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ADB Driver for HTC Evo 4G

2010-05-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

I just came back from Google IO 2010. It is awesome developer conference. Each attendee was given Nexus One , HTC Evo 4G, and of course Google TV Socks :) HTC Evo 4G is amazing device.

HTC Evo 4G

I got home, hooked the Evo to my PC and found that my Windows machine did not recognize it. I managed to find the solution in Android Developer Google Groups, you can read it here. We basically need to modify the entry in android_winusb.inf to add the VID and PID of HTC Evo. You can download the modified android_winusb.inf from here (right click on the link and select save as).

IEC Christmas 2009 / Projector Calibration

2009-12-14T19:56:00.000-08:00

We just finished with our church Christmas Celebration, it was tiring, but it was worth it. We had wonderful team working together to serve God in this event. Great job guys and gals!

GII Christmas 2009 Crew

I would like to share one challenge we encounter in the visual presentation team. The challenge actually starts last December, but I just write about it now. Last December, we are asked to utilize projector for helping audience to virtualize settings in the drama, since we do not have any physical stage decorations. So far so good, we just create the contents and display them using appropriate program. Ideally, we will have something like the following.

Ideal Projector Placement (credit to Martin for the illustration)

However, we could not implement the ideal projector placement. We have problem hanging the projector, as we do not have skill to build custom mounting bracket that could be hang on the curtain's rod (i.e. we rent the building, so we could not mount anything on the wall). Ehm...trouble, fortunately, I found an idea that we could use. If I could put the projector on the side and adjust the perspective, I could achieve larger projection size without obstructing drama/choir people and I do not have to hang the projector at the top center. In short, the program development is started right away and the first version is used last December, unfortunately, with a lot of bugs :(

Implemented Projector Placement (credit to Martin for the illustration)

In the initial release, the ideal perspective could not be achieved, because I only consider translation, scaling, and skewing. I miss rotation. Hence, on last December event, half of the projection image looks ok, the other half looks stretched :( Moreover, there are heavy memory leak on the program at that time as well, so video playing is pretty bad.

Image on the left side is ok, but it is stretched on the right side

Time passed, the program is still used on Easter, but this time we avoid placing projector at extreme angle to avoid rotation problem I mentioned above. We are ok this time since the building we rent has enough space that allow us to do rear projection, and we also put another projector on the balcony. In total, we used three projectors: two projectors for rear projection to form 2048x768 resolution, and one projector on the balcony, mainly used for subtitle and video (i.e. projector calibration is disabled on this projector).

GII Easter 2009 Celebration

This year, we are renting the same building as last year. Ehm...I am pretty scared when hearing about this. I suggest to the stage coordinator (ko Hendri) to find a way to mount the projector on top at the center of the stage.

In the mean time, I try to go through my program's code to perform various improvements, I also added rotation as one of the variable when adjusting the perspective. I fix most of memory leak, but I am sure there are still some that still exist. I do not have enough time to dig into this. However, we are able to handle video playing at 1024x768 without any problems.

So I notify ko Hendry and do demo to show that the program could be used again this time. He agreed and then we proceed with it. We do however need to rent a projector with 4000 ANSI Lumens, since our projector could not handle it (ie. 2500 ANSI Lumes).

2009 GII Christmas Celebration (Image Courtesy of pak Felix Teja)

That's it, I forgot to mention that everything is done in Flash, which could easily top up CPU usage. Machine on the left (gray machine) is used as controller for both audio and video. Machine on the right is running the projector calibration program only. It is being controlled via socket by the gray machine. I used my Android G1 to remote control the audio and WiiMote to remote control the projector calibration program. It is possible to control everything just with mouse and keyboard, but I am more comfortable with this setup.

The Machines

For the next version, I am planning to bring everthing to OPENGL, GPU could give better horse power especially when we want to play HD video.

That's it for now.

Android 2.0 aka Eclair is Here

2009-10-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Waow, Android 2.0 SDK is just released. It now supports RFCOMM Bluetooth, which is great for peer to peer communication. WIFI is great but it does not work when you want to establish communication with other devices in WIFI-less environment. I also could not depend too much on 3G, in some areas, it is very slow and sometimes it does not even exist.

Automating inDesign for Repeating Content and QR Code

2009-10-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

Our church is going to hold Bible Camp this coming week. We are all getting busy preparing for this event. I am responsible for creating publication materials, such as event booklet, brochure, name tag, etc.

Creating name tag might sound easy, but how about creating name tags for 50 persons. It will be painful to do it manually, copy and paste the layout plus typing names fifty times. So, I did some reading on Adobe inDesign documentation and found out that it's possible to create placeholders for repeating content using XML. Here is the article that I used. I just need to design the name tag, generate XML data for all attendees using Perl script, import XML to inDesign, and inDesign will do the rest of the work.

Generated Output by inDesign

Notice above figure, there is small box on the right of each name. It is QR Code containing information for each person. I was thinking that since I am going to automate the name tag creation process, why not adding some extra information. I decided to add QR Code and our team decided to add color coded group information (i.e. person with the same color belong to the same group).

Bible Camp GII 2009 Name Tag

I wrote a PERL script for grabbing contact information of each Bible Camp 2009 attendees from our church database and use GD-Barcode module to generate the QR Code associated to each individual.

Most people nowadays have phone with built-in camera, and most of them can decode QR Code. So, I think this as a good way for letting people to exchange their information with each other easily during our Bible Camp event. That's it for now. Following QR Code contains our church contact information.

Decoded Message on Android

Alkitab for Android Phone

2009-09-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

Holy Bible in Indonesian is called "Alkitab". I am currently using Android Developer Phone 1 as my main phone, and I cannot find any "Alkitab" app yet on the market. I knew that Alkitab app exists for iPhone and J2ME platforms. Hence, I decided to develop one myself. Please keep in mind that the content of "Alkitab" is copyrighted by Lembaga Alkitab Indonesia (LAI).

You can download the apk file from here. For instruction on how to install .apk file into your Android phone, please go to this link. I am using Apps Installer from Android Market to install apk file from sdcard.

After application installation is done, please go here to download the database. You need the database to run the application. After you obtained "alkitab_db.zip", perform following steps:

Connect your phone to your PC using USB cable and mount the sdcard
Extract "alkitab_db.zip" to root folder of your sdcard. After extraction is done, you should see folder "alkitab_db" at your sdcard root folder
Unmount your sdcard by clicking "Turn Off USB Storage" on your phone
Start the application.

I will explain features available in this initial version.

Text Filter (on Android device with physical keyboard)

Type in the text using keyboard and the list will be filtered accordingly.

Gesture Motion

When you are in chapter or verse screen, you can swipe you finger on the screen to move between books/chapters. Swipe to left will bring you to the next book/chapter, swipe to the right will bring you to the previous book/chapter.

Search for Chapters/Verses

Clicking menu button will allow user to select this feature. This feature is used to search for chapters or versions in the bible, following are accepted input patterns:

[book] [chapter], Mazmur 3
[book] [chapter]:[verse], Matius 3:15
[book] [chapter]:[start_verse]-[end_verse], Kisah Para Rasul 1:3-5
[book] [start_chapter]:[start_verse]-[end_chapter]:[end_verse], Yohanes 10:5-11:3
[book] [start_chapter]-[end_chapter], Lukas 5-10
[book] [start_chapter]-[end_chapter]:[end_verse], Roma 3-5:13

Search For Word

If the search input does not match any of Search for Chapters/Verses patterns, the input will be used as keyword to search for match words in the bible. Searching using keyword feature will require the phone to send request to remote server instead of searching through local database. Local database is flat file database and it will take long time to find the match keyword. If you do not want the phone to connect to Internet, do not use the search for word feature.

That's it and I hope the app can be useful for everyone. Email me closari[at]gmail if you encounter bugs or have suggestions for improvement.

Alkitab apk file (download here)
Alkitab database file (download here)

Android 1.6 Image for Android Developer Phone

2009-09-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

HTC finally released Android 1.6 image for Android Developer Phone, available here.

I have upgraded my phone and now it's running Donut.

I haven't check all the features yet. One thing I noticed is that the camera/camcorder app has new user interface and it's faster compare to previous versions.

I also noticed in Settings, Speech Synthesis is added as part of the Settings items. However, it lacks of Indonesian language. So far I have been using Eyes-Free for performing TTS on my application. Their packs include Indonesian as one of the available languages. I am not sure why Google did not include Indonesian in 1.6, since the TTS service in 1.6 is basically derived from Eyes-Free project.

That's it, I will start playing with new gesture recognition feature added in 1.6.

Android Developer

2009-09-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

I found this in goodies section at android.com. It's pretty cool. It's almost one year now since I started writing applications for Android.

Limbung

2009-07-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, we planned to go for day trip to Tanjung Bira, Bulukumba. However, for some reasons, we need to cancel the plan. Hence, we decided to go to Limbung for lunch. There are a lot of fish pools surrounding the resturant, which make it pretty unique. People can fish while waiting for their order.

Our orders

Tempe Bacem

Tumis Pariah

Gurami Rica-Rica

Gurami covered by Mangoes

Deep Fried Small Fish (crunchy and taste good)

After eating, we relaxed, slept, then took pictures before heading home.

Kodingareng Keke

2009-07-11T01:41:00.000-07:00

On the recent presidential election day, Indonesian government decided make the day to be a public holiday. So, we got nothing to do at home and decided to take a short trip to Kodingareng Keke Island, it's only about 14km from Makassar. We then head down to sea port close to Gapura Hotel. We rent a boat for Rp. 550.000, and it could carry 10 persons.

Seaport

The boat

Leaving the seaport, going to Lae-Lae Island
to purchase gas for the boat enginee

Following is our trip route plotted on Google Earth. I wrote simple application to do location logging on my Android G1. For some reasons, the island is not shown in the satellite photo.

Kodingareng Trip Route

Our stop at Lae-Lae is almost not viawable on the map. Lae-Lae is small island close to Makassar, it's only about 1.5km from Makassar. There are some people permanently live on the island.

Lae-Lae

Samalona Island (~ 7km from Makassar)

We almost arrived at Kodingareng Keke

Water is crystal clear with a lot of coral reef,
perfect for snorkeling or diving but probably not for swimming

Waves were getting bigger and it's time to go home

We need to go around the island in order to travel back to Makassar due to the big waves

Last picture I took before being hit by big waves (~ 1.5m),
my camera was wet, luckily it's weatherproof :)

We arrived safely at Makassar, our trip back from Kodingareng was surely interesting, going through 1.5m tall waves.

Losari Beach

2009-07-07T03:36:00.000-07:00

After going back from work, it's always nice to know that Losari beach is just couple minutes away from home, place to go to refresh my mind.

Lot of couples go there to enjoy sunset, wish my wife is here with me

Losari Beach

SS Choir - Mother's Day 2009

2009-05-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

For Mother's Day this year, the Sunday School Choir sang a song called "Cooperation". Yuli found this song at the last minute on youtube, and it was a fun song. The kids were having a lot of fun learning and singing it.

Cooperation is a big word...

Cooperation

Cooperation is a big word
And so is obedience
But when I do what my papa says
Do what my mama says
It seems to make a big difference

My mama teach me cooperation
She says I'm old enough to lend her a hand
So I pick up all my toys
I don't make too much noise
I think I'm doing all that I can

But I like helping my mother...

But I like helping my mother
And I like minding my dad
Cause when I'm good and they know it
Their faces will show it
And it always make me feel very glad

Do what my Jesus says, do what my parents say...

And if I go and do a bad thing
I'm feeling all sick and upset
I just say "I'm sorry"
No fret, no worry
My Jesus, He forgives and forget

Cooperation is a big word
And so is obedience
But when I do what my Jesus says
Do what my parents say
It seems to make a big difference

The song was followed by a video presentation from the Sunday School Choir Kids, and then each mother got a token of love from the children as well.

Messages from the kids to their moms

The beaming faces of mothers

Happy Mother's Day! We love you, Mom!

Ichtus Valentine 2009

2009-05-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Valentine 2009 flew by in a blur. When it was here, though, we spent the day with Ichtus Youth Fellowship, playing games and eating yummy dinner.

"Can you hear me? Can you hear me?"

"Ahh... that sounds like a good idea"

"Test one-two-three.."

"There are lots of statics -- Can you repeat that?"

Is anyone at the other end of the line?

Listen...

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

.....

Can you keep a secret?

Sundoro and his magic flying cup

Operator, I think the phone's broken

Valentine is not Valentine without games for couples. Pairing everyone in the room, the games seek to find the ultimate couples, where the guy knows everything about the gal.

Ivan and Jess won the "perfect couple" title

Heru & Carrine also tie for the first place

These two didn't win, but were enjoying the games nevertheless

These two were not even a couple, but that didn't stop their big smiles at each other

Following the games was the dinner. Thanks to our chef, Liong and Heru, for a very delicious way to end the night!

Ready to eat

"Let [Ivan] sing you a song about this dinner..."

Ah... and of course, group pictures!

The King of Oil Empire + the girls

The brave and courageous knights, with a lady in distress..

Cheeeeeeeseee!!

Spring Fellowship 2009 - Pemberton

2009-05-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

(Almost) every year, the university-age young people of our church is having Spring Fellowship. As the name implies, it is usually during Spring Time, after the Winter term ends, but before the Summer term starts.

Spring Fellowship is basically the funnest activities for youth. It's kinda like Bible Camp, but with very limited Bible sessions, and a whole lot of free time, games, and sight-seeing. Not to mention BBQ and scavenger hunting. And the weekend is usually spent somewhere far from the ordinary, places you wouldn't visit by yourself, if not for the Spring Fellowship. Youth (and youth at hearts) are usually very excited to go on Spring Fellowship. And this year was no exception.

This year, the Spring Fellowship was at Pemberton during Mother's Day weekend. Pemberton was a small city about 1 hour north of Whistler. The Cottage was in the Valley, surrounded by mountains, farming lands, and grass.

View from the parking lot

Yup, behind the cottage was the cow stall. Moooooooo.....

Friday night started with Rawon Dinner, followed by games. One of the games involving two teams sitting in a straight line facing each other. The last person on the line would flip coin until he/she got a head. Then that person would shake the hand of the people in front of them. The first person on the line would then throw a cup full of baby powder to the opponent's face. Whoever lost would have white face (and t-shirt).

Now let me hold your hands, I want to hold your hands... (The Beatles)

Ivan, one of the victims
(btw, his team won this, so he shouldn't have gotten hit,
but in the heat of the moment, no time for logic... ^_^)

The front-of-the-war-line people... mostly white regardless of victory status

Then we played another game involving throwing a straw-protected egg from high place. Each team had different strategy.

The purple/blue team, using the least amount of scotch tape (wo hoo! extra points)

The orange team -- crack-proofing the egg with scotch tapes

Yellow team -- is that a hand fan?

Green team -- careful with that pod!

Let's just say my team didn't win, and leave it at that.

And that end the night. Mega, Lorensia, and Sylvi were busy vacuuming the floor (noticed the powder?), while some watched TV, played poker, played piano, preparing food for tomorrow (oh.. did I mention that Liong and Hosea were our in-house chef for the weekend?), slept, took photos, etc. Oh, the cows kept on mooing all night (weekend) long, and I kept thinking, "Is somebody's cell phone vibrating? Why don't they pick it up?"

Our cottage under the moonlight

The weather prediction for the weekend was not sunny, but thankfully, it was a bright and cheerful day that greeted us when we opened our eyes Saturday morning. That was a good thing, since we were going on a Scavenger Hunt!

We're going on a scavenger hunt
And we are not afraid
Got my gun on my side
Gonna catch the first prize...

Stop and pose before the bear.., I mean, the scavenger hunt

Start of the hunt was four-person-four-legged race!

The scavenger hunt was a secret ritual, and as such, no photos can be found. No evidence that the hunt ever taken place (except our own memory of the terrifying ordeal). You just had to be in it to feel it!

Next up was BBQ. We were so hungry nobody thought about taking pictures until after all the meat was gone. Ehem ehem.. ^_^ But we did remember to snap some pictures on dinner table.

Chicken with some kind of Liong's special sauce -- very yummy!!

Look! We even got dessert!! Mmmm... strawberry...

We had our first Bible session that night, followed by more Games and Talent Shows from each team. When I find more pictures, I will tell you the stories presented by each group.

And the night ended with fire crackers!!

Cihuyyy!! Pretty fire!!

Jumping up and down! Shout Hosanna!

Jemaat GII

2008-12-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

Minggu barusan ini, atas ide pak Felix, kita menyempatkan diri untuk foto bersama jemaat menjelang penutupan tahun 2008. Berikut ini adalah hasil pemotretannya.

Foto Penutupan Tahun
(silakan di klik gambarnya untuk melihat resolusi yg lebih besar,
atau klik sini untuk mendapatkan resolusi asli)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2008-12-21T12:42:00.000-08:00

The Best Gift of All - Natal GII 2008

2008-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Gereja Injili Indonesia baru saja melewati perayaan Natal tahun ini. Dalam natal ini tema kita adalah The Best Gift of All. Dalam acaranya kita lebih konsentrasi ke arah praise and worship. Jadi hanyalah ada drama singkat yang diselipkan sepanjang berlangsungnya acara.

Kita membuat dua video klip sebagai video latar belakang pada saat penyanyi menyanyikan lagu duet.

Yang pertama adalah lagu We Are the Reason, dinyanyikan oleh Mega dan Jason.

Jason

Mega

We Are the Reason

Yang kedua adalah lagu The Best Gift of All, dinyanyikan oleh Liong dan Adit.

Adit dan Liong

The Best Gift of All

Berikut ini adalah foto bersama di akhir acara.

Inilah laporan singkat dari acara Natal GII 2008.

Activating Android Developer Phone ADP1 with SimCard without Data Plan

2008-12-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

I have finally got my hand with Android Developer Phone, also known as HTC Dream. I though the phone is going to be extra thick and heavy, but no, it's not. It's a pretty well design phone. I can't hardly wait now to start writing code on Android for my home automation system.

First problem I encounter is how to activate the phone without having data plan with my provider. I have plenty of dummy simcard (simcard that without any phone or data plan). I found nice instruction on android developer google group site:

download the SDK, you basically need adb in order to send command to the phone.
run adb and type

am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.android.settings/.Settings

this will bring you to wifi setting on your phone, and from there, you can activate the wifi, and finally, register your phone using any simcard without data plan

Following are some pics:

I tried to compare the size with iPhone 3G, the width and height is about the same. However, HTC Dream is thicker compare to iPhone.

That's it for now, need to go back to work.

update: while reading through some forums, it's actually possible to activate Android without using simcard at all. Just go here to get full instruction.

Thanksgiving & HUT Tante Khouw

2008-10-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Hari Minggu barusan, kita yang tinggal di Canada merayakan Thanksgiving. Di gereja kita, GII Vancouver, teen, youth, dan sunday school choir mempersembahkan sebuah pujian berjudul "Simple Gifts". Inti lagu ini adalah begitu banyak "hadiah" yang telah Tuhan berikan kepada kita, dan semuanya terpapar dengan jelas di depan mata kita.

The Choir

Jason Leads the Choir

Jason

Setelah kebaktian, kita juga merayakan ulang tahun Tante Khouw yang ke 84. Keluarga beliau menyediakan makan malam untuk disantap bersama di gereja.

Tante Khouw

Para Senior di Gereja

Pak Stef memanggil jemaat untuk foto bersama

Cik Sophie, Tante Khouw, Tante Djin Sioe, Tante Yeny

Birthday Cake

Tante meniup lilin didampingi keluarga

Om2x dan Tante2x membagikan makanan

Demikianlah laporan singkat kegiatan di gereja GII Vancouver minggu barusan ini.

New Tripod - Manfrotto 190CXPRO4

2008-10-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

During our last trip to Comox, I lost my tripod. I think I left it at the museum. That tripod has accompanied me on every single trip since mid 2004. The tripod itself was almost due for replacement, because it didn't provide enough support anymore for my current gear.

So, I decided to buy another tripod. This time, I want to buy a pro tripod within my price range, because I will bring it for sure in most of my trip. Speaking of pro tripod, there are only two brands in my mind: Gitzo and Manfrotto. I browse online trying to make a decision. It's hard to decide when you don't touch the actual item. Hence, I visited my camera store and spent sometimes playing with various tripods from these two manufacturers.

There is one Gitzo tripod that I really like; however, due to price constraint, I had to go with Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod, 190CXPRO4. This model was released this year on March 2008.

One cool feature for this tripod is the "Manfrotto’s innovative and award-winning Q90° (Quick Center Column System)". It allows the center column to be rotated to horizontal position with a simple motion.

The tripod is 100% carbon fiber and it utilizes magnesium alloy for the top plate.

Most pro tripod doesn't come with tripod head, so I have to purchase the head as well. As for the tripod head, I am open to any brands. My requirement is fairly simple: it can handle the load of my camera and one of my heaviest lens, plus a quick release. After playing around with several brands, I decided to go with Giotto MH1301.

It is a ball-head type. I prefer ball head compare to three way head when it comes to photography. There are two rotating dial for controlling the friction of the ball. There is one rotating dial for adjusting the rotation angle that will come useful when taking panoramic.

That's it. I haven't used the tripod intensively. I can't hardly wait for my next trip :)

New Gadget - Sandisk Ultra II Compact Flash

2008-09-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

I got this card from Best Buy, it cost me $70 + tax. It was pretty good deal compare to the other stores. At its maximum speed (15 MB/S), this card could only support 4.5 fps; my D200 could go at 5 fps. At this moment, it is ok because 8GB Extreme III card is still way more expensive.

8GB Sandisk CF Ultra II

We went to Comox last long weekend, which was one of the reason why I bought this card. I could shoot the whole day and I only only need to change card once. I will post our Comox trip picture later. Currently, I am still busy with work related stuffs, so I don't have time to select thousand of photos we took. Following is the preview.

Goose Spit Beach

Seal Bay Natural Park

Minggu Perpisahan dengan Ev. Pancha

2008-08-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Tanpa terasa, Ev. Pancha dan istrinya, cik Acen, telah melayani GII Vancouver selama 2 bulan. Telah tiba waktu bagi mereka untuk kembali melayani di SAAT, Malang. Berikut adalah foto-foto yang diambil pada hari Minggu 24 Agustus, minggu terakhir mereka melayani di Vancouver.

Ko Irawan, MC kita minggu ini

Ev. Pancha sedang membacakan nats Alkitab

Ev. Pancha membahas Yakobus 4:13-17

Lagi khotbah

Jemaat GII sedang mendengarkan khotbah

Mengingat kasih Tuhan yang tidak pernah meninggalkan kita..

"Ku di tangan-Mu.. tak pernah ku sendiri..."

Untuk menyampaikan rasa terima kasih dan salam perpisahan, maka beberapa dari kami membawakan lagu untuk mereka.

The young adults

"The Lord is watching over me..."

Choir SS menyanyikan lagu "Jesus Sees"

"Om Pancha and Cik Acen, thank you!"

"Jesus sees, and He is not the only one"

Om Poernomo mewakili Majelis dan Jemaat GII juga menyampaikan rasa terima kasih kepada pak Pancha dan cik Acen.

Sepatah dua patah dari Om Poernomo

Pak Pancha, lagi senyum-senyum melihat fotografer kita

Sebagai tanda mata, GII memberikan digital photo album lengkap dengan foto-foto mereka bersama jemaat selama masa pelayanan mereka. Biarlah ini menjadi kenang-kenangan yang mengingatkan mereka pada GII Vancouver.

Terima kasih untuk pelayanan cik Acen...

.. dan pak Pancha di GII Vancouver

Cik Acen, pak Pancha, dan om Poernomo

Jemaat mengucapkan terima kasih kepada Ev. Pancha dan istri atas pelayanannya selama dua bulan terakhir di Gereja Injili Indonesia Vancouver. Kami sangat berterima kasih atas berkat-berkat yang telah kami terima selama masa pelayanan kalian berdua, dan biarlah pelayanan Ev. Pancha dan cik Sumanti di Indonesia bisa terus menjadi berkat bagi yang lain.

We'll miss you two!

Garage Sale

2008-08-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

Our town house complex are having garage sale event yesterday. We have a lot of stuffs that we don't need anymore or we want to sell them. So, we join the event by setting up table in front of our house.

I put humongous 20" Sony G500 Monitor (it used to be expensive monitor in its time), cheap MS Keyboard, and bunch of my old digital memory in various forms (i.e. Memory Stick, Compact Flash, and MMC). Their capacities are relatively small, 128MB - 512MB. Oliv and Yuli put kids toys and books. Most of our customers are kids, so Yuli's stuffs are highly in demand :)

However, waiting for customers is boring ... so the girls start playing with soap bubbles.

I get bored as well and start to shoot random things ...

Bees

House Template

Sewer

Entrance

Leaf

It is a very hot day, and we start packing after sitting there for ~ 2 hours :)

Can't Connect to MySQL Server: error 10061

2008-08-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

I encounter this problem when trying to connect from my development machine to Coniques database server, which is hosted on different machine. I have setup all user permission to make sure that user can connect from remote host.

The database server is running Ubuntu Server Edition using MySQL as the database engine. The development machine is running Windows XP Pro and I utilize MySQL Connector/ODBC 3.51 to connect. I get following error message when trying to connect:

[MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]Can't connect to MySQL server on 'server_name' [10061]

I then try to connect using command line:

mysql -h server_name -u root -p

and get following error:

ERROR 2003 (HY00): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'server_name' (1111)

This must be some kind of stupid configuration error that I do not know about. I spend some time googling around and manage to find the solution:

Edit the configuration file located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf
Find the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1. The default value 127.0.0.1 means that it will only accept connection from local machine. I change the value to 0.0.0.0 and save it
Restart MySQL by issuing /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Now, I can establish connection from the remote machine.

Vancouver Trip in 1 Day

2008-08-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, Darwin, and his coworker, Ivonne, are visiting from Singapore. We are high school classmates and we haven't met since 2002. In fact, he is the guy who manages to drag me into the world of geek :) Anyway, we only have one day to explore Vancouver and its surrounding.

I start the tour by bringing them to Whistler. On the way to Whistler, we stop at Shanon Falls.

Shanon Falls (not the main waterfall)

Last weekend, Whistler is very crowded due to some kind of off-road biking event. Instead of walking around the village, we take the Gondola right away to the peak. This is also my first time going to Whistler's peak after living in Canada for almost 10 years. The view is amazing even though the noon light is kind of harsh.

The Peak at Whistler

Olympic 2010 Logo
("It is called Ilanaaq which is the Inuktitut word for friend")

Posing at the peak

On the way back to Vancouver, we stop at Horseshoe Bay to eat at the unique Yaya's Oyster Bar. They have 6 different styles of baked Oysters.

Horshoe Bay

From Horseshoe Bay, we head down to Stanley Park by crossing Lions Gate Bridge.

View of Vancouver Downtown from Stanley Park

Lighthouse at Stanley Park

View from Stanley Park's Prospect Point

Our last destination is Science World at Main Street. It is closed already, but we can get a nice after sunset view of Yaletown from there.

Experimenting with wireless fill in flash

Science World at Main Street

It is tiring day but it is also the fun one. I learn a lot of new things from our geeky conversation in this trip :) Some places we miss due to lack of time are as follow, Robson St, Capilano Suspension Bridge, Londsdale Quay, and Grouse Mountain.

Paduan Suara SS GII dan PA

2008-08-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

Minggu barusan ini, paduan suara sekolah minggu GII mempersembahkan sebuah pujian berjudul "Stop! And Go with Mercy", yang menceritakan betapa banyak hal dalam kehidupan sehari-hari yang membuat mereka menjadi jengkel terhadap seseorang: saudara, teman, sepupu, tetangga, dll. Namun ketika mereka mengingat bahwa Tuhan mengampuni mereka setiap hari, dan menginginkan mereka untuk memberikan kesempatan kedua kepada orang lain, maka mereka pun melakukannya.

Untuk lagu ini, hampir setiap anak mendapatkan bagian solo. Dan sewaktu Lisa menyanyikan "my sister always wants her way", banyak jemaat yang menoleh ke arah Karen sambil tersenyum. Hehehe..

Shanelle, Nathania, Syen-Syen, Andrew/Henry, Amanda, Lisa, Vicky

Stop! And go with mercy!

Setelah selesai kebaktian dan ramah-tamah, penginjil Pancha membawakan PA "Intisari Alkitab", yang mengajak jemaat untuk melihat "benang merah" dalam Alkitab. Seringkali kita membaca Alkitab tidak berurutan, sehingga kita tidak punya "map" Alkitab yang lengkap dalam benak kita. Seri PA ini menjelaskan tentang daftar isi Alkitab secara menyeluruh.

Pak Pancha menjelaskan tentang peta Alkitab

Inilah hari minggu tipikal di GII.

Cool 3D Desktop Effects in Ubuntu

2008-07-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I spent some time playing with my newly installed Ubuntu machine. It is running Hardy Heron, 8.04. I read somewhere on the web that it includes a lot of cool 3D features. I have seen some of the effects before but I never thought it will be included in Ubuntu distro. Some of the effects I like the most are the transparent window, wobbly window, animation and 3D Cube. It's amazing to see that the videos are still playing smoothly while the effects are in action.

Workspaces in 3D Cube

Transparent Windows

I will share the instruction on how to enable it.

Goto System > Preferences > Appearance

Click the Visual Effects tab and select Extra. You could now see wobbly window when you trying to move any active windows. We will go beyond these effects by installing additional components.
Goto Applications > Add/Remove. Choose All on the left frame select "All available applications" from Show combo box. Then type "csm" on the search box. Check "Advanded Desktop Effects Setting" and click "Apply Changes" button to install this new module.

Now the module has been installed, goto System > Preferences > Advanced Desktop Effect Settings. The control panel will show up and have fun with all the cool 3D effects.

I did encounter one minor problem when trying to enable extra visual effects under the appearance window. I am using Dell Inspiron 6400 with ATI X1400 graphics card. The pop up window with message "Desktop effects could not be enabled" showed up when trying to enable extra visual effects.

After doing some Google search, I found that my Ubuntu was not using the proprietary ATI drivers; hence, the 3D effects could not be used. To make Ubuntu use the ATI driver, goto System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, then enable the driver. After doing this, I could enable Extras visual effects with no problems.

That's it for now. Hope the instruction will help.

Hotpot Party at Pak Stef's House

2008-07-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

We just had a hotpot party last weekend, it is part of our IEC Ichtus Youth Fellowship Event (i.e. acara Komisi Pemuda GII). Liong and Jimmy are the main chef for this hotpot party; they are also helped by Mega, Jessica, Pak Pancha dan Ibu Sumanti. Here are some pics I took during the event.

Liong with the creation, Jimmy is hiding

Mega is helping out

Jessica is helping out too

The ingredients

The utensils

The spices

Meat Eater and the Crew

Lagi pada "ngamuk" ngambil makanan

Group Picture (gaya dharma wanita)

Group picture, Olivia kept pressing the camera remote (ada aja yg masih terus berpose :))

It is fun event. Thanks to Ichtus group for organizing it.

Our Church Youth Choir

2008-07-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

Minggu, paduan suara pemuda dan remaja GII, mempersembahkan sebuah pujian berjudul, "Jadilah Saksi Karna NamaNya". It's pretty good song. They were not in their full team, because some members were on their summer vacation. Following are some of the photos I took.

GII Youth Choir

Dan lirik lagunya sbb:

Dengan kaki, berjalan yang benar
Dengan tangan, gunakan yang benar
Mata, telinga, semua puji Tuhan

Dengan mulut, berkatalah jujur
Dengan hati, berbuatlah benar
Jadikan tubuhmu muliakan Tuhan

Hari-hari banyaklah cobaan
Hadapilah dengan kuat iman
Jaga diri, jangan sampai kau tersesat

Ada kuasa di dalam darah-Nya
Jangan ragu, hadapilah dunia
Jadilah saksi kar'na nama-Nya

Piknik Jemaat GII 2008

2008-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Setiap tahun, GII mengadakan piknik jemaat. Di piknik ini, semua jemaat berkumpul untuk bersekutu, makan, dan main.

Tahun ini, piknik jemaat diadakan di Belcarra Bay di ujung Coquitlam. And thanks to Indonesia's tradition of gummy clock (jam karet), koordinator Ario memutuskan untuk mengumumkan kalo waktu kumpul itu jam 10 (acara mulai jam 11). Good decision.

Cik Effie, Jocelyn, and Olivia -- lagi taking care of Jocelyn

Justin and Jocelyn lagi melihat hasil foto yang diambil sebelumnya

Justin, Jocelyn, dan Olivia -- lagi mainan kamera

Karen dan Audrey -- berusaha duduk di kursi kayu terus

Jocelyn lagi pose cute (what'cha looking at?)

The boys

Yuli, Audrey, dan Olivia bersama dengan murid murid Sekolah Minggu

Tante-tante lagi duduk-duduk menunggu mulainya persekutuan

Sekitar jam 11, persekutuan pun dimulai. Puji-pujian dipimpin oleh cik Vivi. Banyak lagu canon yang dipilih, jadi dalam waktu singkat nyanyian pun berubah menjadi ajang tanding teriak.. Sunday School kids versus Pemuda.

Cik Vivi memimpin puji-pujian, diiringi oleh Liong dan Cik Sofi on guitar

Inilah suasana persekutuan -- kasihan yah.. yang MC dicuekin..

James and Peter

With Christ in the vessel ...

Puji-pujian dilanjutkan dengan renungan singkat oleh Pak Stef. Memakai mega phone, of course.

Pak Stef sedang menyampaikan renungan di samping danau

Sambil menunggu lunch yang sedang disiapkan oleh tim Tante Eva dkk, kita pun bermain permainan People to People, courtesy of Jessica.

Salah satu kembar dan bapaknya menjadi partner awal saat bermain People to People

Hand to hand... check!
What's next? What's next?

Hey.. you are supposed to join in People to People, where are you going?

Setelah itu, acara yang dinanti-nantikan pun mulai: LUNCH!

Tapi berhubung beberapa pemuda kita sangat considerate terhadap orang (yang lebih) tua dan anak-anak, maka mereka pun mengalah antrian. Sebagai gantinya, untuk melupakan rasa lapar sementara, mereka sibuk mengagumi keindahan alam sambil berpose untuk difoto. Orang-orang yang sangat considerate itu ada dalam foto-foto berikut ini...

Olivia, Jason, Sylvi, Yuli, Jimmy (dan Chris, our photographer)

Reach for the star.. Ouch, Jason, you step on me!

Let's try it once more.. JUMP!

Out of my way!

Jumping Buddha!

After lunch, saatnya bermain game. Ada game buat anak Sunday School, dan ada game juga buat orang dewasa. Tapi game paling seru yang membuat tua-muda cewek-cowok melupakan kantuk mereka (akibat kekenyangan) adalah.... ... Tarik Tambang! (Of course... kita kan orang Indo asli ^_^)

Pemuda, melawan...

Bapak-Bapak (wow... and this group was winning!)
Pak Stef terlihat tertidur di rumput di samping kiri gambar ini

Hoooiii... kalo tertawa terus, mana ada tenaga, Bung?

Next game was reserved for kids only (unfortunately.. it looked really fun!). Balap Karung!! (Ahhh.. jadi teringat masa kecil saya yang bahagia sekali.. setiap hari Paskah pasti ada lomba antar kelas di Sekolah Minggu, dan Balap Karung termasuk salah satu yang paling seru!).

"I have to run in THIS?!?!"

You can jump, but I can jump higher!

Oops... I dropped my pants.. I mean my karung.. oh no!

Jump with the wind..

Saya tidak ingat siapa saja yang menang. Cuma mengingat kalo semuanya tertawa bahagia pada akhirnya. Oh well, that's the important thing, right?

Berikut ini adalah random pictures selama Piknik.

Nathan - trying to pull himself up by grabbing the top of his head

Chanaldy - belajar surfing di atas tali buat Tarik Tambang

Jessica, Karen, and Audrey - lagi menyanyikan lagu-lagu cinta untuk menghibur pemirsa setia

Cik Deiby sekeluarga - menatap masa depan yang cerah dan penuh harapan

Olivia, Melvin, dan Yuli - bubbles are beautiful

Melvin - wow.. it's magic!

Olive dan Sylvi -- this is fun

Audrey - hey, is that a corn chips?

Olive - okay, let's fold our hands and make a wish...

Andrew and Jason -- Psssttt.. let me whisper you a secret...

Segitulah laporan picnic jemaat GII tahun ini.

Heat Wave

2008-06-28T22:47:00.001-07:00

It was very hot today, I believe it's around 21° C. We took this oppurtunity to do was our car and clean the garage :) The garage was very dirty due to sticky dirt carried over from winter time.

Very hot day in our area

We borrowed Pak Stef's pressure washer for washing our car and cleaning the garage. We are planning to buy one, because it proofs to be very useful when cleaning sticky dirt in our garage.

Olivia was playing with the pressure washer

The Cleaned Hybrid

Night view from our backyard

It's night time now, time to sleep :)

Adobe Air - Keyboard Event in Fullscreen Mode

2008-06-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

Recently, I get error when launching my custom movie browser. It says:

“This application requires a version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author”

I go to Adobe site to download the latest AIR and also the latest AIR SDK for Flash. After I install everything, I open Flash and start generating the new AIR installer for my application.

I get error message when trying to install the application. The error says:

"The application could not be installed because the AIR file is damaged. Try obtaining a new AIR file from the publisher."

Ehm ... very weird, I am the publisher and I just generate the installer file. I try generating new installer several times but no luck. I uninstall AIR and reinstall it again, and it works !!! Weird ...

Next problem I encounter is that my program does not allow me to trigger KeyboardEvent while I am in fullscreen mode. The KeyboardEvent is working fine if I am not in fullscreen mode. This reminds me of restriction I encountered in Flash AS 3.0. It is very confusing, it still worked the last time I make changes to my application, which is about two months ago.

Then, after googling around, I find that Adobe changes the AIR API, I need to set display state to FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE instead of FULL_SCREEN only to allow KeyboardEvent in fullscreen mode.

stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE;

Two hours wasted trying to solve this problem :)

Hard Drive Failed

2008-06-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was a bit crazy. I woke up Saturday finding that one of our server drive failed. This drive contained all photos and various Coniques projects, and I haven't had chance to perform backup in the last 6 months. It seems that there is power spiked the night before that caused the break power circuitry in the USB external enclosure.

I tried to read the drive by connecting it to my workstation through SATA cable. No luck. Windows still did not assign any drive letter to the drive. I opened Disk Management console from Control Panel and found that Windows successfully detected the hard drive. The drive status is healthy and online as well. However, I still have no luck accessing it. It seems that there is something wrong with the drive partition.

I then started googling around to find way for recovering partition and found a program by EaseUS, Data Recovery Wizard. I used it to perform search for lost data in the drive, the search took about 8 hours. The program successfully found all the files and we have to buy additional drive to dump all of the recovered data which took additional 20 hours.

Recovering Process

Now, the drive is back online, and I start to perform backup right away. I will consider adding redundant drive that will mirror the main drive in the future.

New Toy

2008-05-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

I finally got my first constant 2.8 aperture wide angle zoom lens. I have been doing a lot of thinking on which 2.8 lens I should get. I have considered Nikkor 17-55 DX or the new 14-24, but they are very pricey. I need to allocate my budget for other things in life as well. After reading a lot of reviews, I finally decided to buy Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens. The price is only about 1/3 of those two Nikkor lenses, and the performance is really good based on review by Thom Hogan and SLR Gear.

However, cheap stuff always comes with drawbacks. The Tamron casing is plastic, and for sure it is not as robust as the expensive Nikkor.

I got this lens at very decent price in Indonesia, it cost about $370 which is cheaper compare to price in Canada; however, it only comes with 1 year warranty. I also find out that price of camera equipments are cheaper in Indonesia compare to Canada.

Tamron 17-50, taken with Nikkor 60 2.8

Following are some photos I took using my new lens.

Sample Doraemon Shot

My youngest bro with his girfriend

The Brothers

I am looking forward to use this lens as my main lens. I have left my Nikkor 18-70 in the hand of my brother :)

Goodbye Makassar

2008-05-19T05:34:00.001-07:00

I have finally left my hometown Makassar. The feeling is mixed, I am happy to start a new journey with my wife, but at the same time, I also miss our family in Indonesia. Following is picture I took two days before I left Makassar city. It is taken from Taman Bahari, Pantai Losari, overviewing cityscape instead of the beach.

Makassar Cityscape

There are two main buildings shown in picture. The first one on the left is Stella Maris Hospital (Rumah Sakit Stella Maris). It is one of the well known hospital in Makassar. Another one on the right is Imperial Arya Duta Hotel. The hotel is not there yet when I still live in Makassar (i.e. ~13 years ago). Time did fly very fast. The hotel is 5 star hotel overlooking Losari Beach (Pantai Losari). Viewing sunset from the top of this hotel must be amazing, even though I haven't tried it yet :)

Kawah Putih - Ciwidey

2008-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Kawah Putih terletak di daerah Ciwidey, Bandung. Dari Jakarta, kita nyetir sekitar 2 1/2 jam untuk sampai kelokasi. Sebelum sampai ketujuan, kita menyempatkan diri untuk makan pagi dulu di KFC.

Loket KFC

Pesanan saya biasanya, 2 ayam, 1 nasi, 1 sop ayam

Sedikit history mengenai kawah putih yang di ambil dari Bandung Tourism Site.

Keberadaan kawah putih sebelumnya tidak diketahui banyak orang karena wilayahnya di anggap angker. Keindahan kawah putih terungkap oleh seorang Belanda bernama Peter Junghuhn pada tahun 1837. Walaupun demikian, kawah putih masih saja belum terjangkau oleh masyarakat luas sampai dikembang oleh Pt Perhutani sebagai objek wisatal alam.

Kita perlu membayar uang masuk di pintu gerbang utama. Saya lupa pastinya berapa, kalo tidak salah kita membayar skt 50 ribu buat 3 orang. Setelah bayar, kita berhenti dulu di kaki gunung untuk ke toilet sambil menyempatkan waktu untuk moto2x bentar.

adik saya

adik saya lagi

Perjalanan naik memakan waktu sekitar 20 menit dikarenakan jalan kecil dan berliku-liku. Kami sempat berhenti sekali untuk motret pemandangan.

Pemandangan sekitar jalan waktu perjalanan naik

Di lokasi tempat parkir terlihat beberapa penjual mendagangkan makanan dan souvenir, namun banyak toko yang tutup, mungkin karena kami kesana pada hari Senin, bukan hari Minggu. Begitu turun dari mobil, kita sudah bisa mencium bau belerang yang sangat tajam. Berikut ini adalah beberapa foto di ambil disekitar kawah. Hari itu kami kurang beruntung, soalnya hujan cukup lebat, kami perlu berteduh sampai dua kali sebelum memutuskan untuk meninggalkan lokasi.

Tampak Kawah dari Atas

Warna Air Kawah Putih

Warna Kuning di pinggiran kawah adalah belerang, baunya keras sekali,
saya sampai terbatuk batuk, nafas sesak

Ranting dipinggiran kawah

Muara

Lokasi ini juga tempat favorit fotografer untuk pengambilan foto prewedding/wedding, saat itu kita melihat ada satu pasangan yang sedang dalam proses pengambilan foto. Saya juga pingin belajar foto orang, jadi, adik-adik saya yang saya minta jadi modelnya.

Modelnya

Foto 1

Foto 2

Foto 3

Cuaca tidak bisa di ajak kompromi, akhirnya kami meninggalkan lokasi.

Kabut dan hujan mulai datang

Sebelum pulang, makan jagung bakar dulu di salah satu kedai yang buka.

Penjual Jagung Bakar

Selamat Pagi Makassar

2008-04-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

Ditengah kesibukan persiapan pernikahan, saya sempat pergi jalan pagi bersama calon kakak ipar saya, Octav. Namanya jalan pagi sih, soalnya dulu pernah lari pagi, saya nya yang tidak mampu, baru 100 meter sudah ngos2xan. Berikut adalah sebuat snapshot foto yang sempat di ambil dari taman Bahari di Pantai Losari. Dari kejauhan tampak, Makassar Golden Hotel, Akai, semua orang di Makassar pasti tahu tempat ini.

Pantai Losari

Untuk persiapan pernikahan saya, saya membuat small office di ruang tamu di rumah, sambil mengerjakan slideshow, buku acara, pendataan tamu2x dan macam2x. It's awesome to work with 40" LCD with resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. I have plenty of space for my Adobe After Effect, and also when doing some coding, it just felt different when you could see more code :)

Small Office Space

It's 4 more days till the arrival of my bride :)

Taman Safari

2008-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

Saya berkesempatan untuk mengunjungi Taman Safari di Cisarua, Bogor. Perjalanan dari Jakarta memakan waktu cukup lama, jalan tol nya sangat macet. Banyak mobil truk raksasa yang lambat berada di jalur cepat. Kami sempat mampir ke tempat peristirahatan untuk makan siang, harganya relatif murah menurut standar Kanada, tetapi cukup mahal menurut standar Jakarta. Saya hanya order semangkok Bakso, harganya Rp. 10,000, rasanya biasa aja sih tidak ada yang special dari baksonya.

Bakso Daging Sapi

Suasana Food Court

Setelah makan, kami melanjutkan perjalanan. Di perjalanan ada yang menawarkan untuk jadi joki, jadi orangnya akan menemani kita untuk menuju tujuan melalu jalan pertanian, yang katanya adalah shortcut untuk menghindari kemacetan. Tapi, kita tidak mengambil jasa tersebut, takutnya orang tersebut punya maksud tidak baik. Kami tiba di Taman Safari sekitar jam 4 sore, langitpun udah mulai gelap. ISO kamera D200 saya set ke 400 dan pake lensa Nikkor 80-200 AFD 2.8. Sambil mobil berjalan, saya pun buka jendela dan mulai mengambil gambar.

Gajah dan anakanya

Tapir Sulawesi, pemakan semut

Kuda Nil, badannya besak sekali,
mulut nya mungkin muat sekitar 4 kepala manusia

Rusanya lumayan ganas, terus menempelkan hidungnya ke kaca mobil,
karena banyak pengunjung lainnya yang buka kaca untuk memberikan makanan

Onta

Rusa Jantan, lumayan liar juga

Beruang Madu lagi bermain bersama

Badak lucu lagi makan

Bison, penjelasannya udah cukup lengkap

Kambing Gunung

Orang Utan

Ini bukan warga taman safari, tapi adik saya dan pacarnya

Kuda Nil Mini lagi tidur

Adik Saya dan Pacarnya

It's dark already, time to go home

Yuhu, Masakan Padang, after 2 hours drive, my brother is driving,
I slept most of the time in the car :)

Vancouver to Jakarta

2008-03-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

I left Vancouver about two days ago, I am going back to Indonesia to prepare for my wedding which will be held on May 3, 2008. It`s kind of sad, because I will be separated with my soon-to-be-wife for 3 weeks. Hope time flies really fast. Following is picture I took while waiting for boarding.

Vancouver Airport Gate

My friend told me that YVR Airport now has FREE WiFi, and yes, it`s true. I managed to check in some of my code as well as doing email/MSN.

Cabin Light

For this trip, I took Cathay Pacific. It's my first time to take this airline and it's also my first to visit Hongkong's airport. The airport also offers FREE WiFi.

Hongkong Airport Gate

Before I left Hongkong airport, I manage to try one of the restaurant at the Food Court, it`s called Ajisen Ramen. I choose a combo Ramen with BBQ Pork and Boneless Fried Chicken. It cost about US$8. The ramen`s soup is really good except the noodle seems to be overcooked (i.e. it`s too soft for my taste). The fried chicken is ok, I have tried better fried chicken at some of Taiwanese Restaurant in Vancouver.

Store Logo

Ramen with BBQ Pork

Boneless Fried Chicken

The total trip time is almost 20 hours including transit time. I was so tired by the time I arrived at Jakarta. Moreover, I need to deal with Indonesian customs, because I brought a lot of new PSP and Nintendo DS with me. The deal is done in usual way, which didn't take a lot of time. I still don't feel good about the way it's done though.

By the way, I have finalized my wedding site and it now can be accessed at www.chrisolive.net.

Christian & Olivia Wedding Site

Hope you can visit our site and don't forget to leave us a note! :)

Vancouver Dine Out 2008

2008-01-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

Vancouver dine out adalah salah satu acara untuk meningkatkan pariwisata di kota Vancouver. Biasanya diadakan pada akhir Januari sampai awal Februari. Acara ini unik dan banyak digemari bukan hanya oleh para turis, tetapi para penduduk lokal pun menggunakan kesempatan ini untuk keluar makan bersama teman atau keluarga.

Restoran yang berpartisipasi dalam event ini menjual paket "3 course dinner" dengan harga $15, $25, dan $35. Ini sangatlah menarik karena banyak restoran ternama yang ikut perpartisipasi. Diluar event ini, harga makanan "3 course dinner" di restoran tersebut akan jauh melebihi $35.

Saya sendiri berkesempatan mencoba 2 restoran: C dan Kettle of Fish. Di C restoran saya mencoba makanan berikut ini.

Appetizer: Black Heart Spring Salmon Tartare

Entree: Dr. Larry Albright’s Crispy Skinned Trout
creamy Israeli cous cous, braised fennel,
basil infused spot prawn broth

Entree: Herb Crusted Albacore Tuna white bean cassoulet,
organic carrots, bacon froth

Dessert: Creme Brulee

Secara keseluruhan, makanan di C Restoran enak sih, makanan pembukanya mantap, Salmonnya tidak terasa amis, kekenyalannya pun pas. Buat makanan utamanya, Salmon Trout pilihan saya mantap rasanya, kulitnya krispy tanpa ada rasa amis, daging ikannya punya empuk, kombinasi yang menarik. Soalnya, biasanya orang akan makan daging ikannya saja dan kulitnya dibuang, tetapi menu ini lain, justru saat kulit dan dagingnya di makan bersama maka makin mantap rasanya.

Saya juga sempat mencicip Tuna pesanan teman saya. Rasanya enak juga sih cuma saya memang pada dasarnya tidak terlalu suka dengan daging tuna. Untuk makanan pencuci mulut, saya memesan Creme Brulee, texture mirip tar susu (egg tart) kalo di Indonesia, enak sih tapi saya sudah pernah mencoba Creme Brulee yang lebih mantap lagi rasanya di Restoran Bluewater Cafe.

Pada minggu yang sama, saya juga mampir ke Kettle of Fish. Berikut ini adalah menu-menu yang dipesan.

Filler: Turtle Bread

Appetizer: Pan seared scallops, slow braised puy lentils,
lardons, walnuts and proscuitto crisps

Appetizer: Spot prawn salad with avocado, grape tomatoes
and honey balsamic vinaigrette

Entree: Pan seared Pacific Halibut, creamy candied tomato spaztle,
baby zucchini, preserved lemon and basil syrup

Entree: Crispy Ruby Trout, creamy herb risotto, forage mushrooms,
green beans and ver jus reduction

Dessert: Bittersweet chocolate brownie with vanilla bean gelato

Entree: Vanilla pot de creme with a homemade oatmeal cookie

Makanan di Kettle of Fish agak kurang konsisten kualitasnya. Entreenya sangat enak, Halibutnya sangat terasa di lidah dan Trout Salmonnya pun tidak kalah enak. Walaupun, saya harus mengakui bahwa Trout Salmon di C Restoran lebih enak. Tetapi appetizer dan dessertnya mengecawakan rasanya. Mereka juga menyajikan roti berbentuk kura-kura sebagai filler, rotinya ini mantap sekali rasanya.

Sekian dulu, saya pingin ikut lagi tahun depan dan tentunya akan mencoba restoran yang lain.

Happy New Year 2008!

2008-01-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Yuhu, it's new year: 1st year anniversary of this blog :) I am going to get married this year, yuhuuu, it's very exciting, so many prepation and it's so hard to do everything remotely (i.e. I am getting married in Makassar but I am currently in Canada)

Looking at the last one year, there are a lot of things that I have accomplished. My goal in improving my technical skills (i.e. electronics and programming) are reached; I have learned so many new skills that made me able to do so many things.

I have started several projects for my Church as well as my home. The goal of these projects are Automation. For Church, I am trying to automate the process of creating Church's bulletin. All bulletin members are assigned task to gather some information. Once the information is obtained, they could submit it on our "Warta Generator System". The system will then produce xml file near the end of week. Adobe InDesign will feed the produced xml file to automatically generate the Bulleting in the pdf format. One main advantage of this system is that all data are logged in database. It will be easier for church management team to retrieve them later in the future for statistical analysis purpose. The project is currently being expanded to handle more than bulletin.

Home Automation Project, I have spent a great amount of time on this project. I am trying to create a smart home, such as intelligent light control, home entertainment system, etc. I have finished developing most of the interface/library (video control, music control, light control, appliance control). It's almost time for me to start adding the intelligence to the system.

Other than technical side, this year, I want to polish my artistic side as well, Coniques hasn't had any new projects for a while now. My first top priority now is to create an unique wedding site for my bride and me :) After this, Coniques is going to take challenge by joining Pak Stef's Easter Drama Project.

One last thing I am trying to improve is my management skill. Sometimes, I have very short term memory and make me forget lot of tasks. I don't like my local Outlook because I cannot access it anywhere easily. I currently have online todo application that I created myself to help me overcoming this problem. Hope it will help and motivate me to keep track and manage my tasks better.

Lot of things to be done, but the things I most looking forward is my wedding mid of this year. Happy New Year All!

GII Christmas 2007 - Breakthrough

2007-12-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Another Christmas celebration just passed. I am experimenting with new field of ministry again this time :) I am responsible for handling multimedia related to task during the show, not making the slideshow or taking photos like I normally did before.

What I meant by multimedia related is task like playing music/sound effect as well as changing projector background and subtitle for Indonesian to English translation. The task itself is pretty straight forward, however, I took another step forward by developing my own application for helping me to execute this task. I have a team that supported me: Ko Handjar and Daniel helped me in controlling the volume and gain of the audio, Lukas is helping to operate the subtitle.

The interesting part of this task is that it is my first experiment working with AIR using AS 3.0. It is very cool, it's a lot of changes from AS 2.0, but it surely worth to learn. I created a client server multimedia presenter.

Following are some reasons why I initiate this project:

We are running two projectors, one for Subtitle and one for showing background. We then will have two computer sitting at the front for handling this task. Instead of having two persons sitting at the front and running two different PowerPoint Slides, I thought why didn't we create a presenter that will allow its user to control it remotely, xml-driven, and without need of running PowerPoint.
I am planning to replace the use of PowerPoint at Church with something that is more easy to obtain and free (not literally free because one needs to buy the software for development). I choose Flash on AIR, because of its built-in multimedia capability, displaying video background is just so easy and you can do it on the fly :) Moreover, it is easier to integrate it with our "Warta Generator" system, because they speak the same languange: XML
I guess the other reason is because I am a geek.

Ok, here is how it works:

Presenter Client, it's the application that run on computer that is connected directly to LCD projector. It has 3 features: displaying background (both video and image) and subtitle as well as playing music/sound effect. In current case, we have two Presenter Client running: one with subtitle and sound option turned off and another one with only sound option turned off.
Presenter Manager, it's application running on operator's computer. It gave operator option to control background, audio, and subtitle shown/played in Presenter Client. I am running Manager to control both audio and background, while Lukas is running Manager to control the subtitle.
On start, Client and Manager will establish connection to server I called Mediator. As it name implies, it just passing data received from Manager to all connected Client.

One main obstacle we encountered during the event is that something wrong with our WAMP server: some image/audio files were not streamed properly. Initially, it seems that the files are corrupted; however, they are fine when run locally, not through HTTP.

Several possible features that I will consider adding:

Manager can communicate with the other Manager to tell about its current task
Manager can choose Client that it want to broadcast to, instead of broadcasting to all Client.

Anyway, I have been talking too much on the technical side of my task. The event went pretty good except where I lost the cue from Irwan to play some sound effect because I tried to find out why the audio streaming suddenly failed in the middle of the event. It's totally my mistakes :(. All in all, the choir was good and the drama was good.

Celebrate Medley, last song by Senior, Adult and Youth Groups

The Christmas 2007 Team

Merry Christmas all! Thanks for the good work!

Featured in News

2007-12-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

Just got a call from my coworker and he said that our company product is featured on the business section of Vancouver Sun news paper. I am pretty proud about it, because I have been working single handedly on the software of this product for a while now.

Vancouver Sun cover page, business section

I did encounter tons of problem during development time, but I also gained a lot of experience when trying to solve those problems. We are still developing and improving the system as time goes. We'll see where it leads to.

Software and Software

2007-11-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

In the last two months, I have been speding a long of time performing my personal research in remote control area. I managed to develop several Java MIDLET application during the research. They are mostly application that allow me to interface my phone with PC as well as to control appliances at home.

The next step is to add some intelligence to the system. My house is gonna be an experiment subject for my project :) With this limited amount of knowledge, I need to start reading some book in AI area, such as machine vision and machine learning. Hopefully, I can understand what the books are talking about.

I also should start revision control software to manage all my application. Number of personal software that I developed in the last two year has greatly increased. I am currently looking at Subversion, which is also the one used at my work place. It's easy to use and free :)

Back to Work

2007-09-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have been away most of the time during month of August, just went back to my country for my engagement ceremony. Now, I am back at work.

Recently, I am really into things related to "Remote Control". I have been searching Win32 Library in order to find code that can help me to control other Windows Application. I finally found two function that will help me fore sure: FindWindows and SendMessage. Later on, I am gonna integrate it with my phone Bluetooth for controlling my custom made Home Entertainment System. I know I can just use my phone's HID service for remote control purpose or I can just buy Apple TV or similar devices; however, I am the kind of person who will learn by doing it. So, this is one thing I'll do in my "spare time" to enhance my skills.

Spring Fellowship 2007

2007-06-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Spring Fellowship is a special event held by GII Youth Fellowship every year at the end of April/early May. The purpose of this event is to strengthen friendship between each of us as well as with newcomer. This year, it was held at Harrison Hot Spring, ~1 and 1/2 hour drive from Vancouver.

Harrison Lake at Sunset

Following are some photos I took:

This year theme song

Last group leaving Vancouver (Cik Sophie dan Audrey ikutan foto)

Our hotel

Group Photo 1

Group Photo 2

Group Photo 3

More photos can be found at my pbase site

The Missing Iron Ring

2007-04-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

Last week, accidentally, I looked at space underneath my car's windshield. And ..., I found my engineering iron ring. Waow ... I thought I already lost it somewhere 8 months ago; in fact, it's always with me whenever I drive.

The Iron Ring

Canada is the only country that offers iron ring to engineers who graduate from accredited university. We, engineers, are all bind to oath we declared during the iron ring ceremony, pretty cool he ... :) The ceremony itself is private and not opened to public. Wanna know more about the ritual of iron ring? Just visit http://www.ironring.ca/.

Easter 2007

2007-04-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

We just finished our celebration last week. Easter and Christmas are always interesting for me. It's the celebration of birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. How he was born, killed, and alive. At church, we usually work hard preparing for these two celebration.

For easter this year, we are presenting a drama titled "3 Wise Man (The Continuation ...). I am not directly involved this time, because I handled the documentation area; taking photos and videos.

Easter 2007 IEC Team. Thank you guys for the hard work.
(click to see larger size)

More photos at http://www.pbase.com/closari/easter2007.

Pak Berlianto Farewell

2007-04-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Pak Berlianto adalah seorang staff di Konsulat Jenderal (Konjen) Indonesia di Vancouver. Orangnya baik dan ramah, dan juga tertarik dengan kamera. Hal inilah yang sering kita bicarakan pada saat kita ketemu. Sayangnya, dia menggunakan Canon, dan saya Nikon :)

Masa kerja beliau di Vancouver udah berakhir dan kemarin, Senin dinihari, beliau meninggalkan kota Vancouver. Berikut ini adalah beberapa foto pada saat pesta perpisahan.

Pak Berlianto

Ibu Dian, Gaby, Pak Berlianto

Kenang - Kenangan dari GII

Ibu Dian dan Gaby

Mendengarkan Kesan dan Pesan

Mendengarkan Pesan dan Kesan

Pak Berlianto dan Gaby

Gaby

Semoga sukses di Indonesia dan sampai ketemu lagi.

Switching

2007-03-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

I finally had a chance to install Linux on my laptop. Now, my laptop is fully running on Linux; distribution I used is Ubuntu. The installation wizard has improved a lot since 5-6 years ago. Amazingly, it also recognized all hardware in my system. In the past, I remembered trying to go through x86 config file to setup my vga card, installing sound card driver manually, etc.

So far, my experience is pretty good. I have setup all developments tools that I normally used: Java and Netbeans, PHP, Apache, MySQL, GCC. Other than development tools, I do install mplayer to watch movies before sleeping :)

However, I still need Windows to run some tasks. For example, Matlab ( I am still using it eventhough Linux has octave), Adobe Suites ( I am not used to GIMP), and .Net Development Tools (Visual Studio is the IDE that I like the most).

The last one month has been a blast for me. Some cool projects are coming; it's challenging but I do gained a lot of new skills.

File Sync'd App

2007-02-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

Akhirnya selesai juga satu project saya, membuat file sinkronisasi applikasi buat kantor saya. Applikasi ini saya kira lumayan sederhana untuk dibuat, tetapi saya ternyata menemukan beberapa hambatan selama proses pembuatan.

Applikasi ini akan mengambil data tentang semua client dari database, terus melakukan sinkronisasi antara server dengan semua client yang ada. Terus saya juga membuat simple scheduler untuk mengatur banyaknya proses sinkronisasi yang bisa berjalan pada saat bersamaan. Jadi, semua client harus memalui queue list (antrian) sebelum memulai proses sinkronisasi dengan server.

Dari pengalaman ini, saya belajar menggunakan thread untuk menampikan sinkronisasi status di Windows Form TextBox. Pada awalnya, saya tidak menggunakan thread, dan alhasil, tidak ada text yg muncul di TextBox selama proses sinkronisasi berjalan. Textnya baru muncul setelah proses sinkronisasi selesai. Threads arefun if we can manage them :)

Project selanjutnya akan melibat penggunaan teknology nirkabel Bluetooth untuk file transfer. Yuhu :)

Automating Powerpoint

2007-02-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

In July 2006, I started a small project for writing a software to generate a PowerPoint file for our church 'Responsive Reading.' It's painful to see someone actually has to copy and paste bible verses to PowerPoint for generating the Responsive Reading' every week. The software has been developed and used for a while now.

I grabbed all bible verses from http://sabdaweb.sabda.org/bible/ by writing a Perl script. Initially, I saved each verse in a file, and use combination of Perl and C# for generating the PowerPoint file; Perl for finding verses from files and C# for generating the PowerPoint. However, I found out that Windows are extremely slow at processing folders that contains thousand of files. Hence, I moved all those verses' files to SQL Express database, and also eliminate the use of Perl. Now, the application is basically C# app that utilized COM object for PowerPoint.

This project is half a year ago, why am I writing it now? I am going to start a new project that will manage church's song databases. Since most of the songs are currently saved in Powerpoint, I need to write a C# app that will go through all the files and convert it to plain text format.

The problem is when I tried to reuse my previous code, I got the following error:

The type 'Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'office, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'

Then, I went back to my reference site, and I followed all the instruction there step by step, but still got the same error. After googling around, I finally managed to solve the problem by re-installing the Microsoft Office XP primary interop assemblies (PIAs). Here is the link to download it. Hope this will help someone who encounters similar problem.

Richard's Birthday

2007-02-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

Vina's brother, Richard, was having his birthday two weeks ago, and we went to Sun Sui Wah Richmond for the party :) Waow, the food is just amazing, I couldn't stop eating. Anyway, here are some of the photos from the event.

Liong, Hosea, Sundoro

Richard and Lovely Sister

Appetizer, cause hand is dirty and busy eating, no more pictures after this food :)

Main Dishes, taken before appetizer came :)

My Church

2007-02-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, while waiting for my girlfriend to finish worship team practice, I went out and took some pictures around the church. My church name is Indonesian Evangelical Church, in Indonesian, it is called GII (Gereja Injili Indonesia). Our service is on Sunday at 10.30 am, and our current pastor is Rev. Stefanus Theophilus. The church is located at:

IEC/GII Location

And here are some pictures around the church:

PHP in Nutshell

2007-02-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

What a week ... I just finished coding my brother's company website. The site is developed using PHP which is totally new for me. I could just use some free e-commerce software, however, I want to get some experiences with PHP, as well as adding another ability to my programming skills.

I have experienced with ASP before, so it's actually not that bad to learn PHP. Previously, I learned ASP and finish my company content management system project in a week. This time, I also learned PHP and finish the website in a week.

Based on a week of experience :), I will say that I felt like I have more control with PHP compare to ASP. PHP is more tedious in some ways, because programming ASP in Visual Studio is really easy with all built-in controls. While for PHP, you need to understand more in order to start the programming. Anyway, I might be wrong since this is based on a week of experience.

One bad thing about PHP is that I still could not find an IDE that is as powerful and easy to use as Visual Studio. Following is the screen shot of the website. It's still simple, but it's very dynamic and easy to update. More features will be added in the next release, not sure when :)

Xtremespot Website

Fondue Party

2007-01-29T10:46:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I am having fondue party with my friends at Pak Stef's house. It's interesting since this is my first time trying fondue chocolate. For those who don't know what it is, here is how it looks like:

Fondue Chocolate

It tastes pretty good even though I am not a big fans of chocolate. Following are some of the photos from the event:

The Fondue Machine

Honeydew and Cantaloupe

Orange, Banana, and Marshmallow

Strawberry and Grape

Complete Set

My gf: mmmm...chocolate

The Party Began

The Chef: Liong, Jessica, Jimmy

Catur Pak Stef: Roman vs. Egypt

For more photos, just go to: http://www.pbase.com/closari/fondue_party

History Week

2007-01-19T10:24:00.000-08:00

Minggu ini, waktu break di kerjaan, saya menghabiskan lumayan banyak waktu untuk baca-baca sejarah/autobiography dari beberapa tokoh dunia yang lumayan kontroversi, seperti Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Adolf Hitler, dan beberapa lagi.

Saya memang tertarik untuk mempelajari sejarah-sejarang orang yang berpengaruh, mengamati bagaimana mereka berusaha untuk menaiki tangga politik. Memang banyak juga yang membuat kesalahan setelah mereka berada di atas, tetapi yang saya kagumi, adalah keuletan mereka. Mereka kerja keras dan coba mengambil semua kesempatan yang ada.

Hal yang sudah lama saya gumuli, kesuksesan tidaklah luput dari kerja keras, tetapi kerja keras bukanlah the only requirement. As for me, I also need God and friends and family besides me in order to move forward and to be successful.

Freezing Weather in Vancouver

2007-01-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

In the last three days, the temperature here has reached below zero state. It's not normal for Vancouver to have this kind of weather. Road is very slippery due to black ice and snow. However, there the view of snowy land is gorgeous, I wish I bring my camera with me all the time. I will try my best to get some photos before it starts to melt and become mud.

Sekarang, lagi di tempat kerja, kerja sambil melamun, melamunin kesusahan yang bakalan saya dapat jika ingin membuka usaha sendiri. Saya sudah sangat pingin sih untuk buka usaha sendiri ketimbang kerja sama orang lain. Walau saya tahu tidak akan gampang, tapi it's worth a try and for sure it will give plenty of experiences. Ini perusahaan yang sekarang kita lagi bangun: www.coniques.com. We provide services for creating a custom multimedia presentation. Inilah bagian art dari saya, walau beberapa technical skills are surely useful dalam mempercepat proses kerja sebuah project.

Coniques Logo

Balik kerja, c ya.

New Year's Eve in GII

2007-01-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

I just finished editing and cropping photos from our New Year's eve event at GII. It was a fun night, and the food is just awesome.

Awesome Food

Bubur saya untuk ronde 1

We also have games: tebak lagu, tebak wajah, dan tebak gerak. Pemenangnya ada kelompok 2 yang diwakili oleh Pak Stef.

Sang Pemenang

Berikut ini adalah beberapa foto dari acara ini, selengkapnya dapat di liat di: http://www.pbase.com/closari/new_year_eve_2006

New Year Toast

Acara ditutup dengan tukar kado

Good luck all in year 2007!!!

Tambahan Kerjaan

2007-01-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

Kerjaan di kantor bertambah lagi. Saya harus design dan implement custom software buat file sinkronisasi dan security software buat prevent orang untuk mencuri software kita, something similar to MS Windows or Adobe software activation tools. Semuanya saya targetkan untuk selesai dalam waktu satu bulan. Semoga bisa terpenuhi :)

First Post

2007-01-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

Ini adalah blog pertama saya, yang dibuat pas waktu saya masih dikantor, menunggu datangnya bus untuk pulang ke rumah. I am looking forward to put more stuffs here as my life goes by. C ya.

Vancouver from Lonsdale Quay