Sindharta Tanuwijaya’s blog

Oh yeah, that is just what you think, the breast of women. Facebook, which is a social community site, just like Friendster or VOX is deleting and banning users who have posted pictures containing breasts. This is normal if they are used for pornographic purposes, but what if they are used to show breast-feeding ?

I like this quote, taken from TechCrunch:

“Where does the feeding stop and the boob begin?? A peek of nipple?” Where indeed.

News of the Post (same as the above link):
Breast Isn’t Best On Facebook

Typhoon and VOX, pretty intriguing title, huh ? In fact they have no relations, beside the fact that a typhoon is coming to Japan, and I just found a new community site called VOX.

I took this picture below from Asahi, and I guess you can pretty much guess what it is. Yeap, it is a typhoon and its forecast path, currently very near to my place, and in fact, one of my umbrellas has become a victim, a blow of wind, and then whooz, in two seconds, it is broken.

Okay, talking about this new community site I just found: VOX. It's very cool, if not the best compared to the others. You know a company called "Six Apart" ? It's a company who created Movable Type and this year, it founded VOX.

I compared this new community to Friendster, which is my primary community site now, Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, etc, and it is simply better in my opinion. My biggest reason is that you can easily import your stuff from anywhere, like youtube, flickr, amazon, etc in various formats: photos, videos, audios, etc. So yeap, if you are talking about WEB 2.0, this is the community for it.
I have already made my account there, so if you happen to join it, you can add me.

Oh yeah, by the way, I haven't posted the photos that I took while I went to Komiket and Hobby Show two weeks ago, but you can check some photos that my friend has uploaded on his website.
Otaku alert though.:)

News of the Post:
Flights, trains disrupted as typhoon approaches

Okay, I was about to write my second post about "Seven Habits", and I felt that recently I have posted about a lot of several subjects, namely: my own personal life, a little bit science fiction stuff, self development, etc. Since the subjects are different (a lot) and in order to create a community about it, I thought that perhaps I should make a new blog for self-development, so here it is. Check it out !

News of the Post:
Google Earth Flight Simulator

Have you ever heard of Second Life ? It's a new community system which works similar to MMORPG (online games), but of course you don't have enemies or bosses to defeat.
Instead you face an environment, composed of islands, which are rented and built by other parties or persons. A lot of big companies have participated in building the content for the purpose of advertisement, for example IBM, Coca-Cola, etc. Recently, there have been rumors about it declining, mainly because although the number of companies inside the virtual world is relatively high, the number of players who regularly visit it is extremely low.

However, today, I just found out that "Virtual Tokyo" being built there (check the link below). Wow, talking about "Matrix" the movie. Imagine that you have a model of Tokyo, the level of detail of which is incredibly high, so that you can explore every corners of Tokyo just like you explore the real city itself. And then, imagine that a new type of computer has been developed, which works just like a game where you enter a capsule and see 3D game environment around you, for example: a new Gundam arcade game : Gundam: The Bonds of Battlefield(起動戦士ガンダム 戦場の絆). PUFF! You are inside the MATRIX !

True, there are still many things that have to be done before reaching that kind of technology. The power of rendering and the level of detail, plus physics must be simulated very very well so that we can't differentiate between simulation and real life, plus other factors like the hardware to enter the virtual world, etc. However, if you see the graphics of PS3 games now, you'll be surprised to see that the distance between virtual and real is not that far anymore in case of rendering, although they still have to work more on the physics part.

At the end though, I am not really sure that for example, my experience in going to "Virtual London" would be the same as that of going to the real city. Then again, what is considered to be "real" would one day become a philosophical question. By the way, how do you reproduce inside that Matrix movie again ?

Quote of the Post:
Leadership is doing right things. Management is doing things right

News of the Post:
Virtual Tokyo

There were quite a few events this month. Two weeks ago on August 4th, we had a farewell party for some people who would leave Japan: three French, two Japanese, and one Swedish. Some of them are going back because they will graduate soon and some of them are going to study abroad.

In fact, it had been quite a long time since last time all of us got a chance to have a party like this. Plus, there were two special guests, who are currently working in Japan, and whom I thought couldn't make it to the party before, well at least before they noticed me (I was the organizer). They were our resident assistants (like "guides"), and I am sure that many of us are greatly indebted to them.

The food was GOOD ! It had been such a long time that I hadn't eaten sashimi, with wasabi of course ! Too bad though, there was quite a lot of food left, simply because there was just too much food :). However, I have to say that I am sorry for one person, because he is a Muslim and some of the food contained pork.

I think two of them have left by now. Let's hope that they have a good future ahead of them and that we can meet again. Now that I think about it, "farewell" is totally a different story when you come from different countries. True, we have Internet now and we can still contact each other easily, but somehow, direct conversation/meeting is still the best, don't you think ?

And then on August 5th, I had a lab camp, I had a lab camp in Niigata prefecture, Japan. It is a yearly event where all members of my lab present their work and research, but in addition to that, we are also given free time to do anything we want on the second day.

One of my friends, who went there by car and was kind enough to let other members (including me) go with him, was thinking of going around a little bit. Then, bringing a map of the surrounding area, he guided us to some good spots. The first place we went was a sunflower garden. Checkout the pics below !

After that, we went to a water fountain. We didn't take many photos there, though. After water fountain, we got lost for a while :). The roads were strange (narrow), and after struggling for a bit, we decided to go back because our free time was already up. Fortunately, we could still follow our trace back.

At night, we had a small party among members (students only). It was a good chance to know each member because we rarely meet each other, especially new students who just entered our lab. I think we talked until around 2 am in the morning, maybe more. Oh yeah, I learned how to play shogi for the first time there. I have to admit that it is quite challenging, maybe more challenging than western chess because you can put the pieces that you have taken on any empty cells on the board.

On the last day, a little incident happened. One of the members suddenly fell ill and had to go to a hospital in the morning. I don't know what caused it but I hope he is okay. Usually we have a lunch together before going home, but at that time, my Professor went to the hospital to visit the sick guy, so he isn't in the picture below.

Then, a week ago, my Indonesian friend who is working in Australia came to visit Japan and we went to Hobby Festival and Comic Festival two days consecutively 3 days ago ! Well, I'll save the story and pics for the next post :)

In case you are wondering about my hard disk, nope, it is still singing :(

Quote of the Post:
Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

News of the Post:
China Airlines Accident

Duh, bad day, and an interesting experience ! Do you know that a harddisk can produce music ? Well, after checking some forums, I noticed that some of the companies (Seagates) are using "music" as error signals now.

Anyway, my Maxtor harddisk just went down today and started playing "musical tones". I found this thread about the same problem, that goes back to Sept 2001 but is still running until July 2007 ! Maybe I'll post something there and let them know my experience.

I tried almost all the methods written there, shaking, twisting, tapping, knocking with hammer, etc, but nope, it didn't work. Somehow, I felt it was funny and I laughed at myself :). I also felt nostalgic because it reminded me of my work around 4 years ago in Indonesia,
And no, I don't want to open it and I don't think I will use data retrieval service for it.

I guess I'll just give it another try tomorrow, and if it doesn't work, maybe it sounds stupid but I am going to try the last method mentioned in the forum, that I haven't tried yet: putting the hard disk in my freezer. Let's just hope it works.

Quote
"You never miss your data until you lost it"

News of the Post:

You want to be named "@" ???

I have been longing to read this book called "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" since I was studying in my university in Indonesia. Although my major was Computer Science, there was one course related to economics. My professor in that course told us about the book, although I think it's a self-improvement book, not economic. I am not really sure why or to what particular subject I was interested, but I just kept the book's title in my mind, and intended to read it someday. Now that I mention it, it took 6 years for my intention to realize, but hey, it did realize.

Actually, I have only just finished reading about the first habit, called "proactivity", but I am sure that this book will greatly change my life positively in the future. In fact, I already experienced some of it.

Recently, I have been thinking about why some of us have everything that they ever wanted, but still feel not enough, and on the other hand, why some people are still happy although they can't even fulfill their basic needs. In Buddhism, there is a teaching that if you can let go of your ego, you will be able to find happiness. Perhaps that is true, but the idea of letting go of my physical needs (and be happy) is just a little bit too radical for me to apply, although I think that it makes sense.

To quote from the book: proactivity means more than just taking initiative. It stresses on responsibility (response-ability), our ability to response, and on being active instead on passive. This means that we have an ability to choose our response to certain events, instead of being passive and reactive to those events. In the above example, it is to say that the successful people have chosen to let themselves feel not enough, let themselves being chased by their own ego, and to say that the poor people have chosen to be happy.

It is much easier for us to blame our environment, other people (like boss's arrogance) for what happened to us. But why is it difficult for us to realize, although perhaps those are facts (some people might argue that they are not facts), there is also another fact that we chose to let those things bug us. Probably, some of you have advised your friend who had been just dumped by his boy/girlfriend before, "don't let it bug you", "you'll find someone better next time", etc. This might sound similar to "positive thinking". Yes, positive thinking is important, but sometimes they are not in accordance with reality. "Proactivity", instead, tells you to analyze what you can do in your current situation, to tell you to choose your response and to be responsible to what you have chosen, being active instead of passive. If your boss is arrogant, you can analyze what makes him arrogant, is it better for you to leave your current company, or stay and be patient, or try to complement for your boss's weakness. The choice is really up to you, and nobody can force you unless they got your permission.

To relate to recent commemoration about nuclear victims in Japan, they got two choices (maybe more) 62 years ago, to languish in their defeat and pitiful lives, or to accept the fact that they have lost, and to build what they can build. I personally think that it is really admirable, how after losing a war, being the only country in the world that has ever tasted nuclear warheads, and having almost no natural resources, they could climb the steps to be one of the economically powerful countries in the world.

I know that this whole idea sounds absurd for some, but for me, there was an "AHA!" inside my head. I could accept the idea that I "chose" not to let go of my physical needs (Buddhism), the idea that I "chose" to write this long post, etc. And in fact, I see things which are happening around me differently now. I realized that I can "choose", and if I do can't choose, to quote from the book, it means that I choose myself to be controlled by that certain event.

I really recommend this book to anyone, all people ! There are far more examples, more detailed explanations of what I just described, and definitely more concepts. After all, I still have other 6 habits to read, and this is just a blog, compared to a fully structured book. There is also another book called "The Eight Habit" by the same author, Stephen R. Covey, but that will be after I read this current book.

Quote of the Post:
"Being is seeing"

News of the Post:

Southeast Asia's technological Expo In jakarta

Last week on July 22, we went to Kawasaki-Daishi temple to go to a Japanese Fuu-rin festival. Actually, my wife heard about the festival first from her Japanese teacher and then she asked me to go there with her. Kawasaki-Daishi, which is around 10 minutes by bus from Kawasaki, reminds me of Denpasar a lot. Denpasar is the biggest city in Bali, in case you don't know, but of course, you can't see that many kanjis in Bali.

I first time went to Kawasaki on my way to DisneySea, so I didn't get a chance to look around, but that time, I realized that it is actually quite big. You can compare it to Yokohama, or maybe Tokyo, but the atmosphere is a lot different. We went there again today, in fact, and this time we explored a little :)

Anyway, at that time, I wore jinbei and my wife wore her yukata. It doesn't quite match, but I guess it will do :).

One of the statues inside the temple. Many people prayed in front of it, and in fact I also did myself after taking this picture. I don't really know about the priest, but I guess he must be one of the priests that journeyed to spread the religion. I am not sure whether it is Buddhism though.

So what's a Japanese fuu-rin festival without fuu-rins ? Fuu-rins are wind bells, and I got myself a photo taken with a really cute one ! There were also some astonishingly expensive fuu-rins, like 300.000 yen, because they were made of gold ! Now that I mention it, I don't think the security there was tight. I guess that is Japan for you: SAFE ! I like this certain comment that I read sometime ago: "Where else in the world can you be drunk and sleep in the street and then find yourself and your clothes (incl. wallet) intact within the next day?"

The other fuu-rins were also cool and cute, and at the same time a little bit expensive for such a small thing. Anyway, I was expecting the festival to have booths for playing traditional games though, which often appears in Japanese movies and games, but there weren't any of them there, too bad.

There were also some people performing a traditional Japanese dance called Bon-Odori. I took a movie of it and uploaded it to youtube, my first "youtube movie". Check it out !

My "daruma", which I bought in the festival. It is said that after you make an eye for it, it will grant your wishes. Then, if your wish is granted, you should draw the other eye. Yes, at first, it didn't have any eye, and I drew the eye myself. Well, let's see if I will draw the other eye sometime soon :)

Quote of The Post:
Where there is love there is life

News of The Post:
Japan's Abe unbowed by defeat

I watched Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix today in the morning. I think that it's the best Harry Potter movie until now, and I am even thinking of starting to read Harry Potter books, one thing that didn't occur to me before, perhaps because of their thickness :)

My wife told me that there were a lot of parts "summarized" or "changed" compared to the original book, and some parts just went by without any explanation at all. But I really enjoyed the film, and didn't remember those particular issues before she pointed them.

At the same time, around when the movie just started, we felt an earthquake a little bit. It made us worried a little while, but we soon began to forget it. Anyway, we checked the news after, and we found out that an earthquake (Japanese scale:6) had just occurred in Niigata Prefecture. If I remember correctly, there was also a big earthquake there two years ago. I hope things would recover quickly.

Oh yeah, I changed my recommended anime section and put Harry Potter's latest movie there. Last time, I put a Japanese anime called "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion" or "コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュ" (Kōdo Giasu: Hangyaku no Rurūshu) in Japanese. It is a very good (one of the best) anime, a joint production by Sunrise and Clamp. Next time, I'll give a brief summary and comments about it.

Quote of the Post:
"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

News of the Post:
M6.8 quake jolts Niigata