Thanksgiving & HUT Tante Khouw

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

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

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

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

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

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:

1. Edit the configuration file located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf
2. 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
3. Restart MySQL by issuing /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Now, I can establish connection from the remote machine.

Vancouver Trip in 1 Day

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.