Albert Tanutama

Finally I could catch up with this blog again – this time, as newly achieved Microsoft Certified Professional

Two months ago – after attending Bill Gates Live! event – I signed up for Microsoft certification course. I decided to take MCSA/E track to understand better how to design, implement and manage information infrastructure in an organization. While it seems totally different area from what I’ve been doing for the past four years – the course in broader sense will complement skills required as Information Professional.

Through this course, I was exposed to the ‘hidden world’ of system administrators, who despite obscure are arguably one of the most powerful groups in the organization. They establish the fundamental information infrastructure to ensure everyone in the organization could smoothly communicate, share expertise, collaborate. They are responsible and will fight for security, reliability and robustness (flexibility is optional). It is essential therefore that in today’s information age, their are playing a bigger role than being supporting personnel who troubleshoot computer and network issues (viruses, crashes, corrupted data, etc). Together with software developers, they will deal with bigger, unstructured and fragmented information to create seamless, global and mobile organization. This is an interesting challenge that requires multidisciplinary perspective which I’m currently trying to establish.

Meanwhile, I managed to tackle the first challenge of Managing and Maintaining Windows Server 2003, which I’d like to dedicate to you who support me with prayer, time and space to study. Three more to go – yay!

Howdy! As you would have noticed by now, this blog is getting an overhaul. I’m currently working on a new WordPress theme that could be extended to accomodate contents beyond blog posts. This might cause a couple of hiccups accessing this site – especially at night. Anyway, feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions to improve this weblog. Thank you for your understanding and supports

Netvibes.com is a web application that give the user the ability to create a personalized homepage available anywhere, anytime. Much like other AJAX based web portal (such as Microsoft Start.com and Google personalized homepage), user could move windows-like modules, add new RSS/ATOM feeds, change the parameters for each module, etc. These modifications are saved in real-time locally for non-registered user, or remotely for registered user. Apart from aggregating feeds, Netvibes also features additional modules such as web search, weather info, access to Gmail, and a handy webnote. Its simplicity, fast response time, and beautifully designed UI make Netvibes pleasant to use.

Last Wednesday, Scott McNeally from Sun Microsystems, came to Singapore and talked about Sun’s vision in eliminating digital divide and making the World better of. In what he called as “Participation Age”, Scott is envisioning an age where individuals are creating and supplying the news as much as they are consuming it. Scott believes that everyone will benefit more from sharing information. Information sharing paves the way for ideas and breakthroughs as participants are building upon each others discoveries. Millions of additional connections on economic and social development will create business opportunities, leading to economical gain. To achieve this vision and to increase values inherent in the volume of their users, Sun has significantly reduced the barrier to use its technologies, for example by giving away its Solaris OS for free and making it as Open Source.

This vision is not new, though. Survival of software technologies has been largely dependent on their community of users and developers. Thus, creating large and vibrant communities are essential for those companies. From mailing list, Usenet, Bulletin Board to blogging, these communities are growing and evolving. What’s unique about Sun’s initiative is to combine both Open Source and Closed Source approach in growing their user and developer communities by offering low-cost software infrastructure to develop applications, maintaining standardization, compatibility and technology innovativeness through Java Community Process and protecting Intellectual Property through “Community Development and Distribution License“. The only thing left to do is generate excitement over the technology – something that I find lacking from the conference.

Google Blog Search is a new search service that focused fully on blogs. It helps people searching blog content – to find out who is writing and what is being written on the topic of interest. The index comes from blog feeds, which are frequently checked for new content. Thus, Blog Search will be able to return newer content than the standard web searches, with greater precision and accuracy thanks to the nature of site feeds.

Thank you all for celebrating this special day with me. The wishes, prayers, and thoughts. They are all making this day especially memorable. Friends, family and special one. Life is much more meaningful with your presence. Smiles, laughters, and love. They are the treasures of life. I’m grateful that I have them all.

From June 18 until October 9, Asian Civilization Museum (ACM) showcases art and historical collections from the Vatican in a special exhibition called the “Journey of Faith” which is the most expensive exhibition it has ever put on, with a number of loans from Vatican-related buildings which do not accept visitors.

The exhibition features magnificent paintings such as “The Vision of St Helena” by Veronese and “Saint Matthew and the Angel” by Guido Reni, ancient relics (including two reliquaries that contain tiny wood piece from the crucifix belonging to Singapore churches), and various papal paraphernalia. ACM is also having a “Roman Carnival” – sort of Farmer’s Market to introduce some of the Italian culture, lifestyle, cuisine, arts and crafts on September 10 and 11 with special admission to the exhibition as well as a documentary screening “Inside the Vatican” from National Geographic. The documentary provides a rare glimpse of the Vatican and the thriving community that exists within its walls, beginning from the Swiss guard, the pope’s photographer, the bishops, the tailor, the archivist, up to those who responsible for cleaning the Basilica. As the world’s smallest nation, Vatican is a place to live and work unlike any other.

Apart from the special exhibition above, ACM is a unique museum in its own way, featuring extensive use of interactive multimedia in its various galleries. They have virtual hosts of real people, who smile, sleep, pray and even write SMSs while waiting for visitors to interact with. Interesting, although it could be quite creepy to see those faces staring at you. Their permanent collections are neatly displayed and annotated. In a number of places, they also provide booklets for further reading. Indeed, it deserves a worth-to-visit recommendation.

This week, Ascendas organized Healthy Lifestyle Week 2005 for all tenants in Science Park area. There are plenty of sports and recreational activities held, such as Street Soccer, Volley ball, Table Tennis, and even Scuba diving class (albeit limited up number of participants). As in the previous years, I participated in the “always popular” Road Relay competition around the Science Park complex. T-Shirt and goodies provided.

We form a group called “March of the Penguins” – inspired by the movie of the same name There are three guys, two gals, plus a road marshall in the team. Our team’s fastest individual timing is about 7 mins; and we completed the whole relay in about 41 mins. While the competition did push us from our usual comfort zone, we managed to get all the calories back with really tasty sotong balls >-<

Synergy is a software that enables mouse and keyboard sharing across multiple monitors, computers and operating systems. Using Synergy, I could control both my laptop and PC without moving hand from my mouse. Really convenient. The tricky part is to configure Synergy after installing it in all machines that you’d like to connect. There are basically 3 important steps:

1. Ensure that every machines can find and talk to each other. Certain wireless configuration might pose a problem, especially in corporate environment. I have to give up my wireless connection because it gives unreachable IP address. You can use “ping” message to test.
2. Create screenname and enter the actual computer name in the alias section before editing Advanced options, or else it might pop an error message. Assign one machine as the server.
3. Assign left and right position for all screen names in every installed Synergy. This will decide how the mouse should be placed after reaching the display boundaries. Different machines will have different set up

While Synergy does not really give you bigger working area (it is different machines after all) – it does help in reducing clutters and keeping certain information handy. For example, you can browse Internet using your laptop, and type a report using your PC. The only thing that I need to get used to is to find the mouse cursor, which might have jumped elsewhere.