This is something pictured in a travel guide book about Italy. The cover pictured photograph on top of a church with the sky shined purple in the lower half as the sun sets. Well, someone with me thought it’s something from overseas, but sometimes we do have it here too.

The problem for her in my opinion is, the prettiest moments of sunset is during the time for Maghrib. If I’m not mistaken, there’s also a belief that this is the moment when devils are roaming around, the border of light and dark instead of the darkness itself. In practical words, not recommended to be outdoor. I’m not sure if the belief is originated in Islamic belief, or product of assimilation with the local culture.

As for me, my interpretation of that would be, “the devil is not in where pure good and evil lies, but where the distinction between both become blurred”, deceit is an example of such place.

Anyway, back to the wine, I guess I find another biblical justification for not wanting to drink alcoholic drinks. When the deluge finished, Noah plants grapes, then brewed wine. He drunk it, gets drunken, and dance naked. No, I don’t want to perform that, and I’m not confident I’ll stand having much of those in my blood stream ^^;

Another turn of topic back to the sky. Since I cancelled going to the skate today, I tried going to that place again. Last Sunday, my parents took me for a dinner in the residential complex where we used to stay about a decade ago. It changed a lot (well, a decade and 5 presidents). I’m interested in the line of shops, so I planned going there just checking the mood and probably take some pictures.

Took another wrong turn and had to walk a kilometre of two (I think) into the Pantai Indah Kapuk area. The shopping area is still mostly empty. Lights are off to save cost. But although there are not many shops, some are interesting. There’s the book rental I used to visit (they moved there, I thought they go to the apartment). There’s also decoration stores, one which seems to specialize in artificial plants and the inside looks much like a conservatory, although darker inside instead of filled by sunlight.

Other than the dusts (understandable, some stores hasn’t finished decorating), liked the mood and the Mediterranean architecture design. I took several pictures inside, and outside, until the security staff told me picture taking is prohibited without any given permission (not even for personal use). I don’t know, did they want to protect their design investment, or want to control all publication, or they just want a royalty in case the picture is made in a publishing that are sold for money?

Before leaving, went to the second floor, find a place nicely shined by the sun and have breeze of wind coming through. Have an ice cream bought in supermarket, when a security guard came again to me, probably suspecting I still took pictures. Well, I don’t. Now I only wonders, if I took out a notebook and starts sketching, will they also told me sketching is prohibited?

After that photography restricted area, I choose more natural environment. If taking pictures of sewer, trees and grasses growing wildly is still prohibited, I’ll start to think they’re really being over protective.

By the way, in that area, there is a natural conservation. And other than peoples coming to play soccer in the open field yet to be constructed, there’s also a lot of families from around who goes there for recreation, alas only outside the fence watching monkeys plays. For here, I don’t think the typical mid to high class folks would want to take their time and sit there to join them though :P

Frenchly speaking, the textures kind of freaks me last night. Probably because there’s nobody else at home and half the lights are turned off.

I mentioned yesterday about going to the festival today right? That one failed. I failed to check first that to enter, I need ticket that could be bought only if you have invitation from parties who held the event. Probably security consideration, could be just to keep unwanted peoples outside.

I walked long way, and the weather is really hot. But at least after the fails, I could go for a short date in that place afterward ^^

It’s not really that bad actually. While walking out, there are many interesting sceneries. One of it that I feel impressive is the apartments. From the look, they’re old building. The lower floors also have stores, mostly restaurants. Probably because of that also, that impression I get is summarized in one word, “Singapore?”

Actually when walking out, I met someone I knew and he had a ticket, so I could have tried getting ticket. But since I’ve made a new appointment, can’t cancel that one even if it’s just for a short time :D

From the festival, they probably cancelled the dance and firework too. After months, rain falls on Jakarta again. I’m hoping that the rains will happens more consistently now, and more rain in the afternoon instead of evening because evening rains means that noon is damn hot and moist.

There is a part of Windows Live called Live QnA. The principle is the same as some other sites, like Yahoo Answers for example. Users make questions, and the other users answers. After 4 days, the question is closed and everyone starts voting for best answers.

Kind of similar to one of the sub forum in an online forum I attend (nicknamed, the #56).

When I heard it had a revamp in Liveside, I visited the site again. Not really because it’s better, I don’t have time previously and this reminded me of the place.

It’s a fun place. The questions adds up real quick, but just read questions you’re interested and gave answers as you could. If you have no answers, reading other peoples’ answers is interesting also. There are new knowledge and humours as well.

A suggestion from me. Don’t think too much about wanting to get votes from others. Just post and get along with the flow. It’s a lot more fun that way. Votes and getting high rates are just bonus.

Also, try to remember them. I haven’t really succeed in doing this myself, but there could be a community forming among the regular participants there ^^

Got a friend’s birthday today. She’s a friend from the Japanese course I attend last year. But because I got informed early this week, in the work day, I started looking for the present today.

First, check to Kinokuniya book store in Plasa Indonesia. My subscribed Dragon Age magazine (2008-07 edition) finally arrived! I look on several candidates, but cancelled buying the fan, that one had short life span. But I get my joke present, a ring note, after all, she’s in third year of high school :D

After that, went to Grand Indonesia, checking on the newly opened book store. In my opinion, half are the luxurious feel they mentioned, but the other half is not that different from Matraman. Well, brighter white light, but the rest is not that different. The cafe is not opened completely yet before August 6th and Wi-Fi seems non-functional.

But I found my main present. There are other, but is beyond my budget. And on my way out, found the packaging.

Here’s a picture. After I checked again, I should’ve removed that white paper on the table or turn the bag about 180° so the darker colour would contrast the white base better. And I should’ve move the book so the reflection didn’t cover the text.

Personally, the main reason I choose the book is because I actually want it also ^^; That’s different from my usual reason for picking present, which is something that’s useful and me. But she often do public wall magazine at school, so it might help. The bag is also something practical. And the notes, to remind about the coming final test ^^;;

There are talk about suggestion by our version of congress here to remove value added tax (10%) from food & beverage products. In addition, more reduction of tax from financial transaction including gold bars and certificates. Another one is for foreign tourists. But the discussion will be started next month and not finalized yet.

But finalized or not, how the hell are they going to replace the lost income from that 10% ? Food & beverage is much of daily life too and it’s logically not a small sum. Then, for this year’s budget alone, thanks to the oil price, the situation is beyond expectation (beyond expectation as in: $#!T, we didn’t see that coming).

As end consumer, we like having tax abolished. But again, where from will they get replacement for those money? Upping the tax somewhere else?

---

By the way, US will have their general election on November right? We’ll have ours in April 2009. Campaign business will flourish again, especially for making campaign attributes. Then, there’s those show-of-power kind of events with huge mass (“the vote of many peoples can’t be wrong, right?” effect?).

Yes, the days when I’ll get banned by my parents from going to import book store because it’s close to HI (one of the main demonstration spot in Jakarta other than the parliament building and presidential palace). Then there are time when major streets are congested because of the sheer amount of mass gathered without thinking of others who don’t care about that candidate.

The campaign is like advertising IMO. Gave sweet promises you don’t need to fulfil later days. Thus, my favourite question to be given to the candidates should be “give us a practical and reasonable way about how we could make your life miserable if you couldn’t fulfil that promise?”

But since many peoples accepted the most likely false promises happily… probably those campaign engineers does see the right situation of their potential voters.
No matter how they sweet talked that peoples are mature enough to think for themselves, they still treat the majority of voters as easily bribed with those promises. Then ironically, proven right ^^;

A disclaimer though. I’m not that fond of political news, so this is just thoughts that I can’t present backing proofs of. Take it as you like.

What is the most troublesome feeling after feeling inspired ? The feeling of unoriginality. After reading something smart, sometimes I felt like I had my own thoughts to be communicated also. But after trying to lay it out in any media, come that feeling. “I think… this is just the same thing as what I just read, nothing original.” and ends up cancelling my intention to publish it.

Anyone had their story? Ever feel it? And how do you face it? Just publish it anyway, or just post a link like “news sites” that looks more like feed aggregator rather than a news site on it’s own?

It’s been a small question of mine. My phone, HP iPaq 512, came with English-Chinese language ROM, so Unicode font is available (named, Nina). Although I don’t have any input method, I could read the texts in web page and in notes I made through my computer, even a Contact using kanji character.

But in Windows Media Player, the texts doesn’t shows up. Almost all of my digital song collections is ID3 tagged with Japanese texts; the title, artist, album, etc. These shows up as jumbled symbols in the device. This has given a problem to me, because that means I had to convert my songs and then re-tag all the songs manually first instead of leaving it to WMP to transfer all to my memory card.

Last Tuesday night, I tried moving several songs into my memory card (the phone had only USB 1, time wasting) with Windows Media Player. Guess what, it works! The Japanese texts shows up pretty on the screen.

After revisiting the steps taken, I get to one weird point. Pocket Windows Media Player will read the Japanese texts correctly in WMA files, but not MP3.

There are feature in Windows Media Player’s Sync feature. This will convert files with high bit rates (e.g: you rip your collection to 320kbps MP3).

But not all problem is fixed yet. First, the convert only allows down sampling. For example, if you force to convert to maximum bit rate of 160 kbps, then all files same or lower (such as 128 kbps) will just get copied as it is. So I need to convert some files manually still.

Second problem. Recently, I download songs using FLAC (free lossless audio codec) and although I could listen to the songs with codec pack installed, WMP won’t convert FLAC to another format, instead it will just copy the large sized files right to the storage device. So, I convert those FLACs to MP3 first.

Still, I now could use the original texts, no need to re-tag everything by hand one by one :D

Enabling CJK font display. There’s a registry trick to enable CJK reading in your device. But standard disclaimer on playing with registry keys applies: if you don’t know what you’re doing, leave it.

I found the guide here. The important part is in the font linking keys: HKLM/Software/Microsoft/FontLink/SystemLink. That guide is for Korean font, for Japanese, the fonts are somewhere between MS Gothic, Mincho, or in Vista, Meiryo.

But if you had ROM that includes Chinese, probably it’s unneeded.

Summary. To show ID3 written in Japanese texts (in my case) in Pocket Windows Media Player, it seems like the file should be in WMA format. If you use MP3, Media Player can’t read the double byte characters as complex scripts. <== that short, so how come I wrote 8 paragraphs up there ?

Window Live for Windows Mobile Team (yes, long name, they admit it also) had just announced the availability of new Windows Live client. Anything new ? They don’t give any details of changes from previous version.

From previous post, seems like this is the first version released that’s free to download and install by yourself. Previously, Windows Live application is installed by default on Windows Mobile 6 devices.

Any compelling reason to install this one if you already have it installed? No! Don’t try because this version removed the Live Messenger application. I learned it the hard way and now thinking of re-flashing my phone some day, if I just don’t have a lot of software installed already.

In short, quoting a comment in LiveSide website, if you have it included in your device already, don’t install this one. Also from the comments, I guess the culprit of this is the telco in US that gave pressure to MS because giving free Messenger will hurt their extra cost services.

Aww… so the rest of the world can’t get products released US only (Mesh, anyone?) and yet, the rest of the world have to suffer because of the US market’s rule about MS don’t compete with partners?

I actually put my hope high that the IM client will be returned at next version together with Live Space client and probably cosmetic works (such as the Live Search for Mobile) as well as calendar sync. But reading the theory about competing with partners, I guess my hopes are crushed to pieces.

About the contacts sync, the behaviour is still difficult like last time I tried. There are option to merge same contact, so you don’t get two entries for every person. The notes said that contacts with same first and last name from Outlook and Live will get merged. But in reality, I had several contacts with same name (same person) and yet it didn’t get merged. Not to mention the synching process took long time and ends up failed.

Update by your’s truly. Reading the article, and relating the news to statement by HP that they will not make updated version of WM available, I guess my only choice is to buy new device when the new version of Live Mobile is rolled out. Well, I do plan on saving for WM 7 device, but hope they won’t cost that much.

Since my boss will take a leave for two days by family urgency, that means tomorrow it’s my turn to go to the monitoring meeting again (three times in a row already ^^; )

Anyway, planned the weekend. Got invitation for birthday party by a friend in the Japanese course I attend on Saturday. I went to her house to pick up the invitation, but she’s not home yet.

For Sunday, I guess I’ll go to the national Yosakoi event. That’s the bilateral cultural friendship event between Indonesia and Japan which has continued for 50 years by 2008. But most likely will be there alone though.

By the way, I took a turn to the shopping centre near my place and look around the promo. In Jakarta, there are shopping promo, like in Singapore and Malaysia which includes discounts to attract peoples from abroad. Of course it’s not yet the same level as the said two, but the department of tourism seems to be trying to achieve it.

And currently, there are food festival event too, which I don’t really catch much of the details yet. But on chain restaurants and cafe, it includes price promo and discounts, like free upsize and buy 1 get 1 promo at Starbucks until this Sunday.

Talking about Starbucks, they also had museum promo. On Thursday and Friday, you could ask the counter for free pass to museum in Jakarta.

The most important though is telling and giving incentive for peoples to come. In the Kota (old city area where there’s still buildings from the Dutch collonization era), there are many museums placed closed to each others.

There are city history museum, national bank museum, wayang museum, pottery museum. Then, there are maritime museum and an old cemetary as well as archive building and national history museum. The first four is close to each others, you could visit all on foot. The maritime museum is a bit more distanced. For the others, there are public transport with reasonable price also.
Personally, from all the museums, I like the town square, and the old cemetery (probably the oldest modern cemetery in the world).

Now, I did mentioned that the important thing is informing and giving incentive for peoples to come right? Well, all the museums (excluding the National museum) cost only Rp.2000, that’s probably even less than a quarter of USD. Most younger peoples don’t go there simply because they’re not interested at all.

Anyway, I feel more and more wanting to get a camera. Many things I noticed and feel want to take picture of today. When coming back from my friend’s place, I noticed there are an Tiki (local courier service company) close by. Then, when going to the ATM to pay my cell phone bill, the red sun looks really beautiful behind thin haze-like clouds. There’s a new clinic opened in our residential complex. And the growths in the sewer I mentioned some weeks ago starts to show yellow colours at the edge of the leaves; I wonder if this is by the change of season, or disease.

Got this when reading C.M.B. 5 at office, skipping my supposed job checking proofs. Anyway, although I like the canon pairing there between Tatsuki and Shinra, Mou seems like a cute couple too. So, got inspired in making this one :D

Once upon a time, there’s Nanase orphanage. The owner’s only daughter is responsible on taking care of the children there, her name is Tatsuki.

Among the children, there are two special kids. First is Sakaki Shinra, a pure and simple kid but with knowledge about all secret of nature. Some peoples called him the son of god. He’s brought to the house by the three wise men, leaving him the ring with initials, C.M.B. Shinra likes Tatsuki very much, often childishly said he likes Tatsuki and want to marry her. Of course, it’s taken lightly by Tatsuki.

The other one is Mou Sygirl, a girl who one day came there with a huge briefcase on her back and founded almost dead on the front door before she managed to push the bell. Most of the time, she just play pranks on Shinra and likes to trouble him like a demon queen she’s known everywhere else in the underground world. But actually, she likes Shinra, only without a good way to express it. Her briefcase, there’s rumours that it holds her house in 4th dimension and that she sleeps inside at night.

Anyway, that’s of course not the story. C.M.B. is story about Shinra, a boy that’s appointed as successor of the three rings. The rings are created by order of the Queen of England for three best researchers, originally from the British Museum. With the ring, they have virtually unlimited research time and funding, and also able to see every scientific research materials they needed. In an occassion, the authority represented by the ring could also requested the opening of bank safety deposit box to retrieve a Guttenberg Bible stolen to be sold in black market.

But the owner himself doesn’t use the ring, almost never. He had a museum with collections he discovered on journeys with his foster fathers (the previous “three wise men”) and his dream is just to have peoples coming and felt amazed by the wonders of the world they never realized before. In Tatsuki, the girl that somehow got really involved with him, Shinra’s fathers gave him the ring because they knew he wont use it.

Random post for this morning, finally I decided taking a snapshot on my SIM card. Until now, I had switched between two major operators, and had switched phone numbers four times (Mobile number portability is not implemented here yet). These two are from Indosat.

The blue one is the number I had back in college days, approx. 3 years ago. The one in the front is my current phone number, starting this May.

There are opinion that substance is more important than the packaging, besides, after we put the card in our phone, the package will just go to the trash bin, right?

But the difference in packaging are clear. The old packaging looks more luxurious. I like the flap design more than the new one that use jacket. Then, the inside case. New one had cheap looking clear plastic box, while the old one use metal case I could recycle into name card holder (±6~8 cards). But three years is a lot of time to change for the highly unhealthy competitive market.

Unlike in the US, the carriers doesn’t have contract system. There’s only two main type of product, pre-paid and post paid. You could switch anytime you want with procedure that’s mostly not any more than finishing your standing bill for the month. No penalty.

And to win those “swing voters”, there are price war campaigns between the operators. The move are complained by users though, because quality of service is heavily costed. But, unlike in more developed country, consumers doesn’t seem to have much power. Their complaints will fall to deaf ears of the carriers’ board of executives. (=_=)
If you could understand Indonesian language, I think in the Q1 and Q2 of this year there’s a lot of news related to concern about the price wars between carrier. There’s also another news about text messaging tarriff cartel, as well as monopoly issues (because two of the major carriers’ majority shareholders are company owned by Singapore’s Temasek holdings; IINM, the third major carrier’s owner is also in a way, controlled by that holding company).

The only phones tied to a carrier are low-end entry level phones, especially CDMA devices. Higher end phones and PDA phones are always sold in retails unlocked (which I suspect is why we only have jailbroken iPhone here).

I mentioned earlier that I’ll put up my idea about implementing technology, especially Windows Live in my daily life several days ago.

Personally, I consider myself tech enthusiast type, wanting to try implementing things. Borderline to impulsive consumerism and made me realize the function of money as the restraint chain for humanity from over-consuming this planet’s resource. ^^;

Situation: I work from Monday~Friday, 07.30~16.30. The workflow are mostly chaotic, we do things manually and adapt to situation right there. A standarized proccedure are not likely to work well with the workers work culture.
On weekend, my activity is going out with friends, or sometimes alone, looking for ideas.

My online activities are mostly browsing with no particular interest. Or most of the time, activities in online forums. Shifting the model to social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace is least of my interest. I do had an account, but eventually, I had more interaction through the older method.

When analyzing the case, actually there are two main hurdle in implementing. First is my own routinity and peoples around me which doesn’t make interaction using online services easy. Second is the services itself, which in my opinion, in many place is still a step short from being usable.

PC and the activities around it. I had four devices. The desktop PC in my home and my office; my notebook computer, and my phone (Windows Mobile smartphone).

I usually wrote my story of the day in Live Space or LiveJournal. The main motive is just to write it down, and sharing is not really a main concern in doing it :)
And I think I hasn’t effectively used Space’s social networking side, because I don’t have many contacts using Space. Only small fraction of my close contacts have online presence like online journal or social networking profile, and it’s scattered in various providers.

Lately, I also wrote in Twitter, but come to think of it, it’s actually easier to twit using my Messenger personal message text. I’ve just realized that when seeing the Digital Life clip at Microsoft UK. Of course, there’s no tracking what someone write.

Eventually the heart of my online community is always online forum. I started it in 2000, and after 8 years, I’m still at it. I don’t think this could be replaced by social networking and I like this media better than newer model of social sites.

Outside social, I recently moved my browser homepage to Live personalized page. From there, I put the feeds I followed most. Another tab is Live’s home to have an overview of my space. For the home, I used the en-us market’s layout because it has overview of calendar and shortcut to Live workspace. en-id (Indonesian) market’s page doesn’t even have the weather info.

Another new online tool I’m trying is Office Live Workspace. I’ve been using this to save some writing I made and keep a single copy to use in my desktop or my notebook when I’m outside home. The main charm is collaboration work on single file, but at the current stage, I only use it to remove the need of file synch routine.
Before this, I used USB flash disk and Sync Toy to do the job.
I could also use this to keep copy of my works from office and do it home without the hassle of flash disk also. Only the problem is, I’m too lazy to do those homeworks :P

Mobile activity. The phone works as my PDA, saving my contacts, schedules, tasks and notes.

But there are limitation. Windows Mobile Device Centre only want to sync with Outlook. From the Live Mobile suite, the only things that can be synchronized online are Contacts and mail. I can’t sync against Live Calendar.
Considering that I keep my phone with me all the time, I prefer to manage my appointments in Outlook. It’s cumbersome to manage two sepparated calendar at once.

But there are many requests for synchronize feature in the Calendar beta update announcement though, so I hope it will get implemented. If it does, I’ll start moving my PDA data up to the Live’s cloud, for a really good reason better than technology or convenience :)

When I’m away from my PC, I used my phone for text messaging, e-mail, instant messenger and browsing, more than talking (more on this next time). Because I don’t have e-mails that frequent, I set the synchronize schedule to every two hours as long as I’m awake.

Actually, e-mail and IM is a lot cheaper than using text messaging. In Indonesia, I think the text messaging could be 1500% more expensive. Depending on carrier, GPRS cost in the major carrier goes around Rp.0.1~10/kb. In comparison, text messaging cost Rp.150~350 / message. By yesterday’s closing, 1 USD = 9’137 IDR.
But, not many of my friends used mobile internet. This is cultural, and I tried to at least gave them ideas about using that GPRS that’s cheap enough for e-mails. Even if they don’t like Microsoft, there’s a lot of providers like Yahoo and Google.

Even at home, I sometimes used my phone for internet using the wi-fi network I set up. It’s a lot more compact than having to bring my notebook while in the kitchen or dining table or while watching TV. Works are still done in the bigger devices though.
The limitation of browsing using phone is, other than the keypad input device, the rendering by Pocket IE is still not so nice for unoptimized pages. So, until Microsoft Deepfish is out for public, I used Opera Mini.

Unfortunately, music is not so automatable. 90% of my song collection had their ID3 written in Japanese, which doesn’t show nice in Windows Mobile’s media player (although the ROM of my phone supports English and Chinese, unicode for most applications). So I had to manually convert the files and rename the tags before moving all to memory card.

Verdict. As I mentioned about hurdle. I’d like to use the services, but unfortunately, there’s still many issues, features cut short, before I can optimize the use in my life to the fullest.

[Note]: What’s after this is generalization of my experience and should not be accounted as picturing of the whole society.

Culturally, Indonesian are not really the most timid peoples in the world. This is a generalization though, and I won’t claim the same thing applies to business. But in casual activity, we have very flexible appointment time. By flexible, that means 1~2 hours late by some attendants are to be expected.

Also, it’s common for attendance to be cancelled in the last days or even hours. In my opinion, an example would be, you might plan all activity for the next week, but your parents could make a sudden family event and they have all veto right to cancel all your carefully planned schedule. Not to mention transportation for the younger peoples without their own vehicle.

The thing is, SPOF works here. No matter how time disciplined you are, or your closest person are, if one of the link is not, the whole plan fails. Depending on who messed up the plan, saying “no” is not always the best answer. There are politeness factor in the victim’s part, and the denial from admitting they’re wrong to do schedule without coordination by the people that caused the schedule to change.

This means, my arranging of schedule (mostly are going out with friends) is also prone to such sudden unexpected troubles. It’s as effective as planning schedule that tomorrow I shall study in my from 18.00~21.00.

Today, friday. I still had some health problem, which involves some light infection in my lips, that stingingly painful white crater-like formations which I don’t know the English nor Latin name of. And the usual side effect, I drink probably more than a dozen glasses of water, and go to toilet several times per hour to fulfil the nature law, “what goes in shall goes out”. Not really being productive at work am I ?

Since yesterday, my father went to Batam to look after some assets he had there with his friends.

The plan are, my brother planned attending Indonesian Idol live event and wont be back until night, so most likely he’ll be down until about 13.00 tomorrow. My mother asked that I don’t come back home late night in the weekend. Okay, all’s set.

Then, the reality today. I got invited for movie screening (a.k.a. free ticket) for… I think it’s The Dark Knight. Quick makeshift of the plan, not that I had tight schedule.

Afterward, another set of books came. It’s the book my boss bought in Japan for reviews. It should’ve arrived several days earlier, but the package got holded by the Customs. This usually means we have to gave statement that it’s not for trade purpose, and buy it out.

The watch is understandable actually. There are peoples here that buy items from abroad as “personal”, sometimes using connection as “gift” and yet it’s a commodity. But in the other hand, many believed that the arrest by our local Customs are either for public image, or the staffs need more money from the bails :P

List of the books coming, many is interesting, although I can’t mention it, either because of strategic reason, or simply because I don’t remember ^^; But many are just material for titles already published, because the publisher often send the materials late. But in this case, some are already sent by the publisher in Japan.

But I didn’t have the chance to read some of my favourites, such as the two manga by Katou Motohiro, and Yozakura Quartet in the subscribed Sirius manga. Kaibutsu Oujo is on another break I guess.

The reason is a call from my mother back home. Her stomach problem got worse again. It’s actually from yesterday, only worsen today. She suspect that it’s because she ate something wrong this morning. As a note, if I remember correctly from last examination, she got a gastric ulcer, which is added by the fact that her personality, IMO, is prone to stress.

So I guess the plan tomorrow is all cancelled and I’ll stay home. My brother is back home early though. He don’t have the money for entrance ticket ^^;

By the way, do you know that in the Indonesian version of that Idol show, all vote through text messages are charged premium (about 2300% regular text cost)? And it’s not one person one vote, you may nuke the server with 10k+ votes, all they care is, profits are flowing in, and you’re paying.

But hope I can join tonight for the guided tour for the new Windows Live community page.

Why I use Live Space ? And actually, the other Live products. As for diary, I had another one in LiveJournal also, which I attempt to be able to write same thing in different words from here. Try to avoid copy-paste cross-posting.

When browsing just now, I read a comment by Jamie in Brandon’s post, that his main reason to choose using Live Space is because he can use his Live ID.

Mine is… sillier and more unpractical. I’m stubborn in useless things. In this case, I want to try liking something many peoples seems preferring to hate, Microsoft. Not yet into devil’s advocate things though. But I enjoy reading more positive comments than the attacking (and somehow, lately, Apple fans ticks me more than Linux fans several years ago despite giving probably the same attacks, probably the ads’ reverse-effect).

Yes, browsing around the site of the Community Club members is fun. You might not have something to write about, can’t think of any interesting tips, or story. Looking at the posts featured could gave inspiration.

One I liked is the post by Chris, which tells about how he intergrates Windows Live to his daily activities. Reading it tempts me to try it myself also. How much could I utilize the technology available to become part of my life (as for short term target, regardless of how useful it is).

That’s an example of things I find to do, idea to write about. I guess, since I consider myself someone who’s still shy to write something and push it to public rather than waiting for someone to find it, trying these kind of things could become a stepping stone to start showing out myself? But eventually, original contents is needed.

---

PS: About the LJ account. That one I started because my girlfriend said opening Live Space is too slow on her internet connection. Although now she moved to Wordpress because she doesn’t feel comfortable writing in Indonesian among community that wrotes in English. Probably because LJ had stronger feel of community as a whole than WP that feels like just a hosted web log site. In any case, we’re both stubborn in our own ways ^^

The situation.

Online address book sounds like a great thing compared to localized version, saved in either address book applications (e.g: Windows Contacts, WAB, etc) or mail program (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc). To name the most obvious, ability to access the contact list everywhere internet is available. But with the advent of mobile devices, we could sync our local address book to our mobile device and have it everywhere also. :P

I think, even all free mail server had this online address book feature. But then, probably the same case as the ID system. Difficult in programming cross site authentication? Overhead in querying someone else’s database? Privacy concern? Reality check? Whichever, it doesn’t seem coming soon.

So, how about us the end user ? Imagine this use-case. You use Windows Mobile device, and that thing sync only with Outlook, so, you have to have your contacts in Outlook. Then, you have address book in each Live, Yahoo and Google’s network. You know what comes next by such disconnected data redudancy. Inconsistent data between each list.

Current solution I used.

Every several months, I do maintenance of my contact data. Delete those obsolete data, back up those I still need, then put it all into Outlook. Then, delete all in Live Contact, and import. The bad side it, I lost the Groups, and Live Messenger contact (added/not), plus I guess, annoying my contact with request. Another risk is that I deleted contacts that I missed during the back up stage.

Somehow, this sounds like a better solution.

There are not yet any application to sync between Outlook and Live Contacts, I guess. But there is a way to synchronize between Live Contacts and Windows Contacts. Found it through that Wikipedia article of Windows Contacts, an entry in Windows Experience Blog.

In Windows Live Messenger’s Option-> Security, uncheck the encrypt contact list option.

Then, you can manage your contact list using Windows Vista Contacts. And better, this works both way, so the update in Windows Vista Contacts will be synchronized to the internet server (or they call it “cloud”).

There is also the way to view Live Calendar through Windows Calendar explained in other post, basically, the “publish the calendar online as .ics and subscribe using Windows Calendar” trick. But I agree with the comments. They should implement a way to do allow two way synch. I prefer using desktop apps when I’m in my own PC.

[add]

Following the post in Liveside.net, seems like Live Calendar will be able to subscribe to public calendar too now.

Set back from my earlier plan, I depart at around 13.00 today. But the bus depart late, so we have to wait longer there, in metal sauna. Then, after transferring from 37 to 213 in Slipi, had a baby vomitting on board. Egh, luckily I’m quite distanced, but just looking made my stomach feels slightly sick.

The books hasn’t arrive at Kino yet, but there’s more of other magazines. There’s also a lot of discounted old magazines, some dated back to 2006.

Take a walk and found a boxes’ store in the basement level. The items looks cute ^-^
I personally liked the basket that looks nice with laundries more than pets. It gave me that impression of a usual weekend in a countryside home, which is definitely not in any place as hot nor hotter climate than tropic.

Other boxes are the gift box styles, although there’s also boxes for keeping stuffs. And they all had that made of recycled cardboards and papers visual style of material.

Then, after dinner, went for a walk in Grand Indonesia. Enjoyed the walk. More shops are opened, and there’s also a pre-opening sale by Gramedia book store. And, I’ll probably like the room decoration in that temporary space in fifth floor more than the store itself in 2^nd and 3^rd floor.

So, the decoration is really minimal, but not iMinimallist style. The wall and pillars are not painted, there’s even still the rough cement texture on it. Then, instead of the common by topic grouping of books as usually in Gramedia, the books are arranged in nicely spaced islands by publisher, just like in a book fair.

Then, walk in the European style walk and stop by in the cafe. But before that, I complaint that the toilet is too far, located in the New York style area and decorated like a subway car.

Had Ice Moccha. The regular size is not too bad, and it’s not too sweet either, still have trace of the chocolate’s bitterness. The seat might not be the best, not near the window to see dusk view from the window. But, I really enjoy it.

So, I starts typing a story –gladly, free wi-fi is included, so I can open the file saved in Office Live Workspace. Managed to do only a page, but I enjoyed the process, because I learned something. During writing, I got the inspiration of trying to give them alternate numerical form. Our world has the metric unit and imperial unit. I tried putting base-12 and base-8 in that world.

So there is actually groups who support that we should use base-12 numbers instead of base-10 in our daily life. And with this group, I put my belief that metric unit is better for our world that’s dominated by base-10 numbering. But, if the world would use base-12, I’ll probably prefer imperial unit.

Also, there’s article that mentioned, we could count base-12 using our fingers just like in base-10, and using only one hand. Each of our four fingers had three sections, so we could count base-12 using that. I tried, and it reminded me of the paranormal in Chinese ghost movies counting something with probably taoism fortunetelling method.

How many social presence is there in the wired already? There’s Live Space, Facebook, MySpace, Multiply, Friendster, and many others I never heard. Also community like LiveJournal, DeviantArt, and the vast numbers of online forums.

As much as I prefer using Live ID for most of my online activities, most of my relations here are using Yahoo. I’m not using Google’s despite being popular because of some baseless sentiment like why I don’t like bean tofu (no reason, but I can starts looking for justification if needed). My freedom of expression.

Yahoo is seemingly more popular here in Indonesia, and I also need to ask when the IT guy came again why Live Messenger is blocked in office while Yahoo Messenger is all OK (despite being slower than outside because our network sucks most of the time). For networking, many prefers Friendster, Multiply. this kind of forming groups of unconnected networks that are difficult to manage centrally. For Live alone, I still need something that could sync the contact in my office’s Outlook, and Live Contact seamlessly.

Yesterday, I thought, how great would it be for all the networks and database to be joined in one piece (and how much tears would be shed if the backup failed in case of disaster).

Yesterday, in office, thinking of it. How nice would it be, if just:

• The whole business become one. We had only one way to go. But the good side, we know we’re in the same network. They said it’s bad for innovation though.
• Move everyone to one service. But other than being monopoly, it sounds cruel to those other networks being left to die. And sounds even more impossible than the first option to happen.
• Gave interoperability. Let the users share their informations, or make a centralized database. But I shrugged this one. Privacy concern. And I don’t think it’ll work with the companies. See the ID in Live, Google, Yahoo. Everybody want to manage their own customer’s data and don’t want to let anyone use it. As an article about Facebook also, an edge in marketing information.

… summarized in a word, “Hopeless” ? ^^;

This one is for the monthly challenge in the Windows Live Community Clubhouse about favourite gadget.

Personally, in both the personalized homepage and this Live Space, I didn’t use much of custom gadgets. Let’s see… Photos, Lists, I don’t use much of the third party gadgets so far.

So, instead I tried to arrange my rule of thumbs, for Gadgets in Live, and also applicable to apps in Facebook.

• Gadget that’s useful, and useless. This is relative, but for me, mainly it’s utility type of gadgets that I use. Those useless for me are badges, statements (I support xxx, I’m with yyy, those kind).
• Gadget that will stay for good, and for novelty. Games are for me, novelty. I might put it on, play several time, then remove it. Those are not for permanent clutter of my space and make it difficult to load.
• Gadget that’s meant for me, and for my visitors. I’ll put those for myself in Personalized page, and those to share in Space.

On the last point. Feed could be on both depending on if you want to share. Then, for place where you sell thing, currency converter might be something to share. But for my practical case, I can’t find much gadgets that are “for visitors” yet, so far. Or at least, most looks like novelty that they (visitors) can go to specialized site for better information. Also, it wouldn’t feel proper to have them play games in my space.

So, my preference would be gadget to share something about myself, or from myself. Or something to connect to me. In this case, most of the gadgets from the Live team.

Also, I’m actually hoping, like users commenting on Simple Calendar for Spaces, we’d like a Gadget where we can connect it to probably an iCal, better if we can connect that to the Live Calendar also, and can manage it through Vista Calendar or Outlook for example. :D

Well, most likely we’ll cancel plan of date to Ancol. I’d probably go to Kinokuniya and check my subscribed magazines.

I know I shouldn’t complain since I, for one thing, can’t drive. And I prefer public transportation. In the other hand, having couple with a very restrictive family (of protective, and of using family property such as car) is really limiting the choice.

There’s a lot of place, when I tried going, I’d like to think how if we could go there together. And there are pretty places that’s for the night only.

街は昼(現実)で生きる, 街は夜(ゆめ)に生きる

それに時間もさあ. 時々心配なんだ. 本当はあたしも話事最初からそんなに多くないけど, 会う時, 彼女が本を読んだり, 仕事をしたり, ゲームをしてるなんて, ちょっと悲しいな -_-