Leap On!

Why is everything so packed? Let me list all the items that needs to be done at the same time this Friday:

• Kent Ridge Hall Dinner and Dance (5.45pm)
• Intro to Nanoworld lecture (6pm)
• NUSSU AGM (everybody in NUSSU CBLC, which I am in, is “highly encouraged” to come) (6.30pm)
• Harmonica practice (7pm)
• Friday mass with ICy (which I’m also in) which will do all the work supporting the mass (about 5pm)
• (updated) Inter-faculty bash, which I am not really inclined to join – I gave away the ticket to someone already
• My mom is coming to Singapore! (at about 2pm though, can’t I just spend the whole day with my family? Duh…)

For Dinner and Dance (DnD) I have already paid a certain amount of money, so I’ll skip the others… It is also the first appointment that I made (excluding lecture)... That’s how life is…

It has been about a month living in NUS for me...

Life here is so much different from the past. There are so much CCAs (Co-Curricular Activities) and hall life needing attention that I barely have leisure time during weekdays. Add to the fact that we, fellow undergraduate students of NUS, are entitled a magnanimous task of STUDYING!

It is fun however. Really - I get to know a lot of people from extremely different backgrounds, I get to try a lot of new things, I get to know organic chemistry (hey that's not the plan >.<) ... I won't go through the details of FWOC, Flag, Rag, IBG etc because I am too lazy for that haha... I'm not really the type of person who writes everything concerning in his/her life (can see that in my previous posts).

But what made me so sad is the lack of free time. Part of this is my fault of not being able to manage time better, I know, but still... no matter how many CCAs there are in NUS, few things like making games (I want!) cannot be done in CCA scope.

I really do hope that my 4 years in Singapore will be enjoyable and most fascinating.

Sebenarnya udah basi ini berita, tapi bolehlah gw tulis di sini, setelah sebegitu lamanya blog ini tidak di-update…

Jadi ceritanya gw kan nungguin hasil Singapore Scholarship / SS. Karena pengumumannya selalu ditunda berhari-hari gw jadi stres juga, nanya-nanya Arie (dan ditanya-tanyain Davin) kalau-kalau ada berita tentang SS. Nah pada hari Jumat dua minggu yang lalu, gw jalan-jalan ke Artha Gading (jarang-jarang lo, jauh sih). Nah setelah selesai makan siang…

Ada telepon. Dari “Ignatius Sunrise” (tempat les A-level gw). Wah apaan nih, gw pikir. Ternyata… gw dapet SS!!! SS… SS… Read more »

The real world has been pretty hectic lately so I was forced to postpone blogging, but hey, now I’m back! It feels good to have a leisure time again. Anyway, I got a new Toshiba laptop (the first one actually) – not really powerful but very much usable for work and fun. The purchase includes a Windows Vista Home Professional (or Premium? I don’t really bother reading it >.<) – an OS I’ve never tinkered with. Read more »

I have just watched this lecture from the local TV. The speakers were the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (henceforth SBY).

SBY did not particularly said lots of things, he was mainly concerned about how technology can help Indonesia to face the current trend of globalization. There was really nothing much to know.

Mr. Gates then talked about the massive growth of IT technology with reference to the Moore's Law (which says that processor capabilities doubles every set amount of years). Then he advertised the current Microsoft research focus such as Microsoft Surface (if I am not mistaken, it enables mobile devices to talk to tables that they are over them and synchronize everything without intervention). Gates also previewed another Microsoft plaything on astronomy which looks very much like Google Earth but it is for the outer space, not for the Earth. Furthermore, he mentioned how IT boosts a lot of other sectors important to humans such as medicine. MIT OpenCourseWare were also given as an example of the profound effects of the internet (although the name was not mentioned explicitly). Read more »

In the last month things were going against this blog. The readership of Leap On! dropped significantly from about 2000 visits a month to only 1100 or so visits a month, which was a huge 40 – 50% drop!

Looking into the statistics, I found out that the real culprit was Google: the search engine cut the traffic to about a third of its usual level. Add to the fact that Google search comprised a huge portion of traffic to my blog (about 50%). Seeing the graph gave me the impression of drilling down a hill… oooh T.T

The graph for traffic from Google over the last month (which was April 2008)

It’s not that the human species will become extinct after that last roll-down-the-hill, it’s even worse – I can’t get the motivation to continue blogging, and I might get rid of blogging altogether…

— positive thinking mode ON — Read more »

Indonesia ICT Award, atau INAICTA, adalah bentuk penghargaan terhadap inovasi-inovasi yang dilakukan oleh bangsa Indonesia dalam bidang teknologi informasi dan komunikasi (TIK). Saya adalah salah satu pemenang dari INAICTA 2007 (tahun lalu) kategori Student Project.

Lomba Apaan Sih?

Lomba-lomba yang berhubungan dengan komputer, mulai dari OSP, OSN, sampai olimpiade internasional (IOI) semuanya mengadu kecerdasan dalam bidang problem solving dengan implementasinya menggunakan pemrograman. Tentu saja hal ini tidak salah sama sekali, bahkan sangat baik karena dengan mempelajari algoritma kita mempelajari cara berpikir sistematis dan logis.

Tetapi, dalam bidang informatika, algoritma hanyalah salah satu dari sekian banyak faktor yang diperlukan. Ada teknik pembuatan software, penguasaan API, design pattern, dan lain-lain. Nah, dengan faktor-faktor yang lain itulah baru kita dapat membangun sebuah program yang benar-benar digunakan oleh masyarakat. Mau maju sampai mana Indonesia kalau generasi mudanya cuma bisa membuat program dalam Pascal, command line pula? (Jangan pakai VB ya, berbahaya.) Read more »