life's like this - avianto's journal

Bush is in Ottawa today. And he got a really “warm” welcome from Canadians. More than 5.000 people, more than 12.000 people according to the demonstration organizer, are marching down the street while waving banners and posters showing their true feeling about the leader of the United Empire of America… which can generally resumed as… “Bush Go Home” and home means Texas, not United States of America.

The demonstration were mostly peaceful, a brief clash between a few demonstrator and riot police but… it’s not even a “clash” by my standard, OK I am not being fair here since I’ve seen worse back in ‘98 in Jakarta. Back to the demonstration, it was very peaceful and energetic, almost like a carnival. No violence, no damaging public or private properties, no riots, everybody enjoyed venting their opinion about Dubya, which is of course oppositional opinion. This was one of the most peaceful demonstration I’ve ever seen. The police are friendly and helpful, kinda made me bite my teeth when I remember how over-acted and over-reacted Indonesian police were and still are.

There are couple of pictures if you like to read more.

Continue reading Ottawa against Bush

I’ve been in Montréal today. Again. This time only for a day, left early, very early,around 5:30 to catch 7:00 bus, and went back late afternoon, using 16:00 bus. Not much to do, went to CCA again to meet my thesis advisor for an hour or so then strolled down the city, walking and riding the famous underground Metro. The weather was cloudy, temperature was below zero, some flirting snow were falling down but not much. I’ve been in Montreal for three times now. First time was when I arrived in Canada. So basically I was just passing by at / Read more …

I am back in Ottawa now. Montréal is an amazing city. I love the atmosphere, it is big enough for me but not too small like Lübeck. It has a some kind of European atmosphere in it. Maybe because of the French signage everywhere. It also has a good subway, called Metro just like in Paris. Interesting thing is most of the people on the sidewalk speaking English while Francophone are there but not as many as I think they are… or maybe I just walked on the wrong street. The weather was sadly bad. Drizzling rain all day with / Read more …

I will be leaving this afternoon to Montréal, Québec to attend Devices of Design event tomorrow at Canadian Centre for Architecture. The event looks promising, especially since it has an interesting topic which related to my proposed Master thesis also CCA is the place that I’ve been wanting to visit for quite some times. It will be fun and educational. Stories, reports, photos and other stuffs will be here after I am back in Ottawa. / Read more …

I like reading novels. Science-fiction and Fantasy genre are always my favorites, although I also like some action/thriller/mystery genre from author like Agatha Christie - Poirot’s series only, Dan Brown and John Grisham. My all time favorite novel is always Sherlock Holmes. But right now I am looking for some good “Steampunk” genre novels. This genre is really an interesting one, it is so full of imagination and possibility. According to Wikipedia’s article mentioned before, Steampunk genre has two major sub-genre: Historical Steampunk and Fantasy Steampunk. Historical Steampunk literatures are easy to find because they are basically speculative fictions set / Read more …

Ied Mubarak to everyone who celebrates it! Not much to say here unless may Ramadhan make the best out of you this year and for upcoming year. / Read more …

I’ve heard rumor that Hell is opening new section created especially for spammer. Well, I guess those spammer deserve it. But since I will not waiting until those spammer are dead to make myself spam-free, I’ve decided to join Project Honey Pot to battle spammer. Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins / Read more …

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. On 11th month, 11th day and 11th hour people stay still for a couple of minutes to pray for the fallen during the war. The Poppies One most unique thing about remembering this event, especially in the Commonwealth countries, is most people wear a plastic red poppy flower on their left lapel of their garment (as close as possible to the heart). They wore it since October 25th until November 11th. It was a great spectacle seeing most people wearing the same kind of symbol for more than 2 weeks. After thought I remember / Read more …

is finally here! Get it and enjoy the web like never before. The traffic is very high tho. You may find it difficult to get access the main website - it’s so slow. Try to find a mirror site somewhere else. Or just wait for a couple of days… Anyway, for those who still use IE, on their personal computer that use Windows OS, after Firefox 1.0 is out… It seems like you are either uninformed (well, now I am telling you this, go get Firefox) or just plain ignorant. Or maybe you just love to hurt you and your / Read more …

This movie is deserving its own name. It is just incredible!!. The major things about this movie are fun, fun and fun. Good story telling, great animation and loveable characters. It’s entertaining, enjoyable and did I mention fun? The characters are amazing. Mr. Incredible is an typical strong superguy, bold, temperamental and daring. He is the guy that just can’t stay behind while somebody is in danger and he got a soft heart… have to admire this guy. Elastigirl is my favorite, great superpower, very flexible (hey, she can stretch her body, how flexible is that?) and a wonderful / Read more …

I don’t know what happened with mailing list environment nowadays. It used to be a fun place, lots of things to learn, sharing knowledge and knowing people with the same interest. It also used to be a place where people respecting each other, learn mistakes, accepting fault and try to make that place a better place by trying to follow Netiquette. The major problem right now is signal to noise ratio of most mailing list are very high low (Thanks to Ronny for correcting me). What is SNR (signal to noise ratio) means in mailing list term? It means that / Read more …

Presenting home.avianto.com Winter 2004 Edition, nicknamed WashOut. I know it is not winter yet - even tho it was frozen rain yesterday in Ottawa, brrr. But consider this change of layout as a work in progress until winter really here. It’s no way finished, it took me only 1 hour to do the graphics and 30 minutes to change the CSS. No change made in HTML files. Thanks to the power of Web Standard. Nothing fancy for now, I am quite tired with all of that fancy stuff. So yeah, it’s kinda a washout version. I will put the “Summer / Read more …

of fear, uncertainty, terror, unconsistency, annoying behaviour, absurdity, insecurity, act-like-you-always-right, hatred, isolated policy, ignorance, damage, lies, destruction, pre-emptive attack, so-called-democracy forcing, more useless death, hard times (and hard work), suspicious, illusion about safety and chaos. Another four years with George W. Bush. The still Emperor of United Empire of America. In the name of Democracy. Long Live the Emperor! American people, that is your choice. I have to respect that. As a citizen of the world, I take my time to mourn. It will be a bumpy ride for the next four years. I can’t say no more… / Read more …

Today is the USA Election day. I hope that American people have good sense whom they will choose as their next president. Why good sense? Because it seems like half of the American people still think that the warmonger, George W. Bush is way much better than the war hero, John Kerry. Go figure… Being in Canada, the closest neighboor of USA, make me watch this event with enthusiasm more than ever. I can’t still believe that there are people actually believe that Dubya did a very good job in his term. Those people even believe that Dubya make USA / Read more …