Vancouver to Jakarta

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

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!

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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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:

1. Manager can communicate with the other Manager to tell about its current task
   
2. 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

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

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

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.