Wow just wow…

Not so long ago I talked about my instrument-less condition. And just today I received a very interesting offer.

A friend of mine, a fellow musician, wants to sold one of his axe. After taking a look at it, I felt the urge of consumerism. I, with that overflowing feeling, made the deal with him that I’m gonna buy it next month. For some time, I felt really excited. The instrument looks great and I think, of course this is just a subjective opinion, it would look great on me too. And the best part is I don’t have to deal or make transaction with some dealers.

In a few minutes, I finally regained my consciousness. I imagined if I buy an electric instrument like that, can I really take care of it? Looking at how miserable my previous guitars ended, it was not hard to answer that. This is a kind of thing that constantly require your love and care. This is not a toy for a carefree person. Added to that, it is an electric one. That means it requires extra works to set it up perfectly as you wish. And I never had previous experience with it. To make it worse, I don’t think I have much skill (I never did anyway) and passion to play it anymore.

The doubt had taken over. I apologized to him and canceled the deal. So now he can offer the gear to someone else while I am rethinking about this

Just when I thought world domination drew nigh, shit happened. The lifetime partner of the captain, (arguably) best support player, weirdest ward placer, non-glory-chaser melen decided to retire from professional gaming. Sad news, not just to our country.

Take a look at this testimonial, written out of sheer respect.

The sign of things to come begins 3 years ago when you added my msn (it would normally be the other way around) and started asking the contacts of all good teams from me. I did not know why I helped a total stranger from a foreign country then but I did because the fact that you reached me (3 years ago) to get these information shows how serious you take all this and really strives to be the best in what you do. You opened my eyes that the Dota playing field is global now and beating the world requires training partners around the world, not just your own LAN scene.

From then on, news started to spread about this new Xcn team that seems unbeatable from the contacts I gave out that fateful day to no surprise from me. To be able to command a team of players (arguably) better than yourself skillwise and inspire respect (sometimes fear) among the best of teams in memory (Ct-ROA , Kingsurf , Zenith , Flow) in and off the game is no easy feat. The SMM 2006 winning team leader WN-SK.M4gi once told me that each 5 in a team must have his own purpose and your purpose is undeniably crucial and perhaps more important than Yamateh in Kingsurf.

The team you form remains (at least for me) a model team for all teams. A team that can walk into any tournament and has a high chance of winning it no matter which teams are present. That aura of invincibility remains since our first meeting IRL at ACG 2007 is still felt at the SMM tourney where everyone ranks you all as favourites after Day 1 of the competition.
With that kind of aura, its amazing that there are basically no bad blood from the community in general to you guys, only massive amount of respect and a sense of sad inevitability of not being able to catch up with such a superior team in every way.

Perhaps the greatest compliment comes from your greatest rival, Kingsurf. Although you both never directly spoke, Papaxiong can almost be certain that both teams has started researching each other since their first meeting 2 years ago and knew each other so thorough to a level that no other team can claim. The euphora of beating each other could be equivalent of winning the whole tournament itself. I always think that the focus on your team in each tournament creates another hurdle for themselves in winning the tournament itself. News of your retirement is greeted with a simple “sigh” from him as if he lost a good friend in battle. I know he will miss the draft battles he waged with you since 2 years ago , would you?

Your retirement for Dota is definitely a huge loss to the Dota community , not only for Indonesia and Asia, the world as well. Though I would selfishly tried to stop you from doing it, but to do that is asking too much from a man who has given so much to the game we all loved. With your obvious talents, I am sure you will succeed anywhere in life.

Good luck in your future endeavors my friend, melen.

Yes good luck to you melen. Thanks for making our country known in professional gaming. I may sound to pessimistic here but this will probably be the last entry about the best Indonesian gaming team. I really doubt they can find his replacement (not so soon). Years of hard works and understanding….

Now its time to farm money, not farm creeps anymore

This is just too big.

Press release
Detailed background
The complaint

Now, now. You call copyright violation “piracy”. What should we call copyleft violation?

It’s been a very long time  since I broke my guitar. If I take my inactivity, it’s probably years since I played guitar passionately. After some vacuum, I decided, ‘Hey, maybe it’s time for me to pick another instrument’. But which instrument? I always have a thing for keyboard instruments. You don’t need a motor skill coordination on both hands when producing a note. But being a guitar player, I found the keyboard’s composition was so…”unfair” to accidentals. I like the way the tones spread over a fretboard better than over a keyboard. I thought I want something more traditional and more exotic to be my instrument of choice…

After asking around, I finally found one of my friends who was gonna go ‘mudik’. That was how I get the instrument. However, purchasing a non-modern instrument, in my opinion, requires the buyer to purchase it directly. You won’t find any clear how-tos on the internet, so you have to ask the vendor how to play it properly. Did my friend ask? Yes. Was he capable to show me? No. These are the instruments.

The small one is just a mere traditional version of a recorder. The big one (approx. 60 centimeters) is the one I wanted. All that left is just learning the instrument. However there are a lot of things that make the quest almost impossible.

1. The forgotten factor of a wind instrument. You need a motor skill coordination on several fingers when producing a note.
2. How to play. I don’t have any slightest idea to play (the big one). I feel like blowing a water pipe. You have to blow it in the right angel, that’s my friend’s wisdom. After mimicking some guys at youtube, I finally can make some almost decent sound coming out of it. It’s been over a month, and I can only made a quality sound once…by accident. The internet told me that you need at least a year just to learn how to blow it properly.
3. Continuous sound. This is the biggest obstacle. The instrument is meant to be played continuously and it comes without some airbag mechanism (like Scottish bagpipe). It would take a very long time just to gain a circular breathing ability.

Well I think it’s extremely hard to play it at a decent level, even when you do not count #3. So I have to resort to something else.

After hearing Stephen Sondheim’s contrapuntal compositions (these are awesome), I thought ‘Hey, maybe I can try to sing it’. You know, I feel closer with the notes produced with my own voice than any other instruments. I am not a natural singer. I have to put a lot of my concentration just to reach a correct pitch and maintain it (if it’s a long note). So no matter how bad my voice is, I feel a great sense of achievement producing some tones. I feel kinda tired if I try to sing an entire song properly and with decent pronounciation. So for the time being, until I buy another instrument,I am gonna just use my voice to indulge my musical needs. I will sing any genre. Don’t worry I’ll keep it as private as possible so you won’t be disturbed.

Well before telling you the story, I’m gonna give you some background information. I usually actively followed the International (north american and european) competitive dota scene. When Asian teams started to show their fangs (hmm internet connection and FLOOD were problems), for some reasons, I stopped following the news. This was the time when XcN, Indonesian dota team, gained a lot of reputation since the start of their arch-rivalry with Malaysian Kingsurf (the epic game when they beat Ks in a very heroic, funny, entertaining series of games).

One year (more or less) has passed. This friend of mine told me that some foreign (Sweden) pro-gaming team (fnatic) has acquired XcN as their dota team (around August this year)! WOW! Good fucking game. They already showed great performances even when theyre not fully professional. With this, they dont have to worry about anything else aside from their game. Too bad, stamx, one of their original members left the team. Oh yeah, “PinkPriestess” Rinoa was appointed as their manager. With this pro shit, they will never have any problem with US Embassy EVER AGAIN.

Their profile. Neo, stamx replacement, is already replaced by Koala.
Recruitment news on local site. Plus their boss and manager’s comment in Bahasa Indonesia.

Just when I heard this great news, this new fnatic dota team was already in the MGC 2008 tournament. They lost their first match, so they had to fight in lower bracket. So to cut the story short, THEY WON!

Photos and replay pack from MGC 2008 (youll have to register. Replay pack also available on sgamer.com)

This is their third LAN tourneys. They won all of them.
Go fnatic! You have our flag in front of your names!!

“yamateh, gg back u” –xcn.ritter

this on imdb (LOL the board is so funny. mostly they talk by quoting the lyrics. the boards CONTAINS SPOILER!)

Okay this movie turned out to be a lot better than I expected.  It consists a lot of my favorite stuff. Crime, good music and dark comedy to name a few. So lets try to break it down.

Not usual musical

Be warned. Most musicals tend to stop the plot for the singing part(and dancing Bollywood style).  This movie is like opera or broadway musical, injecting the songs cleanly through the dialog. Characters start to sing suddenly but it timed perfectly with subtle background music.

Directing

Well I dont know much of directing. I can only say I love the camera works. It makes a simple scene looks beautiful. Tim decided to make this a lot more realistic so some people said it has less comedy than its original version.

Casts

Just great. Oh before I forget, today is one of the actor’s birthday! The actors are the reason why I wanted to watch this movie. Depp, Rickman, Bonham-Carter, Spall ( three of them also play  Harry Potter characters. What will happen if Thompson or Staunton got the part and played as Ms Lovett. Both are good actress, but I prefer Thompson), Borat, a kid with a good voice, old woman, and a young couple. Theres nothing much to say about most of them (known actors). They show their usual quality. I read on IMDB that Borat(yeah Im lazy to write his full name) sang an entire score on audition, and hired his barber as his coach. Bonham-Carter also took an extensive vocal lessons. If I have to choose my favorite character, It will be Ms Lovett by Bonham-Carter (the corpse-on-the-chest reaction was soo funny). All characters can sing pretty well (IMO).

Music and Lyric

Ah the one that made this ride excellent. So many great lyrics. Either it’s funny as hell, so witty , or both! Maybe theres alot more comedy on the lyrics that I dont get. I should watch this again. The movie used the original Sondheim music. Some songs didnt make it to the movie. Some got cut down. Now I am looking for these songs on the internet…they are must have. Memorable funny songs are The worst pies in London (syncophated singing while baking), miracle elixir(good voice by the kid), and meat-discussion song(the funniest and wittiest of all).

Plot

The plot is very simple but the conflicts were good. And since the lyrics was part of dialog, you dont have to wait for the song to finish to continue the plot since it never stops. I like the ending. I dont like put to much detail. It will ruin your experience.

Conclusion

If you like, or try to like opera/broadway this can be a good watch. Good music and good actors. I cant wait to watch Borat playing as Freddy Mercury.

Changes since 2.0 include:
- Linux-ubuntu-modules cleared of non-free blobs
- Usplash added, thanks to Jean
- New theme and artwork, thanks to Patricio, Briareoh and Leo
- Readded fix for module-init-tools for eepro100
- Builder: LiveCD no longer asks for password on sudo
- Builder: Added support for extra repositories in python-apt
- Builder: Various tweaks, fixes and improvements from Karl

Here’s a few words from the chief

I’ve just realised that tomorrow will mark the 2 year anniversary of our first release.
Accordingly, it’s somewhat appropriate that our 10th LiveCD is released today.

It’s strange to think that it’s well over 2 years since Paul and I started gNewSense. While I remain the main developer; many other people have contributed code, and many many more time and effort, to ensure that this distribution stays free and usable. We were the first for example to remove all non-free blobs from the kernel and also the first to remove GLX. Through all this work we have produced what is, to the best of my knowledge, the freest GNU/Linux distribution in existence.

I’d like to thank everyone for their help and support thus far, and look forward to the future of gNewSense.

Heh…the most “hated” removal had to be linux-ubuntu-modules. Glad to see it back.

I still remember the day Toni Kroos stole the Golden Ball award from Bojan Krkic (and shared the Bronze shoe with him). The tale continued. He began gaining experience in senior team. Most notable performance was saving his seniors from UEFA Cup defeat in Belgrade (some guy in the internet said “wow you have to depend on a teenager to save you from losing”). I got the opportunity to watch him live when his team came to my country(three assists and one cooly taken goal). But I still surprised to see him picked ahead of Borowski last week (if Ribery was fit, he would sat on the bench).

Enough about him. Now I’m gonna talk about Marin. A lot of fans were ecstatic when Low included him on last 26 men for last Euro. Too bad Low prefered the-speed-only-not-so-good-in-La-liga Odonkor. Here’s his output when given a chance.

One-two with Lahm … Link

The old school effective dribbling. I dont understand why kids nowadays drool over useless tricks on the pitch. One effective feint > one million stepovers per second (I dont hate stepovers, but players tend overdo it).

To end this post, I wanna say thanks to Global TV for their Bundesliga program. Compared to La Liga, EPL or Serie A, Bundesliga had the most goal scored in a season. Well I think that will continue, considering the goals galore on its first matchday last week. Tak kenal maka tak sayang.


tino@kusut:~$ df -lh
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6             5.8G  2.8G  2.8G  50% /
varrun                506M  108K  506M   1% /var/run
varlock               506M     0  506M   0% /var/lock
udev                  506M   72K  506M   1% /dev
devshm                506M  288K  506M   1% /dev/shm
gvfs-fuse-daemon      5.8G  2.8G  2.8G  50% /home/tino/.gvfs
/dev/sda1              21G   17G  3.3G  84% /media/a0
/dev/sda5             9.4G  7.9G  1.5G  85% /media/a1
/dev/sdb1              21G   21G  211M 100% /media/b0
/dev/sdb2              98G   95G  2.9G  98% /media/b1
/dev/sdb3              98G   97G  1.1G  99% /media/b2
/dev/sdb4              82G   81G  1.1G  99% /media/b3


IceCat 3.0 was released days ago (development release). Here the link if you dont know what that is.

Source
Binary

If you have the previous version (2.0.0.13) compiled and installed, be ready to bust your balls uninstalling it, since it doesnt have “uninstall” target. Check its mailing list to do it properly.

Gnash 0.8.3 was released way before this. I heard it plays youtube now. I still have 0.8.2 on my system and rely on youtube-dl heavily.

I want to try both of them later and maybe write about it.