It was four days holiday: Mawlid al-Nabi (the birthday of Muhammad, PBUH) on Thursday and Easter on Friday, then regular weekend. Long weekend means Jakarta was free from jam traffic, streets were empty. As a consequence, people went for holiday to many cities around, crowds in parks, and destination on Bandung, my city.
Mawlid was celebrated in limited fest, usually by some discussions about the life of Muhammad and its context to nowadays. Easter had specific rite as I saw on television, arranged in churches or some religion-related place. Other than religious fests which are close to commercial attributes, these holy days are for belief awakening.
Still, long weekend forced me to keep away from reguler works and handle some domestic jobs. Nice to have more time with kids to extra patience accompanying them to go around.
Monday comes and I stand up for working day again. I told that I hate Garfield (because of its saying, "hate monday"), and a comment posted that it is blasphemy. Nice!
Happy working days, everyone!
Old story repeats: I forced myself to fix blog's tags, to arrange layouts, to enhance design, and finally... all was broken! Not only my blog was failed to look better, but also I wasted my time not to post anything. Web design kills, really.
This challenges, while some bloggers I know are web designer by profession. How if I hire their talented capabilities to make my sites up, so I can concentrate to my writings? This idea has bloomed for some times ago, but not yet to be realized. Many reasons behind, e.g. expenses, curiosity with stylesheets, and do-it-yourself mind. Not all bad, as not all good.
Now the decision has been made. I contacted Thomas Arie Setiawan, a well-known reputation for their mass-product design and blogger by heart. He also keep his enthusiasm on using Movable Type, on the same track with me.
A part of experimental for me to be more productive on writing, that is let the professional do their jobs.
About 05 a.m.
One of my closest friends on Flickr asked if I have an independent photoblog. I answered: is this simply a website containing my Flickr's photos? Yup!
That's good, I thought. I have enough photo stock on Flickr and it is better to explore them on other website as my individual photoblog. Repackaging, in short. Or, even farther, I also have more photos on my laptop which had not exposed anywhere.
Whichever better, it will be nice and worthy to try.
Press "Start" to continue: that was my workplace at the last day before we moved to new building.
Next eight hours to turn into 2008.
Time passes by, frequently felt as superquick, and I can not distinguish between one day to others – really. They are workdays, weekends, beginning of week, month, year – or whatever, end of week, month, year – or whatever. I move from one to next, dig inside sometimes, with all of any events I celebrate or let them gone.
But for the beginning of 2008, I have a wish, a simple one: my blogging activity must revive again, must be waken from a long hiatus. I have to write more and more entries, even things that seems a bit unimportant or less noticed.
Happy New Year 2008.
According to OpenID, if I use one of services mentioned there, I already have an OpenID. Vox is mentioned, so it means ikhlasulamal (my account in Vox) is registered as OpenID. I want to "activate" – I mean: using this account for other service related to OpenID. But I could not find a way to associate my Vox account to OpenID.
Would somebody like to help me pointing to OpenID information in Vox?
Thank you.
Pesta Blogger (Blogger Fiesta), an Indonesian blogger party, will be held next week, Sat. 27 Oct, in Blitz Megaplex Jakarta. I had received an invitation from Chairman of the party, Enda Nasution, replied as "CONFIRMED" and passcode for the party came two days after. Several serious movements had been marked in Indonesia blogosphere, either in quantity or quality enhancement as well. Blogging is nowadays a popular keyword connecting various interests. Individuals, mainstream media, organizations, and even commercial entities are in competition provide blogs to achieve goals, to embrace audience, and to promote into public. Even Vox as a brand comes into Indonesia displayed on many Nokia's advertisings.
In Pesta, first I would love to meet many well-known bloggers vis-a-vis, talk and have fun, and the rest... I will follow commitee of Pesta's plans. Great expectations about bloggins are okay, but still stand on realities are also important. In a large area like Indonesia, it is very difficult to achieve national-wide goals furthermore by grassroot movements like blogger. So, keep going in the first time, and hope it will be able to continue in the next occassions.
Amen...
Since yesterday is Eid ul-Fitr. A celebration after one month Ramadan fasting, a moment to ask and give forgiveness one to others, a hope to be "reborn" again – fitr or "clean" (fitr comes from fitrah, nature).
To me this also leads to rethinking again many things I have done in this cyber world, many friends I have had along various social networking. They are all generally a joy, warm, but I am pretty sure some of annoyances also occured. Even in an "unimportant" issue such as my absence in Vox for about three months, I felt I left this colorful site for a while. And I miss that!
So now I am back, with a hope I can keep continuing posting here. Amen.
I was mandated to write about blogging on Asia Blogging; actually that was a choice among many, and I was agree to handle for "blogging."
But what will it be different? Regarding to my topics in this Vox which is also about "blogging as a lifestyle", I had to consider it may not go overlapping. In quick decision on my trip to Jakarta, I thought about Asia Blogging mission to "explore" Asia. Short conclusion: I will blog about Asia culture and lifestyle charged to blogging.
Second, I need to be aware about "developing nations". This is not about fund or something as real incentives, instead an education in all and broad meaning. So this comes to blog: to educate, to empower people in some kind of ways.
I hope this will not be a bombastic buzzwords. Other than writing, I would love to meet people, talk to them about some possibilities to enhance their life using new media.
So let's get blogging, in some other kind ways.
At the same time scheduled soft launching reached any last minutes "checksound", we gathered in monthly IT community meeting in Bandung. Right, on 1 June Asia Blogging Network did hardly completing various posts, finishing acessories, about this and that, scripts, and also themes to conform to milestones listed before.
On Thursday, 6 June, official announcement was declared and team members wrote their own "individual announcement" on each blog. We decided that words of mouth is potential enough to create snowball effects, the way many of Web 2.0 start their services, and – most important – reduce promotion into less-expensive one. Because Budi Putra, the CEO of Asia Blogging Network, still has many friends working in mainstream media, his network helped launching since the day one.
Yes, Asia Blogging Network – I admit this posting is also one kind of promotion written by a team member of this initiative, so Harry Sufehmi told that it would be potentially biased. Okay, no early review; it is better to go directly there rather than judged by [biased] reviewer. Finally, this means I must write double, take care of its members, and share more passions about blogging.
Thank you.
on Eid ul-Fitr: I am Back for Posting