FIRST, CHECK THIS OUT!

Computer hero Dennis Ritchie died a week after Jobs

no idea who he is?

read this article by Cade Metz on CNN

or read it here


The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won't match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

And then some.

"When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn't even know who he is," says Rob Pike, the programming legend and current Googler who spent 20 years working across the hall from Ritchie at the famed Bell Labs.

On Wednesday evening, with a post to Google+, Pike announced that Ritchie had died at his home in New Jersey over the weekend after a long illness, and though the response from hardcore techies was immense, the collective eulogy from the web at large doesn't quite do justice to Ritchie's sweeping influence on the modern world.

Dennis Ritchie is the father of the C programming language, and with fellow Bell Labs researcher Ken Thompson, he used C to build UNIX, the operating system that so much of the world is built on -- including the Apple empire overseen by Steve Jobs.

"Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX," Pike tells Wired. "The browsers are written in C. The UNIX kernel — that pretty much the entire Internet runs on -- is written in C. Web servers are written in C, and if they're not, they're written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C. And all of the network hardware running these programs I can almost guarantee were written in C.

"It's really hard to overstate how much of the modern information economy is built on the work Dennis did."

Even Windows was once written in C, he adds, and UNIX underpins both Mac OS X, Apple's desktop operating system, and iOS, which runs the iPhone and the iPad. "Jobs was the king of the visible, and Ritchie is the king of what is largely invisible," says Martin Rinard, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

"Jobs' genius is that he builds these products that people really like to use because he has taste and can build things that people really find compelling. Ritchie built things that technologists were able to use to build core infrastructure that people don't necessarily see much anymore, but they use everyday."

From B to C

Dennis Ritchie built C because he and Ken Thompson needed a better way to build UNIX. The original UNIX kernel was written in assembly language, but they soon decided they needed a "higher level" language, something that would give them more control over all the data that spanned the OS. Around 1970, they tried building a second version with Fortran, but this didn't quite cut it, and Ritchie proposed a new language based on a Thompson creation known as B.

Depending on which legend you believe, B was named either for Thompson's wife Bonnie or BCPL, a language developed at Cambridge in the mid-60s. Whatever the case, B begat C.

B was an interpreted language -- meaning it was executed by an intermediate piece of software running atop a CPU -- but C was a compiled language. It was translated into machine code, and then directly executed on the CPU. But in those days, C was considered a high-level language. It would give Ritchie and Thompson the flexibility they needed, but at the same time, it would be fast.

That first version of the language wasn't all that different from C as we know it today -- though it was a tad simpler. It offered full data structures and "types" for defining variables, and this is what Richie and Thompson used to build their new UNIX kernel. "They built C to write a program," says Pike, who would join Bell Labs 10 years later. "And the program they wanted to write was the UNIX kernel."

Ritchie's running joke was that C had "the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language." In other words, he acknowledged that C was a less-than-gorgeous creation that still ran very close to the hardware. Today, it's considered a low-level language, not high. But Ritchie's joke didn't quite do justice to the new language. In offering true data structures, it operated at a level that was just high enough.

"When you're writing a large program -- and that's what UNIX was -- you have to manage the interactions between all sorts of different components: all the users, the file system, the disks, the program execution, and in order to manage that effectively, you need to have a good representation of the information you're working with. That's what we call data structures," Pike says.

"To write a kernel without a data structure and have it be as consist and graceful as UNIX would have been a much, much harder challenge. They needed a way to group all that data together, and they didn't have that with Fortran."

At the time, it was an unusual way to write an operating system, and this is what allowed Ritchie and Thompson to eventually imagine porting the OS to other platforms, which they did in the late 70s. "That opened the floodgates for UNIX running everywhere," Pike says. "It was all made possible by C."

Apple, Microsoft and beyond

At the same time, C forged its own way in the world, moving from Bell Labs to the world's universities and to Microsoft, the breakout software company of the 1980s. "The development of the C programming language was a huge step forward and was the right middle ground ... C struck exactly the right balance, to let you write at a high level and be much more productive, but when you needed to, you could control exactly what happened," says Bill Dally, chief scientist of NVIDIA and Bell Professor of Engineering at Stanford. "[It] set the tone for the way that programming was done for several decades."

As Pike points out, the data structures that Richie built into C eventually gave rise to the object-oriented paradigm used by modern languages such as C++ and Java.

The revolution began in 1973, when Ritchie published his research paper on the language, and five years later, he and colleague Brian Kernighan released the definitive C book: The C Programming Language. Kernighan had written the early tutorials for the language, and at some point, he "twisted Dennis' arm" into writing a book with him.

Pike read the book while still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, picking it up one afternoon while heading home for a sick day. "That reference manual is a model of clarity and readability compared to latter manuals. It is justifiably a classic," he says. "I read it while sick in bed, and it made me forget that I was sick."

Like many university students, Pike had already started using the language. It had spread across college campuses because Bell Labs started giving away the UNIX source code. Among so many other things, the operating system gave rise to the modern open source movement. Pike isn't overstating it when says the influence of Ritchie's work can't be overstated, and though Ritchie received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998, he still hasn't gotten his due.

As Kernighan and Pike describe him, Ritchie was an unusually private person. "I worked across the hall from him for more than 20 years, and yet I feel like a don't knew him all that well," Pike says. But this doesn't quite explain his low profile. Steve Jobs was a private person, but his insistence on privacy only fueled the cult of personality that surrounded him.

Ritchie lived in a very different time and worked in a very different environment than someone like Jobs. It only makes sense that he wouldn't get his due. But those who matter understand the mark he left. "There's that line from Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants," says Kernighan. "We're all standing on Dennis' shoulders."

Additional reporting by Jon Stokes

----

the last image courtesy of artist juan osborne, I hope he/she won't sue me for using his/her work with no prior notice and consider this an advertisement of his/her work instead.

this is the reason why I'm going to get myself the new fiesta :p



unfortunately, the green version is not available in this part of the world. according to a source from Ford, they decided to go with orange, the color of the skuishy fruit known for the phrase 'bad orange', as their trade mark color as slimy green was already taken by yet another competitor. that's right, I'm talking about the exterior marvel yet interior blah mazda2.

so I'm getting the red one instead,


hmm.. even the above picture don't do it justice, as the one available here had to experience various downgrades to be able to fit into the price-range, the below image is more like it (pay attention to the rims and the plastics)


that's right, it's the 1.4 litre engine version instead of the 1.6 litre version. I was hoping that I might be able to do something about it to make it less boring, partially inspired by steeda's rendition of the focus, into something like this,


because steeda's rendition of the fiesta was a bit, well in my narrow minded oppinion, boring


steeda's original idea on the fiesta was, despite its awesomeness, a bit less spectacular than its focus, but the one on display is even worse, though it still looks awesome on the average's standards of cool looking cars :p

anyways, I'd be more than happy if I can turn it into something like this


wait, what?

review : Mattias Eklundh live in Jakarta (clinic unfortunately) back in 11/18/2008


The mad professor of guitar science explained two things throughout his two-hour Laney clinic this Tuesday: That being crazy is cool for geniuses and that every guitar player wannabe should grow their own mustache.

It was almost seven o'clock, and the steep climb to the second floor of Balai Kartini didn't look inviting to those coming late. Two excited looking guys waited for the elevator with one of them holding the cassette cover of Freak Kitchen's fourth effort in 2000: Dead Soul Men.

Rushing toward the Mawar conference room, the annoying bunch blocking the entrance was the consequence of Planet Musik's generosity, as it had displayed 20 new, flashy guitars and basses, from Cort to Music Man Stingray.

The inside, nevertheless, was predictably overflowing, just like the Ciliwung River in December.

Feeling like one had just stepped into a guerrilla meeting in a typical balai kecamatan before an important ambush, all the chairs were full. The rest were hovering in the back of the hall, with more than 20 people on the floor on the left side of the stage, facing stacks of Laney amplifiers.

The space between the stage and the seats was gone, replaced by the boney faces of guitar mongers.

"The sales number of cassettes and CDs in Indonesia has reached around 10 million per year -- fought over by not just local, but also international artists. Passband survived by building a solid fan base; fans who love our music, love watching us live and love buying tickets to our concerts," the voice of Passband's Beng-Beng bounced off the high ceiling of the room, in answer to a question about the band being different from mainstream, mellow, lovey-dovey Indonesian music.

Along with Beng-Beng, local bass hero Indro Hardjodikoro opened the clinic for Ia (Mattias' nickname; poetically meaning "him" in Bahasa Indonesia) that night. And though missing Indro's performance, Laney made a good call choosing the two skillful players as its local endorsers.

It was about eight when they killed the light. Soon a giant statue of a golden-haired man came forward waving his yellow signature guitar. "JAKARTAAAAAAA!!!!!!" he growled. "IT'S GOODY-GOODY TIME!!!!"

Wait -- what?

The crowd was of course cheering like maniacs on death row, and after he briefly introduced himself with the help of a guy named Chucky as translator, he plugged the cord of his Caparison Apple Horn into the massive Laney amp.

Born in 1969 in Gothenburg, Sweden, Mattias "IA" Eklundh quit school at about age 15 to spend the rest of his teenage years in his basement, goofing around seriously with his guitar and his four-track machine.

After joining bands like Frozen Eyes and Fate in the 1980s, he went back to Sweden to form a prog-rock power trio named Freak Kitchen with fellow Swedes Joakim Sjvberg on drums and Christian Grvnlund on bass in 1992.

Their 1994 debut album Appetizer appealed to critics as "the best debut album a Swedish band has produced in both this and the last decade".

Currently working on their seventh album, Land of the Freaks, the lineup for the trio changed in 2000 with Bjvrn Fryklund replacing Sjvberg and Christer Vrtefors replacing Grvnlund.

The vegetarian guitarist has so far released three solo albums: The lesser known Sensually Primitive in 1997 -- under the pseudonym Mr. Libido, the highly acclaimed Freak Guitar in 1999 and Freak Guitar-The Road Less Traveled in 2004 -- the latter two under Steve Vai's Favored Nation label.

His 2007 project Art Metal combines the mastery of Swedes bass-god Jonas Hellborg with the tabla maestro Selvaganesh in a tight Southern Indian flavored prog-rock.

Kiss was his favorite band and his playing has often been described as influenced by the likes of Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin. But nothing sounds like the way he plays -- technically and lyrically.

He plans to release a third solo effort in 2010 -- hopefully a double album.

"I'm left-handed, but I play guitar the right way -- everyone else's way is the wrong way!" he jokingly said, explaining his use of a distinctly Swedish-made fretboard, directly plugging it into the amp without effects or pedals.

He tried to cover as much as he could into the clinic from the very beginning, packing the session with both excellent music examples and complete play-along tracks from his Freak Guitar solo releases and a couple of new tracks.

Beginning with a new tune, he continued onto the theory of guitar harmonics and where to find them on the fretboard.

And after playing "There's No Money in Jazz", he demonstrated how to use five-string arpeggios to emulate the sounds of a "urinated" Nintendo and played "The Battle of Bob". He also demonstrated how different interpretations of bar and phrase counting can be interesting, even at full speed as long as the beat is maintained. A power chord song such as "La Bamba" was also played meticulously.

While effortlessly performed, these theories are of course unplayable without causing serious damage to your fingers.

One thing that stood out about Ia was his wonderful sense of humor and the way he carried himself. He would growl like an injured death metal monster, shriek like a fat lady opera singer from hell or yell "GOODY-GOODY!" in the hopes of a unison reply -- while most of the time making scary faces and stupid gestures.

Every time he would ask the soundman at the back to play a track by number and long pauses would occur. And during these time he would do a waiting posture, say ludicrous things and occasionally take a peek at his watchless wrist.

A group in the audience on the left side of the stage once complained that they were unable to see the lesson on the big screen, and he responded nicely by demonstrating the lesson right on their face -- literally.

He didn't seem to mind sharing his knowledge or revealing his signature sounds. "Absorb as much as you can, but find your own sound. Grow your own mustache, and have fun with your music," adding that playing with fun and imagination is much better than just speed.

He told the audience to be both creative and resourceful. And then he magically revealed a cheap play phone, played it with his guitar and threw it at the audience. Next came a chopstick, he hit the strings with it before throwing it also to the audience and said "I only got one" to a kid who wanted the other stick.

And then he played "Father" from his Freak Guitar-The Road Less Traveled, a ballad dedicated to his late father Bernt.

"Putting a purely emotional song on a record, I think, will ultimately make an album more powerful for the listener. It's all about dynamics and working on different layers within a song," he once stated.

And after playing "Minor Swing", complying to a request from the audience, he closed the clinic at about 10 p.m. with a new track called "Sharsce", a witty composition with a Frenchman saying over and over "you're so beautiful," and "you're a beautiful man".

Waiting about 20 minutes after the show with about 30 other fans, this writer finally got his signature on two Freak Guitar cassettes and said, "Ia, you're the best guitarist ever!!" to the man personally.

"This is an exhausting night; the crowd here is just wild!" he said, promising to come back with Freak Kitchen soon. Ia head down to Bandung the following morning. Knowing the crowd there, he's in for another exhausting night.

The writer is an avid devotee of the Mattiasology, acknowledging Mattias as God and the likes of Ron Thal, Buckethead, Paul Gilbert and Steve Vai as prophets.

review : balada ching ching, shots through the heart


Maggie Tiojakin is not funny. In fact she’s rather serious, particularly in making everything sound serious.

While she doesn’t seem to have any intention of drawing tears from our eyes, her forte lies in the ability to give us that pause, making us stop for a moment to ponder life, and do so again after another read.

And she’s really good at it.

Maggie’s exploration of her surroundings breathes into most of her short stories the soul that’s deemed necessary to keep them afloat. Most of them are interesting, some of them unbearably heavy, but all of them deploy the perfect ingredients that work: not so long as to be boring and not too short to come up empty.

Balada Ching - Ching could be the defining collection of Maggie’s best works so far: 13 short stories, including six published previously, one in schedule and others not specifically written for the collection.

This is excellent stuff, and Gramedia Pustaka Utama has made a laudable effort to enrich our literature. If this isn’t nice, we don’t know what is.

One thing is for sure, Maggie managed to avoid the problem of translated literature. Previously published in English, a second language for her, these short stories shot out to receive positive reviews from critics at the time of their release. And when it was required to have them rewritten in Indonesian what came through in her personal interpretations was slightly different, slightly more engaging in details, mostly appealing, and formed a group of new literature that stands on its own.

The plots of her stories do not drag on or slump like those of many Indonesian writers who dwell too long in explaining the unnecessary. Hers are indubitably brave with topics as simple yet as complicated as the fractions of life itself.

Titles such as Liana, Liana (Waiting for Mother), Dua Sisi, Luka (Crush) and Kawin Lari (He Said, She Said) can otherwise reveal the paradigm of everyday events through Maggie’s eyes, making us question the usual and unusual, making common occurrences interesting and engaging.
The theme of racism is huge, but a child desperately waiting for her mom; a foot massager falling in love with her client’s foot; and what a dying 15-year-old child brings to the world are elements of life’s colors we may have previously ignored.

However, this doesn’t mean Maggie’s way of storytelling is maxing out. Obviously there is room to grow. Simplicity is working nicely for her, and though some of her stories could soar to unquestionable heights, readers’ common expectations after the big entry points are often cut short by following events, by forced romance and immediate continuations that are somewhat less natural. She worked them out OK, but they could have been up there.

But still, it’s hard to count this as criticism. These stories, if not well spawned, are often crafted brilliantly as explorations with sufficient research and depth to give us not just knowledge, but an emotional, personal understanding of what truly happened — although sometimes she chooses to blur the endings, hinting with a bag full of flowers or a heart pinned with needles.

Readers will love this collection. Some will be glued to your eyes like contact lenses and some will stay in your minds for a following read the next night. Whatever happens, Balada Ching-Ching is definitely that type of book that keep on your bedside for some time.

-------------------------

a review of a short story collection by a dear friend of mine Maggie, did it for the post back in the hey days :p

how to perfectly enlarge uploaded pictures on blogspot

I just found this cool workaround to posting bigger pictures on your blogspot without uploading them first on other image-hosting websites like.. shit forgot their sites -did remember that one with frogs..

anyways, this has been bugging me for quite sometimes before I actually find this loophole, though admittedly will require you to do the work twice -but uploading to image hosting websites and link your post to the image you've uploaded is no fun either, some of these sites periodically crashed when you need them to work, which in order to work okay, they will need to do some maintenance which basically erasing images they don't think is good or some shorts -fyi I made this assumption myself :p.

enough talk and let's go on with the how-tos.

basically, to have your photo published on your blog, you would have to do the usual thing. you make a new post, press add-image, browse an image, chose setting (center, fixed or left/right, float) you also chose the size of the image (small, medium, large). but more often than not, your supposedly large image only turned out too small on the screen, which is suck.

(this is what I'm talking about)

and when you try to enlarge them, by editing the html code, you got yourself the size you want, but of blurified lesser quality, and sometimes jiggy, boxy, pixelated dipshit images, which is -for lack of a better word- suck.

(see my point? blogger had done improvements on layout, but things used to be worse..)

and weird, because when you actually uploaded an image from the web, or add url, the outcoming image looks exactly like it's supposed to be, with the perfect size -sometimes even too large, which is okay- and the perfect dpi's -proven by the correct resolutions.


that's the key right there..




so it's actually very simple.. when you uploaded an image, the small image coming out on your blog we're talking about before, blogspot has already saved the correct image by size and resolution somewhere in their cloud -or something like that.

so all you've got to do is open that image on another page, by right-clicking the down-sized image on your blog and chose 'open link in new tab', and copy the url. this is the tricky bit, sometimes the displayed url on the address bar is not similar with the exact url blogspot can use, the work around for this is to right click the already enlarged image on another tab, and choose "copy image url".

then edit your post, erase your image html and upload another image. but this time, chose 'add picture from url/web' instead, paste your link on the url slot, chose properties (center, large), and press upload..

(this is it! as usual I'm using a pict of my Kaezee because the purpose of this post is to make him famous :D)

and problem is solved -see the quality increase on the enlarged image even when the size is the same at 800x600?-, you would see that when you hover your mouse on all images, they all leading to one url source. the best part about this is that as long as your blog is running, your image will remain available for access..

I hope this works for you as this works like charm for me, and if you've known about this shit long before I did.. dude.. you could have been a saint you know?!

goofing around seriously



done back in the hey days when notturno was still alive and kicking -not that they aren't now, I just lost track of them.

the idea is to put the trio in a combination of anthropomorphic imagery possessed by each of its members (or is it the other way around?)

I think I did good with both pianist and bass player, but failed flat with the drummer. I did say that I kindda notched up his level of cool in this work, which is anthropomorphic in its own, whatever the exact meaning of the word..

anyways, the first image was done on paper with pen, the second one is done with the always dependable photoshop.

colors are not really my strength, in addition they said they were planning on using the image on T-shirts, which explains the limitation to power colors (as in power trio).

I have one of those things called dissatisfiedbysecondlook kindda thing where I will stop and think how some images I did simply suck and will need to be redone.. this is one of those things.. but heck, I don't have 36 hours in a day like I don't have extra pair of hands..

taca back in the days


I did this a while back.. probably four or five years ago. the subject was a family who was a bit messy but has the kindest heart that's almost too naive and child-like. she now works in a bank -not that it has anything to do with anything.

done using pen on paper

iron and wine - fever dream



some days her shape in the doorway
will speak to me
a bird's wing on the window
sometimes I'll hear when she's sleeping
her fever dream
a language on her face

I want your flowers like babies want God's love
or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

some days, like rain on the doorstep
she'll cover me
with grace in all she offers
sometimes I'd like just to ask her
what honest words
she can't afford to say, like

I want your flowers like babies want God's love
or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

-for mom-

Some Skunk Funk Indeed

amidst the piling works for my new magazine, I stumbled upon this blog by a guy whose apparently related to both Michael and Randy Brecker.

two of them are awesome, and Michael Brecker, if you haven't realized it from my previous blog -not that you care I suppose-, will remain my personal hero.

in this particular page, he talked about the memories of his uncles, including how they are as persons with real personalities -and not just random mutherfuckas (as Miles put it) who can nail the hardest licks and patterns.

here's a picture of boogiewoogieflu and Michael, his uncle, my hero


funny how I got stumbled on his blog. I was googling about Michael the other day, finally getting some shots about his Pilgrimage sessions on his page -though lack parts where he's actually saying anything-, and finally reaching the part of his memorial service, where supposedly James Taylor said to the attendees that Michael Brecker had saved his life, literally..

that's the phrase I was googling today, though it brought me nowhere. but as fate does -if you're dramatic enough to call finding a page on the world wide web a fate- this brought me to Boogiewoogieflu's blog instead, particularly to his reminiscing-type page.

I remember how I cried profusely upon learning of Michael's death back in the day, previously contacting a webpage responsible of finding him a bone donor -from Indonesia.

well..

since the departure of my mother, leaving for a better place up there, through a long tunneling road which access door is actually located down there, I made a promise that no death will worth any tear from my eyes, unless it happens to families who are greatly close to me.

so there..

but the thing that amuses me was how he's got a catch phrase under his blog.
the phrase says

this blog kills fascists

and it has successfully inspired me to put somewhat different -as I don't really understand the meaning, as in real meaning, of fascists- but similar -as in trying to exclamate my principles in life- catch phrase..

and will do so pretty soon.

blogspot.. yaa begitulah..

barusan nambah gambar di post terakhir yang panjang banget ga ketulungan..

trus sempat mikir kenapa blogspot ini ga bisa full nampilin semua bagian website di layar, ga kaya website blog lain.. soalnya barusan nemu templete joomla yang super duper keren di yoo.. apaaa gitu :p website gitu deh.. trus rada nyesel.. (jangan bilang google yak he, kayanya ni blogspot emang punya google deh, tapi terabaikan tanpa seri pengaturang website yang bagus gitu..)

contohnya tadi gue di tawarin masuk ke.. yang kalo bahasa indonesianya jadi pengaturan baru, halaah, ga penting gitu, trus ga embedded kaya model tumblr gitu yang semua templete udah tersedia, padahal kalo liat chrome beeh, semua udah di desain sedemikian rupa sehingga enak di lihat dan bisa langsung di applikasikan dengan sekali klik.. mungkin nature blogspot yang punya banyak data tersimpan ga gitu kali yak..

tau juga lah..

dan setelah gue balik lagi nyariin templete blogspot ini, aseli susah banget nyari yang dari layar samping kiri ampe samping kanan ketutup dalam templete nya gitu

ya kecuali emang templete yang udah gue pake..

tapi apa daya.. kadang gue rada berasa ni desain ga menyatu gitu, ada bagian bagian yang terpisah jadi keliatan patah patah gitu, untung bekgroundnya putih, jadi kalo upload gambar macam..



apa kaya gini



pokoknya yang bekgrund nya putih gitu



aseli ini lucu bgt



udah udah




hayaaaaah..

keliatan menyatu gitu bok.. tapi tetep, rada nyesel dikit..