Car Free Day February 2008

Yesterday I had a chance to try my friend's Dahon VD6 for a test ride. Fortunately, that day was a Car Free Day, a one day monthly event where cars and motorcycles are not allow to enter the street of Sudirman, Thamrin all the way to Monas from 6 AM to 2 PM. This event usually held on the last weekend of the month. The uncrowded street then used by pedestrians, cyclists, and families for recrational activities.

There is no special preparation for me, just use my airsoft helm (Protech helm), my Lowepro backpack and of we go. Together with my wife and her Dahon ht661 (see my previous post) we start late around 9 AM, while many people and events are already begun from 6 and 7 AM. After cruising around the street and meet fellow folding bike owners and took some photos we decided to went home and have lunch at Gado-Gado Bu Aam near our home around 12.

The ride with Dahon VD6 is nice, one shortcome is the saddle that is too hard. It really uncomfortable for a long ride or when the road is not that good. And after riding my bike's wife (16" wheel and hi-tens frame) before, you can really feel the difference that come with the 20" wheel and light alumunium frame of Dahon VD6. Next week I'm planning to go to Tamansari where there are some bike stores that sell Oyama folding bike and test ride it.

Folding Bike Fever part 2

I have a habit of doing intense research of something I want before I decided to have it. And internet is a very important source of doing research and it has been for many things I have at this moment. And when I decided to have a folding bike, i go nowhere but digging in the vast resource internet has to offer. Two most important sources for me is Sepedaku (Indonesia bicycles forum) and Id-Foldingbike (Indonesia folding bike mailing list). Both offer important informations for me to choose what folding bike I will have. And right now they are 3 options in front of me, buy one of my friend's Dahon folding bike or buy a new Oyama folding bike. The other option is to buy 2nd hand Hasa F1 folding bike. They all have the same price.

My friend's Dahon actually is a streamlined Chinese Dahon KA062, a version of 2004 Dahon Vitesse D6. The other options is to buy a new Oyama folding bike (a Taiwanese brand) type Skyline Pro that some said it is a copy of Dahon Speed P8 (but with 7 speed). While Hasa F1 is a little bit out of reach because not many people own it and so it is hard find a used one on sale at a reasonable price.

Stupid grammatically correct sentence

Have you read or heard this sentence?:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

There are 8 buffalo words repeated in one sentence. And yet it is still grammatically correct sentence. An example is the proverb "Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you". This kind of words particularly the buffalo sentence has been discussed in literature since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, currently an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.
The sentence can be breaking down into 3 types of buffalo:
1. The place called Buffalo (city of Buffalo, New York) as an adjective (A).
2. The animal American bison commonly called a "buffalo" as a noun (N).
3. The word buffalo as a verb meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate (V).
So here are there:

Buffalo(A) buffalo(N) Buffalo(A) buffalo(N) buffalo(V) buffalo(V) Buffalo(A) buffalo(N)

And so the sentence means:
"Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."

Confuse? Don't be. Lets say we change all instances of the animal buffalo with "people" and the verb buffalo with "intimidate". The sentence then reads:

"Buffalo people [whom] Buffalo people intimidate [also happen to] intimidate Buffalo people."

Or substituting the synonym "bison" for "buffalo" (animal), "bully" for "buffalo" (verb) and leaving "Buffalo" to mean the city, it reads:

"Buffalo bison whom other Buffalo bison bully themselves bully Buffalo bison".

I'm gonna stop here :)

*originally from Wikipedia

[Photos] Hambalang Hills

A photo session with friends from Lensa.Net. Model featuring Amel.

iPaper, a better way to show documents on the web

iPaper is a flash widget that can be embed in any web page to show various document formats. Its like YouTube, but instead of showing video, this one shows documents such as Word, PowerPoint, PDF, etc. It features the ability to add Google Ads directly in the documents. And it also has social features built in to encourage users to share their documents with their friends. In security side, because iPaper documents are embedded in webpages, the documents will naturally inherit the website's existing security system.
Scribd, the developer of iPaper offers 3 methods to begin using iPaper. QuickSwitch, that automatically convert documents on your website. Scribd API, for those who know more about programming. And the simplest method is by using the embeding system. This last method works by uploading document to Scribd website, and then you can copy and paste the embed code on Scribd to embed them on your website. If you do not have a website or just want to share the documents, you can choose to view it directly from Scribd website.
One thing that really interest me is the idea of sharing documents (like YouTube does with video) is something that really sell. Just go the homepage of Scribd and you will see a lot of people share documents. There a lot of documents from simple thing like cake recipe to some heavy stuff in political or religion. And not just documents, here are the list that can be uploaded:

• Microsoft Office Word (.doc, .ppt, .pps & .xls)
• OpenOffice (.odt, .odp, .sxw, .sxi, etc)
• Text (.txt & .rtf)
• PDF (.pdf & .ps)
• Images (.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png)

(ebook) US Army Ranger Handbook