Indian workers in Batam

I suppose most of Indonesian knows what happened in Batam. For those who got left out, here’s an English article.

A thread in Detik Forum got my attention that there are lots of comments agreeing that the Indians deserve those attacks and injuring four of them.

I can’t see through what they were thinking.. and on top of that, many (educated and Internet literate) people seems to be supporting the riot. In every conflict, it is rare that only one side makes mistake. Most of them are basically accumulation of mistakes from both sides, discarding who started in the first place.

One thing I just knew that there are such thing as War Risk Zone and several places in Indonesia are included in it. This attitude will surely bring no good to the public. This article is outdated, but it seems that the call was not granted.

I have been insulted no less than people around, and I haven’t got the grudge that I’ve been insulted and never got the intention of bringing harm to those insulted me.

[well to be frank I’ve got this wild imagination that I’d scare the guy off me with some cool moves or words, but that was simply to relief my mind]

Violence does not bring more good than harm, especially in larger scope like what had been going on in Batam. I do hope and pray that people would realize, aware of their surroundings; or at least think out of the box that every action bears consequences.

Linux User

I just counted myself into Linux Counter and registered as #509002 ^_^

How to use Google

Google is very well known for the search engine (duh.. obviously) to the extent that there were actually a verb for it to express the use of Google to search for anything. My colleagues and I have had the term: “ask uncle Google”. For those who don’t know how to use Google Search, check out Google Guide.

As the primary business of Google is the search engine, Google also has lots of products with their own innovation that I would say that they are very interesting.

Here’s what I’ve been using out of Google.

1. Search Engine to search the Internet
2. Google Mail for my email
3. Google Calendar to maintain schedules of my life
4. Google Contacts to maintain my contact list including contacts’ birthdays with integration of Google Calendar
5. Google Sync to synchronize my contacts and calendar entries with my mobile phone
6. Google Maps to learn new ways of how to get myself from one place to another place that I know very little about
7. Google Talk to communicate (chat or voice or video call) which can also be used in GMail
8. Google Chrome as my Internet browser, which is fast and lightweight but powerful

And quite a lot more that I might be too lazy to mention that I haven’t used extensively like Blogger, Latitude, Google Sites, Google Docs, and Google Wave.

New member of family

Gen 1:28
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Well at one point, I seem to have completed that particular order that God commanded. My wife gave birth to a healthy and beautiful baby girl that (they said) looked just like me last week on 12.04.2010 10:20 GMT +7.

I would say that it was definitely one of the best moments of my life. I wonder when those feelings would come again next time.

I get the joy of kissing her (and I didn’t forget the wife too ^_^) when I get to work in the morning and before sleep.

My Karaoke Program

After being deserted for months, I finally made a working program for my dad to get his new hobby a lot easier for him and his friends at home. I called it KaraokeSys for no specific reason ^_^

The program uses simple SQLite database to store the song details and VLC media player to play the video. I’ve seen quite a lot of free and open source karaoke programs, but somehow I feel that the requirements here is quite unique, that they usually prefer to use the karaoke VCD rather than custom made videos.

For now, it has features to:

1. Manage songs (add, edit, delete, and multiple edits of song properties)
2. Drag & drop files to upload songs
3. Multiple monitor support to view live video at secondary screen while still doing anything else in the primary screen (including searching and selecting songs)
4. Search anything (any displayable text within title, artist, genre, and even tag)
5. Manage playlist (add and delete songs for future use)
6. Play, pause, stop, next song, previous song (this is very obvious)
7. Switch to left, right, or stereo audio channel for vocal + music or music only
8. Volume control
9. 3 seconds fast forward and rewind with speed control without chipmunk effect (thanks to VLC)
10. Preview song in mute volume

What it doesn’t have for now is pitch control, which can be easily controlled with hardware; at least the only missing feature I’ve thought of.

And this is how the real thing looks like. It simply needs a Windows based computer with dual monitor and sound enabled.

FML

Have you ever feel so fed up with your life? that everything is so f***ed up? Will it make you feel better knowing that other people are experiencing worse that you? Check out F My Life, it compiles tons of funny life stories.
I’ve been reading the stories since last year and I can’t stop visiting it every day. :)

Bank or don’t bank (2)

Continuing yesterday's post, the funds just came yesterday evening and sent me an SMS notification. Quite satisfied with the service this time as they promised me to work this out for 14 days tops and turned out they sorted it out in half a day.

At least it’s a good start of Tuesday ^_^

Bank or don’t bank?

It’s so typical Monday.. except that I got a really bad start of day with Bank Mandiri. Here’s the story:

28.03.2010, I needed cash so badly and the ATM only allows me to withdraw 10 mill per day, so.. since Mandiri is a member of ATM Bersama, the transfer should be done within minutes. 2 hours later, the funds were not there.. and somehow I managed to get the cash from other means.

03.04.2010, Called 14000 to query the bank of how come that the funds did not reach the destination, but still has been debited from my account. The reply: “there was a network error and although the ATM said it was a success, eventually the transaction failed, and your money shall return to you in 4 days.”

Okaaayy… Now that is bad news.. What if that was the money I’ve got? They’re holding my money for unknown reason (at least to me). I thought I just gave it a chance.

05.04.2010, Check the online banking and did not find any trace of the return of my funds. Yesterday was certainly not the worst that could happen.

I called 14000 again to query my missing funds and somehow the other end of operator seemed to forgot about me and left me on the phone for almost 10 minutes with their song. I hung up and made another call this time response is quick, but not satisfying.. They wanted me to go the any branch and file a written report.

I am furious!!!! and yet cannot express it the the operator..

The only reason I’m using the ATM, and Internet banking was simple: I don’t want to go to the bank!!! Now I’ve got to find a way to get to the bank and file a written report.. for something that was not my fault (maybe it was my fault to transfer to another bank provider? –_-)

What a Monday!!!