a fresh new sidebar

Okay, it’s not actually “new”. I’ve just re-organized it’s layout and content. For a better look and easy to use, I hope. The biggest difference would be the Google AdSense. Maybe this is the only kind of advertisement that I can tolerate having it on my blog. I have been using several AdSense layout, big, small, back to big, and now I am using two rather big layout. I somehow you feel disturbed by the advertisement, feel free to give me some advice (I could use a good one). Next would be the banner below the profile box. I find it as a good place to put a banner. Maybe not a commercial one, but something like Technorati Live 8. Last, I have change the appearance of my blog links. I’ve made it more.. compact. To save more space and to reduce the scrolling down activity. So, this sidebar now is different. I don’t know anything about freshness. But I certainly hope it will not stop all of you from coming to this blog from time to time, reading from post to post. Thank you.

rainy saturday

It’s been a clear blue sky at the morning, but dark-grey-cloudy at noon. Eventually the rain poured down in the afternoon. I wonder if the people in southern area of Bandung got flooded. I hope not.

My friend and I stop by a shop that sells iPod. I think it was a great inovation by Apple. It has functions as well as good look. Although iPod hasn’t been popular in Bandung, I wonder if someday everyone will be using the white earphones.

Today is the opening of Bandung’s Pasupati Fly-Over. A time-consuming project. Built to reduce the traffic-jam problem in this city. But as Sisil said in her blog, the first impression was not good. I hope it will work out fine soon, or it will just be a sore in the eyes.

Twenty-six years old Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) did it again in MotoGP in Assen. He wins for the sixth time, that is the fifth in a row. Although Honda engine believed to be more powerful, it is the skill of the riders that matters. Yamaha should be thankful to have Rossi on their side. Read more here >>

introspection

Pronunciation: "in-tr&-'spek-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology:

1. Latin introspectus, past participle of introspicere to look inside, from intro- + specere to look
2. a reflective looking inward : an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings

When you are walking/running your life, maybe it is best for you to give yourself a chance, a time, to stop for a while and do this. Introspection. Looking inward. Examining one’s thoughts and feelings. Compromising. There are hopes and dreams. There is also reality. Negotiating. Reality should not holding your pace. Hopes and dreams should be challenging, not burdening. Life is not always about running but also enjoying every step you make. Don’t think just feel. You lose something, didn’t do lots of thing. But you also gain more things and do many wonderful things. Life’s like this. Everybody has their own “mission” in life. And everything you do has purpose in it. You are special. To be able to live your life another day, to be able to wake up in the morning, it is a gift. To be able to feel pain, sadness, misery is making you realize that you’re alive. In the end you should be realizing how fortunate, how beautiful your life is. Hopefully. Eventually. Thank God for giving me another day to live in.

Now move on with your life. And I’ll do the same with mine.

musical baton

I got this Musical Baton from Nana. I am not sure what this is, but since I do have some spare time I said “Why not?”. So here we go.

My music collection contains of many kind of music. From old song to the latest. There are pop, rock, jazz, ballads, instrumental. There are Indonesian, Western, Japanese. Bottomline is I don’t listen to a specific kind of music. I hear whatever I like

Total volume of music on my computer:
There a couple of hundreds songs in my computer. But I do have more songs on CDs.

The last CD I bought:
The Corrs Live in Dublin.

Song playing right now:

1. Ayumi Hamasaki
2. Do As Infinity

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
There are many, but I have to choose 5,

1. Superman (It’s Not Easy) — Five For Fighting
2. Jejak Langkah — Tohpati feat. Glenn Fredly
3. Damainya Cinta — GIGI
4. Blurry Eyes — L’Arc-en-Ciel
5. At Your Side — The Corrs

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

• Budi
• Hanindyo
• Alice
• Linda
• Vilen

live 8

When I blogwalking through Joi Ito’s blog, something caught my attention. There’s a “movement” in the blogosphere to help the campaign Make Poverty History. On their site, they said that “It’s a chance for ordinary people to call on world leaders at this year’s G8 summit and tell them to put a stop to the needless deaths of 30,000 children every single day.” For your information, the G8 summit mentioned will be held on July 6th, 2005 in Scotland. For me, this is quite extraordinary for us in the “virtual world”, the blogosphere to be able to participate in something big such as the G8 summit. Thanks to Technorati and Live 8.

I don’t know if this will work, but I always interested in the issue of helping developing countries. I just hope that my participation in this campaign may help, even for a bit, and may the voice of the blogs will be heard.

Technorati Tags: live8

most popular blog

Have you ever wondered, who/what is the most popular blog in the world? And how can it be measured?

Well, I find something in Technorati. It seems that they ranked blogs, measured by links as they said in their page: “Popular Blogs. The biggest blogs in the blogosphere, as measured by links.” Fair enough. Although there are many reasons to put a link to your site, but indeed the more links you have on your blog, it can only mean one thing. That your blog is popular. So here is the top 10 most popular blogs (in blogosphere):

1. Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
2. Instapundit.com
3. Daily Kos
4. Gizmodo
5. Drew Curtis’ FARK.com
6. Engadget www.engadget.com
7. Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
8. Davenetics* Pop Media Web
9. Eschaton
10. dooce

For your information, the number 1 blog has 15,458 links. Amazing. And some blogs that I read actually are quite popular. Jason Kottke in number 14. Scobleizer in number 30. Joi Ito in number 54. Stopdesign in number 69. Seth Godin in number 89. For comparison purpose only, Indonesian blogger Priyadi are in the number 4,751 Technorati rank. Goblogmedia rank in number 52,726.

As for this blog, my blog, I only rank as the number 206,775. It doesn’t matter actually since I don’t blog for fame or fortune (yet?). But it is quite fun to see my blog ranked. How about you?

UPDATE: Something just crossed my mind. I am curious. Who/what is the number one Indonesian blog according to Technorati? If anyone happens to know the answer, would you mind sharing it here?

a fresh new look

As I browse through the Blogger template collection, I found an interesting one. There’s a template named Minima, designed by Douglas Bowman, the same person who design my previos template (Rounders). This could be the template that come closest to what I’ve been writing in “is it possible?“. So, I’ve decided to give my blog a new look. Here it is. Still under many development of course, but I hope all of you can enjoy it. And as I’ve always said to Budi, “In minimalist design, there’s almost no difference between the genious and the lazy” Ha!

UPDATE: I’ve also change my blog’s font, from the original Georgia to Arial. Although lately I’ve been using Trebuchet, I find it disturbing in a long post. So I’m using the font that I used in my school-days, Arial. Back to the old days, back to the minimalist.

english or indonesia?

Ga kerasa, ternyata udah ada 3 posting saya yang ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris. Antara sengaja dan ga sengaja batasnya tipis. Kadang-kadang memang saya merasa lebih nyaman menuangkan pikiran dalam tulisan berbahasa Inggris (terlepas dari grammar yang berantakan dan vocab yang ga banyak). Ada kalanya saya merasa bahasa Indonesia tidak efisien untuk menulis. Ah, tapi saya rasa dalam berbahasa dan menulis, efisiensi bukan yang utama bukan? Menurut saya, bahasa yang baik adalah ketika maksudnya bisa tersampaikan dengan baik. Jadi kalo saya nulis dalam bahasa Inggris kacaw, atau saya nulis bahasa Indonesia yang agak slang, asalkan kalian yang baca masih bisa ngerti, no problem kan? (tuh malah kecampur antara Indonesia, Inggris) Atau malah kadang-kadang bisa juga kecampur dengan bahasa Sunda hahaha, ya sudah lah.. dinikmati saja. Just Relax, everyone!

wordpress, mac, 24hrs internet

Right now, I don’t have them (yet). I was considering to move this blog to a WordPress-blog. There is nothing wrong with free-blog like Blogger, but I guess I am the type of guy who wants more with less money spent (if you haven’t heard about it before, WP is an open-source blog engine). I also have been waiting to trade my PC with Mac (any kind, but for financial-reason Mac Mini would be more realistic). As for 24hrs internet connection? The internet-service-provider here still put a high-price tag on it. Can you imagine blogging with dial-up internet connection and a PC? I can and I did and I assume this is what most Indonesian blogger doing all this time. (Oh, when will we have the chance to get a hand on cheap-reliable-cheap-broadband-24hrs-did I mentioned cheap already-internet connection?). So, I am planning, waiting, dreaming to have a fast and 24hrs internet connection, a powerful and reliable computer and a blog that I can fully-customized. Just the way I want it to be

blackout

it’s a blackout, what do you expect to see?

Sunday night, when I’m spending the last of my weekend time in front of my computer, suddenly the power went off. It was a total blackout. I think it was a power failure from central since one of my friend experience the same thing. It was late in the night and it was dark. So what should we do? In the good old times, I would usually pick some candles and lit it (the process of lighting the candle up is fun, and putting it out is even more fun, it’s like having another birthday). Now, I just pick my cellphone (which haven’t finished its battery-charging) and turn on the light. Next, I could have been thinking about our rights as a consumer (if we have one). Instead, I thought “Hm, so this is the closest thing we can get to feel blind” (there must be something we can learn from everything that’s happening, right?). And instead of wasting my time by cursing the government, I know a way to do something useful… thinking of writing it all into a blog-posting. (And if this went longer than I thought, I could always use more sleep time).

What did I learn from yesterday?
I learned that now people can’t “live” without electricity (and I cannot write this post without one). I learned that business monopoly is not good for the consumers. I learned that the people in Bandung are very tolerant (were there any complaints?) or they just tired of complaining. I learned that when the visual sense is not active, it is true that other sense will be more sensitive. When you can’t see, you can always “hear” and “feel” the night. And while this “incident” should not be happening next time, I do realize that this kind of moment also have its benefit. If the lights in the city went off, I can see the star more clearly

(A couple of minutes later, the power went on.. my thought about blogging about this stopped, and I turned my computer on again only to find that later on that night.. the power went off for the second time. That moment I’ve decided to went to bed no matter what)