Avianto's Journal

It was a great party! Blogger Party 2007 was a successful and memorable event. Thanks to all of the committee, workers and sponsors and of course, big thanks to all blogger who were there or supporting the event from afar.

It was a blast. Words could not expressed how I felt there. Met lots of people, some I already met before, some I knew since ages but never met and some were new. We should do this more often, eh?

Blogger’s power

For Indonesian blogger, this event was a moment of recognition and acceptance. The Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Muhammad Nuh proclaimed 27 October as a “Indonesia National Bloggers Day” and I believe it made Indonesia the first country in the world to have a “National Bloggers Day”. He also promised to value freedom of expression for all blogger in Indonesia. Hmm, should Indonesia offers asylum to repressed blogger all over the world too?

With great power, come great responsibility (Uncle Ben to Peter Parker aka. Spiderman)

So the freedom was granted and the blogger was recognized highly… Now, how Indonesian blogger will respond to that?I believe Indonesian blogger are those rare people who understand and value great power and will use it wisely and full of responsibilty. Without those value, all of this will be vanished in vain and nobody wants that to happened.

Lighter side

On the lighter side, I was enjoying the event so much. It remind me years ago when I started this journal as a mere media to express my thought, opinion, dream and experience without restraint. I never dreamed that one day, blog became a giant snowball and brought down freedom of expression into personal level, especially in Indonesia.

The joy of meeting people I respect and read their writing every day was unbelievable. I felt like I knew them for so long, I could jumped in and started conversation right away with them. Amal said to me that day: “We already know them by their writing and that was a good start since we value and respect them by their mind and not appearance and any other physical attachment.”. I believe he was right on the spot and as an admirer of human’s mind, I think blog is one way to empower a human being to achieve the next level of thinking.

I enjoyed the party too much, I forgot to take out my own camera. Ouch. I know, it was blasphemy not taking any picture during the event but what can I say? I was enjoying the event so much, I really don’t care about taking photos. Anyway, those who want to see the picture could see hundreds of them at flickr.

So thank you to all of you, sorry for not put all of your blogs in this entry – there are too many of you! You know who you are, thank you so much for brought back my faith about Indonesian people. You are the greatest people I’ve ever known, all of you.

What’s next?

Blogger Party 2008, of course! Between them, I hope there will be many meeting and hangout among bloggers. Maybe not just for fun, maybe for business, profit and hopefully for the greater cause like peace on earth or whatever.

Hopefully, Indonesian blogger are realized they are now have a great power and great responsibility. Blog is not just a ‘momentary trend’ as one of the so-called expert said some years ago. Blog is the people power, the power dreamed so many years ago by the fighter of freedom.

Well, for me… it was a challenge. A challenge for a better writing and opinion. In the end, this journal will be one of my legacy and I want to have a great legacy.

Sidenote

Some promises were made. Actively contribute articles to 3GWeek for mas Budi Putra, continue my hiatus podcast for mas Rane and of course, writing more quality content for all of you.

Thank you all. I’ll be just around the corner if you need me.

Finally, using my own design again for this journal. Actually, I’ve been working with this design since around 4-5 months ago and didn’t had time to finish it. Some bugs are still lingering around, let me know if you found them.

Rusting Red

I named this layout “Rusting Red”. This layout relied heavily on Blueprint CSS Framework, which is a great CSS framework – safe me hours of tweaking.

Some new features here:

1. Adding Twitter, flickr and del.icio.us widget on the right sidebar.
2. Search now performed using Google Search.
3. No more CAPTCHA, using “Preview before Submit” method now.
4. Thanks to Blueprint, hopefully this layout is easier to read than the default template.

Of course, nothing is perfect, there are some things unfinished yet:

1. The Colophon and Contact sections are unfinished. This will be the first priority.
2. The Blogroll (Links to other blogs – yes, it’ll back) still not finished too.
3. Some bugs probably still laying around. Well, I hope this new layout will make this journal easier to read and pleasing to the eyes. Enjoy.

Short announcement, I believe most of you already knew it anyway.

I’ll be whirling around Blogger’s Party 2007 tomorrow, starting from 10.30 until 15.00 at BlitzMegaplex.

So, if you happened to be there, say hi and hang out together. Until then.

Since I started blogging again a couple of days ago, this blog was under spam attack very heavily. I tried many setting of the default spam protection and somehow it wasn’t stopping the incoming flood of spam. Sometime I set things wrong and then some of you were complaining that you were not able to leave any comments. Sorry for that, it was totally my sloppy mistake.

First

Thomas advised me to use Akismet plugin. It worked quite good but it was not eliminating all the spam and for me one spam was too many. And somehow in MT4, there are no indication whatsoever about how this spam filter actually work. It said, Akismet works transparently but actually, I don’t want too much transparency since it make me feels uncontrollable. But somehow this plugin worked beautifully to reduce my daily spam and hopefully this plugin was not eating the real comment since I don’t know where I could find the page that shows all the captured spam comments. Somebody help me with this? Thanks.

Final

I am not really fond of CAPTCHA since it reduce accessibility and usability especially for those who are using text browser or any non-graphic enabled browser. But it seems like the fast and quick solution for my spam problem now. So starting today, I put CAPTCHA feature in the comment form and it work beautifully. Hopefully in the future, once I’ve got a better way to handle spam I will remove it.

Rest

So hopefully, I solve the comment spam problem for now. I am still looking for a more efficient, effective, accessible and usable way to do this. If only I could make some free time – it’s been quite busy lately with Real Life™. In the mean time, sorry for the inconvenience lately and if you are still unable to comment here, please send email to avianto@gmail.com and I will try to solve this problem right away.

Thanks for all of the support lately (33 comments for my first entry after two years were just wow, thanks people).

It’s been exactly two years since my last entry. It was too long, wasn’t it? Many things happened in two years. Especially in this information age. So where was I?

The story so far

I won’t bother to tell what happened in the last two years, some stories might shows up from time to time in my next entries, but for now, let me simplified it by saying “It wasn’t what I hope it would be”.

But the last two years was not a complete disaster. Not at all. It was a very appreciated learning experience. Some experiences taught me more about life, hope, romance, expectation, politic, economic, business, ethics, friendship, communities and others.

All and all, everything was quite decent. Life’s suck sometime but once in a while there will be a rainbow when the rain stops. All I hope is someday I’ll be at the end of the rainbow when this storm pass.

What I miss the most

Still, lot of things are missing. In fact, some of them seems like miles away from my grasp now. I miss a reliable and affordable internet connection. ‘Broadband’ in Indonesia is actually ‘Fraudband’, come on – most countries are selling ‘broadband’ in MBps while Indonesia is selling in Kbps and called it ‘broadband’. Just call it ‘fraudband’ and be done with it. I paid € 20 for a 6 MBps ADSL connection back in Germany and here with more or less the same amount of money, all I have is an up to 512Kbps (shared with 10 other customers) wireless connection courtesy of Diginet. Thankfully it is unlimited (I never understand the purpose of “quota limit” except to extort more money from the customer).

I also miss a reliable and affordable public transportation – taxi is good but not so affordable if I have to use it every day. Ojek (the famous motorcycle taxi run by individual) is one of the choice too but well, face it – it is not really a ‘public transportation’ solution. I miss the change of seasons, while winter sometime sucks but it brings some nice experiences too (Try to walk at night when the light snow falls down and reflects the street light – it is beautiful!). I miss inhaling clean and breathable air. I miss sitting, talking and laughing with friend in a small, cozy and friendly bar (Not the one inside the mall or shopping arcade). I miss listening to chill out and drum & bass music in a club (Again, not some repeatable boring and dreadful house music which strangely very popular in Jakarta). I miss discussing philosophical issue about life, the Universe and everything without afraid of insulting people, belief, religion and other sensitive issues in Indonesia (Face it, as much as Indonesian denounced it, Indonesian are one of the most racist people in this planet – while racist usually deals with different skin colors, Indonesian are dealing with different ethnicity! Same skin colors, same almond eyes, same short nose but because you are Javanese and I am Sumatran, you are worse than me – absurd, isn’t it? Oh, by the way – if you are feeling insulted because I said it then great, you just prove my point, thanks).

Where am I?

So where am I? Right now I am doing a personal mission. I am currently trying to run a personal consultancy service within the information technology products design and development and put the emphasize on user experience. In plain English, what I do is “if you want to create an IT-based product (software’s, website, multimedia presentations and else), in the end your product will be used by a human being. I’ll make sure that your product will be usable, accessible and satisfying to the people who are using it.” My catch phrase is “Creating for people”. So if you think you need my service, go to avianto.com and contact me using any means provided there.

Of course running a personal business will be hard. So I always open for any job offer related to my specialty – actually, currently I am sort of eyeing on any IT-related Business and/or Product Development field. So read my resume and if someone thinks I am the right person for some company, I’ll be happy to talk about it. Working abroad will not be a problem for me – I am ready to leave this country anytime.

Other than that, I’ll be around Binus University International to continue teaching undergraduates. I am an adjunct faculty there, in School of Computer Science and this semester I am teaching 3 courses, ‘Multimedia System’, ‘Visual Gaming’ and ‘E-Issues’ for accounting students. These classes will be a lot of fun, I’ll see into them. I already prepare a blog for these courses, so I’ll announce it later.

Epilogue

So here I am. Biting the bullet of my decision returning home. Do I regret it? Sort of, but I have to face it anyway. Do I am happy now? I believe I do as happiness has nothing to do with the situation around me. One of my teacher back in grad school told me, “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way” (Thanks, Richard – this one for you) so while I am currently unsatisfied with my situation now – I choose to be happy with it but of course, once the opportunity to fly away arise, I’ll be on the first line to grab it.

I am back blogging now, thanks to everybody who keep irritating me about blogging again (Just kidding, folks – I am glad some are still paying attention to me) – thanks to Mr. Nukman from Virtual Consulting, who keep on insisting me writing about my knowledge and of course for paying my return ticket to Indonesia – Sir, I owe you more than you know, Priyadi, Thomas, Amal, Thalia, members of GF, these people keep on harassing me to blog back, and to others whom I forgot at this moment – sorry, but I’ll mention yours every now and then later, OK?

So keep on reading for more of my usual rants, unusual wisdom, tips and hints about technology, lifehacks (this is a new stuff, it’ll be interesting) and of course my usual mumbo jumbo about life, the Universe and everything.

That’s all for now, folks. Avianto’s back!