BELLAMYBUDIMAN

Remember the last time I talked about Tumblr and how I managed to end up with an account there? It was part of a multi-user project that we’re doing.

This ongoing project is called aifonografi, a project coined by Andira Pramanta and Arief Rakhmadani. It is a simple photoblog with many contributors. What sets it apart is that the contributors are required to be either in Indonesia or Indonesian anywhere in the world, have an iPhone, and to contribute a photo a day, throughout 2010 (at least until we decide if we want to continue this next year or not). We have a theme on every weekend that lasts a day, and it’s free-for-all for the rest of the week.

So here we are, on the fourth day of 2010, 17 members, and growing bit by bit all year long. Come take a look.

Note: This is a repost of what I’ve written in Neuro-Designs’ Company Blog.

Just two days ago, our good friend Jonathan Nasution came up with the idea on integrating Twitter users to report traffic updates. I took the chance to develop this website together with him, as a pet project for Neuro-Designs. The basic idea is to have Twitter users update their status with the latest traffic report, and we mine that data as a feed to WordPress. The result? Well, you would just have to see it for yourself.

This is work on the go, so I’m quite surprised with what we can come out with in just two days. I really feel that both WordPress and Twitter are easily integrated, and they contribute an immense impact to the world of Web 2.0. Thanks for all the support and suggestions, guys! Especially to Charles Johnson, Aulia Masna, and Andira Pramanta.

Oh yes, our country is exceptionally known for making high stake dramas, from the Fitna drama, the YouTube blocking drama, Roy Suryo dramas (He’s been making dramas all his life. He could be an actor after all, you know), and the latest… The fuel price drama.

Okay, the issue is that the price for fuel is going up. Why? Because fuel is not a renewable source of energy, and non-renewable energies cannot be reproduced. So the less supply we have, the more expensive it gets. And why does this really matter that people, especially college students, had to go marching for protest and jumped into the bandwagon? In my opinion, it’s because of Indonesia’s lack of knowledge that in the future, FOSSIL FUEL WILL RUN OUT!

Despite the government is also to be blamed because they never give out education on how limited FOSSIL FUEL are to the society, I think I would have to agree with them. If we want to subsidize fuel, until when can we keep subsidizing every single kind of fuel? Until the world ends? We simply can’t afford to subsidize fuel anymore. Look at other countries, it is inevitable that the price for fuel is increasing time after time. Do they accept it? Oh, yes. They have to. Because it’s reality, and you just can’t recycle fossil fuel. Fuel just doesn’t go up to $4 a gallon for no reason. Do you really think that the government has absolute control over this? This is a reality pill that we all just have to swallow.

Now, as a college alumni, one thing came across my mind about these college students that call themselves “college students”, or mahasiswa, as in the highest grade of students, and yet in a stupid act protested the government on how they should not raise the fuel price? You call yourselves intelligent students? Of all kinds of people, college students are supposed to learn and understand things, not going down to the street wearing your colorful jackets and shout “TURUNKAN HARGA BBM!“, while at the same time knowing that reality bites. Get a life, do something useful other than making yourself stupid, and READ THE FACTS THAT FOSSIL FUEL IS NOT RENEWABLE. If you want to make things better, why not switch to a green lifestyle? Ride a bicycle to college, not that idiotic horde of motor kampungs with 2-stroke engines, or wasting fuel for useless car parades on demonstrations, or even hijacking a tanker for that matter. Indonesian college students… I bet half of them are idiots. Just plain idiots. Mahasiswa my ass.

Since next week we’re going for the Easter celebration at Andreas’ villa in Puncak, I figured that I make some time earlier today to have my car’s shockbreakers upgraded. That has been a target milestone for a while now, since I changed the springs some time ago.

It didn’t take too long for the technicians at Suara Motor to dismantle the front running gear, to install the new upgraded shocks. As per Oom Jimmy’s recommendation, the front shocks are replaced with a pair of aftermarket Gabriel shocks. I didn’t know what type they were using as the new shocks were brought out of the office without any packagings.

Unexpectedly, the stock front shocks that I’ve been using for almost 3 years now, are apparently dead. And for sometime already, the car relies only on the springs. The rear shocks, however, remained intact although it’s not as good as it’s used to be, but at least it didn’t broke down again like before.

For the rear replacements, they used KYB Excel-G gas shocks, which of course performs much much better after I took the car for a test ride after the installation. So now with all the things implemented on the running gears section, I consider the modifications on that section completed.