eric.setiawan.weblog

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…

For those of you who make a weblog only for fun, or only concern about the result, may not make this validation a great deal. Or they don’t even have a clue of what this is. I could end up the same as all those people, but luckily I have the right “friends” on the blogosphere. You might have notice that this blog have two small badge/icon stating XHTML valid or CSS valid. That is the sign of a blog that has been built upon a correct or standard tags of (X)HTML and CSS. If you want to see other valid blogs, what they’re look like, you can visit Budi’s, Avianto’s and Priyadi’s blog. Well, some of you might ask about the differences between valid and non-valid blog? On the visual appearence, there may have no difference. From my experience, there are some reasons that made a blog not HTML-valid. Building a WYSIWYG-base blog is one of them (don’t trust your eyes, just follow the standard HTML coding and eventually you’ll get there anyway). Blogger’s blog like mine has lots of errors when validated. (UPDATE: Last time I check the errors had gone down to less than 10) Copy-pasting from other website/blog can also bring errors (mostly about Ampersands). For more spesific things, you might have to ask the pros. But you may want to ask why should we make a valid blog? Then I must answer, why not? If you have the chance and the knowledge to make it right, then why do you still making a not-valid one? Or for the perfectionist-type of person like myself, just think of it as a challenge or a test of your skill. After you satisfied with the visual, why don’t you learn a little bit more and make your blog a valid one.

So, how valid is your website/blog? You can check it at W3C Validator.

Last Sunday, I have the opportunity to visit SOS-Kinderdorf in Lembang. Thanks to all my friends at Lil’ Finger. Quick review and facts about SOS-Kinderdorf, Lembang. This is the first village (as they call it) in Indonesia. Since its beginnings in 1949, SOS Children’s Villages has been committed to offering orphaned and abandoned children a home in a family-based environment. For further information you can visit SOS-Kinderdorf International’s website.

I never wanted to be a teacher, never learned to be one, never thought that I could become one. I came to Kinderdorf expecting only to be an observer, but then I was appointed to be a teacher of a group along with my girlfriend, Lita. Well, I was not actually teaching. I was talking with the children, playing, laughing a lot, joking around. I kind of having plenty of little brothers and sistes instantly. It was fun. Very tiring but fun. Afterward, we walk through some of their facilities. We also visited the home for the retired SOS mother. From this place, I learned some lessons. Family bond doesn’t always have to be with birth-parents. We find families through our journey of life. And being old doesn’t always have to be waiting for death, but to live each day the fulliest, praying for the best of their children and grandchildren. Thanks a lot for the lovely moment, kids. And thanks for the advice, the lessons and the blessing, grandma.

Thx to all Lil Finger staffs: Erwin, Handi, Khimkhim, Lily, Fong2, Lina, Ade, Fika, Ade, Eunike, Linda, Ani, Lita. Thx to STV crew: Cardo. Thx to the children in my group: Eno, Dewi, Maria, Aan, Leni, Mei, Ria, Suluh, Okto, Ignas, Flori, Siti. And all the cats in SOS-Kinderdorf.

Last Saturday, I went to Setrasari Mall Bandung. I use public transport, that is a small minibus car that carried approximately 16 people (7 seats on the right, 5 seats on the left, 1 backward, 2 seats on the front, and 1 driver - amazing how such a small car can carry that many people). Normal ETA 30 minutes. Last Saturday, it took almost 1 hour for me to get there. Unfortunately, the new fly-over bridge didn’t help much. Instead it caused more problems, traffic jams problems. As far as I remember, that bridge were built to reduce traffic jams in the city. Ironic. Now, I have time to daydreaming a bit. Why don’t we (read: our government) build a mass rapid transport system, instead of building more roadway. By using public transport, a mass rapid one, it will decrease car quantity on the road, reducing time and cost, reducing pollution, saving fuel (which is critical and crucial for this time). Eventually we will have a better city, a healthy one. No traffic jam problems anymore. No parking problems. No more headache on the street.