eric.setiawan.weblog

It’s been 4 months since the first time I blog. It was May 2005 and I was a fool. I think I still is.

There was Friendster. It supposed to be connecting friends and it did. I find my long lost friends here. Great. If my mind don’t fail me, this is where I made my first blog. It was nice and weird at the same time and I decided to delete that blog. It’s true.

There was Yahoo! 360. I was invited and for the first time I really do some writings here. At first I still use Bahasa Indonesia. It’s fun and I mostly wrote jokes. I enjoy it too. Everytime I read these posts I can’t stop smiling :) How can I wrote such things?

There was Blogger and not a single clue. At that time, I feel Blogger is a big step for me into the big big blogosphere. And for the first time I have to get face to face with HTML and CSS codes. Otherwise I can’t change any of my blog’s layout. No problem. In the end of this era, I can do some re-coding, get familiar with web standards, how to blog, etc. But still have no clue.

There was Blogsome. It was good. And it use Wordpress. Nice. I learn what I believe to be an intermediate class of blogging service. I can customize some of the parts but no more. This time I can get to design my own layout. Do you like it? I do. But the more I knew the more I need. I want more which Blogsome cannot give. This blog may live shortly but undoubtly memorable. Goodbye Blogsome.

There is Wordpress.com. Full of dynamics. It uses WordpressMU under Wordpress 1.6 alpha. In term of customizability, this one is certainly the worst. I can’t change virtually anything. I just post and post and post all those entries with default theme. But I don’t whine since it gave me something more. Progress and development. I can get to see firsthand of what the WP dev team doing. I do send some feedbacks to them. And I can get a chance to be listed on number 6 on Top Wordpress.com blogs today. Great. There’s some achievements I made here, some new friends and of course recognition from other bloggers. This is still going on with some deep thoughts in my mind.

There is ericsetiawan.com. The supposed to be my last home. My weblog. It still uses Wordpress, version 1.5.2 this time, and no plan to switch to other blog engine. You do yours and I’ll do mine. I get everything I dreamed of and more here. In fact, I was caught unprepared. I don’t understand PHP and now I have to face it. So now I’m using a K2 basic template, unchanged. I remembered Budi once said that now I’m turning into more of a blogger than a web designer or developer. For your information, I’m an architect. I want to learn more coding. HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, XML and all the stuffs. But living a life one step at a time, those stuffs are a couple of steps ahead. This is where I am now.

You know where this is going. I’m closing this weblog down. Again I use the same date, 17th. I know today is September 22nd. But I want to use 17 anyway. And by editing the time stamp, I can do so. It’ like I can travel back in time. I still keep the archives here though. I just don’t post here anymore. So I really really hope that all of you my friends and readers to start visiting my new weblog. Preferablly the ericsetiawan.com one. And you might want to change my RSS feed on your agregator too. I’ve been changing blog so often but I hope you don’t get bored of me. So please stay with me. Change the course, Mr. Zulu. We’re heading for a new destination.

So finally I get THE wordpress.com account. Not from Matt though LOL. I got it from someone else. My first impression of wordpress.com and its WPMU/WP 1.6 alpha version is that it still need lots of improvement but I see the potential. There are some changes. The CMS seems more user-friendly (so WP is for everybody not just for the tech guy). And I see that Donncha already implement some of what Matt said as the AJAXy thing. That is AJAX the asynchronous javascript and XML, not the AJAX Amsterdam. Overall, I can’t wait to try it firsthand. You all can visit my wordpress.com blog through the top navbar or simply put http://eric.wordpress.com on your browser. Don’t expect much since I can’t tweak the HTML and CSS code. Oh, and don’t you worry, I won’t leave this blog here. I will still post here. There’s some dilemma of course. But let me handle that. Just stay with me and I’ll keep writing. Promise?

So, can I self-proclaiming that I’m the first Eric ever to use wordpress.com? LOL.

Budi gave me this link which apparently is some kind of baton/tag. But I didn’t think of it as an analysis. How can they analysis my past life? My guess is that they combine astrological sign with Chinese or other. Whatever, let’s enjoy this.

I don’t know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Iran around the year 850. Your profession was that of a map maker, astrologer, astronomer.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life: Artistic personality, always transforming the ugly into the beautiful, gray into bright colors. You would find an opportunity of creative self-expression in any situation.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation: Your main lesson is to develop magnanimity and a feeling of brotherhood. Try to become less adhered to material property and learn to take only as much, as you can give back.

Do you remember now?

Okay, I admit that I love the sky, so that somehow has something to do with the “astologer, astronomer” thing. And I’m an architect who love comics, movie, design and many other art form. That should fit with the artistic personality, ugly-beautiful, gray to bright and so on. The lesson itself is nice. So I have to take only as much as I can give back. I should keep that in my mind. But one thing cross my mind, in a funny way, am I that old? Born in the year 850, my soul must be 1155 years old. Wow, with that age, shouldn’t I get wiser by now? Btw, I never been to Iran before and don’t plan to. Oh, and I was a female. What else could beat that? And no, I don’t remember.

Life doesn’t always have to be about running or reaching your goal. Sometimes you just need to stand there for a while, take a few step back and use that moment to really, and I mean really, re-thinking your journey in life. After all, like Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards”. So this is about me, trying to connecting my dots in life, somehow. Not that I live a depressed life or desperate or else. In fact, the way all things around me evolve lately are just fine but they were so fast it makes me a bit confused. You live your life just once and you can’t take two roads with one step at one time. You have to choose. Not an easy task but I, like everybody else, should do so. That’s what our journey is about, making choices with our conscience to reach the end. Our end and His end. It seems some of my dots are starting to show up but still need lots of adjustment work, time, and oh.. I could always use some extra time to sleep. May be the real problem is that I have (and want) to do so many things but with limited time to do it. So it’s all back to personal time management. I guess Just Relax is not so relaxed anymore LOL. See, this introspection works out just fine, even on a blog post. Now I will stop my rants and ramblings. Enjoy your life. Meanwhile I have a life to maintain here.

Oh, Matt a.k.a Photomatt is giving away invitation to WordPress.com. If you want it, you have to write a good comment or post about what will you do if you have it. Well? Should I do it? Why not? What will I do? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just thinking that since this wp.com thing is still new, maybe I can get myself a first-name domain. That is eric.wordpress.com. With so many Erics in this world, to have a domain like that would be cool, isn’t it? That’s one very unimportant and unnecessary reasons LOL. Anyway, this is a great way to distribute an invitation. And in some ways, this is also a way to promote WordPress further. Besides, for a blog engine, what better way to advertise than to use the blogger-buzz. Keep on blogging, guys. Me too. I’ll just wait for the invitation to shows up on my e-mail box. Whenever it may be.

• Wearing Firefox

Read Joi Ito’s story when he was wearing Firefox shirt. What’s the reaction of the people he meet on Detroit. A fun story to read :)

• Google Talk

So, after seeing the success of Yahoo!Messenger, I guess the Google guys were eager to get their feet on the side of the field. The look and design are good with minimalist touch of Google. They have the call feature which I thought will be a cool addition. And for Gmail users, you’ll love it since it was using Gmail account and embeded with Gmail notifiew. But in the chatting-area, they seems not to offer much. Unlike YM, GTalk doesn’t offer conference chat which is quite useful for me. And for the fun lover, you won’t see cute emoticons here :) Correct me if I’m wrong, or maybe I should do some more exploring here since I just only install it a couple of hours ago.

• Game-inspired cookies

For cookies lovers who also just happen to be a game lovers. Follow the links above and you’ll get to see some inspiring photos. Maybe you want to make some yourself? Don’t forget to share some with me.

Hey, that’s one big change you got there, guys. I’ve been scouring for its content on the oldALA for some time, which I just found out it was version 3.0 and also meaning that they have had 2 other version before that. With the big names in Web Standards teaming up (Meyer and Zeldman), I am expecting to see something extraordinary. Am I asking too much? Well, the designing job went to Jason Santa Maria and I think it’s quite good. It got its clean and minimalist look. But forgive me, I can’t stop but comparing this new ALA with Stylegala. Frankly speaking, I like Stylegala better. Maybe that’s because I got used to 3.0 version and think of it as THE ALA style. Or maybe because of their new concept as Zeldman said “the design has a classic, almost scholarly feeling, although there is a hint of teasing play behind elements like the laurel wreath”. So, I guess it was only my subjective opinion. CSSing went to Eric Meyer (who else?) who I still see as (one of) the CSS master. I, as some of the commenters on Meyer’s article, was asking about the flexibility of the design. Try using 800x600 resolution and you’ll get yourself a nice sideway scroll. I’m assuming that there still no 360 degree scrolling mouse on sale except the Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The good thing is I don’t have to mentioned that they’re HTML and CSS valid, do I? Oh, and have I mentioned that this new ALA using Ruby on Rails for their publishing system? Cool. And I can’t wait to see these

Each issue will have its own color scheme. Imagine: Red and green for Christmas; blue underlined links for when Jakob Nielsen finally writes for us.

So can I start expecting those whites to turn into reds and greens or else?

There are only a few blog theme designer that I admire and one of them is Michael Heilemann. Some of you might have noticed that my blog here once use the Kubrick theme. And I have to admit it, the reconstruction of the layout were based on Kubrick. So far I’ve been hearing about K2 theme. I’ve seen it on alpha testing on Michael’s and Barry’s blog and finally K2 beta one is released. Great. Another theme for WordPress are available. If you like it, download it. If you don’t I don’t think you’re going to read my post this far LOL. Good job, Michael.

I tried to leave a comment on my friend’s blog. Nothing extraordinary except that I got this message afterward and I guess this mean my comment didn’t get through at all.

Sorry, you’ve been prevented from commenting on this blog.

Either your comment content was found to contain spam, or
your IP address (or a subnet of your IP address) has spammed this blog before.

If you think you got this page in error, your entered name might be too short.

You can also complain to wp.spaminator@gmail.com. View source to see why you got blocked.

Strike count: 5

To my friend, if you read this, it’s okay. Really. I find it quite amusing instead. Although I am a bit worried if my IP address somehow has “spammed this blog” before. I ruled out the posibility of entering my name too short since I always use that name on every comment I wrote before. Or is it possible that I wrote something spammy? I never thought of myself as a spammer before. I just don’t want to end up on Priyadi’s list of spammer on his Disinfo Busting category. I am curious though. Do I even have the look to be one?

You might have guessed it right and you find it silly. Yes, this has connection with my previous entry. As silly as this might be, I am sure this will be helpful for the beginner bloggers like me. Have you ever wonder what type of font should we use on our blog? I’ve tried some of on-the-list fonts such as Trebuchet, Arial, Georgia. But now I’m settle with the Lucida Grande. If you don’t have this font on your computer I guess you’re working on a non-Mac. And if you do have, then you’re a Mac-lover or you install it on your PC. Then the PC-users (that including me, the authors himself who still use a PC) should have another good font to look at. My choice went to either Tahoma or Verdana. And I chose not to blow its size on the monitor. Instead I use 11px size and the magic is within the next clue. Use 15-17px line-height. That should do it. At least for me, I now see my blog’s entry easy and nice to read. Combine with my previous hint, you get yourself a good look for your blog. Enough talking (that’s me) and reading (that’s you), now you can try it yourself. If you have other hints and tips, you can just share it here.

Maybe I was so ignorant or just plain dumb. I just realized there is something different about my blog than others. I never thought about font-color until today. My friend Budi asked me to check some other blogs. Upon seeing all those blogs and seeing the CSSes (not that I steal something, it’s just for learning purposes only) I realize that they don’t use the color: #000 anymore. Though they looked the same at first glance, but they are different as the color are greyish. The one that I now applied on my blog is #333 (do you see the difference?). This not so black font color is softer than the pure black one and proven to be useful when reading a long entry of a blog. Care for your eyes and for the readers’. Call me silly but now I know it.

Yes, you read it correctly. If you are familiar with WordPress, they were and still dot org and not com. But this is not a hoax since I read about it on Matt’s blog and he has announced it on Blog Business Summit about his wordpress dot com blog. What’s been on everyone’s mind is “What is this?”. Is WordPress go commercial? Darren Rowse wrote about rumor that this is intended to compete with Six Apart’s Typepad. So they decided to make a hosted blog service with WP platform. Hey, then what’s with Weblogs.us, Blogsome and Blogthing. They provided blog service with WP too. Are they going to be any different? One thing for sure, for now they have limited the access to use wordpress.com by using the GMail-like invitation system. Others who also write about this and I somehow found and read are: Donncha, Phoenixrealm, Exit 171, Abdul, and many more who just can’t wait to get a hand on a (free?) blogging service with WP in it. Count me in.

UPDATE: Here’s a related article from Yahoo! about the Blog Business Summit which from the article I get a sense that it has become so called celebrity-blogger-summit. I think it’s nice. I hope I could be there.

Jason Kottke wrote So Long, Technorati, about what he thoughts about it and later, why he chose to leave it out of his blog. I didn’t use much of Technorati but I do use the automated ping to tell it if I’ve updated my blog. Of course sometimes I also let the narcissistic-side of me to take control and use it to check who has linked back to me (Oh look, there are more people linking back to me, yippee!). One thing I agree with Kottke is that Technorati takes way too long time to track all those blog, including my little one, they claimed to (supposedly) track. Sometimes I know that someone has put a link to my post before Technorati does. And if so, what do I need Technorati for? Or maybe I just have to be more patient and learn all the features it has and start using it, whatever it might be.

UPDATE: It seems that Molly wrote a related article. Not that she complaining or something. She somehow got a tour inside of Technorati. So I guess you all can take a look at her article to answer my article above. And if you’re still unhappy with that even if the source come from inside Technorati, well you are welcome to write about it on your own page then. Is this article been Technorati-ed?

The Republic of Indonesia celebrating its 60th Independence Day on August 17th. It’s funny when I read on newspaper that Netherland, the country who invaded us, acknowledge our independence this year. So apparently, to them on August 17th, 1945 Indonesia never really be free and independent. Another stories about this day every year would be about all those silly games we used to play. It was once fun but later become boring due to the lack of variety and creativity. And this year, I must added annoying to the list. Some of my neighbours seems to have an idea to throw a late party to celebrate this day. It won’t be such a big deal if they not held the party in the middle of the road with all those big lousy speakers, right in front of my house, in the middle of the night. They were all applauding, cheering, laughing and playing dangdut music. I’ve known for not being to supportive of this kind of music although I do appreciate some musician trying to play dangdut accoustic version. But what these people played were disco-remixed-dangdut which supposedly played on a discotheque rather than on the street. I feel sorry for the elderly on my neigbourhood if last night they have trouble to get some nice and decent sleep. So have I. Can I have my freedom, please?

This morning I read Nana’s latest post on my Bloglines. She wrote that Natasha has passed away. I never had a chance to know her before, but I read her blog from time to time. In time like this my feelings are so complicated, but I know one thing. Life is so short, everyone. So why don’t we make the most of our time. And don’t forget to enjoy it. So, goodbye Sha. Rest in peace. I guess I won’t be seeing another post from you.

“…applaud me when I run, console me when I fall, cheer me when I recover”

UPDATE: More posts about Sha, some also have linked back to me: Priyadi, Elzan, Triaji, Enda, Love for All Season, Nana, Axal.acidblog.net, Danin, Yulian, Doeljoni. You can see more of Sha on: Natasha Anya, Melodies of Life, Somewhere Out There, and Sha on Friendster.

“Bu, apa anaknya mau dihitung?” That’s the question of the driver of angkot in Bandung. He was asking a mother whether she want her child to have a seat or just sit on her lap. If the child to be seated, then she has to pay for two persons. And if not, then it’s free. Hey, where are those time when children can paid for half the adult price? Even more, can the driver imagine having to sit on a small minivan, full of people with mixed body odors, with a child on your lap? I think Bandung needs a new kind of public transportation. A cheap, mass and better one where where children and the elderly can take a sit nicely and safely. One MRT for Bandung, please!

If you use GMail, despite all the rumor out there about them reading our mails, you will find some funny message. Try deleting all the spams you got and there come the response “Hooray, no spam here!” Maybe it a small thing but I find it fun and nice to see. Imagine you got all the automatic response such as “No spam detected” it will be plain ordinary. It’s all about personal touch. The writer of that message has made me smile a bit upon reading it. And to add the list here is a message I got a while back from Flickr.

The Flickr team has up and moved this week to Californ-i-a and has been singing Beach Boys songs non-stop since arrival. And you’re moving too!

We’re moving each and every pixel, bit, and byte, all your data, lock, stock, and barrel, from our humble server shack in Canada to our new server palace in the U.S. of A!

This process will begin during the week of June 28 and will result in speediness, stableness, and happiness. For more information, please visit the FAQ about the data center move.

Thank you, Flickreebies, for making Flickr such a wonderful place to share, connect, and befriend. We love you! (In an entirely non-creepy way.)

- The Flickroobies

Such messages are fun folks. If you own a company you should try this instead of the usually boring memo or announcement. So like what the Flickroobies said, I love all of you who read my blog here. Also in an entirely non-creepy way.

I got some bad cough for some time. No, I don’t smoke but yes sometimes I take my shower late at night, too late I guess. After trying some of the generic medicine, I haven’t got any better. And I thought it’s been too long and too tiring and too uncomfortable and it’s enough. Luckily, my girlfriend gave me a medicine she used to take when having bad cough (thanks honey). She said the dose is quite strong but effective. So I prepare for the worst because in my experience, the good medicine always taste bad. And if it tasted good then it’s a bad one. But when I took a sip (it’s a powder medicine so I have to mix it with water) it taste like orange juice. Hey, what is this? Will this work? Now I can say it work perfectly fine. Not without the side effect. Last night I got to get all those slimy, yucky, .. (okay, you get my picture, right? It’s simply awful) things out of my throat. And this morning I feel a lot better. Who said that the good medicine have to taste bad?

Have you ever try to remember many things in your life, other’s birthday, other’s cellphone number, to list, and suddenly you just can’t seem to remember your thing? I have. My most forgotten item is my cellphone number. Since I don’t dial my own number, I assume it is natural to forget one’s own cellphone number. After all, why would you want to call your cellphone? I also forgotten the phone extension number to my office with the same reason, I never call my own office since I always there at workdays. Have you ever tried the remember-password thing on your webmail for example? If you use that all the time, eventually, one day, you could end up just like me. So beware everyone. Have you forget something about yourself today?

As some of you may notice lately, my blog’s layout and design has change a couple of time. In Blogger, I have used the Rounder and Minima theme by Douglas Bowman for quite some time. And then here at Blogsome, I have tried the Green Track theme by Sadish Balasubramanian, Minima Plus by Theron Parlin (original design by Douglas Bowman) and Kubrick by Michael Heilemann. And now, I decided that from now on I’ll use my own theme. Surely I won’t be able to do it overnight. My first experiment is on the Kubrick theme (I love the blue color) mix over Douglas Bowman CSS structure (I learn to organize my CSS from his). The result is quite nice, though I was surprise to know that the design is very similar at some points with K2 theme. Maybe that’s because I’m using Kubrick as my base-theme. Then I decided to start sketching my own design and handcoded it myself. You can see the result on Budi, Indihiang and of course my blog. And since there are so many design possibilities with no experience on webdesigning, I thought it would be best if I try some of the theme I build. And are there any better place to start experimenting than my blog? So, you can expect more changes in the future. Don’t worry, I will still post my journal on this blog. Hopefully I can come across one design that I can settle with.

Today is a good day. For me, this is the day when that little hope and dream from the old days come true. Me and two friends who share the same interest, blogging, has come with the decision to start Indihiang Web(log) Solutions. Not a commercial webdesigner. At least, not yet. We are not there yet. We still have a lot to learn and a lot to catch up. But we are more optimistic than before, that this blogosphere is going bigger and bigger every day. And when it do become bigger, we want to be sure that we are part of it. Not just as a daily-for-fun-blogger but also as a designer. Okay, I admit that I just learn HTML, XHTML that is, and CSS only for 3 months or less. But with the right friends and connections, you can go anywhere you want. There are many stories about my experience in blogging. And there are certainly those of my friend’s. Later. For now, August 8th, 2005, the day that we purchase the domain indihiang(dot)com I believe will be also known as the starting day of Indihiang Web(log) Solutions. Thanks to my two great co-founders, Budi and Hanin. Let’s do our best and God will do the rest.

• Why I Blog

This is not a new article. It was dated July 25, 2005. But the question is everlasting. There are the typical answer such as blog as a sharing-communication tool. You can write practically anything about anything by everyone. As for me, my answer is even more typical. I blog because I simply love it.

• Budi Sukmana Weblog

That is some awesome layout there. With all the orange color. And the one-column-type. And the minimalist look. And I handcoded it all myself. Not that I’ve become a master CSS overnight, but I just consider it as a practical lesson. I am not Eric Meyer although we share the same first name. I am just trying to learn more and more and become even better each day. I really hope so.

• Presentasi Blog di Kalbefarma

Indonesian blogger, Priyadi, gave a presentation about blog on Kalbefarma. He reports that they all seem interested to use the power of blog in their corporate. Considering the rapid growth of blogs in the world, I wonder what will happen in Indonesia in the future.

Since I first got my hand on XHTML and CSS, I have been dreaming that someday I can get a job as a freelance web(log) designer. Yesterday, I got it. My friend Budi asked me to design his weblog. He gave me a quick layout drawing from Adobe Photoshop to show me what he wants. A minimalist look it is. It seems that he has an enlightment after seeing Notable Words and Garrett Dimon’s weblog. Indeed he has had the minimalist taste a couple of years back. But to implement it on a weblog today is a brave decision since not many people are ready to throw away all the blog’s accessory and just stick with the content. Notable Words and Garrett Dimon did that. And now my friend, Budi, do that too. It’s my first time ever to handcode a complete HTML and CSS of a page. And it’s valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. Not bad for a first timer, eh? Well, it’s not finished yet, though. You may expect more development in the next couple of days.

• One blog created ‘every second’

That is statistically said. That is what Technorati claimed. You may see the title as too much, but maybe it is the current development in blogosphere. More and more blogs are coming and if you’re one of them then congratulations, you’re officially part of the blogosphere. Just keep writing. And we will keep reading.

• About Going Solo

It seems that more and more people wants to become a freelance web designer. And if you have learn the way of the HTML and CSS, maybe you’re one of them. I think I AM one of them. Here Garrett Dimon wrote an interesting article for you freelance-webdesigner-wannabe. My friends and I have the advantages though, since here in Indonesia we don’t implement some of the points. So theoretically, Indonesian-freelance-webdesigner should be able to cut some costs and offer cheaper price. Just a thought.

• Button-maker

This is actually not an article. Not even a blog. But this sure help bloggers to make their own button. Just follow the instruction and voila! you’ve got yourself a very nice button for your blog.

• 31 Days To Building A Better Blog

It’s nice to have someone sharing the tips to build a better blog. Darren Rowse of Problogger seems eager to help other bloggers, like the description on his blog “helping bloggers earn money“. I do need that kind of help. But don’t get it wrong. The tips above are coming from the readers of Problogger, not THE pro-blogger himself. So share your story and let him know. You can expect him to summarize the tips and post it on his blog along August. And it’s day 3 already.

• Don’t Get Mad, Get Even

Oh, it’s the bandwith thief in action. Lucky for us, Jeff Gates track him down and kindly enough to report it on his blog. For some of you with the same problem, you might be interested with how Jeff dealing with this problem. In a fun yet effective way, of course.

• Hanabi

It’s August and it’s still raining heavily here in Indonesia. But not in Japan. It’s summer time. And traditionally, they have hanabi, a Japanese word for fireworks. It reminds me of a Japanese movie by Takeshi Kitano, with the same title. It’s always nice to read the insight of the event from the fellow Japanese’s point of view. In my case from Joi Ito.

• whogodwhy

I always eager to read what’s the latest entry on Notable Words, which mostly the summary of good writings on other people’s blogs. I never thought of re-summarizing it to my blog, but I read a good writing here. Want to tell other about your dream in a creative way? Ask Kevin Fanning then.

Ah yes, I made some changes in this blog. No, make it lots of changes. What changes did you notice at first? Ah! It’s the header! Right. Here’s the story. First, I made a switch from Minima Plus to Kubrick. There are something good in Kubrick that make me switched. One of them is the font Lucida Grande. I never thought of using this font before. Usually I choose Helvetica, which ironically I myself cannot see on my PC. I cannot see Lucida Grande as well, but I chose it anyway. For those Apple-user, please enjoy it. The only trace of Kubrick theme is , I guess, the font and the sidebar, if I don’t change them in the future. To tell you the truth, I get my inspiration to make this changes from the weblog of Barry Price and Avianto. And let’s not forget my friend, Budi Sukmana who has kindly enough to give me the image for the header. He said that he took the picture somewhere in Indihiang, a place in Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia. The scene is typical of West Java. A very nice picture he got there. There will be another changes in this blog, but nothing more to the visual appearance (I hope so). My next job will be the back of the blog, which is the HTML and CSS, to make it more customizable to my preference. But I must admit that the header-changing was the one that take me away further from Kubrick. Please leave comments if you have anything in mind about my blog here.

Upon reading my daily Bloglines, I stumbled on an interesting article from Joi Ito. The title is Khalid Jarrar: Iraqi blogger detained. A journalist detained, we heard it a couple of times. A blogger detained? Well, that is unusual. Was it something that he wrote? And even so, are bloggers considered as journalists? Then, I guess blogs and bloggers are getting more and more important. I recalled once Benny Chandra wrote “Jangan anggap enteng blogger!” or literally “Never underestimate blogger”. When I need to read something, let’s say news about London bombing, I got more update by reading blogs than the newspaper (obviously) or television. One more lesson I got from this happening is that blogger everywhere tend to stand for each other. When something bad happen to one blogger, the other will react, support him/her. I don’t know if that is true or it’s only in my dream. And if blogs and bloggers are about to take part in some new-media-movement-sort-of-thing out there, then I guess I am stand right in the middle of it. From Khalid Jarrar’s case I found out that there are in fact a Committee to Protect Bloggers. Even the family had their own blog. As stated in the blog’s description:

A Family in Baghdad; mother: Faiza, sons: Raed, Khalid, and Majid writing down their diaries. Father: Azzam is not interested.

Amazing. I wish my mother and my sister write a blog.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that according to the mother’s blog, Khalid Jarrar has been released.

Some of you might realize that there are posts that dated before the “first post (on this blog)“. There is a reason for that. From yesterday afternoon, I’ve been moving some of my old posts in to this blog. Not that I want to shut my old blog down (since I don’t intend to do that; my old blog is the track of my blogging-journey). I just simply want to share some interesting thoughts of what was happening in the past. These old posts will be here one by one since I have to do some editing, editorial and HTML editing that is, not the content. Some may need some translation-work from Indonesian to English. And I need to upload some of the photos. There a lot of working to do but I enjoy it. And it is nice that I have the chance to review my old posts again.

Okay, it seems that my new post somehow got error in it. When I publish my third post, it didn’t show instead all my previous posts also didn’t appear. Also I got a message that there are 28 errors somewhere in the storage. I don’t know what that was all about. Were there any problems in my HTML and CSS? Or were there problems in the PHP? Or were there problems in my posting? Anwyay, I temporarily change my theme to this one by Sadish Balasubramanian. Another great theme. It gives me some perspectives on blog-layout. But no offense. As soon as I get to know the problems and fix it, I will move back to my previous theme, Minima Plus. I’ll be right back.

UPDATE: It seems that the people in Blogsome managed to put things back in order. The blogs are up and running again. And now I am back.

I found recently that the Apple Student Blog is powered by WordPress. There were article about it on Matt Mullenweg’s weblog. You can read more about it there. But what I’m interested on is the footer on his weblog. A very nice line that goes like this,

“Proudly powered by WordPress. Also powered by ramen noodles, XFN, Ping-O-Matic, gallery, and love.”

Yes, Matt. I love WordPress too. And though I use it via Blogsome, I know that this is a great blogging tool. I might also put that same line on my blog. Proudly powered by WordPress. Also with love. But maybe without the ramen noodles.

When I first got the chance to use WordPress via Blogsome, I felt excited. Again, there is nothing wrong with Blogger but I just wanted to edit my blog as much as I wanted to (and a blog that doesn’t bring up errors again and again; I couldn’t make my Blogger blog valid). Now that this blog is up and running, I kind of enjoying myself. But recently I found one disadvantage of using Blogsome. I can not edit my PHP files. Not much, but it can be painful, e.g: when I want to use Asides in this theme, it requires me to edit my index.php file. I guess I should aim for the next step, either using other WP-powered-free-domain-and-hosting-blog (if any) or buy my own domain and hosting.

P.S: There are a couple of problems with this Minima Plus theme default at the beginning, but I managed to right some of the wrongs and voila! a valid blog. Some of the errors though, still there and quite annoying. I will write about these errors another time. Meanwhile, you can see Theron Parlin’s blog (the one who made Minima Plus out of the original one by Douglas Bowman) to see some problems and solutions to this theme.

In my opinion, first post should be the very first time someone ever write something somewhere (in this case, writing on a weblog). And by the definition, this post is not qualified to be the first post. Some of you might have know me before on my previous blog which actually was not my first blog either. My blogging time started on my friendster blog and my Yahoo!360. Some of my friends and may be some of you might ask: why did I have many blogs? One of the reasons is since they’re free-domain-and-free-hosting-blog, why not? But the more important reason is that I want to learn to blog. That include learning to write-to express my thoughts, feelings, opinions-on a blog, learning HTML and CSS. The result of having multiple blogs, especially the last one on Blogger is that now I understand more about the-blogging-world. Learning to write, learning to write in English, learning HTML and CSS and to make them valid. And as I previously wrote about my dream, now I fulfill one of them to use WordPress with (still) free hosting and free domain (you can reach my blog through Blogsome domain or through here). So here we go…