Italy chapter’s missing logs….

This posting is dedicated to the major events (especially the travelling part) during my 1-year stay in Trento, Italy, that haven’t been logged yet. Honestly, I’ve forgotten the details, so pictures may tell the stories better than my memory.

On September 17th 2008, the master theses defences (presentations) were held at the IRST building. And one of the Indonesian EuMI students (Ferry Irawan Tantono, my senior) got a 110 con lode (with distinction). Congratulations to him!

Trento – Congratulations to Ferry! (me, Tizar, Ferry, Ida, Yusi)

On October 12th 2008, I and Mu went to Bolzano for a day trip.

Bolzano – Me posing with a big pumpkin

On November 8th 2008, I, Alexis and Mu went ice-skating. Jeff and his wife, Jennifer, came along a bit later.

Trento – Ice-skating (Alexis, Mu, me)

On November 15th and 16th 2008, I and Mu went to Torino for a 2-day trip. We visited several spots, the most interesting one was the Egyptian museum that showed several mummies

Torino – In front of the National Museum of Cinema

During the Christmas break, I, Mu, Wenjing, Gao Xiang and Chen Zao visited Taormina and Palermo (Sicilia). Then continued visiting Rome, but we were separated since I joined Josef, an EMSE student. I, Josef and Jun Ming (a guy I didn’t know before who was interested in joining our trip) went to the midnight Christmas mass at the Vatican city and visited many famous spots in Rome.

Taormina – Posing at the old Greek theatre

Palermo – In front of the cathedral

Roma – Inside the famous Colosseum (Jun Ming, Josef, me)

Roma – Eyes-closed pose outside the Colosseum

Vatican – Posing in front of St. Peter’s basilica

I spent the new year’s eve in Trento with Indonesian friends. We went to piaza del Duomo to see fire crackers during the year-changing moments, then we watched a cartoon at Yudis‘ place until morning came.

Trento – Snowy new year….

On January 17th 2009, I and Ida visited Vicenza. Palladio’s architectures are indeed nice.

Vicenza….

Early January I, Mu, Sandeep, Jeff, Jennifer, Mike, Fatih, and an Italian girl went skiing somewhere around Val di Sole. A stupid thing happened. I, Mu and Sandeep went down hill with the wrong cable car

Val di Sole – Enjoy skiing….

On January 21st 2009, Yudis conducted his final Ph.D presentation at IRST.

Trento – Yudis’ Ph.D defense. Congratulations to him!

On May 25th 2009, I went to Trento from Aachen to fetch some left luggages. I visited Verona and visited some famous spots.

Verona – Self-taken picture inside the Arena

It’s a pity that I haven’t visited Pisa and Firenze. Next time then

RWTH-Aachen’s eduroam on Fedora 10

The story began when I came to Aachen from Trento and needed the internet connection around the campus. I tried to use the “eduroam” SSID, but since it didn’t work, I used the “mops” instead. To get the connection, I needed to use the Cisco VPN client. So it all went well, I could connect to the internet at the university. But then, last month, when I discussed my thesis thingy with my supervisor, I couldn’t get my laptop online. I tried the normal procedure for connecting to the VPN server but with no positive result as shown below.

Connected to the “mops” SSID

Couldn’t connect to the VPN server (previously it worked fine this way)

Getting a bit frustrated, I contacted the RZ helpdesk through email, and the operator said “mops” was not available anymore! (except for guest users) Goshhh…. So the only choice was to use the “eduroam” SSID. I tried following the instructions at RZ’s website with no luck (I tried installing all 3 certificates required). I went to the RZ helpdesk at the SuperC building, but they couldn’t support the Linux platform So I went to the center for computing and communication’s helpdesk, but they couldn’t support the Linux platform as well. So they routed me to the informatics building, the usual place for me to hang out (the computer pool room). And finally the guy showed me how to configure things appropriately on newer Linux distributions. He used the Ubuntu 9.04 Linux distribution, but this specific configuration should work for Ubuntu 8.10 as well. I tried it on my Fedora 10 box and it worked just fine. Surprisingly, the guy wasn’t a computer science student. So what’s the special configuration? It is without using the CA certificate!!!! Gosshhhh… Had I known this earlier, I wouldn’t have had to be routed around Aachen Of course I used the NetworkManager provided by the Fedora 10 distribution instead of using the old-school network service (the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ thingy). I will never use the traditional iwlist, iwconfig, and dhclient tools anymore unless in specific circumstances where I’m forced to use them

Using the nm-tool make sure that WPA2 or WPA is supported by the wireless interface

The correct NetworkManager configuration

Spring trip 2009: Keukenhof-garden

Spring is here for several weeks already, and I with several informatics students of the RWTH Aachen went to the famous Keukenhof tulip garden somewhere near Lisse, the Netherlands, that’s claimed to be the world’s largest flower garden. No comment about the claim, but the garden is indeed large We were 13 (me, Anu, Ali, Bikash, Chat, Chitra, Eduardo, Fariha, Imtiaz, Jothir, Kiran, Pan, Rashed), and we went to Lisse by bus (a sort of tour). The tour package was quite nice, € 26 for the whole trip (including the ticket entrance to the garden, but of course excluding food). Thanks to Chitra for arranging the trip. By the way, this log is relatively fast compared to other logs in this blog, just 1 day after the event

We departed from near Aachen’s theatre around 7 a.m., and the trip took about 4 hours. The bus took us to a street where the flower parade (bloemencorso) took place. Cars, buses, trucks among other vehicles were decorated with tulips. In addition, several drum bands showed off their talents as well. Several pictures from the spot can be seen below.

Lisse – Asterix was there in the parade

Lisse – This big bee was also there

Lisse – The drumband parade

After the parade was over, we went back to the bus and continued the trip to the Keukenhof garden, and entered the garden. It was so crowded and we lost the guys some moments before entering the garden. So I, Chitra, Fariha and Kiran went around (just the 4 of us, and I was the only guy ) and took many pictures. I took a video as well, but I’m too lazy to upload it to youtube. As I had expected before coming to the garden, the garden was packed with cool tulips. Colourful and beautiful.

Keukenhof – Entrance to the garden

Keukenhof – The garden’s entrance ticket

Keukenhof – Yellow and pink tulips

And below are several poses of mine with the tulips

Keukenhof – Posing with the tulips

Keukenhof – Another pose with the tulips

Keukenhof – Another pose, this time sitting on the grass

I was wondering also whether one day I’ll be in a position like in the picture below, giving the pretty tulip to my future wife and say “I love you….” Ow, so romanticcccc Well, I hope it will come true

Keekenhof – “Ti amo….”

There was also a sort of lake in the garden. I and the girls bought ice cream and sat on the grass at the bank of the lake. I felt so light and relaxed. I wish I could enjoy that moment frequently

Keukenhof – Tulips at the bank of the lake

We also came accross to a giant traditional pair of shoes of Holland. And as usual, I made a cool pose with them

Keukenhof – Posing with the giant pair of shoes

There was also a windmill at one edge of the garden. Windmill is a famous icon for Holland as well.

Keukenhof – Tulips and a windmill

Before leaving the garden, I also tried laying on a stack of hay. I felt so comfortable. I wish I had laid longer

Keukenhof – Laying on the hay stack…

Then I and the girls hurried to the bus since it was almost 6 p.m. (the bus’ departure time back to Aachen). During the trip back to Aachen, the guys were playing cards like mad. I watched them for sometimes then slept. I’d like to thank my travel companions for this wonderful trip to the tulip garden. Hopefully I’ll visit Keukenhof again later on.

The time’s changing again…. (the DST is applied)

So this is the 4th time for me to experience the time-change in Europe for the graduate study part of my life. The clock was advanced 1 hour yesterday (Sunday, 29th March 2009) which means the summer time (day-light saving time) is applied now.

The 3rd chapter is (unofficially) finished….

As the title describes, it’s unofficial since there’s still 1 pending report to submit and not all grades have been registered to the online system of the University of Trento. But I have all the grades already in hand, so I might say it’s finished…. unofficially So let me highlight a bit the courses that I took during the 3rd semester.

I’ll start with the Computer Graphics course which was conducted by the Graphitech in cooperation with the University of Trento. I start with this course simply because it’s worth for 12 ECTS credits and the best grade I obtained during the 3rd chapter of the EuMI programme, thanks to my partners: Alessio Guerrieri and Gavriel Smith. I enjoyed working with them, and in fact I learnt a lot from them as they were experienced in the area. So the course was divided into 2 parts, the first part was mainly tutorials about how OpenGL works coupled with in-class exercises, and the second part was the project development phase (each group was assigned a project to accomplish). All implementations were done using the Java programming language with JOGL API. My group’s project was about the hybrid-terrain representation using a TIN (Triangulated Irregular Networks) on NASA’s Worldwind API. For a visual demo of several exercises and the final project, please watch the 2 clips below. The original clip was captured using the Istanbul desktop screen recorder in ogg theora format, then it was converted to MPEG4 format using FFMpeg, then splitted into 2 files to fit youtube’s 10-minute-length constraint using the Mencoder. Everything was done on top of my currently installed Fedora 9 linux distribution. I’d like to thank the teaching assistants: Olga, Bruno, Giuseppe, and of course prof. DeAmicis for giving me something to know about computer graphics

Computer Graphics demo – Part 1 (to watch directly from Youtube, please follow this link)

Computer Graphics demo – Part 2 (to watch directly from Youtube, please follow this link)

I’ve been interested in data communications topics since the very beginning I joined the EuMI programme, inheritted somehow from my previous job. During the third semester, the only related course to this topic that I took was the Advanced Networking course conducted by prof. LoCigno and his assistant Csaba, and also several guest lecturer(s). I learnt many things on the network, transport, and application layers through this course, complementing the second semester’s Nomadic Communications course which mainly focusing on the physical and MAC layers. For the final project, I teamed up with Ruchi for developing a call traffic generator program that used the (negative) exponential distribution for the call interarrival time and call duration. The final exam was dealing with the project as well as some questions from the theoretical class. In the end, I got a good grade for this course. Thanks to prof. LoCigno and Csaba for conducting the course, also to Ruchi for the time developing the program And to Fabrizio as well for giving us the direction during the project’s development phase.

The Computational Complexity course was quite tough inherently, but it was a bit releaving to have the exams (both mid term and final) in an open-book fashion. It reminds me the good-old-days of my bachelor programme where almost every course incorporated an open-book exam approach. In the end I got a quite so-so grade. Thanks to prof. Massaci and Ida for conducting this course.

Mathematical Logics was the nightmare of the semester. No doubt. Many students failed the intermediate exams, and so did I I studied hard like for a week at aula 22 of the faculty of science with Sandeep for the final complete-exam, and the result was not that good. But well, it’s enough as other students still failed this one. This course was about 3 classical logics: propositional, first-order, and modal logics. Despite the gory nature of this course, I’d still like to thank prof. Luciano and Anna Paola for conducting the course.

During the early month of the third semester, I also took an intensive basic Italian language course (that was compulsary) at CIAL for the A1a level. It was only for 1 month in September, and I got the certificate stating that I passed this course

Last but not least, the most interesting course was none of the above. Instead it was the Italian culture course that made me interested most. It took place by the end of January 2009 for a week or so by a professor who conducted the course very well. He talked, talked, talked, and we laughed, laughed, laughed In addition, the final 3 days of the course was conducted by his assistant, a super pretty girl. All guys in the classroom couldn’t agree more I believe A friend of mine even stated: “She’s the most beautiful Italian girl I’ve ever met”

So now comes the 4th chapter: the master’s thesis…. I hope everything will go well….

CeBIT 2009

This is a log about my trip to Hannover for visiting the CeBIT 2009 expo that’s claimed to be the world’s largest computer expo. I’ve been wanting to visit a CeBIT expo since last year, but I moved to Trento already when the expo took place last year. So I decided to visit this expo this year since I’ve moved back to Germany. But when I asked several friends of mine, nobody seemed to be interested in joining me (well, I don’t have many friends yet in Aachen). Then I asked an EuMI student from Indonesia, Citra, who lived in Aachen if she would visit the expo. And she said she would. So I asked if it’s possible for me to join her. She replied me positively, very positively as I was given a free pass (ticket) for the expo Thanks to Citra and her friends

CeBIT 2009 – The ticket and my visitor ID

So we were 5, we took the schönes-wochenende-ticket (weekend regional train ticket valid throughout Germany) which cost for € 37 for max 5 persons. We departed from Aachen Westbahnhof to several intermediate stations (which I can’t remember) before reaching Hannover. The train departed at 02:59!!! So I went by foot to Aachen Westbahnhof from my flat. It took around 30 minutes.

CeBIT 2009 – My travel friends (Mariana, Divya, Alex, Citra)

We arrived at Hannover hauptbahnhof around 7 a.m., grapped some coffee, then took the S-bahn to the expo spot. The expo’s entrance gate was not far from the S-bahn terminal, but to enter we had to show our tickets which we had registered beforehand through the CeBIT’s website. Then they printed our visitor IDs.

CeBIT 2009 – Me, on the way to the entrance gate

The expo ground consists of 26 huge halls that we tried our best to traverse through all of them but couldn’t manage to visit every stand. At least not me We started from hall 13 as shown in the expo map. It was the telecommunication area.

CeBIT 2009 – The expo’s ground map

There were many big companies and I can’t remember all their details. But as far as I remember, Cisco Systems, SAP, Microsoft, IBM were there. IBM showed some demos about the so-called cloud computing, but as it was so crowded, I didn’t really get into it. And of course Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft was there, and surprisingly I met Ferry, an employee of the Fraunhofer FIT, who is also an Indonesian I met him before last year when I did my lab work at Fraunhofer FIT.

CeBIT 2009 – IBM’s cloud computing technology demo

CeBIT 2009 – The new way of working (viruses)?

CeBIT 2009 – Want your business to be one of the best-runnings? Buy SAP products!

And as the trend goes green on everything, the IT world doesn’t want to be left behind. Well, my laptop’s colour is not green (yet) There was also the Green IT World section in the expo, showing some concepts of green computing etc. I know very little on this.

CeBIT 2009 – The green IT World

And another surprises came from 2 sets of stands from 2 specific countries: Singapore and Malaysia. Unfortunately no Indonesia stand to be found there

CeBIT 2009 – Malaysia’s stands

CeBIT 2009 – Singapore’s stands

Several antivirus companies were there also in the Security World’s hall such as McAffee, Symantec, Kaspersky, and G-Data. I also came accross a cool tactile technology demo and a cool advert: Live in Los Angeles, study in Berlin, research in Alaska, and love in Taipeh. Cool…

CeBIT 2009 – A cool tactile technology demo

CeBIT 2009 – A cool advert

And inside Hall 22, there’s the Intel Gaming Hall packed with youths witnessing some gaming tournaments. I watched the SK Gaming Asia team beating its opponent by 2-0 in the World of Warcraft tournament, but then I got bored and moved on to the next hall.

CeBIT 2009 – The Intel Gaming Hall

After getting bored and tired, we decided to go back to Aachen around 4 p.m. I didn’t bring cool souvenirs except a pen, a mouse pad, and a book on Storage Basics. Had I been more proactive, I might have got the laptop bag just like Alex did. Yes, the Fujitsu-Siemens stand threw many laptop bags to the crowd, but I wasn’t tall enough to catch one

CeBIT 2009 – My take-away souvenirs

Finally I’d like to thank my travel friends to Hannover for the wonderful time visiting the CeBIT 2009 expo. I hope I’ll have the chance to see other CeBIT expos later on.

My first days in Aachen

My first days in Aachen didn’t start as smooth as I was expecting. It started with a very bad experience at the Milano Malpensa airport several minutes before my flight to Köln-Bonn airport (well in fact it’s more likely to be categorized in the ending of my stay in Italy than the new part in Germany). The story went like this: On Sunday, 1st March 2009, I arrived at the Milano Centrale train station around 22:30. I took the Malpensa shuttle bus to the airport terminal 1, dragging my big luggage and carrying a backpack, laptop bag, and handycam bag up to the check-in area. There I found a good seat for spending the night. So I tied my laptop bag to the big suitcase, also my backpack, and tied my handycam bag to the seat’s handle. Then I slept tightly. Well, playing the PSP for an hour before moving to another world When the morning came, I woke up with all my bags at their intial places. Then I went to the rest room, wrapped my huge luggage using a wrapper service for € 8, and went to Germanwings’ check in desk. The checked-in lugagge was 1.5 kg overweight, but the check-in guy was ok with that Then I went to the boarding gate and…. My handycam bag was not with me I tried to check the seat where I used to sleep, it was not there. There was no time to report my missing bag to the lost & found department, so I just let go. When arriving in Aachen, I reported this incident by phone and email, but no satisfying feedback yet until this post is written The contents of my handycam bag are my handycam and digital camera. Too bad…. In the memory card of the digital camera there were pictures of David Beckham taking corner kicks and free kicks when I watched the AC Milan match against Cagliari at San Siro. And recently I bought the replacement for my digital camera, a Canon Ixus 80 IS, because of the CeBIT 2009 expo that I didn’t want to miss (though in the end I didn’t take many pictures from that expo ).

So I moved in to my new flat in Aachen, thanks to Chat, one of the EuMI buddies from the same cohort as me, who prepared the administration matters for me. So we are flatmates now. The apartment itself is pretty good in my opinion, with a fair price for Aachen standard. It consists of 2 rooms, quite big (used by me and Chat), a small kitchen, and a bathroom/rest room. My room is furnished very well with a sofa and a bossy chair

Aachen – my room (the bossy chair ist sehr bequem )

Aachen – my room (the sofa is very comfortable for relaxing as well )

I spent my first days (first week) in Aachen processing administration stuffs with the international office (student card, stay permit) which haven’t been completed yet, and also with the housemaster. I also spent some time for reading my thesis materials and related articles. I hope everything will go well

Italia, arrivederci!

Today, Sunday, 1st March 2009, is my last day in Trento, Italy. I’ll take a train to Milano Centrale, then take a shuttle bus to Milano Malpensa airport. I’ll spend a night at the airport, and my flight to Köln-Bonn airport will be tomorrow early in the morning.

My last days in Trento were packed with deadlines (the projects were really consuming a lot of time to complete). I couldn’t even manage a farewell party with my university friends But my Indonesian friends here in Trento arranged a farewell lunch on Saturday afternoon. It was really awesome.

Well, at this moment I’d like to thank all of my Trento friends for the time spent together filling my lifetime diary. It is indeed a great memory to be remembered in the future, this particular Trento part of my life. I hope we will meet again some day. I am also hoping that I’ll visit Italy again.

Italia, arrivederci!

Amazing Grace

Last week, Wednesday, 26th November 2008, I and some of my bible study friends watched together the Amazing Grace movie. Actually we took the bible study time and counted it as another form of studying After returning back to the flat, I found the Amazing Grace song by Il Divo below. This version of Amazing Grace is pretty good in my opinion.

Il Divo – Amazing Grace (click here to watch it directly from Youtube)

The Amazing Grace movie is based on a real story of Mr. Wilberforce struggling to end the slave trade in the British Empire. The movie shows how religious beliefs can be instantiated in real life in  the form of real actions for the good sake of humankind.

In my opinion, religions are present and meant to be instantiated in real actions in the world for the good sake of humankind, not only as rituals. And this is the hardest part I guess. Doing rituals are much easier than doing good In my opinion religions are just guidelines for doing good. And it’s a bit too selfish for any religion to claim the only way to reach eternity (for those who believe). Don’t forget humans existed long time before today’s religions were introduced

A trip to the land of gods: Greece (Athens, Delphi)

This is a log of my trip to Greece with my senior, Ferry (again).

We left Trento by train to Milano on Friday, 19th September 2008. In Milano I bought several hamburgers at the McDonalds just in front of the train station which cost for only €0.50 each Of course hamburgers aren’t good for health, but they did a good job in stuffing my stomach Then we took a bus heading towards the Malpensa airport. We slept at the airport since our flight to Athens was on the next day early in the morning.

So on Saturday, 20th September 2008, the plane took off in the morning to Athens. We used the Easyjet airline since it was one of the cheapest flights available. After our arrival in Athens, we took a bus to the Syntagma square, then went to the hostel that we had booked to check in. Unfortunately we arrived at the hostel too early, so we had a lunch at a small traditional fast food restaurant nearby.

Athens – arrivals’ exit point

Then we visited many famous spots with the guidance of the free city map, wikipedia, and wikitravel as usual. I can’t remember all the details, but I’ll try to write the major outline.

First we visited the temple of Olympian Zeus. The good thing about archaeological sites in Athens was that they were free for students enrolled at a university within the European Union. The problem was that I lost my Univ. of Trento’s student card But fortunately I brought the Univ. of Bonn student card so I could enter the sites for free.

Athens – Temple of Olympian Zeus

Then we headed to the Acropolis. At the foot of the Acropolis we visited the theatre of Dionysus, and not far from it there’s the theatre of Herodes Atticus.

Athens – Theatre of Dionysus

Athens – Theatre of Herodes Atticus

Then we went further up and found the gate to the Acropolis, the Propylaea. Advancing forward passed the Propylaea we found the famous Parthenon. And near the Parthenon there was the Erechtheion.

Athens – Propylaea

Athens – the famous Parthenon

Athens – Erechtheion

Then we visited the Areopagus hill where it’s said that the Apostle Paul delivered the famous speech written in the Christian Bible and associated with the spread of Christianity into Greece.

Athens – Areopagus hill

There were so many archaeological spots we visited that day. In the evening we had dinner and walked around the city center. Then we went back to the hostel. I made the stupidest mistake that night: sleeping without any blanket. In the next morning when I woke up, I was really sick! I caught the influenza, which was really terrible. But I still tried to enjoy the following days as much as possible.

The next day, Sunday, 21st September 2008, we went to Sounion by bus to see the temple of Poseidon.

Sounion – Temple of Poseidon

We walked about 3 km or so to the bus stop and headed back to Athens. We had our lunch at the city center, then went up to one of the hills (there should be a funicular but we couldn’t find it, so we walked). Then we spent the rest of the day strolling at the city center.

On Monday, 22nd September 2008, early in the morning we took a bus to Delphi. The main thing to see there was the temple of Apollo.

Delphi – Temple of Apollo

Going further up the hill, we found the theatre of Delphi, and on top there was the stadium.

Delphi – Theatre

Delphi – Stadium

Then we went down the hill towards the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia. There we found the Tholos.

Delphi – Tholos

After visiting the main sites, we took a bus back to Athens, had our dinner, and went to bed.

Tuesday, 23rd September 2008 was our last day in Athens, so we did most of the shopping and also visited some unvisited spots at the city center. Then we went to the airport and took another Easyjet plane back to Milano.

Athens – posing with the guardian near the Syntagma square

This trip was pretty interesting. Nevertheless, my influenza made it a bit difficult to enjoy.