
"Tidak."

Hasan Al Bashri kemudian menjawab,
"Aku melihat bahwa ia menahan dunia darimu, sehingga kau pun memeranginya karena menginginkan dunia tersebut."

البصائر و الدخائر لأبي حيان
١٥٦/١

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I/O Load Monitoring

General

:: A few days ago a client of mine complained about slowdown on his website. I checked his server, and later noticed that the server seemed to be burdened with heavy I/O operations.

When checked with tools such as "top", the row showing "%wa" (meaning: I/O wait) was very high. Normally < 10%, it was ranging from 50% up to 98% instead.

This is a very alarming information. Because the server is using SSD disks 🙂 so its I/O (input/output) should be #really fast. Not bogged down like this.

I checked the daemons (server software) such as Apache, MySQL, Varnish, etc – and they were all idling. None were busy.

So the I/O load came from somewhere else. Probably from the hypervisor (physical server) itself. Which means it's a possible hardware problem.

Because the datacenter has concluded that it was not a "noisy neighbour" – another VM (virtual machine) in the same physical server that's hogging all the I/O resources. Pretty much all of them were idling, just like mine.

===
However I'll need some data to convince the datacenter to do hardware check on its SSD storage cluster. So I wrote this little bash script : http://pastebin.com/SxxuaVy4

The script logs server's I/O status into a CSV (Excel) format. So it can be very easily graphed later.

Using iostat tool, it probed the server's current I/O load.
Then the script is executed every minute, by running in as a cronjob.

You may notice that iostat is executed with "-d 1 3" parameter. Which means "run 3 times, with 1 second delay in between"

This is because iostat's first run always cause a spike in I/O load 🙂 so the numbers would be inaccurate. I noticed the numbers tend to stabilize after the 3rd run, so I set it up that way.

===
Of course, you can very easily modify this script to monitor something totally different 🙂 just change the iostat / head / tail / cut part to something else – voila.

===
Attached is a graph created from one of the log. The X axis is timestamp, in military format (24 hours)

I submitted the logs to the datacenter.

It convinced them to do checks on the storage cluster – and voila, they found some degraded disks in that cluster 🙂

===
Damaged disks replaced, storage cluster rebuilt – and everyone lives happily ever after ? 🙂 Fingers crossed. Happy ending !

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Kita Bisa Lawan Hoax

General

:: Gambar terlampir ini memberikan harapan 🙂 bukti bahwa kita #bisa melawan hoax. Lingkaran di sebelah kiri menampilkan hanya 2 titik oranye, para aktivis anti hoax – namun, sudah cukup untuk nyaris melenyapkan titik ungu; yaitu berita hoax 😀

Ini adalah hasil penelitian Professor Filippo Menczer dan koleganya. Sangat relevan dengan situasi di Indonesia, yaitu dimana mayoritas hoax menyebar melalui komunitas-komunitas tertutup di BBM atau Whatsapp.

Tanpa aktivis anti hoax, maka akan terjadi lingkaran di sebelah kanan – virus hoax bebas merajalela.

Mari bersama-sama kita BISA melawan hoax. (y)

Sumber : http://theconversation.com/misinformation-on-social-media-can-technology-save-us-69264

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Happy Ending

General
:: Di tahun 2013, dibahas tentang perburuan sebuah penyakit misterius, yang membunuhi anak-anak di India sejak 1995 🙁 setiap bulan Mei :O :O https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/africa/as-mystery-illness-stalks-its-young-india-intensifies-search-for-a-killer.html Bagaimana mereka mati-matian bekerja keras untuk mengungkap sumber penyakit yang misterius ini.

Di tahun 2017, akhirnya muncul kabar gembira : mereka sudah berhasil menemukan penyebabnya 😀 yaitu, buah leci (lychee) :O :O :O

Siapa sangka ?? 🙂 ternyata buah leci bisa membunuh anak kecil 🙁

Ternyata ada 3 kondisi yang kebetulan muncul di setiap bulan Mei :

(1) Pohon leci berbuah, dan dimakan oleh anak-anak

(2) Anak-anak banyak yang kekurangan gizi : salah satu dampaknya adalah kadar gula darah yang rendah.

(3) Buah leci mengandung racun Hypoglycin & MCPG : keduanya membuat tubuh sulit mengubah glukosa/gula menjadi gula darah.

Poin 2 ditambah poin 3, membuat sebagian anak-anak yang memakan buah leci menjadi drop kadar gula darahnya sampai ke tingkat yang fatal 🙁

====
Masalah ini jadi kini bisa diatasi dengan mengajarkan 2 hal kepada para orang tua :

(1) Anak-anak harus mendapat asupan gizi yang cukup

(2) Batasi konsumsi buah leci oleh anak-anak

Alhamdulillah, kini jumlah kasus ini jadi drop dengan sangat signifikan 😀 <3

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Berkat metode investigasi yang ilmiah, bukan cuma berdasarkan perasaan, maka misteri yang sudah ada selama 20 tahun ini akhirnya jadi bisa dipecahkan dalam waktu sekitar 2 tahun.

Salut kepada para pahlawan yang telah menyelamatkan nyawa anak-anak ini 🙂 semoga kita bisa tiru teladan mereka (y)

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/world/asia/lychee-litchi-india-outbreak.html

Dangerous Fruit: Mystery of Deadly Outbreaks in India Is Solved – NYTimes.com

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*Install old packages with Debian Snapshot *

General

:: snapshot.debian.org is a wayback machine that allows access to old packages based on dates and version numbers. It consists of all past and current packages the Debian archive provides. I found out about this service when a customer needed to use an older version of PHP, and I couldn't find a way to cleanly do this. Thanks to Debian Snapshot, it's now done & running.

I began by finding out the exact version of PHP and Apache packages that needs to be installed.

===
The client asked for PHP version 5.3, so I browsed to http://snapshot.debian.org/package/php5/

Found that the most up to date version is 5.3.10-2,
so I browsed to its folder : http://snapshot.debian.org/package/php5/5.3.10-2/

It shows date & time of 2012-02-21 04:16:01
so I added the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list :

—-
# PHP 5.3.10-2 packages
deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20120221T041601Z/ unstable main
—-

Note the date & time format on that line.

Now we need to install Apache version 2.22.2-1 – why this particular version?
Answer: because this is the version required by PHP 5.3.10-2 package; it will complain if any other version are installed. So yeah that's pretty easy to figure out 🙂

Using similar technique, I found out the line for Apache2 packages :

—-
# Apache 2.22.2-1 packages
deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20120202T040408Z/ unstable main
—-

Now let's do the installation process itself :

===========
# remove current PHP packages
sudo apt-get remove –purge `dpkg -l | grep php | grep -w 5.5 | awk '{print $2}' | xargs`
# remove current Apache packages
sudo apt-get remove –purge `dpkg -l | grep apache | grep -w 2 | awk '{print $2}' | xargs`

# update package database
apt-get update

# this is the setting required to be able to use Debian Snapshot
apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update

# now we can specify the exact version
apt-get install php5=5.3.10-2 libapache2-mod-php5=5.3.10-2 php5-cli=5.3.10-2 php5-common=5.3.10-2 php5-gd=5.3.10-2 php5-mcrypt=5.3.10-2 php5-mysql=5.3.10-2 php5-pgsql=5.3.10-2 apache2=2.2.22-1 apache2-mpm-prefork=2.2.22-1 apache2-suexec=2.2.22-1 apache2-utils=2.2.22-1 apache2.2-common=2.2.22-1 apache2.2-bin=2.2.22-1

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
===========

If the commands does not work, maybe it's formatting problem – you can refer instead to my Pastebin here : http://pastebin.com/r2qBtbs4

Hope you find these useful (y)

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