Saturday, April 26, 2008

Dilbert Comics

Dilbert website changed its skin. Lots of people responded negatively, like:

  • http://blogs.sun.com/kevin/entry/new_dilbert_com_web_2

  • http://blogs.sun.com/venky/entry/whats_up_with_dilbert_com


This is because they use flash (not all browsers support flash). But actually, we can still read Dilbert comic by using its RSS from here.

In the state of questioning

To many questions about what happened recently bogging my mind.

And now I stand in the crossroads.

Stop believing and walk it my own.

Or, keep believing?

Being a TPI

Last three days, from 22 until 24 of April 2008, I was assigned to be a TPI (Tim Pemantau Independen - Independent Monitoring Team) for UAN (Ujian Akhir Nasional - National Final Evaluation) at Bintang Timur 1 Balige (BTB) high school in Toba Samosir region.

From my observation, generally the UAN at this school run smooth. The teachers did their job very well in watching the students. There were some cheating activities observed by me though, and when I found that, I just looked sharply at the eye of the students who cheated and they'd stop (but they'd tried again and again). I've written all the activities that I observed in a report form and gave it to the committee.

From the committee I got information that there are schools that helped their students by providing the key answer for their students and distributed it via hand phone. This has been a circle of evil. The teachers didn't want their students failed. Because if their students failed, they'll be blamed. Because of that condition, the students didn't prepare themselves very well for the UAN, and just depends on the "help" from their teachers.

Then I just wondering, will there be any follow-up from the report by TPI committee?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Google Holidays Logo

Opened a Google page today and the logo's changed (temporarily) to commemorate Earth Day:


Google has created logos to commemorate some event since 1999. The history of all Google's holidays logo can be seen here.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

You are wrong!

Hey you silly flock, you're all wrong. We're the best. Ours is the rightmost. You don't deserve to do your activity anymore. There's no such thing like tolerance. Now, get lost!

About my top three tracks at LastFM

There are only three songs that I listened most currently at LastFM, they are:

  1. Big Mountain – Only One.

  2. Juges Trio – Holan Ho.

  3. GrooveBandit – Rindu.


The first song is about a guy who's really mad about a girl that he wanted to do anything to show her that she's the only one who stole his heart away. Besides strong in lyrics, the music is also cheering because its genre is reggae.

The second song is in Batak language. I don't know the exact meaning of the lyric, but I'm sure it has the same theme as the first song.

There's nothing special about the lyric of the third song, but it sure has a lovable beat and a fine tune. I usually play this song to accompany me while I sleep very late at night.

If you're interested to hear the song, just google it or search in multiply [dot] com.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Latex on Wordpress

The reason why I started to write articles about Mathematics is that I want to learn how to write using LATEX. The first two article didn't need LATEX because I could easily wrote it using available fonts in my keyboard. But for the next article, I'll need LATEX for Wordpress to write more sophisticated Mathematical formula.

Here's my experiment:

$latex i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left|\Psi(t)\right>=H\left|\Psi(t)\right>$

Well then, I'll start to write using Latex in the next post.

A Motivation

Today I got a visit from my seniors at FMIPA UI. Well actually I've never met them at campus, because they graduated long before I entered FMIPA UI, but I knew them from our Christian Fellowship mailing list in which I'm one of the moderators. They're husband and wife. The husband graduated from Department of Chemistry and the wife graduated from Department of Biology. The husband has just graduated from his Doctoral study at Tokyo University and came to this village (Laguboti) to visit his parents.

They were in my campus for about two hours, and almost all the conversation are to motivate me. One of their words that I'll always remember is "keep on trying". Yeah, I've almost lost my faith and start giving up, but their motivation is such a relief for me. This can be applied to all aspects in my life. I'll keep on trying. Thanx Bang, thanx Kak.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Temperaments

Hippocrates (460-370 BC) divided temperaments into four categories[1]:

  1. Choleric. Persons with this type of temperament have a lot of ambition, energy, and passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types.  But they are easily angered or bad-tempered.

  2. Sanguine. Persons with this type of temperament always feel confident (sometimes cocky), and also arrogant. But they are also considered indulgent (lenient).

  3. Melancholic. Persons with this type of temperament can be highly creative, but can also become overly pre-occupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world, thus becoming depressed. They are also often a perfectionist, being very particular about what they want and how they want it in some cases.

  4. Phlegmatic. Persons with this type of temperament is calm and unemotional. They generally self-content and kind, but their shy personality can often inhibit enthusiasm in others and make themselves lazy and resistant to change. They are very consistent, relaxed, rational, curious, and observant. They are more reliable and compassionate than Sanguine, that makes them a more dependable friend.


My friends once told me that there is a way to recognize people's temperament: see what they say while seeing something bad.

  • Choleric guys will say "hey, that's a terrible situation, I'll go there and help them" (go there and do something)

  • Sanguine guys will say "hey, that's a terrible situation, come on people, please help them" (and just saying that)

  • Melancholic guys will say "how pity they are" (and moaning)

  • Phlegmatic guys will say "oh, that's a terrible situation" (and do nothing)


Most people usually have two dominant temperaments, and two non-dominant temperaments. You can take this test to see your portion of temperaments. Mine is 48% Melancholic, 33% Phlegmatic, 8% Sanguine, and 13% Choleric.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Temperaments

Monday, April 14, 2008

US and Kids

US Government prepares their kids to be an excellent scientists by equipping them with knowledge about technologies they're used. NASA and CIA for example, they provided web pages dedicated to kid that provide informations about their technologies.

How about Indonesia? Naaahh, don't expect too much :)

Vectors (Part II)


  • The set of all n-tuples of real numbers, denoted by Rn, is called n-space.

  • A particular n-tuple in Rn is called a point or vector. Can be written as:
    u = (u1, u2, ..., un)

  • The real numbers ui are called the components/elements (scalar) of the vector u

  • Two vectors u and v are equal, written u = v, if they have the same number of components and if corresponding components are equal

  • The same vectors operations are applied

  • -u = -1u

  • u - v = u + (-v)


Next: Basic properties of the vectors in Rn.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Disabling UAC Secure Desktop on Windows Vista Home Edition

This people acting as if it's their first time using Microsoft Product. They're complaining about Vista's UAC (User Account Control). Disabling it is not a good idea, but we can still minimize the annoying effect of secure desktop by disabling it (I suggest you to keep using UAC because it can improve the security).

Here are steps to disable UAC Secure Desktop:

  1. Click Start -> Run type “regedit”

  2. Go to key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

  3. Find a key PromptOnSecureDesktop and modify the value into 0

  4. Restart your computer


And the Secure Desktop won't be there when the UAC popped-up.

Vector (Part I)

Vectors are quantities which possess both "magnitude" (a quantity that can be represented by real numbers, called scalars) and "direction". They can be represented by arrows (having appropriate lengths and directions that emanating from some given reference point O).

Operations on vectors:

  1. Addition: if (a,b) and (c,d) are the endpoints of the vectors u and v, then the endpoint of u+v is (a+c, b+d).

  2. Scalar Multiplication: if (a,b) is the endpoint of the vector u, then the endpoint of ku is (ka, kb).


Next: Vectors in Rn

Nadapdap Family Tree from Si Raja Batak (The King of Batak)

Still related with my previous post, now I'll write a family tree for Nadapdap descended from Si Raja Batak. So, here it goes:

Si Raja Batak -> Raja Isumbaon -> Tuan Sorimangaraja -> Tuan Sorbadibanua -> Silahisabungan -> Sondiraja -> Rumasondi -> Ruma Bunga-bunga (Raja Parmahan) -> Sinabutar.

Sinabutar had three sons:

  1. Doloksaribu

  2. Sinurat

  3. Nadapdap


It means, whoever girls with a family name Doloksaribu, Sinurat, or Nadapdap can be proud because they have a pariban (I'll explain about this later) like me :D

Manalu Family Tree from Si Raja Batak (The King of Batak)

What I'm writing here is taken from a book titled Leluhur Marga-marga Batak dalam Sejarah, Silsilah dan Legenda (Angkola, Karo, Mandailing, Nias, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba) written by Drs. Richard Sinaga, published by Penerbit Dian Utama.

So, here's Manalu Family Tree descended from Si Raja Batak:

Si Raja Batak -> Raja Isumbaon -> Tuan Sorimangaraja -> Tuan Sorbadibanua (Nai Suanon) -> Raja Sumba

Raja Sumba (Toga Sumba) had 2 sons (**):

  1. Sihombing

  2. Simamora


Simamora had 4 sons (**):

  1. Purba

  2. Manalu (*)

  3. Debataraja (sometimes called Simamora Debataraja)

  4. Sumerham (Toga Rambe)


(*) If I'm not mistaken, all of the above "marga" is from Batak Toba tribe. Other Batak tribes also has "marga" that still has relations with the above "marga", e.g. Manalu in Toba is related with Tarigan in Karo, etc.
(**) Daughters were rarely written in Batak's Family Tree.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Passion

I agree that passion is a very good "thing". With passion, people can do something very well, even better than expected. But what if a person doesn't have a passion for something? Should he/she be impelled to have a passion for something? From the WordWeb dictionary application, passion means:

  • strong feeling or emotion

  • the trait of being intensely emotional

  • any object of warm affection or devotion


See? They're all related with emotion/feeling, and in my opinion, anything related to it can't be forced to someone. All we can do is to suggest/evoke/advise them to have a passion on something, and whether the person want to have a passion on that depends on him/her. If the person agreed that the passion on something is good, he/she will try to have one.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Opera for Google Android's Platform

Opera is trying to be consistent as a number one web browser producer for, not only PCs, but also mobile devices. And as Google's Android Platform is taking a fame, Opera is tuning itself to the platform by developing a web browser for the platform.

The most interesting thing about this is the way Opera created the application. Instead of re-writing the existing Opera Mini web browser, they created a wrapper that translates Java ME API calls into android API calls, and they're using MicroEmulator tool.

Unfortunately, by the time this post is written, no hardware available that will run Android, so for now the Opera Mini for Android can only be run in the Android Emulator. You can download the Opera for Android Platform here.

Related link:

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Millennium Problems

No one can boast of his/her field of expertise, because each field has its own strength. I still can't understand people who have a blind fanaticism toward their field and tend to look down other field. F*ck you! I'm sorry I have to say that because it's suck to be you!

By the way, while reading an email in a mailing list that I joined, I was reminded of Seven Millennium Problems in Mathematics that has not been solved until recently. Actually it's an interesting topic to be a research topic, but I guess I need thousand of hours before I can attack one of that beautiful problem :)

Suspicious

There's a chapter in UU ITE that makes me suspicious, is he (the so-called pakar) the one who suggested that chapter? I copied the chapter here:

BAB VII
PERBUATAN YANG DILARANG

Pasal 27
(1) Setiap Orang dengan sengaja dan tanpa hak mendistribusikan dan/atau mentransmisikan dan/atau membuat dapat diaksesnya Informasi Elektronik dan/atau Dokumen Elektronik yang memiliki muatan yang melanggar kesusilaan.
(2) Setiap Orang dengan sengaja dan tanpa hak mendistribusikan dan/atau mentransmisikan dan/atau membuat dapat diaksesnya Informasi Elektronik dan/atau Dokumen Elektronik yang memiliki muatan perjudian.
(3) Setiap Orang dengan sengaja dan tanpa hak mendistribusikan dan/atau mentransmisikan dan/atau membuat dapat diaksesnya Informasi Elektronik dan/atau Dokumen Elektronik yang memiliki muatan penghinaan dan/atau pencemaran nama baik.
(4) Setiap Orang dengan sengaja dan tanpa hak mendistribusikan dan/atau mentransmisikan dan/atau membuat dapat diaksesnya Informasi Elektronik dan/atau Dokumen Elektronik yang memiliki muatan pemerasan dan/atau pengancaman.

I guess the above can only be applied if that person has ever had a "nama baik" :) and sure he must be aware of the first point as well.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Homesick

HomesickI feel so bored, everything here makes me sick, there's nothing that can make me feel cheerful, all I found here are damn f*cking things.

I really wanted to go home immediately. I wanna see my family. I wanna hang out with my friends. I wanna do lots of things this small-and-remote village can't provide. But my leave for this year is running out, I have to wait until the first of May before I get new leaves.

Meanwhile, I'll just motivate my weary soul to do my best (though I know that it isn't) in everything I do.

PS: Actually there are several things that keep me feel a little cheerful: The Simpsons Episodes, Someone out there, someone out there, and Netbeans :)

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Golden Rule

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

No matter who you are, what's your position, how old are you, from which race you are, as long as you're Christian, this rule applies.

Don't expect something you didn't do to others!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Lazy on the Sunday Afternoon

I thought that I could learn lots of things in this Sunday (got so many things in my to-be-learned list), but what can I do, after going home from church I felt asleep for almost 5 hours.

As an excuse, I assure myself that I deserve that, after all sleep-late-at-night days I have in the previous week. And now, I just can learn a little topic in JEE (JMS), but it's better than nothing at all.

Still got many things to do for the next days though, so I think I'll just sleep now :)

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Bye Ramiele

Too bad you're eliminated in this episode, I thought that you can make it at least to the top 5. But that's okay, you did a good job there, and may be this is not your way of success, I believe that you can be succeed out there. Good bye Ramiele.

Now, I hope that Kristy Lee Cook can stay longer there :)

Unsuccessful Manager

Ah, finally I got this position, I want to surprise those who've chosen me so that they'll still think that I'm the right person in this position. I think I'll plan, err not plan (coz I never plan anything), but am intended to make something different, even if it's silly and ridiculous I don't care, I just need to make something different.

But wait, I need to go for a while...

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Prepare your safety boat

Beware, the storm is coming, everybody for himself.

Marlojong ma hita sudena.

You just need to improve

A week ago, I went to Samosir Island, an Island that is located on Toba Lake, the greatest lake in Indonesia. It makes Samosir has lots of beautiful landscape.

But don't be surprised if you found that not much tourists visit there. Yeah, I've heard lots of excuses explanations that it's all started because of Monetary Crisis Indonesia had back on 1997. But you just can't make it always as an excuse, Indonesia is not at crisis now, well at least compared to 1997. I think what you need is to revitalize your human resources, train them to behave nice to tourists (I found a very good example of this, when I went to Wisata Hotel at Pangururan, no one was came to serve us, even though there are three of the Hotel staff sitting there just watching tv), and the most important thing is to speak English.

Yes, you can get your glorious days back, you just need to improve your human resources.

Sibursik

It makes me wondering seeing such a creature who always take complicated things easy and make easy things complicated. Two thumbs (down) for you, creature!  This creature also has no brain, but always think that it's the best (shame on you!). One of its strongest "ability" is to spit out dirty and seem-look-good words at the same time, how amazing!

I believe that this creature must cost a fortune if I sell it at ebay. But maybe it'd hard, since it's kinda tough to tame. I guess I just keep it on its cage and feed it daily. Yes, I think it's the best solution. Meanwhile, I'll still open sale for it (just like transformer movie, you won't know who'll want your stuff ;p).