Kokoro’s Den

Posted by admin at April 11th, 2009

Is there someone who is perfect for us? If you ask me the answer is yes, but I’d also say that there’s a catch. To find someone perfect and to keep a perfect relationship is two completely different stories. One can easily find someone (thought to be) perfect but can only keep a perfect relationship with true understanding of the basic law of perfection in the world of human relationships.

My definition of someone perfect would be someone we can reach occasionally yet we cannot have completely. Someone who can keep us craving so dearly at thoughtful distance, close enough to remind us that he/she is there but far enough to keep you taking that someone for granted.

People can easily (well, relatively) meet someone and then say that he/she is perfect and that he/she might be the one. Then (if they’re lucky) they’ll have a relationship until the day they’d say that they’re wrong, do it over and over again with new people and end up saying: nobody’s perfect. I think they’re just looking from the wrong angle.

The one thing that will ruins anything perfect is ownership. Meet someone who you think is perfect and you’ll fall in love and try to put a shackle on that one person. Guess what buddy? Big mistake! Mankind is creature designed to take everything they own for granted. Once you own someone and start knowing everything about that someone; worst emotion, disgusting habits, nasty thoughts, your brain will start playing “what the hell I was thinking!” while at the same time planning and initiating relationship breaking sequence.

So the simple answer to the simple question “is there someone who is perfect?” is yes. The catch is don’t own that someone for you will most definitely end up spoiling the perfection. Keep your distance and control your possessive nature, that someone will always be perfect: guaranteed.

Posted by admin at June 29th, 2008

These are my favorite free softwares, mostly Open Source some are just Free. I use them to replace illegal software installed on my machine. Here in my country software piracy is something very common, so common that most people doesn’t even realize that installing a copy of Windows XP and Microsoft Office without paying is illegal.

I’m most definitely ashamed to be one of them, but when almost everybody around you use illegal software, it became standard that whether you like it or not you cannot work without installing the same set of software. How about buying? To our economic level, that’s just very unlikely to happen. So, all we can do is try to use free and open source software. Anyway, here’s the list.

Inkscape (www.inkscape.org)

It’s an OpenSource vector drawing program, which I have been waiting for like centuries, currently in version 0.46 and I found it quite usable and capable of replacing Corel Draw (at least for my needs).

PhotoScape (www.photoscape.org)

This is a photo management and light editing software, currently replace my ACDSee quite nicely. But it’s not very usable on small screen, my wife tried it on her 7″ Asus EEE (800×480 resolution) and the user interface pretty much ruined.

Gimp (www.gimp.org)

A (relatively) heavyweight photo editing software. I tried to replace Photoshop with this software, but missing the image slicing feature despite the availability of some similar plug-ins but none of them is quite as good as Photoshop’s slice feature.

OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org)

Probably the most mature open source Office Suite application and to many opinion mature enough to replace Microsoft Office.

SharpDevelop (www.sharpdevelop.com)

This one is my baby, the 2.x version is a great replacement for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The version 3.0 is coming and now in beta, support .NET Framework 3.5 and should be able to serve as replacement for Micosoft Visual Studio 2008. The Workflow Visual Editor Add-In is even available already at this moment. I frequently use it for my side projects.

AVG 8.0 Free Edition (free.grisoft.com)

I think Grisoft is one of the best company ever for giving away this software for free! This antivirus has been my favourite for years, thank you Grisoft

That’s all for now.

Posted by admin at June 28th, 2008

Now I know why I like Dan Brown’s books so much especially the first one I read, “Digital Fortress”. I thought it was just for his high-quality writing skill and obviously-deep research he put as foundation for every of his work, but I just found out that there’s more than that. Few days ago I started reading “Deception Point” and got startled while reading these lines:

The woman was attractive, in her mid-thirties, wearing gray, pleated flannel pants, conservative flats, and an ivory Laura Ashley blouse. Her posture was straight—chin raised ever so slightly—not arrogant, just strong. The woman’s hair was light brown and fashioned in Washington’s most popular style—the “anchor-woman”—a lush feathering, curled under at the shoulders… long enough to be sexy, but short enough to remind you she was probably smarter than you.

When I was living in Bandung (a city in Indonesia, known for the beautiful girls), I had a favorite morning-scene that always somehow manage to brighten my day, a tall and beautiful girl walking to work on her long legs. My friend asked me why I like the girl so much (other the fact that she’s really pretty) and my comment on the girl’s style was pretty much like those lines from Deception Point (except the mid-thirties part, I’d prefer mid-twenties).

Dan Brown, you rock!

Posted by admin at June 26th, 2008

What those geeks at Microsoft came up with is actually pretty cool. CardSpace, the idea of having digital identity cards so we don’t have to try to recall login information for every emails, website membership, and God knows what more.

But the problem for new technology standards remains the same, to expect every websites (or at east, major websites) to implement this technology is simply too much. It’s a lot like looking at an adult mag, they’re there seducing us but simply untouchable.

For the time being we should keep our account information somewhere (not on stickies, that’d be dumb). I found Passpack (well google did), this website is quite awesome Online Password Manager with all their promises especially the part where they said that they can’t see our passwords even if they want to.

It is said that they use AES-256 Encryption (what the hell?! I’ll dig it later, at least it sounded assuring), a U.S. government approved algorithm. Our information is “packed” with a Packing Key and only us holding the key (not even Passpack holds them). Even after we logged in, the information within our account is still packed and requires us to enter the Packing Key to unpack the information for displaying. So I guess the idea is that Passpack only store our Login information and packed (locked) information and let us hold the key. It’s like saving a locked briefcase in a deposit box, the service provider might own the master key, but not the briefcase key.

Nice concept as it is, there are two tiny winy problems come with the concept. One, how the hell can we sure that when we enter the Packing Key they won’t copy and store it as that would be very easy to do. Two, we have to create a very secure login and passkey (that means three elements: username, password, and packing key), and “very secure” always means long, complex, hard to guess, and hard to remember. Because if this information leaked somehow, pretty damn sure it would be disaster.

So, if you are to use this service, I recommend creating strong login information and Packing Key (Passpack always display password strength indicator and minimum strength recommendation). Then, store your login information collection and “forget” about them. That means you’re not suppose to try too hard to remember the login information collection that’s already been stored, but instead concentrate only on remembering the (supposedly long and hard to remember) Passpack login information and Packing Key. Pssword generator is even provided for they who really have faith and believe in the concept that passwords shouldn’t be remembered.

Last and of course least, I understand if you want to go back to those stickies.

Posted by admin at June 25th, 2008

Few days ago I met this chick programmer in front of the water dispenser at my office when she’s filling her 1.5 liters water bottle. She’s one of the juniors, young as she was, she has beautiful skin, fresh, and somehow looked “wet” (and umm.. hot :p). I started a conversation while she was filling her bottle, “You drink that much water during work hour?”, she replied, “No, I drink twice as much” (FYI, the conversation did not end there). That make sense, she’s a tiny girl and she drink 3 liters of water only during work hour. I’m inspired.

I think she’s a really good examples on how IT workers should be taking good care of themselves. IT workers spend a considerable amount of time in air conditioned room, staring at monitor(s), and beat their brain up all day long. Water would keep kidneys healthy (this is actually very important, kidney damages are mostly irreversible), keep our face looked fresh (negate the effect of intimate relation with monitors), and a nice bath of fluid is actually really crucial to promote brain power and responsiveness (now I started to sound like my doctor).

Air conditioner I think is what makes things worse, it’s like double punch to our health. Yes, it makes room more comfortable especially in this tropical island I’m living in, but at the same time it accelerates dehydration while keeping our body from telling our brain that we need water. Air conditioner makes the air cool, and we don’t get thirsty that much when we’re cooled.

As soon as I saw the (wet and hot) girl, I started to push myself to consume plain water as much and as often as I could. First day result, I feel fresh and energetic, looked at the mirror and I think I looked a bit fresher when I drink whole bunch of water, but this was (most) probably just my imagination. Second day, still not sure it was real, I continued. Third day, yes.. I was assured that those effects are real (along with humiliating frequency of going to the bathroom).

So I will continue drink lots of water during work hours, and if you’re an IT worker and haven’t tried it before, I recommend you to adopt this “keep wet and hot technique”.

Posted by admin at June 25th, 2008

Scene : At Work

They told me to move to another building, since I’m in idle-state and (endlessly) waiting for the new project to start, so I moved. This is a building where the junior staffs, fresh from the training, are placed and endure a simulation project. In short, I’m lurking with the youngsters, where I’m about to realize that I’m indeed growing old mature. (more…)