Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Google Translate in Picasa

I commented on a photo in Picasa of my friends, attending our friends' wedding. I wrote in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language; and it's not just 'Bahasa' as many people, even fellow Indonesians, think it is )

After submitting, my comment appeared with another sentence underneath.. It was a rough translation of my comment into English, haha..


After checking their "what's new", this was what I got:

Automatic comment translations

If your photo is getting kudos from around the globe, we'll automatically translate comments in foreign languages to your default language.

Wow, then Google must have had a checking mechanism if the comment is in the user's default language, if not then decide what language it is, and finally translate it to the default language.

I tried to submit a comment in English just to check, and yea, there was no such translation appeared.

Although not perfect, it's a cool way to facilitate non-Indonesian speaking visitors :D I really like it.

update:
Surprisingly, through images we shared in Plurk, my friend and I saw different translations for an exact same sentence she wrote.

What she saw:
What I saw:
Hahaha, this is getting more interesting..

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Another Word Verification

Bwuahaaha.. ngakak guling2 (ga segitunya sih :p) pas mo comment di blognya teman. Mengingat postingan yg ini tentang word verification, hal yang sama terjadi lagi.

Yahh, semakin mendekati kaaan? :D Keep it coming Blogger! It's getting closer, hehehe :D

(Penting yaaaa...)

NB: Oh iya, dulu jg terjadinya pas mau comment di blog yg sama.. hmm..

Perkedel Jagung

I'm intrigued to make Perkedel Jagung (Jagung = corn, and I don't know the proper English for "Perkedel") yesterday after tasting some of Ocha's at her home in Den Haag. I recalled being fond of Perkedel Jagung sold at Kantin GKU Barat (in my former university), with their golden-ish colour and crispy yet soft texture (krauk krauk, LOL).

I didn't really know the recipe and although it's easy to find on the internet, I was just too lazy to follow such recipe.

So I just used my feeling, hahaha. I took all-purpose flour, mixed it with an egg, a can of sweet corn, and half-pack of roerbakmix (mixed diced vegetables), some water, a bit of salt, a bit of sugar, a bit of chicken powder, and tadaaaa:

They tasted good, although what I had in mind was somewhat more crispier (eh, what's the correct term again? maksudnya sih renyah, garing). I reckoned the egg made them puffier (lebih empuk2 gitu. Enak sih, tp jadi kayak bala2/bakwan).

So, I tried one more time, after coming back from Christmas Celebration in Wassenaar this afternoon. This time, I didn't use egg, but I added some portion of cornstarch (tepung maizena) to the all-purpose flour. The rest of the ingredients were the same (oh, I added garlic and white pepper a bit). Here goes the result (after some of them were eaten, hahaha):


They were indeed crispier. I still have some doubt whether they will stay crispy after some time tho. If they're not, I will consider removing the mixed vegetable from the ingredients next time like how it's supposed to be in the first place (hey, they're Perkedel Jagung you know), hehehe

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Let's Take A Shower

As I now live together with two other friends, I have to share kitchen, dining room, toilet, and bathroom. Our bathroom looks like a simple room with stone as the floor and some tiling on the wall. A blue curtain separates the shower area with the sink & mirror area.

I won't complain about my bathroom, it's good enough for me But this cold winter days really make me want to enjoy a soothing warm bath, with steam showers probably

These shower enclosures look very elegant. I like the so called Chic Glass Shower Enclosure With Sliding Door (pretty long name, huh. They should have made a shorter name. But it helps describing the product anyway). I'm not sure I like Acrylic Base Glass Shower Enclosure. It looks cool, but probably too small for me. If they have it bigger, I'd like it



See this shower kits. Whiiii, I'd definitely enjoy the combination of rain shower with foot massager The massager is in the form of water massage jets. I love being around water (I am an Aquarian anyway, if that matters, hahaha). Well, I have to wait until I have my own house to have this luxurious items. It's no use remodelling my temporary student housing, hahaha.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

This surely is a cool game.. I'd like to try it :D The name's Crayon Physics Deluxe.


Ohh, for those with limited internet speed for viewing the video, this is the explanation of the game taken from the original website:

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics.

But should I get the pen? Humm, I guess I could use my mouse..

Monday, December 22, 2008

Elliot Yamin's new song + Christmas Album

They (people on the internet) said that new (unfinished) song of Elliot has been leaked.. The title is "Be Apart"

Here goes the song:



I kinda like it already :D
While at it, I want to share Elliott Yamin's Christmas album (2008) to accompany our Christmas, hehehe: Elliott Yamin - My Kind Of Holiday

Merry Christmas everybody!! :)

Friday, December 05, 2008

The Twilight Zone Tragedy

I want to share a story about the tragedy happened in the movie set of "Twilight Zone", where the main actor was decapitated (so scary ) by Helicopter's rotor blades.

Two child actors also died in the set, resulting major reform in US child labor laws and safety regulations on movie sets.

May they rest in peace. Here goes the story of ten pages.

Friday, November 28, 2008

No More Night

I want to share a video I found long ago in YouTube. It's a video of David Phelps singing "No More Night".

I have sung the song in choir format in Sunday Services and a concert with my church choir in GII Dago. I really love the song for the message, the beauty of the music, and the feeling it gave when I sing it. It helps a lot in difficult times.

Now I love the song even more with the beauty of David Phelps' voice. It's wonderful!

So here goes:





Lyrics to No More Night :
Words & music by Walt Harrah


The timeless theme, Earth and Heaven will pass away.
It’s not a dream, God will make all things new that day.
Gone is the curse from which I stumbled and fell.
Evil is banished to eternal hell.

No more night. No more pain.
No more tears. Never crying again.
And praises to the great "I AM."
We will live in the light of the risen Lamb.

See all around, now the nations bow down to sing.
The only sound is the praises to Christ, our King.
Slowly the names from the book are read.
I know the King, so there’s no need to dread.

No more night. No more pain.
No more tears. Never crying again.
And praises to the great "I AM."
We will live in the light of the risen Lamb.

See over there, there’s a mansion, oh, that’s prepared just for me,
Where I will live with my savior eternally.

No more night. No more pain.
No more tears. Never crying again.
And praises to the great "I AM."
We will live in the light of the risen Lamb.

All praises to the great "I AM."
We’re gonna live in the light of the risen Lamb.

Web Hosting

I need to create a website for a small business of my friends’. Alas, I know very little about webhosting, domain, data transfer, design, and all other stuffs related to it. I have tried to look for local (by local I mean Indonesia although I live in Netherlands at the moment) webhosting services but got confused with the many offers. You know, having too many options is as confusing as having too limited options.

I heard about a website that provide web hosting articles and I think it will be quite useful. Some of the articles available are about choosing a dedicated host, domain parking, overview of many type of control panels, et cetera. There is also categories of articles, such as about one of the most well known control panel: Cpanel.

So, let’s take a look at this website to learn about web hosting :)

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Google's New Feature


I just noticed this new feature in Google search. I don't know if it's been there for quite sometimes, but since I use Google a lot, I don't think I miss it at the first go. Its name is SearchWiki.

Quote from Google:

Customize your search results with your rankings, deletions, and notes — plus, see how other people using Google have tailored their searches.

Please remember that your SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.

For every search, each links is now given three new buttons, namely Promote, Remove, and Comment. At first, I assumed Promote would be used if you find a link useful and wanted other people to know it too, Remove for the exactly opposite reason, and Comment if you wanted to leave comment (d'oh) about the links.

When I tried clicking on Remove, the link is removed from the list. If you want to restore it, you can find it at the bottom of the page.

When I clicked on Promote, it brought the link to the first rank and subsequently another button appear in place of the cross Remove button. The tooltip still mentioned Remove, but if you clicked on it, it would just return the link to its previous normal rank.

Screenshot

This is a new way of Google to let user customize their search results. This is probably because the Information Retrieval technology used by Google (and every other search engines) will always produce non-perfect recall, precision, and ranking system. Hence, I think providing this kind of feature will help in mitigating the imperfectness of those measures.

The other good thing is the customization is shared among users so that users can also benefit from input from others. For example: I can see what other user think about a link in search result, and can feel more confidence in that link (as being recommended).

Notes: You can only see the new features if you log in to Google account

Updates
:
Here's a video from Google's official blog about how to use SearchWiki:


Friday, November 21, 2008

ShopWiki - Shopping Search Engine

What do you do nowadays if you want to buy something?
Probably you'll do some searching in the internet by using web search engines. If you're lucky, you'll find an online store that sell the product you want with a price that you're happy with. However, if you stumble upon many online stores offering the product at different prices (it could be very different), you might not feel so lucky any longer. That kinda thing brings confusion.

Now let's see this website. It claims itself to be a shopping search engine that make use of web-crawling technology in combination with consumer-written Wiki. Web crawling technology is the same technology use by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!Search, etc. Thus it can crawls a huge number of online stores. This brings benefit as users can compare prices of a product from several stores simultaneously. For example is specialized bicycles.. or Apollo bicycle.

ShopWiki present the search result as a list of products related to the keywords. The good thing is for each entry, a pic of the product is presented, along with the name and description. The lowest price of the product is given from the many stores that sell it. If you want to know more data of the different prices, you could point your cursor to one of the entry and a bubble with pop with a list of lowest prices from several shops. Here's a snapshot of the search result:


I think this shopping search engines is very helpful and user friendly :)

India Translation Service

I came across an India translation website and I was reminded about the need of proper language use in building relationship.

I have written about a request from my sister for translation of some Indonesian words to India language for her work/assignment as visual communication designer. I only needed a simple translation tool for that.

What if you need to translate not several words, but paragraphs? whole documents?
That's the time you need a translation service.
If you have a business and you want to reach a market that do not understand your language, what will you do? Say, you speak English, you produce Batik, and you want to sell it to India. Well, English is commonly used in India, but I believe there are many other people that do not know English. Moreover, isn't it nicer to build a relationship with your prospective customers by using their own language?

Like villagers in many countries, that have diverse traditional languages and might not understand English that well, certain areas in India face the same thing. Hindi is a language spoken in India as well as Urdu is. Punjabi is a language used in the area of Punjab (well, at least now we know how the famous Raam Punjabi got his name :D).

Back to the topic, that's the reason IAFL (I can't find what it stands for from the website) provide a translation and interpretation service, They claim that it's best to give the work to professional because poor Urdu translation, for instance, will lead to decrease of credibility. A very sound argument, I would say. In fact, there are many things to be concerned about translation. It's not only making the native speakers understand, but it should also use the style of the original and be culturally appropriate.

Talking about the business model, it is not wise for a company to have many language experts in house. A more feasible (and effective) way is by using a service from a company like IAFL.

I think for a global-minded business people, a translator/interpreter is necessary in terms of reaching people in their respective comfort zone, namely their language. That will help them to be able to relate more to whatever it is that you want them to know.

Push-up

I found this post very nice and I'd like to share it. I found it through the post in Pandu's blog (this is like share it forward, hehehe)

Thought: What will we do with the grace our God has given us? *I myself need to do some reflection on that* :)

Monday, November 17, 2008

Travelling and Accomodation


Since my last travel to Spain and Italy last summer, I haven’t done any travelling. I would love too, but my courses’ assignments and other works are very time consuming. PPI Delft actually planned a travelling activity “PPI Delft goes to Berlin” but since only very few people responded to the registration, it was cancelled.

Hmm, Mai is still in Zurich for her exchange program. I would like to visit her (and force her to be my guide off course, hahaha). I should do that before January though, otherwise she’ll already be back in Delft.

Talking about travelling, I’m sure that new students (Vel? Ron? Niss? Mel? hehehe) might want to do that, probably as cheap as possible :D Accommodation contributes to the expense greatly, but the cheapest alternative is not necessarily the one you’re satisfied with. Let me share some useful information on that.

Couchsurfing.com might be your first alternative to find accommodation. Mai is the one introducing the website to me when we planned our trip to Leuven and Brussels last year. She contacted some members who offer a couch or a room to sleep in the cities we’re interested in. We got the rooms but we needed to bring our own sleeping bags (there were four of us). The rooms were free of charge (that’s the beauty of the couchsurfing concept) but we, as nice people (yes, we are :D), prepared dinner for our hosts. It was an interesting experience. It might not be easy to get room though. Mai needed to contact many people before getting the offers (probably also because she’s been well reviewed by other members from her previous couchsurfing).

Last January, when I travelled to Prague with some classmates, we found accommodation through hostelworld.com. The prices of the hostels were cheap (probably because it’s Prague). The first hostel we booked was okay, but crappy in its service. We checked out on the second day and found another hostel that was slightly more expensive, but superb in its service. You can read the rest of the story in my previous post.

If you prefer hotel to hostels, you can try finding good rates through hotelscombined.com. My Dutch friend once told me he used this website to find accommodation for his travel to Indonesia. He went there with his family. It can help comparing hotels in one go. That’s helpful, I would say. I tried to search for hotels in Bandung, and it shows me an impressive list of hotels to choose from :D Perfect for planning a honeymoon, hehehe.

So, if you’re on a tight budget and want to experience something new, you could try couchsurfing.com (but you should be careful in choosing the prospective hosts). If you’re looking for student accommodation, try hostelworld.com (not necessarily the cheapest and you have to make sure it’s comfortable enough). If you’re looking for a good hotel and need to compare for the best value for your money, try hotelscombined.com. These could spare you the trouble of searching the accommodation manually.

Medical Alarm

Hey, this is interesting. I stumbled upon a website selling customer care service and products related to safety. They sell some kind of Medical Alarm Systems, one for inside the house and one for the outside. I am always interested in stuff related to medical (thanks to my parents who work as nurses and sorry for them that none of their children pursue a career as a doctor. Well, they don't complain though :D)

The interesting feature of the inside-the-house system (they call it Tele-Assist) is Fall Detector. Imagine when your grandmother is at home, alone, and you know that she’s not in her fittest state as she’s ever been before but you couldn’t be around. The product has a panic button, which alert the family, doctor, or emergency help when pressed. But if somehow the wearer cannot even press the panic button, the fall detector will alert the company’s operator, who will act accordingly once (s)he has assessed the situation. It is wonderful how new technology (like the detector) can help people.

For outside, they use Mobile GPS in the form of a watch. They claim that the device will connect you to help no matter where you are in the world. It will send your GPS location to a trained professional in case of emergency. I think this is very useful. I can imagine how hard it is to create such complex connection of medical alarm system with other actors in the environment, such as the doctors, emergency ambulance, et cetera. It is difficult especially in developing countries, for instance my home country. I don’t know how they could do it if a customer actually travels to Indonesia and goes to some rural areas.

Nevertheless, such technology implemented in this medical alarm system is admirable and could really help. I only hope that the infrastructure in Indonesia could get better to actually make use of such technology in a large scale.

Oh ya, I found their video in YouTube, here goes:

Monday, October 27, 2008

Word Verification

Waktu mau mengirim comment untuk postingan terakhir di blog teman ini, word verification yang muncul seperti ini:

Hahaha, dikit lagi dapet de nama 'Credo'..

My Plurk

I really love the theme of my Plurk page :)
It feels so serene. And that's important because I spend (or waste, depending on how you see it :p) a lot of time looking at it.

I don't know if it's just me, but I think this Plurk thing is a smart product. I reflected it to the (weird urging) feeling of commenting on my friends' Yahoo!Messenger status. My friends' did that a lot too (commenting on others' online status, that is). So, instead of commenting on a real-time status, Plurk creator(s) made it possible for people to comment on a continuum of statuses posted in Plurk. Which make it very attractive (at least for people who'd like to share small things in their life).

I'm kinda annoyed by Plurk too, I guess.. Because it's so easy to post something and get comments on that. However, that makes me even lazier than before to write blog post. Well, they call Plurking as micro-blogging though. They do it for a reason, right?

Twitter is another micro-blogging service. But representation of the posts somehow makes it hard to follow all the posts of your friends because they are pushed on top of each other. I would just say, it's not helping the user.

It's a different case with Plurk. It positions your friends' posts so that you could see them clearly. You can choose to see only your own posts, your responded posts, or even your comment on others' posts. Plurk keeps track of them for you. If your friends trashes you with too many posts, you could simply choose not to follow their Plurk temporarily but stay friends. Ahh, almost forget to mention: we could adorn our post with pics (mostly emoticons. Ahh, and they look great :D) and shares video and links.

With all this, will this micro-blogging change our blogging-behaviour? I think it starts having an effect on me.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Wikipedia Needs Help

I have seen the advertisement (if I could call it that) of Wikipedia indicating it needs some donation to keep going. Like this, "Wikipedia is sustained by people like you. Please donate today."

What I just realized is that they (I refer to those guys behind the curtain off course) provide several alternatives to deliver the message. Like:

Every time you load a Wikipedia page, the sentence is generated (randomly shown, I would say). I think it's neat having this kind of thing. It's not something new, but it's just... nice.
The position of the message is also nice. On the top left with readable small font. The italic style makes it stand out without irritating the eager eye looking for valuable information.

Click the 'donate' links on those messages and you will see a video of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia explaining the purpose of the free encyclopedia and the needs for donation. (Hey, Indonesia is in the video :D)

Imagine a world
in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
J. Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

I hope I help them delivering the message by making this post :D

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Proteksi CD/DVD

Hwahahaha..
Justru dr anak2 IT yang jawabannya malah ga jelas..
Maaf ya Pop..

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Free products

There's an offering of studentenbox in front of the aula this morning. As students, all we need to do is register in their website www.studentenbox.nl and bring the print out of the confirmation letter and student card to the aula.

The box contains various kind of snacks, soepbasis, toothpaste, shaver, and.. (I chuckled) condoms... Exactly what students need, huh?

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Volley Ball

Huff, I'm tired today..
Playing volley ball for almost 3 hours from around 10 to 12 am in the sport center. It's actually an International Student Program which give a month free access to the sport center to introduce it to new students (I'm not new though :p). I have had a sport card since last year but I don't want to join the Dutch volley ball club because I will looked ridiculously short compared to those Dutch guys.

But it feels good after the play with some new friends. Let me see: Tiago & Rui from Portugal, Victoria from Norway, and Laura from Spain (Hahaha, I feel the need to note them down so that I won't forget). We plan to meet again next saturday and invite more friends since many of them do not know about the program yet. And heey.. it's free.. So no reason actually for not coming :D

Apart from Volley Ball, there are also schedule for basket ball, tennis, badminton, body shape(for woman), and so on.. Would like to join the badminton and tennis too next week.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Krashna Musika Proms Concert

Krashna Musika orchestra and choir will have another concert this September. It will be in Delft Market Square and it's FREE!! :D

It's the 40th anniversary of Krashna Musika.

We will perform:

Prokofiev - Romeo & Julia suite;
Guus Westdorp - The Hymne of Delft (on world premiere!).

Glinka - Ouverture from Ruslan and Ludmilla;
Borodin - Danses Polovtsiennes from Prince Igor;
Bizet - Les Voici from Carmen;
Verdi - Va pensiero from Nabucco;
Verdi - La donna e mobile from Rigoletto;
Gounod - Deposons les armes, gloire immortelle de nos aieux from Faust;
Wagner - Treulich geführt from Lohengrin;
Puccini - Nessun dorma from Turandot.

Before the evening concert, there will be another concert in the afternoon for Children. It will be the Romeo and Juliet, by the orchestra, and there will be a narration for Children by Petra Pijnaker (penulis musiknya gitu klo ga salah ingat).

My favourite choir piece from the program are Danses Polovtsiennes (Prince Igor) and Les Voici (Carmen). Les Voici is so lively and extravagant! While Danses Polovtsiennes is grand and mystical :D

So, for those of you who can reach Delft, please do come! :)

One video of Danses Polovtsiennes that I can find in YouTube:



PS: I haven't written anything about the Concert Tour several months ago.. I hope I can write it soon.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Three Fishers

Three Fishers by Chen Ningkang & Fu MulanIt rains a lot in Delft, but rarely thundery. But that's what happen tonight. While listening to the drops of rains and enjoying the thunder (surprise surprise), I suddenly remembered one of the songs PSM-ITB sang for the 1st KPS Unpar and for other occasions after that: The Three Fishers.

I tried to look up for its video clip in YouTube and Google but none were like the one I searched for. Instead, I ended up with some interesting facts.

The song was based on a poem by Charles Kingsley and first published in 1851. John Hullah was the first to compose a song based on the poem although I'm not sure his melody was the same as the one I know, comparing to some solo versions and music score that I found. Derek B Scott, a Professor of Critical Musicology from University of Leeds, sang it the first time.

The music score in PDF and midi file by John Hullah can be found here: http://www.ibiblio.org/mutopia/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=429.

Here goes the poem:

The Three Fishers

1 Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
2 Away to the west as the sun went down;
3 Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
4 And the children stood watching them out of the town;
5 For men must work, and women must weep,
6 And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
7 Though the harbour bar be moaning.

8 Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
9 And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
10 They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
11 And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
12 But men must work, and women must weep,
13 Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
14 And the harbour bar be moaning.

15 Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
16 In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
17 And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
18 For those who will never come home to the town;
19 For men must work, and women must weep,
20 And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;
21 And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

(taken from Representative Poetry Online)

The poem/lyric told the story clearly. The arrangement of the music (it's an a cappella composition) added up to the holistic image of the scene.

At least I got the image of the town nearby a sea in my mind when singing the song. At bay, some women worrily looking at their husbands as they were preparing their sailing equipments, while the children stood still in silence beside their mothers. The sky didn't look friendly, the clouds were hovering and the wind blew strongly. The sun started to set and darkness was creeping on the surface of the roaring sea. As the men started sailing, some children ran to a steep hill that raised high from the sea, to get the last glance of their fathers on the horizon.

I can go on and on with this image, I'm afraid I might write too long.

Line 8-11 were sung by Soprano and Alto describing the situation and possible feeling of the women. The duet was melodiously and beautifully aching. Then came male voices in line 12-14 as cantus, like breaking into a new scene (I imagine the sudden change of scenes like in a movie, from a secluded lighthouse tower to an open, rough sea; with cracking thunder and lightning; and the men struggling in their boat). I remembered the males started with forte, and gradually lowering down the dynamics (not decrescendo, but on some starting points).

Line 15-18, again the females sang the main melody, but this time accompanied by the males singing only some words of each line. The emphasis on each syllable rhythmically by the Tenors and Basses created a sense of splashes of waves on the shore where the corpses laid.

The song is so beautiful.. sooo emotional.. Line 20 "And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;", sang in piano/pianissimo, suits the feeling the best.. Since the sorrow is so strong, it feels like it's the only way to shrug off the burden.

Fuhh, I should try my best to dig through my recording collections to find the song.

Another interesting fact is that the poem has a rhyme structure of ababccd. I just noticed it and I think it's beautiful.

I found The Project Gutenberg Ebook of Journeys Through Booklands that contain Kingsley's poem and an illustration. Haaa, I'm so glad the illustration suits my former imagination:


(taken from Gutenberg.org)

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Bi-directional Override

Stumbled upon an html tag with an attribute that will write text backwards (if your browser support it).. I know it's not gonna be used a lot though :D

The tag is <bdo> and the atttribute is 'rtl'=right to left.

If your browser supports bi-directional override (bdo), this code :
<bdo dir="rtl">
Let's try this bi-directional override tag
</bdo>

will be written from the right to the left (rtl) as:

Let's try this bi-directional override tag

Well ya.. If it's not written from right to left, you know what your problem is :D

Braxton Hicks

The first time I saw the term was on Layli,'s YM status, "I think it's Braxton-Hicks"..

I went like, "Whoaa.. Does Toni Braxton have a duet with Taylor Hicks?"



Apparently not, after a hit to Google and eventually Wikipedia.

Braxton Hicks contractions, also known as false labour or practice contractions. Braxton Hicks are sporadic uterine contractions that actually start at about 6 weeks, although one will not feel them that early. Most women start feeling them during the second or third trimester of pregnancy. Braxton Hicks are named after the English doctor who first described them, John Braxton Hicks.

Ahahaha, does anybody know this before? :D

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Whaku Bhim, Papuan Choir: Gospel Night

Got an email from Ocha this morning, informing there would be a choir performance in Indonesian Embassy's Auditorium at 7pm tonight.

The choir is Whaku Bhim, a choir from Papua, the eastern-most province in Indonesia. It is reported that they got a gold and a silver medal from the World Choir Games 2008 in Graz, Austria. Haaa, then this is a must-see performance for me :D

Paduan suara Whaku Bhim dari Papua akan ditampilkan secara khusus bersama beberapa kelompok paduan suara lainnya dari China, Australia, Amerika Serikat, Eropa dan Afrika Selatan dalam acara "We Are The World, Die Grosse Sommer-Nacht der Chore", International choir competition World Choir Games.

After contacting Rahmadi, Rizky, Mieke, and Reini, we agreed to go there by Reini's car at 6pm. As expected (at least by us Indonesians, not by those Dutch ladies) the small concert started late. Although the choir had arrived at 6.30 from Nijmegen (another concert there), the Indonesian ambassador didn't arrive from an appointment in Morocco's embassy until almost 8.

The choir consisted of church members and universities' students from Jayapura and its surroundings, conducted by Aris Sudibyo.

I didn't know the first song they sang, but I could notice that they're good. The second song was Indonesian version of "The Majesty and Glory of Your Name" by Tom Fettke (is it "Betapa Mulia NamaMu Tuhan"?). Now here I got a lot more excited and think that they sang it beautifully (perhaps also because I really love this song :D).

Other songs were "Sanctus"and I-forgot-the-other-one. The Tenors were kinda flat & stiff. The soloists (or descants, I forgot) were weak. At this point I was kinda having a skepticism. I mean, they're good, okay.. but what I heard were not the quality of WCG's gold medal choir.

Then came "Bukakan Pintu KasihMu" by Ronald Pohan and "Toki Gong (Sambil Menari Halleluya)" by Christian Tamaela. Ahh, "Bukakan Pintu KasihMu" are so typically Ronald Pohan. With all those complicated and close-harmony chords. I love his works. Impressively, the choir sang Toki Gong very well (except one noticeable false/drop at the release of one verse) and the clap-part was perfect. Very tidy. Now I could see that they've actually practising very hard. "Bukakan Pintu KasihMu" was nicely sung, with a lot better vocal compared to previous songs. The last 'Amen' part was great. "All Things Bright and Beautiful" was sung okay.. I think it was put as last song to neutralized the effect of Ronald Pohan's song, khekhekhee.

Second session was started after a break with bakso, hahaha :D
A medley song (I forgot what they were) and another Ronald Pohan's song "Tinggal Sertaku", which was composed before the death of his father E.L. Pohan. Then the session was mostly filled with Negro Spiritual songs such as "I Want To Thank You Lord", "Everytime I Feel The Spirit"(You introduced this to me B'Josh :D), "Soon Ah Will Be Done", ended with "Elijah Rock". I really liked Moses Hogan's work :D

I would say they sang Negro Spiritual really good. The ringing of the voice and the vibrato fit really well, apart from their physical appearance (well, the conductor said so :D). I think they related more with those songs and sang them more relax-ly (if this word exist :p). The dynamic flowed rather smoothly, although with less control to go piano/pianissimo. The soloists in this second session were much better. The power of the choir were great, although there's a tendency to be screamy (udah kecapekan kali ya).

***

Whaku Bhim was also appointed to perform in World Symposium on Choral Music in Copenhagen, Denmark. Later in a chat with the conductor, I acknowledged that the conductor was a former conductor of Universitas Kristen Petra choir (a very good choir in Surabaya). He was encouraged by Aida Swenson Simanjuntak, one of the judges/committee of WCG (Oh, Tante Aida existnya dirimu, hehehe) to form and train Whaku Bhim. So in 6 months, forming and training a choir like this was a very good achievement I think.

Eventually I knew they got silver medal in Mixed Chamber Choir and gold medal in Open Folklore. So, the gold medal was from Open Folklore.. I gotta see their next concert at 6 August 2008 at the same place, performing Papuan folksongs and dance. Tomorrow, they will be touring to Germany for another (some more) concert(s).

In the end, I really enjoyed the small concert. It's so endearing to see other Indonesian choir participating in World Choir Games.. Congratulations!!
And I really miss my choir now :)

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Kembar Hitam-Putih

Untungnya sih bukan kayak zebra :D

Tapi bayi yang satu kulit putih, bayi yang satu lagi kulit hitam. Si kembar ini lahir dari pasangan ibu dari Ghana dan ayah dari Jerman. Yang berkulit putih diberi nama Ryan dan yang kulit hitam bernama Leo. Katanya kelahiran seperti ini terjadi dengan probabilitas 1 dalam sejuta (siapa juga yg ngitung2 ini..).

And the twins are already revealing opposing personalities.
Light-skinned Ryan is described as a "spirited" baby, while Leo is laid back.

Berita lebih detail bisa dibaca di sini dan sini, lengkap dengan videonya.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Praying Dog

Praying dogI found out about this dog from detik but since the article was written as lame as usual, I search for other source: this and this.

The dog's name is Conan (1,5 year old) (named after Arthur Conan Doyle), a long haired Chihuahua .

He learned the position by imitating his master in a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan.

"I think he saw me doing it all the time and got the idea to do it, too," Yoshikuni said.

He is just too cute to ignore, hehehe :D

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Sheep Dash!

Got a link for a BBC's reaction test game from Wuri: Sheep Dash!
It is said in the automobile driving manual that the average driver's reaction time is 0.75 seconds.


As warned in her email, the game is indeed addicting :D
I have tried it around 10 times and the best (and average) result I got is Bobbing Bobcat.

Let me know if you can get Rocketing Rabbit or Turbo-charged Cheetah! :D And tell me how you do that, hehehe.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Take Copter / Baling-baling Bambu

Lagi-lagi karena nonton channel national geographic..

Seorang Jepang bernama Gennai Yanagisawa, 75 tahun telah mengembangkan mesin terbang personal berdasarkan konsep mesin terbang Leonardo Da Vinci. Mesin terbang ini hanya memiliki satu tempat duduk untuk penggunaan pribadi dan memiliki 2 baling-baling yang terpasang pada sumbu vertikal. Mesin itu dinamakan GEN H-4.



Yanagisawa's inspiration: da Vinci's 1493 ornithopter

Pada helikopter biasa, ada sebuah baling-baling besar pada sumbu vertikal badan helikopter dan ada sebuah baling-baling kecil di bagian ekor untuk memungkinkan helikopter menjaga kestabilan dan terbang maju.

Fungsi ini diimplementasikan pada GEN H-4
dengan dua baling-baling sejajar pada sumbu vertikal yang berputar saling berlawanan arah, sehingga bentuknya lebih compact.

Satu hal yang masih menjadi masalah adalah pengaruh angin kencang pada
GEN H-4. Mesin ini belum memiliki toleransi tinggi terhadap kecepatan angin.

Harga mesin ini masih mahal sekali. Berita mengenai demonstrasi mesin ini di Italy, tepatnya di Vinci tempat asal Leonardo si pengembang konsep awal, bisa dibaca di sini.


Dalam tayangan videonya, Gennai menyampaikan kalau sejak kecil dia memimpikan bisa terbang di angkasa. Itu yang mendorong dia untuk mengembangkan mesin ini. The power of dream is truly amazing.

Mengagumkan ya.. Jepang semakin mendekati pewujudnyataan Take Copter alias Baling-baling bambunya Doraemon :D


Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Cane Toad

Cane Toad
Di salah satu TOEFL test yang pernah aku ikuti beberapa tahun lalu IELTS test practice yang aku ikuti tahun lalu, ada materi reading test tentang Cane Toad. Disebutkan kalau Cane Toad didatangkan dari Hawai dan digunakan sebagai usaha alami/biologis untuk membasmi hama Cane Beetle yang menyerang tanaman tebu di Australia.

Rasanya ini ide yang bagus kan?

Tapi sayang kenyataannya ga begitu. Setelah didatangkan, si makhluk kecil menjijikkan tidak-terlalu-menarik ini malah ga mengkonsumsi si Cane Beetle. Seingatku karena beetle-nya makan daun di tempat tinggi dan larvanya makan akar dalam tanah sehingga Cane Toad-nya ga bisa memakan mereka. Ujung-ujungnya, karena begitu giat berkembang biak, si Toad ini bertambah banyak dan malah menjadi hama di Australia.

Lah, terus kenapa tiba-tiba ngomongin makhluk tak menarik ini?
Hehe, tadi pas nonton national geographic di TV (tumben banget kan), si Cane Toad ini dibahas. Pembahasannya mengenai mereka sebagai hama dan penanggulangannya.

Bertambah banyaknya Cane Toad menjadi masalah di Australia. Selain mendiami banyak lahan dan bersaing untuk resource alami dengan banyak makhluk setempat, si Toad yang ternyata beracun itu membahayakan biodiversitas (terjemahan sotoy dari Biodiversity.. eh, rasanya di perasaan biologi dulu ada padanannya: Keanekaragaman Hayati). Dilaporkan kalau populasi ular, burung, dan sejumlah reptilia menurun drastis. Ini terjadi karena mereka mati segera setelah sok jago memakan Cane Toad.


The spread of Cane Toads in Australia from 1940 to 1980 in 5-year intervals
(taken from Wikipedia)

Sekarang ini mereka sudah tersebar luas di seluruh Australia.

Cara penanggulangan agak nyeleneh yang pernah dipakai adalah dengan menjadikan Cane Toad sebagai bagian dari 'olah raga'Cara penanggulangan agak nyeleneh yang pernah dipakai adalah dengan menjadikan Cane Toad sebagai bagian dari 'olah raga'. Cane Toad diperlakukan seperti bola dalam permainan golf dan cricket. Metode ini ditentang oleh kelompok pemerhati (peri ke)binatang(an).

Akhirnya peneliti berusaha mencari cara untuk mengatasi Cane Toad. Salah satu yang menarik adalah fakta bahwa mereka bereaksi terhadap sinar ultraviolet. UV light yang juga biasa dipakai di dance floor itu menarik perhatian serangga-serangga makanan si Toad dan akhirnya membawa Cane Toad masuk kotak perangkap. Kotak-kotak perangkap itu disebar di alam bebas dan berhasil menangkap banyak Cane Toad sampai berplastik-plastik besar yang kemudian dibekukan untuk membunuh mereka.

Terus, Cane Toad yang berhasil ditangkap sampai berplastik-plastik itu diapain? Apa dikirim ke club-club golf dan cricket?

Ternyata tidak. Sebagian besar diproses menjadi pupuk dan sisanya dijadikan souvenir, seperti dompet koin. Emangnya ada yang mau ya?

Energy Drink

Drinking energy drink at night is certainly not a good idea.. At least now that's what I think.

I had dinner with Mai, Doudou, Dirk, and Harold around 8 pm at my place (and I was glad they finished all my cookings till the last piece, especially those two girls competing over the Rendang). After washing the dishes around 11 pm, I drank the still-half-full energy drink. I thought, it's leftover from the afternoon and just finished it and threw the can away.. Nothing's wrong with it.

I was wrong..

It's 4.20 in the morning and I haven't slept yet. Not that I didn't try to. I have turned off the light, said my prayer, curled up on my bed since around 2, and.. nothing happened. I mean, I still couldn't sleep. Oh man..!

Oh, and I got a jogging appointment with Puspa at 8 in the morning.. Arrgh.. Need to sleep!

Follow Up: The jogging thing still happened although 1 hour later than planned. Not bad :D

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Rest In Peace Alrin



Aku terima sms dari Eldi minggu lalu.
"Gua dapat kabar dari Sari. Alrin meninggal karena Malaria 5 hari yang lalu"

Ga kusangka. Alrin yang aku ga terlalu kenal dekat. Cuma beberapa kali pernah ketemu dan kerja bareng. Terakhir kali waktu Konser Terima Kasih PSM-ITB setelah World Choir Games 2006 di Xiamen, China. Alrin mengiringi kami TLV Male menyanyikan beberapa lagu dengan permainan pianonya (link ke posting yang lalu).

Eldi bilang, dia kaget banget karena baru berencana untuk merekrut Alrin untuk proyek berikutnya dengan TLV.

Sebelum itu aku udah kenal Alrin dari beberapa proyek tapi jarang ketemu setelahnya. Hanya saling menyapa dan ngobrol sebentar kalau ketemu di jalanan ITB. Menurutku dia tipe pendiam yang ga ngomong banyak kalau ga perlu. Tipe orang yang teduh tapi tetap menyenangkan untuk diajak ngobrol. Dari obrolan kami, dia ga pernah belajar piano secara khusus, tapi belajar sendiri karena senang aja. Untuk main piano di Bandung, dia memanfaatkan piano di Aula Barat ITB yang nganggur siang hari. Bagiku, dia bermain bagus dan aku mengagumi dia karena kecintaannya terhadap piano itu.

Aku heran, kenapa meninggal karena Malaria? Bukannya dia di Bandung? Bukannya obat Malaria udah ada sejak lama? Ya, mungkin ini cuma pikiran-pikiran egoisku yang mencoba complain dengan apa yang terjadi.

Belakangan dari Sari aku dapat info kalau Alrin kena Malaria saat berdinas di Sulawesi, sebagai anak Geologi bertugas ke pelosok-pelosok daerah. Sari juga ga terlalu yakin, tapi nampaknya penanganan terhadap sakitnya Alrin terlambat dilakukan, sampai akhirnya dia meninggal 9 Juli lalu.

Ya, I don't know Alrin that much.. But I admire him. And I write this to show that his life has indeed touch mine and I believe also many others'.

Rest in peace, my friend.. For God loves you more than we do...


Monday, July 07, 2008

New Room

Yep, I've just moved from my old room at Roland Holstlaan to this new one at Poptahof Noord. 4th of July was the day I signed my new contract with DUWO, the housing agency.

My new room is a unit on the 2nd floor with 3 bedrooms, a toilet, a bathroom, a dining room, and a kitchen. I share it with Jarot & Handy... (well, they share it with me since they got the unit first and offered me to stay with them :D)

My room is the biggest (and the most expensive) of the three, but still 40 euro cheaper than my old room. It's also bigger.

So far, I'm satisfied with my new room, although I just realized that Netherlands also has mosquitos :( Come to think of it, maybe I didn't realized it before because I lived in the 13th floor at Roland Holstlaan and the mosquitos were too lazy and couldn't afford to fly that high, hahaa :D Plus my new room has plants under its window which makes it nice to see but tend to become the home of those darn mosquitos. Ah well, everything comes in balance :D

So, say hi to my new room! :D

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Von Smith

I know Dreamgirls hype was over..
But I stumbled upon this video and I thought his vocal technique was awesome! The fact that he can sing so high was amazing, although personally his type of voice is not my favorite. Yupe, some of you might have known him: Von Smith (birth name: Vaughn Lee Smith).
His other songs can be found in his myspace.

Friday, June 27, 2008

The End of Integration Moment II

Haaah.. At last, the Integration Moment II has finished.. So relieved..

Integration Moment(IM) is a "special" course in MOT (my master program--Management of Technology) which takes place at the end of every semester. It consists of a big (i mean BIG) collaborative assignment which covers all courses in that particular semester. In addition to the complexity of the assignment, collaboration problem with group members might occur (and it did in my case).

The assignment for Integration Moment I in the 1st semester was the issue of eBay buying Skype. In this 2nd semester, the assignment was making a proposal to fulfill the tender from 3 Technical Universities for a novel joint graduate school in Netherlands with the innovation of new learning. The students were divided in 2 arenas, in which we were divided again in 4 companies. I was in Blackboard, the ICT company. The other 3 companies were Deloitte (consultant for new learning and project management), Reed Elsevier (publisher and knowledge management expert), and Bouwfonds (building expert). Each company consisted of 5 students.

We had to work as a consortium of 4 companies to win the tender (around 20 people), as well as protecting our own company's interests and goals within the consortium. So the IM2 was full of meetings and negotiations. The 2.5 weeks was cramped with scheduled meetings with the consortium and the consultants(the lecturers), not to mention every consultancy documents and consortium & company papers that we had to submit. Very tiring but in the end felt like the most productive period in semester 2.

And that's the motive of this post, to celebrate the end of the IM2 on Thursday 26 June 2008, hehehe :D After the final presentation to the 3TU board, our consortium went out to a park and had a relaxing BBQ time under the warm sun, while our rival, the consortium in arena 2 was having their final presentation, haha :D

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Rose's Birthday Party

Rose celebrated her birthday last Friday, although her Birthday was actually on June 10. As usual, MOT-ers gathers every time there's a chance for it, especially after such a hard week with all meetings and assignments from the Integration Moment 2.

At first I thought the party would be at 8 pm, lucky I was told by Doudou that it's at 10pm.. Gosh.. so late.. Anyway, Doudou, Mai, and I went to Balpol after having dinner at Doudou's room with Dirk (hmm, bruschetta, tortellini, and tiramisu).

I planned to go home at 12 so at least I have spent 2 hours at the party (as Harold always exaggeratively accuses me of not socializing with MOT-ers because I missed some of the parties). Plan remained as plan since I stayed there hanging out with my classmates until 4am, hehehe.. This was exactly why I told Harold that I couldn't come to a party for only 15 minutes to say hi (as he demanded) because I wouldn't be able to leave that easily. And by the way, this silly guy himself wasn't present, grrhh..

Rose got an orange hat with pinky adornment that could hold two bottles of beer on its side from MOT-ers. Plastic pipes that could be inserted to the bottles and reached her mouth like a head-microphone allowed her to drink beers while freely dancing.. Hahaha, a great gift, I would say.

It was a great night to have fun with my classmates, since we're all so close since the MOT's Introduction Week. I didn't know what I've drunk.. It's all mixed up, cognac, beers, coke, jack daniels, I had no idea.. I just realized that I wasn't the usual me when I thought that smoking might not be a bad idea (Ooops, hold on a second there, dude). Hahaa, at least I could still control myself.. Mai was totally wasted, blabbering and singing (too) happily. In the end, Alex forced her to go home with Doudou and me (well, at first she said she wanted to continue to Jorge's party in Marcushof).

On our way out of Balpol, she started crying when Doudou playfully hit her forehead with her finger. Oh man.. It took sometimes before she stopped. We started walking home since I wasn't sure she could ride her bike. But she said she could..(not convincing though, because she couldn't even walk straight)

Doudou and I spent our time watching her biking and giving direction ("Left Mai! to the left!", "Watch out that pillar!", "Don't sleeep!"). Well, she still ended up on one plant-fence though :D I couldn't help bursting laughter, hehehe.... (bad kitty bad, as Rizky would say)

We managed to get her inside her room and went home ourselves. Pfiuuh.. what a night (and early morning).

My Daemon

I haven't watched The Golden Compass yet, but I was attracted to take the Daemon test after seeing Arzee's post this Sunday morning.

So here goes the result: Fox Daemon named Ariel

Hmm, okay.. but I'd like to take the test once more.. Here's the result: Lion Daemon named Lysandra

Quite fun :)

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Initiative

Self note:
Remember to require certain level of initiative from your group member next time!
Grrrhh..!

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Good bye Laurie..


First time I met her is in my TBI course 5 years ago..
She's my teacher in Manchester class.
A very cheerful and friendly one.
Not even once I found the class boring..

We, her students, gathered at her house several times for fun.
We even met her parents once when they visited her in Bandung..
Lovely parents I would say.

After we were no longer TBI students since we've finished the class,
We were still in touch with her.
I remember the gathering at Ciwalk's Starbucks..

She's still young..
Well.. she always says she's 21
Even after another year's gone by...

Her parents are gonna come to Bandung again soon..
To only have the last glance at her..
I really can't stand imagining how they feel...


Thank you for your life, Laurie..
Good bye and have your rest..
We love you...

(RIP Wednesday 28.05.2008 at 06.20 WIB)