And now, officially this blog is moved to http://blog.alvonsi.us. You may find my older posts from this blog there too, since I already exported them there to. And, yeah, you may find the same announcement at my other blog. And so, I will write both in Indonesian and English language.

Okay, enough reading, I’ll meet you on that site …

My Desktop Screenshot

Humm, the recipe? All you need is …

1. Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (http://ubuntu.com), or other Linux Distros supplied with Gnome 2.20, and Compiz enabled of course.
2. Murinne GTK Engine (pull the latest from the SVN, which create the effect that it won’t be compatible with older Murrine themes), with Shiki-Colors as the theme (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Shiki-Colors?content=86717). Use the Emerald window manager that supplied with the theme package. Second thought bout the Murrine Engine, you could use the DEB package provided by the author of Shiki on that link.
3. Avant Window Navigator for the ‘yeah-it’s-mac-lookalike-panel’. Download the latest package from Ubuntu PPA repositories (since it’s provide you with some cool applets). Don’t forget the Scaled Black theme. Ah … as the AWN is not provide you with some launcher, so you need to build it yourself. It’s easy … just click here and there.
4. Elementary Icons.
5. The fonts? It’s Liberation Sans.
6. One little visual tips from me is, keep your opened application “un-maximized”. Since maximized form of application really suck in this kind of desktop view.

There you go … happy creating something …

Still about GPS location and Web Service … I decide to use RESTful Web Service as the service model for mobile application built on Java ME. Why? Coz I already build the server with PHP+NuSOAP, which still holds RPC-Encoded model of web service, while Java ME (JSR 172) doesn’t support it. After little chat with Nico, he told me to try RESTful Web Service … and here it goes … I rebuild the service, only to serve XML document based on request from the client …

Ah! I never thought that Web Service could be so easy using this concept (err … do I called it right as concept?) … And, yes … actually with REST, our response could be anything as long the client understands it *err, maybe a little drawback if I can’t supply the correct information about it, but it must be thought before, and maybe I am to lazy not to read all the documentation*

My first attempt, using Java ME + KXML as the reader, still in the emulator box, though … well, at least I could see something now ^^ *since I never touch any not-a-web programming before*

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

*aaargghhh … the time is ticking!!!! should keep the speed up here … mayday mayday … mediccccc*

1. Portable GPS Receiver, which could transmit NMEA data by bluetooth. I use Holux M-1000, got a fair price and service at otomasi.com
2. My beloved mobile phone, Sony Ericsson W810i, equipped with MobileTrailExplorer as GPS bluetooth data receiver, waypoint marker, and tracklogger.
3. Viking GPS Data and Topo Analyzer (http://viking.sf.net/), so I could read the GPX data exported from MobileTrailExplorer on Ubuntu.
4. Patient … a lot of patient, since I have to sit on the bus for about 2 hours (that’s average time for one lap).

The actual plan is I will pick route 3A as a target. Since this route is passing both my boarding house and my office, so I could start in the morning from bus stop near of my boarding house, and track the route until my office, stop there and go to work, and continue tracking on the afternoon from bus stop near my office and finish at my boarding house again (yeah, what a nice plan!!).

And the result is …

Actually what happened is not as smooth as I think. Okay, as you may see at the picture above, I only could track half of the route. Why is this happened? Well, technical reason … At Giwangan I saved the tracklog into memory stick (export it into GPX format – resulting that image), and then continue tracking. So far everything is fine, but the problem arise when the tracker application suddenly freeze when we arrived at East Ring Road (Disnaker) bus stop. That time I still could record the last waypoint there but after that the tracker application freeze. And I didn’t realized that happened until we are near of UPN bus stop. Darn … I don’t know what is the source, but when I try to connect it again to the GPS receiver, it is refused …

And so … the tracklog from Giwangan to Disnaker is lost! My great plan on recording a full track of a route is failed just when it’s about to come to the finish line. But it’s okay, since the waypoint records is still there, I could use them for some research preparation.

Tommorow I will track for route 2B, I must prepare everything better now … until then, stay healthy guys!!!

There is no specific reason for this to be happened, I just want to change the mood and keep everyone happy on loading my page (less images less bandwitdh I presume) …

Okay, there are other changes here. I’ve added new category called “Research Room”. This category is dedicated to log my research which I hope will be finished on September. The main theme of my research is using Web Service to create a Transportation Information Services, planned to be tested on Transjogja. The system itself will integrate GPS, J2ME, PHP, and maybe Python applications through web service as their “broker” …

And yes … except PHP, the rest were subjects I’ve never touch for the whole of my life!! And maybe this time is the time to start touching them …

Well, meet you on my next post then … until then, keep healty guys!!!!

As the picture is clearly explained, there will be Jogjakarta Ubuntu Release Party going on May 17th. This time we are targeting to attract more people in using Linux. And as you may read on my previous posts, our concern is the normal user, people who would use Linux just for office matter, or home usage, or anything that have nothing to do with technical stuff.

Well, so please be there and let the wings of penguin spreaded all over Jogjakarta.

Oh, one more thing … you may contact me for further information … just leave a comment here … Humm, and I really dreaming of Sandra Dewi attending this talkshow … *anyone know how to invite her??*

Okay, lets skip that part … what I want to write today is about a phenomenon I saw when I take a walk through the exhibition. Passing so many notebook stalls, I saw that almost all of the sample is using Linux as their operating system. I saw from some-new-brand like advan and forsa, until big market owner like Acer and HP is using Linux. You ask me about ubuntu? Yes! I saw some compaq V3000 and HP 520 series who displaying our so-familiar brown login screen. And of course what interesting is still the scenery of some people who stands between curious and lost desperately trying to operate Linux.

Now, let’s think … what would happened to those brown login screen as soon as a customer buy the notebook? Incredible! What pops on my head is “dear myself, of course it would changed into blue login screen with bling-bling and some windows logo on it. And you know? It won’t take long to the customer to decide to do so” … ironic huh? Linux is only used at exhibition, after that it’ll became history …

I remembered some time ago, when a lady suddenly called me and ask for help about her Ubuntu. Her problem is simple, but the idea about “who the hell is installing ubuntu to this lady? She is totally new user here!” is bugging me. After some chit-chat, I found out that the one who encourage her to use linux is the shop owner where she bought the notebook. Yup! Not her boyfriend, not her parents, not her friends, not some geek she found at the street, not some rules from the government, and definitely not me! And I were so glad to found out that there still a computer shop out there who care about linux.

This is what Linux needed. A marketer, a helper, someone who would speak for Linux, someone who are willing to sell linux on their product. And definitely not a geek who can’t speak in human language, but someone who know how to speak and of course understand what he’ve been talked about. Until now there is always a stigma that linux is all about playground for the experts. And we need to diminish that.

In the other side, I do believe that linux maybe still too hard for some people. Our society is grown in the ease of acquiring a software, and the ease of using a software. Linux maybe too hard for them, but I do believe that with a proper explanation and little bit of practice, even a dull-minded guy could use Linux in a few minutes (oh yes, maybe hours). For Linux developer, the most challenging part is to develop an operating system who easy to use yet secure and stable. And for Linux user (yeah, meeeeee!!!!! and youuuu!!!!!), isn’t it will be challenging to try transform ourself into a Linux seller??

Spread the penguins, and don’t let her only showed up on the exhibition.

This afternoon, I went to Jogjakarta Ubuntu Hardy Release Party meeting at UAD. When I arrived, the forum is currently talking about topic to be presented at the talkshow (yeah, this time we want some talkshow). And guess what? For a talkshow with “Linux and Women” as the main theme, almost all of the member is suggesting alternative topic about networking, hacking, creating server, etc etc … that have nothing to do with the main theme itself.

Make me wonder … aren’t you bored with topics like that? Everytime there is a seminar, talkshow, meeting, etc etc that have connection to Linux, it always smell the same. Hacking this, breaking there, sniffing that, building server here, wireless this, etc etc … and very few themes like kde/gnome basics, desktop beautification, introduction to repository, what-is-linux, openoffice tips, building FOSS-based company/office, etc etc. If this is the way linux is brought to the people, than hell no Linux will get some attention to non-technical user … Hell no Linux will get some attention from big company, and hell no I will get a job with Linux as it’s desktop environment instead as a server ^^

Back to the main theme. Okay, not that I’m judging that women can’t deal with those stuff, but okay … just tell me from 10 women you meet at the street (oh, not in your IT-related university street, but real street), how many of them can really understand those topics? Let me made it simpler, how many of them that ever dreaming about linux? Not many I think. Most women, that in my dream is perfect candidates for next generation Linux user, along with majority of Indonesian people is hardly know what Linux is. At school they were taught with M$ materials (which most of them is a result of piracy, yeah … even school is teaching about piracy, in the name of education), at office they were using M$, at home they always dealing with M$, and so on. This is the main idea. We want to introduce linux to people like this, someone who never touch Linux before. And as I remembered, Ubuntu Desktop is not-only-for-geek OS, as described here there are some point why Ubuntu Desktop is called Ubuntu Desktop, which somehow never taught deeply to the newcomers, coz the old-kids-on-the-block is busy dealing with hardcore matters (yeah, I must admit that I also too lazy to teach most of the time) …

So, guys … let stop eating meat, for this meantime let eat rice, shall we??

So, here is mine …

alvonsius@alvonsius-notebook:~$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
189 sudo
60 cd
33 iwconfig
31 ls
17 ./startup.sh
12 mysqldump
12 ifconfig
11 ping
10 ps
10 echo

Yak mari siapa yang melanjutkan … ^^