Entries from May 2007 ↓

We all know that last week, the sixth season of American ended with Jordin Sparks crowned as the American Idol. As expected, after the season ended, several of the finalists seemed to hurrily taking advantage of their sudden famous. These are some up to date news about them, compiled from many resources. One of the finalists signed a contract to participate as the main cast of a sitcom remake about an alien living together with a woman. Another one is going to be play the role-titled award-winning drama inspired by a familiar Columbian telenovela. Other will be involved in an ambitious remake of a 1922 movie. Another finalist was lucky enough to make a prestigious collaboration with an acclaimed R&B artist/producer. And lastly, someone who did not have the chance to be in the finale, almost literally green with envy for the Top 2, can now smile widely because that someone got an offer to be the model of another sequel of a comedy CGI animated picture.

(Now imagine Ryan Seacrest saying…)

This,
is a week after,
American Idol

Continue reading →

Sometimes when we take digital pictures, we wished that some objects dissapear and not interfering with the ones that we want to shoot. But more than sometimes, we can do nothing to physically remove the distraction. Of course, we can always edit the resulting file, but for me who do not have Adobe Photoshop, only Gimpshop (and definitely not expert on either), editing pictures other than resizing, rotating, and cropping seemed quite a hassle.

I will give you a set of three pictures, taken at Pasar Seni ITB in September 2006. The pictures show some part of Plaza Widya and Labtek VII ITB (School of Pharmacy). Plaza Widya was heavily decorated for the Pasar Seni, and Labtek VII stood with all its glorious roof (for those who are not familiar with ITB, the roof of some of its building look just like this one, and become a sort of unique identity). Just by looking at the thumbnails, you can see that these pictures are similar, if not the same. But trust me, they are in a way different. Here we go.

The first picture is 640 x 480 in size. The sky looked beautiful, and the plastic tubes decoration seemed … well, interesting. Nothing seemed strange, only interesting. If you ask me what is the focus of the picture, go ahead and pick any object, I am not a professional photographer and this is one of the pictures I took, the rest of the world should live with that. Moving on to the second one.

The second picture looked like the first one but with a smaller resolution. This one is a 512 x 384 picture, quite small if you have a 1280 x 768 or larger screen resolution. Nothing too fancy either, just smaller size. Moving on to the last picture of the set.

But when you look at this one, you will see that the first two pictures are not what they look like. This original picture of the previous two has two cables or ropes for the plastic tubes decoration dangling around, making distractions in the picture. Continue reading →

Several days ago, I went to Jakarta for a business presentation. For the presentation, I have to make a demo application and the job was given to me the day before. So I rolled up my sleeve and started to butcher myself for the impossible task. Long story short, I did not finish the demo application, eventhough I worked through the night. So we went to Jakarta with everything we got: a decent presentation slide made by my manager, and a not so decent demo application made by me.

I always get a little edgy about trip to Jakarta by car because I get car sick easily on a long way trip. Yes, I know that Jakarta via Toll Way Cipularang is not that far away, but still I am not keen on long travel by car. First off, I didn’t have much sleep the day before, since I was doing the demo application, and in the morning, I also didn’t have a good meal for breakfast. It got worse when at the start of the journey, I still try to work with my laptop, of course in a moving car headed toward Jakarta. When I read during a travel by car, I feel dizzy instantly, and guess what, I feel dizzy instantly when I try to code in a moving car (d’oh).

I bring myself a small bottle of You-C1000, a Vitamin C supplement which boasts 1000 mg of vitamin C, and drink it while on the road. I like its flavor and I thought it will make myself a little better for not having enough sleep and eat. After the presentation, (this post is not about my job, mind you, so no story about it) we went to several other places, and on the way home, I just wanted to have another bottle of You-C1000. After having half of my second dose of the Vitamin C supplement (making about 1500++ mg in total of my vitamin C intake that day), I felt nauseaous, and my stomach felt bloated. I thought it was another attack of my car sick and I tried to sleep over it. But after a while, I think it was not the car sick, since when I get car sick I think I never feel my stomach bloated. And I became suspiscious about the vitamin supplement. Continue reading →

I have not been writing for a couple of years (go and see the date of the previous entry) and I am planning to yet start again. In the midst of searching a decent topic to write and finding the right time, I came across the movie “Man of The Year” starred by Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, and Laura Linney among others. Tina Fey, apparently a famous comedian in the US, also appeared as herself co-hosting the Saturday Night Live show while in Indonesia I only get to see her during the commercial of a comedy series, 30 Rock, on the cable (nope, I don’t have cable, my office does, and this interference is starting to get a little annoying; straight to the point please, I hear you say).

Okay, on to the main points: while I can’t really pinpoint what genre the movie “Man of The Year” was in, I thought it was a little bit conspiracy-thriller than the usual satirical-political-comedy (Wikipedia’s entry also agrees) (main point please, I hear you shout, sorry, can’t help it), the movie quite succinctly showed the political condition of the United States and to my surprise, it can also be about Indonesia. Robin Williams played Tom Dobbs, an American comedian whose show was typical with the Jay Leno show or the Conan O’Brien show. He was consistently mocking the political condition of his own country, making it laughable for his viewers while spontaneously gave insights to what the politicians should be doing. In one act he jokingly while literally attacking a US senator for his inconsistent speech about energy efficiency while the senator was campaigning for presidency backed up by major oil companies. Continue reading →