life's like this - avianto's journal

I am following the herd, some people tagged or asked me to do this, so I comply. Here they are:

1. I’d been living in 4 countries until now; Indonesia (most of the time), Germany, Canada and United States (currently) and visited more than a dozen countries.
2. I hold a bachelor in Architecture but never worked as an architect, I prefer architecture as a way of life not as a work for living.
3. I used to smoke a lot, not anymore right now except for an occasionally collapse of good judgement.
4. Despite used to be a heavy smoker, I never use drugs in my life and not planned to do so in my life time.
5. I don’t care about races and sexual preferences, it doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow or even green and while I am a strictly straight guy, it doesn’t matter if you are straight, gay or bisexual. What matters is that you are a good person and act like one.
6. I used to be very emotional but I think growing older make me more patience.
7. I love to cook, while my cooking ability is about average I think I am improving every day.
8. Movies, books, museums, galleries and live music hall were the things and places I spend my free time, mostly.
9. As a digital person, I still keep my plan and notes using a paper notebook, Moleskine preferably.
10. I care much with those who I consider as friends, sometimes too much to the point it annoyed them.
11. I prefer walking and taking public transportation than driving but I love to drive as fast as I could if condition allowed.
12. I always afraid of getting fat to the point of nearly an obsession.
13. My passion lies in creating something useful for people to use, that’s why I am in user experience business.
14. People think I am a perfectionist but I am not, I just want to be the best in everything I do.
15. I prefer being a generalist than a specialist, specialization is for insect.
16. I can be extremely cynical, it doesn’t happened so much, but when it happened, you will noticed.
17. I am starting to develop a fashion sense awareness, used to not care about how I dressed but now I put some thought when I am dressing.
18. I have a really bad set of teeth, been thinking to fix them up but it will cost me a fortune, but I’ll do it anyway soon.
19. I used to think life was suck but now I think life is as good as I want it to be.
20. I love pets but I am allergic to the hair… Bummer. I also allergic to dust so I prefer clean places.
21. I can play any kind musical instruments except bowing and blowing instruments.
22. I am an Apple geek; currently owned a white Macbook, a white iPhone and silver iPod nano, but currently using ASP.NET and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for work.
23. I owned avianto.com since 1998 and planned to keep it for the rest of my life.
24. I am stubborn but always open to a reasonable argument and with decent delivery.
25. While I am enjoy being online, there always be a day or two in a month I prefer to be disconnected. Talking about taking the time out.

Well, I did it. Hope you know me better now.

This entry is overdue a couple of days. I was moving to New York City and will be working with Research Foundation of City University of New York. It will be a new adventure to start a whole new year. This entry is about my long travel from Jakarta to New York. Some of you were keep asking me about this, so here it is. Enjoy. SQ 967, Jakarta - Singapore My first flight was using Singapore Airlines. Not much happening during the flight, it was a short flight, around 1 hour. Landed at Terminal 3, Changi Airport around 10 / Read more …

According to Wikipedia: Dengue fever (IPA: /ˈdɛŋgeɪ/) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are acute febrile diseases, found in the tropics and Africa, with a geographical spread similar to malaria. One major difference, however, is that malaria is often eradicated in major cities, whereas dengue is often found in urban areas of developed tropical nations, including Singapore, Taiwan and Brazil. Caused by one of four closely related virus serotypes of the genus Flavivirus, family Flaviviridae, each serotype is sufficiently different that there is no cross-protection and epidemics caused by multiple serotypes (hyperendemicity) can occur. Dengue is transmitted to humans by the / Read more …

Indonesian are curiously amnesiac. Watching current news in Indonesia proved that interesting fact. There is a certain events happened in the media (television, radio, newspaper and internet) right now. It is about the same topic again and again. Most of the people, related to the topic, talked about goodness, forgiveness and reward. Fair enough, but somehow there were some missing pieces. How about the wickedness, repentance and punishment? Being Human As a human being we need to be able to forgive. If you are a religious person then you must believe that God will forgive anybody as long as they / Read more …

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 / Read more …

Short and simple Monday’s fun / Read more …

Sorry for the long absence, I just took my sabbatical time off from computer and internet, well, not entirely but I just tried to get away from technology for a while and of course still busy with life, Ramadhan and Ied. Happy Ied For those who celebrated Ied, Happy Ied, may this year Ramadhan be a blessing and hopefully we all came out as a better person than before. Let us learned from our mistakes and do our best in the next year to come. Bless you all. Ied’s SMS Starting a couple of years ago, since cell phone became / Read more …

Indonesian are very cultural people. I will not argue that, it is a slap fact in the face. My only problem is which culture? Well, admit it, if you are an Indonesian, suddenly being very cultural is not sound so great anymore. Indonesian are proud for their rich cultures. They boasted hundreds of different cultures living under the same roof in harmony… er, sort of harmony. They said each culture enriched the ‘Indonesian culture’, whatever that is. The Truth The truth is not all ‘Indonesian Cultures’ are good. Of course, it also happened to all cultures in the world but / Read more …

Time to take a break to celebrate the incoming weekend, shall we? These are some fun things to do while you are not occupied with life and work. Enjoy! Soundtrack of Life This one is the courtesy of Aan. First the rules: Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) Put it on shuffle Press play For every question, type the song that’s playing When you go to a new question, press the next button Don’t lie and try to pretend your cool…just type it in man! So here we go: Opening Credits: Wheel Of Fortune - Hans Zimmer / Read more …

No, it’s not the question for Kenneth and it doesn’t have any connection whatsoever with the meaning of that amazing song. It is a catch phrase I love to say when I am talking about ‘Social Network’. What is ‘Social Network’? According to Wikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. I like the radio and frequency analogy / Read more …

The same date, 5 years ago, I wrote my first journal entry on this small website. It was starting as an effort to keep my personal website regularly updated and to create an occasional escape hatch during my bachelor’s final project months. With that humble start, this journal was growing into something that I wasn’t even realized before. I use this journal mostly to dump my thought, opinion or everything else, a junkyard for the mind. To my amazement, this place give me more than just a brain dump, it introduced me with some interesting people, it put me as / Read more …

I never considered myself as a “lucky person”. Of course, I believe that luck plays important factor in life but for me, it probably SEP. I am not complaining here but it seems like some people recognized my hard work as a chain events of compiled luck. I wish that was true but no, it never work that way with me. I am becoming what I am now is nevertheless a compilation of smart work. Luck probably plays some part on it but it never become a major element. People tend to measure by the result but they usually never / Read more …

Thesis defence I will have my defence on June 17th, 2005. So my thesis should be printed, bound and delivered around early June. That means around two weeks from now. Yikes. Kompas issue It seems that this particular issue created a turbulent among blogger and other online communities like mailing list. Kompas was acting childish. That is my opinion. I probably will write about this later, time allowed. Antiblog This one is still related to the previous issue. It seems that there are some people really against blogs and bloggers, but still waste their time to leave flame bait comments / Read more …

You know that I always “preaching” about Netiquette in every opportunies. It is not that Netiquitte is THAT important but let see, it is more like “I rub your back, you rub mine” kind of thing. It just make your net-life easier, manageable and organizable. In the end it is just a piece of advice to make your net-life better, it’s not for me, it’s for your own good. Netiquette used to be a thing that valued highly in the net-based community. That’s how we paid respect to each other. But I guess it was old and dying “rule” now. / Read more …

Read The F**king Manual, famously known as RTFM, might sounds like a harsh statement. Of course you could said the “F” is stands for “Fine” or “Friendly” to make it more PG-13. For those who are unfamiliar with the term “RTFM”, this term is commonly used in information technology communities and usually given as in response to a question that can be answered easily by reading relevant documentation, and suggests that the inquirer may be wasting people’s time #[1]. Let me illustrated two kind of questions: A: “Hello. How do I install software X? I run the installer and it / Read more …

I really want to write about this issue for quite sometime but seems like this is a very sensitive issue for some people, especially those who done this kind of practice (Which somehow I just don’t get it why they take this as a sensitive issue). Let me assure you that this is purely my humble opinion about this particular issue. If you are feel insulted or any other of that feeling then I am practically sorry that you are feel like that but my opinion still stand, no matter what. Shall we begin then? Let me start with a / Read more …

If you did blogwalking in the “Indonesian Blogosphere” on Valentine’s Day you probably found a very unique love greetings to the Indonesian Master of Illusion, Roy Suryo. Er… I am not talking about a magician here, I was talking about this guy. Almost, I said almost - I will not get into statistic as Mr. Suryo usually did because I am not as “expert” as he is, all Indonesian blogger were putting this “love message” to Mr. Suryo. Background story Why they were doing this? It is because Mr. Suryo literally “spamming” some newspaper “Reader Mail” column with his letter / Read more …

Some of new students of ISNM are a bunch of complaining creeps. There, I said it. Hate me for that but I am just saying the truth. This amazing school feels like hell because of you. There, I said it again. Complaining is good for your soul. Nah, forget that I said that, complaining is painful for your soul, not to mention make you look like an unsatifisfied moron who always see the world using one eye half closed. OK, this could be just my not-so-scientific opinion but I am kinda tired of seeing people complaining about everything. And what / Read more …

… is actually a name for fossil mythicmyiid (that’s another word for moth) from Dominican amber. When it comes to the Latin name of the species, scientist could be fun and wacky too. There are lots of Latin scientific name that actually doesn’t sound so “scientific” at all. Some are funny, wacky or just plain weird. Some noteworthy are: Dissup irae, hard-to-see fossil eremochaetid fly. Vampyroteuthis infernalis, squid, translated to “Vampire squid from Hell”. Draculoides bramstokeri, spider, from Dracula’s author Bram Stoker. Metallichneumon neurospatarchus, ichneumonid wasp, “Neurospatarchus” translates as “Master of Puppets”. Dicrotendipes thanatogratus, chironomid aka. midge, “Thanatos” means death / Read more …

January 24 is the crappiest day of the year, some experts says. According to Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen today, a British scientist has devised a mathematical formula for today’s condition: [W +(D-d)] x TQ divided by M x NA. W is the weather, D is debt minus the money (d) you earned in January. T is the time since Christmas and Q, the time since you lapsed back into your bad habits. Divide that by M, your low motivational level, and NA, the need to take action. I believe this condition only applied to the 4 season countries. So / Read more …

For those who keep the score: Freedom: 27 Liberty: 15 Full transcript or the very best segment. Sigh. / Read more …

I always enjoyed good argument. The one that have a good atmosphere, good audiences and good understanding about the topic. To have a good argument the participant must understand the possibility of fallacies. Fallacies is a term in the philosophical world that explain some common errors in reasoning. Fallacies has a lot of categories so I will try to write the most common fallacies as a simple guidelines for those who want to conduct a discussion or to give an argument or just want to evaluate something. These fallacies could be specifically called “Fallacies of Relevance”. Here they are: Argumentum / Read more …

Since the canal was closed and just reopened after noon, the “Blogs on Ice” event was cancelled, hopefully rescheduled, and we had the “Blogs on Bridgehead” instead. Blogs on Bridgehead featured: Me, Lana, Robyn, Ben, Anatole, Lia and Emilie. Except for Lana, I never meet any of them before and quoting from Lana: “but it is kind of interesting to meet people and then read their blog for a change!”. Could not agree more. Nice meeting you all! A couple of interesting quotes, not truly exact quotes tho - sorry if I misquoted but you get the idea, from the / Read more …

Just to keep the spirit up for this weblog since the last couple of miserable days. Overheard today at Carleton University Centre: It’s not sumani, dumbass, it’s tsunami! Geez Sure made me grinned for a couple of good minutes. / 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 …

Just read Cameron Moll weblog entry about medical blogs. I always fascinated with the work of the medical crew, especially the doctor. Some of the doctor have their own weblog now and reading those weblog is really an amusing experience. I can’t say much anymore, just read them yourself. / Read more …

Back in Lübeck again. Snowball start to roll now. Many things to do but so little time. Berlin was great. The weather were excellent, quite warm tho but still acceptable. Above 25°C in September, should we be thankful or should we be scared? I am quite afraid tho maybe because I’ve been reading this month edition of National Geographic about Global Warning on the train to and back from Berlin. Human surely know how to damage this small planet… Well… on the other hand, I am still waiting for my visa. The application process was quite hectic but now come / Read more …

The saddest thing that I’ve ever watched since a very long time… Episode Guide here, warning: contain spoiler but still if you watch the episode even after reading the episode guide it is sad enough… / Read more …

Godote’s Forum presenting offline | chapter one: the first book from Godote Forum featuring works of GF members. Intended to trigger creativity, as well as provide a conducive environment for forum members to learn from each other and promote mutual respect for each other’s works, this book is one example of offline events organized by GF. For those who are not it yet, Godote’s Forum is an Indonesian designer online community. A great one and quite big too. One of the best designer community I’ve ever involved with. So if you have interest with design or you are a designer / Read more …

Indonesia will have its first direct president/vice-president election in the beginning of July. So right now it is time for them to campaign. And since I am reasonably away from the country so the only place that I could gather information about them is via their official websites. So here are they based on their current nomination number: 1. Wiranto - Salahuddin Wahid 2. Megawati Soekarnoputri - Hasyim Muzadi 3. Amien Rais - Siswono Yudo Husodo 4. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - Jusuf Kalla 5. Hamzah Haz - Agum Gumelar All websites are online except Hamzah Haz (it had defaced problem / Read more …

Like science-fiction? Recently I watch Firefly, thanks to this man for his recommendation, which turn out to be a really good TV series. Too bad it was cancelled after one season, I wonder why because it is a good series. It’s not typically your spaceship science-fiction series, it have a western-cowboy-gunshot twist on it which I found quite amusing. Anyway, if you have luck to get a hand on the DVD, just watch it… It will worth your time =). / Read more …

Every April 1st there are always something fishy going on around especially on the Web. So I collected a couple of cute jokes around, some of them are so obvious and some of them are just plain clever… some of them are geeks joke and some of them are just joke… whatever that is, just remember: Today is April 1st, anything can happened. I plan to update this tomorrow or after that, because I am a little bit preoccupied right now. So here we go: From the infamous Slashdot, so yeah most of the jokes are geeky jokes (read: it / Read more …

From Boingboing: Butler, Giddens, McRobbie & Foucault in Lego. I love Lego. I guess Lego is one of my reason I want to be an architect… yeah, child’s dream which strangely came true… / Read more …

Another amusing news I’ve read today: Ipod Used In Domestic Homicide. A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod. So it is true, it’s not the stuff that make the damage, it’s always human… Link from xlab. / Read more …

Do you know that your computer is dirtier than a toilet? According to the study, telephones harboured up to 25,127 germs per square inch, keyboards 3295 and computer mice 1676. The average office contains 20,961 germs per square inch. Now that's scary. Link from Gizmodo. / Read more …

Paper Toys. Download the image/pdf files, print it out, cut, fold and glue it... Lots of choices... Lots of fun for wasting spare time... / Read more …

The Darwin Awards honor those who improve our gene pool... by removing themselves from it. One of my favorite: A man tried to commit a robbery in Renton, WA. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choices as listed below: The target was H&J Leather & Firearms, a gun shop. The shop was full of customers, in a state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places. To enter the shop, he had / Read more …

I love pin. PinPops' pin are one of the best I've ever seen. Love them all! / Read more …

Loft Recreates Edison's Light Bulb. Loft Inc. (Japan) has recreated Thomas Edison's first carbon incandescent light bulb. Well, technology... Link from Gizmodo. / Read more …