Due to the bad reliability and performance of Friendster Blog, I have moved this blog (with all comments and posts) to my own hosting, http://blog.andrian.kurniady.net. Therefore this blog will not be updated anymore. Thanks.

-Andrian Kurniady

This is another end-of-year + new-year post, which means that it’s been a year past the last post of mine with the same topic. Well, years were never the same, hence, this post should exist.

The year 2008 left so many memories for me: valuable experiences, new places, encounters with many sort of people, a few competitions, lots of tasks, but it was great. Here is my summary of 2008 :

• I visited Korea (transit only), Canada (ACM ICPC World Finals), and Sydney (Google Code Jam APAC onsites). I also visited my hometown, Pontianak, after 9 years which didn’t feel like so long. Those journeys are done in 12 flights, around a bit more than 20.000 miles in total.
• My cash-equivalent assets shrunk by around 25%, due to the considerable loss in stocks and extra expenses (including the purchase of my Lenovo Thinkpad T61). Extra income from competitions come in a strong sum, I think a bit better than 2007, which helps keeping the shrinking minimal. In comparison, the Jakarta Composite Index fell about nearly 50%.
• I’ve almost finished my studies, with satisfactory grades. I’ve also been appointed as a teaching assistant handling one lab class.
• Relationship matters are mostly still unclear, but is getting better.
• I’ve increased my weight by around 10kg, such that now I have a more or less ideal weight.
• I’m now more outgoing, I believe that now I deal with other people better than before.
• My productivity in completing tasks are not really improving, such that a big chunk of the year are wasted in games, pointless browsing, etc. Maybe I’m just tired with everything, and need a significant change in life (such that moving overseas). Task backlog never clears up throughout the year, which adds to the laziness.
• I got a job offer from Google Sydney, and have decided to go there after finishing my studies. Not lost anymore, which is good.

Many of the interesting stories from 2008 can be seen in the previous post in this blog as well as my main blog. Now I think we shall continue to my outlook of 2009:

• I’ll be finishing my studies, and am targetting an A for my thesis. If everything goes well, I’ll graduate with a GPA of 3.90 and a Summa Cum Laude. Hopefully…
• I’ll be moving to Sydney, hopefully there’ll be no problem with the visa and others. This will be my first time living abroad, hopefully I’ll be completely independent soon.
• Because I’ll be employed and earn my own salary, I’m targetting a steep 300% asset growth. Hopefully the world’s economy recovers, so there’ll be interesting investment opportunities arising by the end of the year.
• I’m expecting to visit two new countries this year, or, one at minimum.
• I’m planning to upgrade my DSLR camera. It’s nearly 5 years old already and I think now I have a higher expectation out of a camera (which is becoming possible and affordable now). Maybe switching to Canon too? or maybe not.
• I’m expecting to learn more about people and their behaviors, hopefully increasing my skill in managing people (which is not so good at the moment).
• I may need to find and tune my long term life plan, because somehow I’m seeing my dreams started to fade, which is not good.

Many more to be written actually, but I suspect you’ve got bored up till this part, so I’ll end it here. I would like to wish everyone the best in 2009!

Cheers,

-Kurniady

P.S.: having a similar thought? or don’t agree with some of those ideas? whatever you think, let me know by posting in the comments. Thanks.

In the past, let’s say, until few months ago, I used to enjoy working alone in the middle of the night so much. Those nights are the time when I can get full concentration on things, and it was usually very hard to force myself to sleep. Usually I don’t go to sleep until I get terribly sleepy (my biological clock thinks that there is 25 or more hours in a day, so I usually get sleepy around one hour later than the time I got to sleep on the previous day), or until I’m worried like “it’s going to be dawn soon, what am I doing instead of sleeping???”. Those nights are the best time for me to browse around the net and read whatever things I found with enough excitement to continue until I finished with some topics. In short, I was very productive at night, especially in learning new things (never really tried studying for exams that late at night though, so can’t tell whether it’s more effective).

However, that was the past. Even though nowadays I still work and learn well at night, I don’t feel like enjoying it as much as I did few months ago. While the urge to “do something more before calling it a day” is still there, it’s not that fun anymore. Just like last night, I was stuck at around 2am in the morning, with nobody to chat with, no motivation to do anything, want to sleep but can’t (not sleepy yet). That raised the question, whether I am still an Introvert like before.

So, today, I took the Jung Typology Test (based on Myers-Briggs approach), and to my surprise, I was diagnosed as type ENTJ (Extraverted, iNtuitive Thinking Judging) - Fieldmarshals. I remember that I took this same test three years ago, during the CB1 class, and was diagnosed as INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive Thinking Judging)- Mastermind with heavy preference on Introversion rather than Extraversion. Apparently currently I’m significantly more Extraverted than before, so that may explains “the loss of motivation to work during the long nights alone”.

The description seems to fit perfectly (even the description here and here too), so I think I really have changed. (And Bill Gates falls into this type too, what a relief )

Is it a good thing? or a bad thing?

The good news is, Fieldmarshals are said to have some Leadership quality, so I should be able to manage people better. Well, maybe. That seems to be a fair trade with my ability to work until late night, at least I’ll be able to live healthier later on when I finally quit being a night-owl , which may happen sometimes soon. Or not.

What do you think?
-Kurniady

It’s been a long while since the last time I wrote something on this blog… well, during the past couple of months, I’ve been having a long holiday, done a couple of projects, and more. But that’s not the point of this post, as those are quite usual compared to other holidays I had in the past.

As some of you may have know already, I celebrated my 21st birthday last week. It’s not about the birthday, but it’s about being 21 years old. Somehow the old thoughts about future are coming back. (p.s. thanks everyone for the birthday wishes btw… )

Based on my observations on some peoples, actually I’m a bit early about thinking about life, as some others say they’re going to think about it later when they graduate, when they turn 25, or some even want to play until their 40s.

But for me, planning life as early as possible is a must (how perfectionist is that ). I am already in my 7th semester, currently doing thesis and looking forward to graduate in about half a year. So, what should I do next?

In the recent weeks, several new tasks comes to me. Thesis, competition, projects, etc. Somehow, I tend to think more when loaded with tasks (think of a Pentium M processor with SpeedStep technology - it works at a faster clock when the workload is high). So that’s may be the reason why this though is coming back.

So, what should I do after I graduate? There are many choices actually, which are :

• Start a career in software engineering. Fortunately, I actually got an interview with Google Sydney next week, so we’ll see whether going there is the right way to go. While working, it may be possible to take a Masters degree with part time coursework. Google is currently quoted as the best employer to work for, so getting a chance to start right there is very valuable.
• Continue for a Ph.D degree in Singapore (or somewhere else). At first, this choice was very interesting. But then, when I tried some research work (while preparing for my thesis), it wasn’t that fun anymore. A lot of the research work is actually reading and re-reading papers from previous work, and currently presenting new ideas in research is quite not easy. It has to be proven to be a new idea, connected to all relevant previous works, etc. This makes working as Software Engineer more interesting, because it is more into “creating cool stuffs that works”.
• Continue to a Master’s degree and decide where to go after that. This choice may look good at the beginning, but if I’m going to continue to a Ph.D degree from here, it will eventually take more time to complete (and more work in total as well). If I’m going into the IT industry, then a Master’s degree may be a good start for a good employment (in lieu of work experience, may be or may not be).
• what else? do you have any idea?

Even more things comes in mind if I consider planning for a longer timeframe. How about getting married? How about retirement? things like that. But for the time being, I think I should focus on these short-term decisions first.

By the way, the new semester is starting. I am enrolled for two courses (Monday and Tuesday) as well as appointed to teach for a lab class on Wednesday. I will be free on Thursday and Friday, but I think the time should be spent doing thesis. Ah yes, I opted to take one lab manual project too. Hopefully it’ll be useful for the next batches of Binusians after I left the university.

Another competition, the Google Code Jam 2008 - onsite regionals is coming close too. I will be in Sydney next week, for about a week there. Competition, interviews, and sightseeing will be the main activities. I actually didn’t expect this to happen before, but it’s a nice break from the routine days in Jakarta whatsoever. Preparing for the event was quite a bit of work, which include applying for the visa (lots of documents), as well as preparing for the competition itself (hasn’t practiced a lot, actually). Fortunately it’s a couple of weeks holiday after I get back, so there should be enough time to catch up with other tasks.

These activities, tasks, really makes me feel that my life is “starting”. A lot of responsibilities, tasks, which calls for an efficient way to be solved in time.

What do you think?

-Kurniady

Setelah lama nggak sempat ngeblog, akhirnya ada waktu lagi dan dapet ide untuk nulis blog ini. Sebulan terakhir seperti biasa sibuk, mulai dari kuliah, persiapan untuk ke Canada, betulin komputer (udah selesai akhirnya… *fiuh*), rapiin file (udah diarchive ke puluhan DVD belum abis abis juga *aaargh*), dan yang terakhir juga trading.

But the topic that I want to write about today is about my workspace (a desk, actually). Setelah sebulan bongkar - bongkar PC (thanks to that damn SEAGATE sampah things - two new harddrives go broken one week apart), beli monitor baru (It’s a 19" wide screen LCD by Acer), dan a couple hours of soldering (modifikasi router biar bisa dipake buat download), I finally got the time to clean up and rearrange my workspace. Here is the picture :

From the right to the left :

• A PC - an old Athlon XP 2500+ PC with 4 harddrives (2×80gb and 2×160gb) and a DVDRW plus a CDRW inside. The casing is a nice one made by Silverstone which was a prize of a computer competition sometimes back.
• A pack of DVDRW and a USB Disk
• An LCD monitor, 19" wide screen by Acer
• A keyboard and mouse (wireless) set by Logitech
• A mouse by Belkin (bluetooth)
• An external harddisk enclosure
• A mouse by Acer
• A laptop by Dell, a Latitude D510n
• A router by Linksys (behind the laptop )
• A card reader
• An HP Print-Scan-Copy all in one
• A handycam by Sony (currently capturing video in the picture above) and a bunch of MiniDV cassettes
• My pen

LOL, that was a lot of things hahahaha… last time I tried to find a Dell port replicator to simplify the process of attaching the devices to the laptop, but I did not find one in Jakarta, what a pity…

Oh yes, for those who are interested, the PC itself is actually running Linux, but currently viewing remote desktop of the laptop which is running Windows XP. I found it to be a nice solution rather than using extended desktop (plugging the LCD to the laptop) since it require me to plug the fragile VGA cable everytime I want to use my laptop there. This way, I can use both of the keyboards and all of the mouses altogether.

Hopefully with this new settings, I will be able to work better in the future. What do you think? hehe..

-Andrian Kurniady

Have you ever felt "lost" in your life? That kind of "lost" when you don’t know where to go, what to do, or even where you are.

Currently I am somehow in the state of being "lost". There are many things that I don’t exactly know how to deal with, such as about the future or even about the relationship matters. Being "lost" is obviously not a right state to be in, and in my case, it significantly degenerate my efficiency in working and solving other things.

Few years ago, when I’m about to enter a university, the choices are not that many. I was choosing between continuing my study in Singapore or in Jakarta. Having predetermined about my interests, choosing a major to pursue was not a problem. The choice came out naturally based on some circumstances and I ended up continuing my study in Bina Nusantara International, without even giving a lot of thoughts on it.

But now, the conditions are different. There are more choices ahead and I have no idea which option is better than which. I have a year to decide, but that wouldn’t be easy for sure. When I finally decided about my future, I think I should be able to draw some rough roadmap about my future completely (for some of you who thinks I have such a roadmap written or drawn already: no, I don’t have it yet, but I certainly will make one). I know that I want to be successful in the future, and since it’s so important, naturally I am very motivated to be successful. The problem is that being motivated does not make the options clearer or easier, I still have to make that decision.

The case can actually be generalized to the case when you want to achieve something. Imagine you have a goal to achieve. Sometimes, you are very determined to reach that goal, but you simply don’t know how. That is not a pleasant situation to be in, because if you’re in there for too long, you’ll start blaming yourself on not doing the right thing to achieve your goal, or simply on not trying hard enough.

Well currently my only solution is keep trying and be patient, and also somehow believing that sometimes I can only wait for the solution to come naturally. However, I still believe that the awareness of being lost (such as me writing this post) is a part of the solution.

What do you think?

-Kurniady

For people who know me, they probably also know that one of my hobby is Photography. For most of big events that I attended, or while traveling outside Jakarta, I always bring my camera along with its accessories. Sometimes I bring a small shoulder bag, sometimes I bring a big backpack for it. Thus, this blog post will explain about me and photography, how I started and where I am right now in photography.

The hobby actually started sometimes while I was in elementary school, as I was always interested in taking photos as well as bringing a camera with my - my dad’s camera, which is a simple pocket 35mm film camera made by Canon with a fixed lens (without zoom). That camera has already ended it’s career as of now (I think it was borrowed by someone and never got returned). I used that camera for some years, during the junior high years when I had a couple of camping (a school’s event) in the mountainous area of Sukabumi, and I started to like taking pictures (really like the sound of the shutter plus the film advancing - quite missing that sound now as I now shoot with digital). However, at those period I am not even an amateur photographer, I just enjoy taking pictures. I had no idea about shutter, diaphragm, or even zooming.

I started becoming more serious about photography about one year after I entered high school. It was the time when I am about to attend the National Science Olympic (Olimpiade Sains Nasional - OSN) of 2003, that my dad bought me a Nikon CoolPix 5700 digital camera (I bought a 512mb CompactFlash card - which still works today to replace the included tiny 32mb card), which was the most advanced prosumer non-DSLR digital camera available at that time. The Nikon D100 digital camera or the Canon 10D was quite too expensive at that time. With this CoolPix 5700 camera, I took about at least 5000 photos, including some trips to other cities, a trip to India (New Delhi and Taj Mahal), as well as some event documentation (I also bought a used Nikon SB25 Speedlight to shoot the indoor events - the flash still works well today with my new camera). Sometimes along the way, I also bought an extension tube and a couple of filters (linear polarizer and UV, I guess).

About a month before departure to Athens for my first International Olympiad in Informatics, my dad upgraded my camera into my first DSLR camera, the Nikon D70. It was newly introduced and was the first DSLR to be affordable to me, along with it’s excellent 18-70mm kit lens which I still use today most of the time. Currently, this camera has taken 18.907 shots (which means around 5000 photos a year), and still works (although it’s mirror or shutter sometimes caused a black shadow in half of the image during long exposures). I have bought two additional lenses for it : a Sigma 70-300mm tele zoom which also does macro (it’s actually very nice to take candid pictures from afar), and a Nikon 50mm F/1.8 with it’s excellent sharpness and great low light performance. Currently, I am thinking of having another lens to cover the wide angle which is useful for landscape and indoor shooting.

Well, enough with the technical parts, now I would like to reflect a little bit about my photos. Actually, out of these 23000photos, I have to admit that I have less than 100 photos that I really like (those kind of photo that I would like to print out in large enlargement and put it in a frame if I have a space to hang it). Out of that, there are about only less than 10 photos that really touches my by heart, those kind of photos that will bring me back to the time I took it and really feels that it is "live" and will not be forgotten (by me) until several years to come. Just a few days ago, I luckily made a couple of this kind of photo and I finally realized something.

Out of these years of me doing photography, I actually tried to "freeze" all the moments I went through and hoping that viewing the pictures will bring me back to that point when I want it. It turns out that this is not the case : however good the picture is, it will never resembles the true moment, just part of it. The true moment itself however, may live in my heart as a great experience. Therefore, from now on, I will try not to pointlessly click the shutter just to attempt to freeze the moment. There are times when the moment should be felt with the heart instead of being frozen (which may cause it to partly loose it’s meaning). Sometimes, taking to many pictures makes me forget to enjoy the moments, an experience that may not be happening again in the future.

Then, I also realized that the tendency to "shoot everything, pick later" is basically an effect of fear of letting the great moments pass by. You may have already experienced the times when you feel really really happy, and you really don’t want the happiness to go away when the event ends. Taking a lot of pictures does not solve that, it is just a weak relief out of that situation. Having thought of this, I think my life is too inclined to events, instead of routines. Bringing those kind of happiness into daily life is probably the real solution. Thus, take the documentation as only "souvenirs from the past" instead of something to look into when you miss some part of your life.

Photography may have changed my life, but at least it made me realized something, and that is all worthed.

As always, I welcome any comments you may have and thanks for reading.

-Kurniady

After quite a very long time, a few days ago I got a flu - a serious one that forces me to skip a class and took a day off to recover. But then, it gives me a lot of time to think, something that rarely happen lately, as my mind is always full with projects and other stuffs (which may or may not - usually not - important). After a while, I found a time that I don’t have to do anything, just sit down, rest, and probably think. That feeling of peace really do have a good effect on my health, as I already mostly recovered on the next day to deliver a final presentation on the Software Engineering course.

So, now, after the Software Engineering course is over (well, 98% over, actually, as we still have to submit the client acceptance statement and also probably a paper), I only have one project left, the Enterprise Application which is due next week on Wednesday. That means, now I have more time to think and relax.

Well, what have I been thinking? Well, actually I felt that lately I changed a lot. I am now more realistic to life, but unfortunately have partly lost my motivation on achieving the best out of myself. Lately, I have become more lazy and less disciplined. For the last couple of years, I always wandered why my results are not as good as before, although I did succeed in several things as well. Now I know why : I did not try hard and smart enough like before. I wasted a lot of time and somehow lost my interest in learning and also lost my persistence in learning things. I gave up more easily now, and that explains why I did not reach the top most of the time.

So, I think it’s the time for me to change. It’s time to go forward instead of living in the success of the past. It’s time to break the limits again. It’s time to go out of my comfort zone and take the new challenges. It’s time to determine my future. Wish me luck!

-Kurniady

The year 2007 is coming to an end, I guess it’s now the time to review and summarize what have happened during this wonderful year:

• From the financial perspective, my investments and savings are doing good during this year, ended with about 85% growth in terms of asset (cash and securities). The amount of liability is nearly zero (as usual), except for the outstanding bills due on January. Most of the gain comes from the incredible growth of Jakarta Composite Index (IHSG) during the year.
• About competitions : I participated in several competitions during the year. The ones that worth mentioning are the ACM ICPC World Final 2007, ACM ICPC Indonesia National Contest, ACM ICPC Asian Regional Contest - Taipei and Singapore site. The year ended with the a ticket to the ACM ICPC World Final 2008 in Banff, Canada. (stories are available in my site http://www.kurniady.net )
• There were 4 international travel for me this year, Tokyo, India, Taipei/Hongkong, and Singapore, as well as one trip to Surabaya, Indonesia. Altogether I flew 16 flight sectors (which means I took off and landed 16 times) in total.
• During the year, I have been successfully shifted from an introverted person into a balanced person (introverted and extroverted). Hopefully it will remain this way in the future.
• I stayed single during the whole year, hopefully it’ll not be the same for next year as I already see the light.

Outlooks for 2008 and beyond :

• The stock market may not be growing as fast as this year, but then I will assume at least 50% growth in my asset. I should start making monthly budgets and planning, to help me achieve even further.
• Next year will be the last chance for me to participate in the ACM ICPC World Final, afterwards, I will not be able to compete again in any ACM ICPC event. However, there are still other opportunities such as the events organized by Topcoder. I should start participating in development competitions as well.
• I think there will be around 4 to 5 international travel next year, plus visiting my hometown of Pontianak.
• I will be doing my final semester in the second half of 2008, and hopefully will graduate on early 2009. After that, a continuation to either a Ph.D degree in NUS or to a Masters degree in business is very likely. The other option is to work overseas. During 2008 I will need to take a considerable amount of time researching and deciding what to do in 2009, as it is very important for my future.

The year 2007 has been a wonderful year for me, which will not be possible without the support of my family and friends. Thank you very much ^_^ and may we all have a great year of 2008.

-Andrian Kurniady

Most (if not all) people who use computers know what a File is, which is, in short, a piece of data with name, size, type, etc. A file can be a Word document, a text document, an executable binary, a compressed archive, etc.

Having a lots of files means you own a lot of information. However, it soon becomes problem when the number of files you own grows (uncontrollably). As a student, as well as a computer hobbyist, you may have already guessed that I have this kind of problem as well. What I am aware of is that I produce (and collect) lots of files which have accumulated for several years now. Currently, I have several thousands (or tens of thousands) files, totaling to about more than 200gigabytes in size. That does not include files that have been archived into CDs or DVDs. So, I guess now it’s time for me to think about how to organize those files.

Generally, I think the problems with having too many files are :

• Storage size : what if you run out of space? (is not a problem if you have unlimited storage)
  • My current solution : add more drives, archive to DVDs
• Organization : how to organize them in a logical way? (is not a problem if you have an AI agent that knows about all your files and can find and order them for you automatically)
  • My current solution : per-category separation, shallow hierarchies (2-3 levels), but still needs a lot of work to maintain (otherwise there will be many "unsorted" files).
• Storage reliability : how big is the risk of losing these files? (is not a problem if your hardware never fails and the filesystem never crashes)
  • My current solution : RAID-1 (mirrored storage) - basically store the same data in two identical drives (just in case one fails)

However, the types of files also matters. I think files can be categorized as :

• Other people’s work - easily re-obtainable (Cat 1)
  • This kind of file can be easily downloaded from the internet, or something you can retrieve from other medias
  • Generally I don’t care to much about the storage of this kind of files, since losing it is not much of a problem. Lately, I have been deleting small downloaded files, because redownloading them when needed is much simpler than organizing the files.

• Other people’s work - not easily re-obtainable (Cat 2)
  • This include big files, or files acquired through some occasional events or procedures, or files that is no more available elsewhere.
  • Still have to be stored well

• My work (Cat 3)
  • I generally save everything I made, directly and indirectly. This include codes, history, logs, reports, documents, homeworks, and of course, photos.
  • Losing any of this kind of file means losing it forever, unless manually remade.

Currently out of these 200gigabytes I mentioned, I guess around 100 to 150 gigs are of Cat 3 while the the rest of them are of Cat 2 and Cat 1. So, that means later when I run out of storage, I should delete these Cat 1 files first (or should I do it now? hmm…).

Organizing files have always been needing a lot of work and time. Several years ago, I categorized my files in a deep-hierarchy structure. But that approach require quite a lot of effort everytime I store a file, which caused a lot of new files stays in the unsorted area (because it takes time to organize them to the structure). Lately, I have changed into a more flat-hierarchy kind of structure, and it is quite successful in making me less hesitating to organize my files upon creation. However, these legacy "unsorted" files are still needing a lot of work to be organized (I am thinking of encapsulating all of them into a compressed archive and not trying to organize them anymore, to reduce the backlogging). I had spent several hours (or even days) lately to organize all of those files, but still, there are a lot of work to be done.

I guess I should consider using the "label and search" kind of strategy (with Google Desktop apps maybe?) and forgot about organizing the files altogether (if you can still find the file when needed, why bother categorizing?…)

So, what do you think? Do you have any strategy on organizing your files?

-Kurniady