30 October 2015
During my final day of internship at Healint, I described about the heaviness and difficulty of this module to my supervisor, Mr Nicolas. His response was:
It will be fun, but you won’t learn anything.
…
11 December 2015
It’s the end of 2015 ACM-ICPC Asia Singapore Regional Contest. But this is not the reason why I stop doing Competitive Programming.
I have stopped once, during my high school times, and this time I’ll do it again. And this time might be quite long. …
Sometimes, music that you listened had an impact on you. I had been, too.
It was far back then when I was in secondary school. I broke my family’s printer and felt guilty and stress because of the guilt. Some thoughts like “what should I do?”, “what will my family do to me?”, or “will I be scolded?” occurred. Then, I listened carefully to “Menghapus Jejakmu” (literal translation: Erasing Your Trail) by Peterpan, one of the most popular bands in Indonesia back then. That song really relieves my stress and my guilt since the song chorus was like “you are not everything to me/ not created to halt my steps/ after everything has passed/ let rain erases your trail”
The next song that has impacted me was “Goyang Duyu” by Project Pop. It was a humorous song by a comedy group. Last time, I watched on TV about an investigation on a religion sect that has quite scary worships and practices, which shaken my faith, and because of that, I couldn’t sleep, scared, and felt sick on the next day. The next day, I felt really better after watching TV where they played that song with its music video which was really funny.
Fast forward to 2011, it was around the time where I started to listen to English songs and to like Coldplay a lot. I also joined the school programming club in which that time they are selecting the school representatives to the national science olympiad on the city level. I think I did really badly and after I finished, I went back and listened to “Fix You“, it was a really touching song as the starting of the lyrics is “When you try your best, but you don’t succeed”. Listening to this song, I felt more relieved and not that sad as “light will guide you home/ and ignite your bonds/ I will try to fix you”
Also in 2012, “Survival” by Muse is released (for London 2012 and also their 6th album, The 2nd Law) and I usually listened to this song before competitions or exams as the song meaning not to give up, to fight hard, to reveal all your strengths, and to win whatever lies ahead.
Some songs reminded me about my family.
“Pachelbel – Canon in D” (especially piano-only version) reminded me of my brother. So during my brother’s high school time, he practiced playing piano on this one song only, and he practiced every morning in very fast tempo before he went to school, while I was just half-awake (since that time my school starts in the afternoon). Sometimes I missed this, especially after his graduation from high school.
“Chopin – Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2” reminded me of my sister, who studied and played piano. Sometimes I was really annoyed by her practicing piano since it was really loud and during that time, I can’t do anything: too noisy for studying nor sleeping. Sometimes, the song was also not that nice for me. But gradually, the song that she played is getting longer and longer and nicer and nicer. This piece was one of them.
Those are some songs that had some impact on me. Most of them relieves me from stress and makes me calm while some others reminded me of home. Sometimes, I wished to go back in time where my family was complete and where life was much simpler back then. But what’s left behind is just memories and they shall not halt life to go forward.
8 October 2015
It’s official. I’m 20.
Over the past one year, I realized that I changed a lot. Thanks to NTUBS.
Now I am more confident, easier to speak in public, don’t feel much awkwardness when leading, and can express myself truly.
I haven’t updated this blog for quite a time due to my busyness (just knew that this is a valid word, I’ve been using the wrong word the whole time since I thought the noun for busy is business :P ).
How busy?
Now I’m the Vice President of Dharma in NTU Buddhist Society 33rd Management Committee. It was a coordinator role, overseeing three portfolios and also being together with the other coordinators in leading the society. It was quite a big task for me since I was new to this field and it is really heavy as most of the decisions for society will be taken by us.
That aside, during my life when I’m 19, I’ve traveled to some places that I never been before:
I also did my first internship, it was at Healint, a start-up company where I did quite number of stuffs.
The best part I guess is that I received Wikimania scholarship and was covered in travel & accommodation expenses to Wikimania 2015 global conference at Mexico City. There, for the first time, I met those people that share the same idea of freedom of knowledge, those people that speak the same Wikipedia terminologies, and those people that are willing to spend their precious time editing Wikipedia. This conference has rejuvenate my motivation in editing Wikipedia that has been diminishing since 2011.
Let’s look at what I planned to achieve from the previous birthday.
What I hope to achieve in the upcoming year?
That’s it. Let’s hope for a greater year ahead :)
Midnight of 14 September 2015.
I’ve been disappeared for some times already.
There are lots of stuffs going on in these past two months.
I’ll flash back from July 2015: continued my internship and I started to do something that I quite like, something like a parser in Node.js; after that I escaped to Wikimania 2015 while crazily doing the Internship report, and then when I came back, my other fellow interns are ending their internship; and when they left, I still continued for another week and worked really closely with my supervisor where at this time, I just realized that my supervisor is a real geek, he has quite a reputation in Stack Overflow community! :o :o :o . After ending my internship, my focus turned into CNS programmer stuffs where there are a trial camp right after the end of my internship.
On a side note, right after I went back from Wikimania 2015, I straight went to move out from my room at Hall 4. I put half of my stuffs at Handoko’s place at Hall 11, and then the rest (and myself) at Liniki’s room at Crescent Hall. It was quite sad to lose a room and need to “squat” for a while now. Hopefully Liniki won’t be mind of me troubling me every day.
After the tiring two-day trial camp, I went to Management Retreat 2 where the management committee have meetings to set the future and also to have fun. So basically in this MR, somehow, I really care about potable water, where I almost always taking initiative to boil water and cool it off. Besides the meetings, job scope changing, constitution revision, we have fun, i.e. play poker while eating ice cream and listening to MUSE and Coldplay (wah, I really felt quite “high” while keeping the poker face for poker game) I really like the togetherness of this MC, especially the coordis that has successfully entertained me with their lame jokes throughout the year. I’ll miss this moments. :) :) :)
Back from MR, it was the long weekend commemorating SG50. On the Friday, I spent the morning helping BFY in the SG50 Pindacara, as I was invited by them and yeah I have nothing planned to do on that day. So it was quite an experience to walk without footwear for quite a distance while carrying stuffs that get heavier and heavier. After that, we helped some other stuffs (like storing the donations, and ushering and helping others to take the food) and then have lunch and attended a Dharma talk there and went back.
On Saturday, I don’t think I did anything productive; while Ivan, Si Hui, Andy, and me went out to have dinner at a really nice vegan restaurant near Clementi (cause we didn’t have anything to do; and they have SG50 promotion), after the dinner, we “randomly walks into Queenstown Community Centre to find a cafe”; after failing to find one, we go to another place to have ice cream while playing Bridge; well I just knew how to play Bridge since MR2. On Sunday, it was SG50 and I went to BF to attend the Dharma talk which was really short and not crowded. Next, we (me, Dian, Andy, Anthony, Marshall) went to the city area while having quite a detour to avoid those crowds. We randomly went to National Museum of Singapore to “see see around” and kill time. Then, afraid of getting too tired, we didn’t go around Fort Canning and went to Astons at Cathay to have early dinner and sit & wait around to kill time. After quite some times (we noticed that songs in Astons have repeated for the 3rd times), we go to Gardens by the Bay area to wait for the fireworks (since all other attractions have passed). And when the time comes, there are communication problems as most of the times, my phone couldn’t pick up a signal. After uniting with Ivan and Si Hui, we found a spot just right behind the bushes and a “lake” near Gardens by the Bay that can see one direction of fireworks. And it started, for five minutes. Wait, what. Yes, five minutes. We waited for hours, went through with a lot of crowds, and it was only five minutes!? Okay, lesson learned, don’t go for National Day celebrations; just go home, sit back, watch TV, and relax :) Or even better, you can go out with your friends at Aloha Loyang and play poker together, that’s the plan for SG75.
Then comes Week 1, where everything started to get busier again. It was crazy, NTU Welcome Week, NTUBS Welcome Tea, and then CNS over the weekend. Well, CNS itself is a long 48-hour journey. As a programmer, I had a presentation session, where I think I did quite well as I was not nervous at all but still not that prepared. For wet games, I don’t really like conducting my game, it was quite overwhelming for me and I couldn’t quite control the helpers and I’m not sure if they like the game or not. But yeah, I really don’t like playing the mass wet games where violence is the way of getting fun. How on earth you can have fun while the enjoyment only came when you successfully hit people? But violence aside, I like the night games preparations despite the very limited time available. I also really like the togetherness of the CNS Programmer, the recce at midnight, and the fail “last year programmer”. On the final day, the programmers finally had time to bond with the group members :) For the final game, I really love my game where I observed the groups playing it and they are all having fun. Even more touching is that they even want to replay the game :’)
Okay now CNS has finished and a little crisis happened. I lost the NYH Function Room key. And Wei Yang, the logistic manager, looked really sad and stressed. And when all hopes are lost, it turned out that one of the careless committee has brought it back accidentally. Phew…
And another side note, on Week 1 around Wednesday, I got an e-mail stating that I got a room at Crescent Hall. Oh yeah! (though it was a single AC-fitted room, that is the most expensive undergraduate hostel room in NTU :( ) So, no choice, I went to settle the admin stuffs, paid the fees, and collected the keys on that day; and on that night, I moved out from Liniki’s room to this new room.
Week 2 now and it was recruitment week. Oh man. It consumes lots of time and I was quite happy that 8 people applied for Resource (up 400% from previous years’ one, hahaha) maybe due to Ivan’s and my promotion during the Welcome Tea itself. So after the recruitment drive, we have a whole day discussion on Saturday morning and it lasted until before dinner time. Sunday was CNS final general meeting, some stuffs meeting, Subcom appreciation dinner, and then another meeting. (but yeah, I screwed up since I forgot to take the NYH Function Room key on Friday; but then no one remembered since we’re all so focused on the recruitment stuffs)
Week 3 is spent on preparing for rally and AGM. Pass down at the end of the week.
Week 4: more passing downs, first meetups, and Investiture.
Week 5 is on committee day meetings.
I’ll stop around here and write more details later on Week 2-5.
25 July 2015
This piece of writing is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 and a similar post is also available in Bahasa Indonesia at Indonesian Wikipedia
I attended Wikimania 2015 conference in Mexico. There are some learning points that I want to highlight and share with Indonesian Wikipedia community:
And there are some major ones that I want to highlight:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ESEA_Hub
Josh (Wikimedia Philipines) felt that Wikimedia Movement can be split into around 6 regions: North America, Central and South America, West Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia (Australia included here). Also, he felt that Foundation treat Asians the same as what they treat Americans and Europeans but the conditions in Asia are different hence it should have some other treatment (e.g. Wiki Loves Monument was a great success in Americas and Europe, but not really successful in Asia).
Besides that, there is no one representing Global South at the recently elected WMF Board of Trustees. This may be the case that votes from Asian countries are really low; hence what we can do in the next election is to promote more voters OR to gather the Wikimedians to support one candidate from Global South (but we’re not sure of doing this since we felt ethically incorrect).
I asked around some other Wikimedians and some of them (Thailand, India) doing photo contest (Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Food), could we consider this? Taweetham from Thailand said that there is a problem though since the photo contributors only contribute photo and not article and what he did for this year is to require the contestants to write article alongside contributing photos.
The forum results in doing idea from Addis (Wikimedia User Group China) called Wikipedia Asian Month <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month> in November 2015 to create articles about Asian countries topic but not your country and will be sent postcards from participating countries. Well, for Indonesia, I need communicate with Wikimedia Indonesia on this.
So on this Wikimania, I joined their Wikimania Hackathon and I was paired up with Aaron Halfaker, a research scientist from WMF doing research on Revscoring project.
What I did was basically help him extend the revscoring project to support Indonesian language: I found a list of stop words; I added the list of Indonesian bad words (with help of User:Ladsgroup who gives us the list of top 250 words that got reverted in idwiki); he found a Indonesian language dictionary (from aspell library); we also found an Indonesian language stemmer in ntlk style but unfortunately was not properly documented with a license. But that was enough he said, he started doing the work to generate the model but unfortunately he said that the prediction model was really bad and he did not know why (he said to me that he may look into FlaggedRevs “reverts” since currently he did not do that)
The other thing that I did was to integrate ORES (the online service that provides revscoring score) with Raun! Now on some projects (en, pt, tr, fa, and es?), Raun will show a fire icon showing the probability of that edit being vandalism. Halfaker’s project was so cool and I really hope that it can be integrated with idwiki (and its sister project) really soon as we’re really lacking of admins.
I joined this talk because it reminded me on https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOANON
The talk focuses on what happens when a wiki blocks editing from anonymous users. They analyzed before and after data from Wikia wikis that disables anon edits.
The results?
Their conclusion of whether this is bad or good is depending on how expensive it is to patrol and revert those anonymous edits.
So, what I’m proposing here is to create a counter proposal for WP:NOANON, i.e. to let anonymous users create new articles on Indonesian Wikipedia because
Current situation:
I hereby propose Indonesian Wikipedia to turn anonymous article creation back on and to mitigate the effects of more vandalism coming, we should:
Expectations:
Note: This piece is finished on end-July 2015 but I forgot published it until September 2015.