3000000000

Well, it's not the sequel of the Spartan war movie.
It's my current hard disk capacity (in bytes).
Just bought a new Seagate Baracuda 250 GB SATA to replace the old one.
The old 40 GB was transformed into portable one so I can steal my friend's data (I mean huge data). Hohoho...
Right now I don't know what to fill into this hard disk but in my thought I will have many many hard-disk-eater games, favorite movies collection, my photograph, some music (I'm not a music maniac you know, 5 GB is allocated and it's more than enough for music), some favorite manga-scan collection, and also my work for campus project, job and hobby.
It's my second upgrade for my 4 years old computer and my next upgrade would be:
- RAM to more than or equal to 1.5 GB
- ADSL modem for ADSL internet connection
- Processor to more than or equal to 3 GHz frequency
- Soundcard under Rp.800.000,00 price
- DVD Read and Write Plus and Minus (how to write it??!)

and last but not least:
- Logitech G25 (picture below if you dont know what is that thing)

The Learning Curve

This is one of my "Most Unforgettable Dialogs"
It's about a talented young man with bad attitude facing a much more experienced old man to learn from him.

Even if you are a talented one, learning is never easy, and sometimes the first thing you need to do is believe your mentor. And to believe someone is something even more difficult for some individuals like me.
But I do always found a way to believe someone with infinite experience and humble appearance.
Just like my Professor and this Jedi Master...


Master Yoda: Away put your weapon. I mean you no harm. I am wondering why are you here.
Luke Skywalker: I'm looking for someone.
Master Yoda: Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hmm?
Luke Skywalker: Right...
Master Yoda: Help you I can. Yes, mmm.
Luke Skywalker: I don't think so. I'm looking for a great warrior.
Master Yoda: Ohh. Great warrior. [laughs] Wars not make one great.


Master Yoda: Why wish you become Jedi?
Luke Skywalker: Well, mostly because of my father, I guess.
Master Yoda: Ahh, father. Powerful Jedi was he. Powerful Jedi.
Luke Skywalker: Oh, come on. How could you know my father? You don't even know who I am. Oh, I don't even know what I'm doing here! We're wasting our time!
Master Yoda: I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: He will learn patience.
Master Yoda: Much anger in him... like his father.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Was I any different when you taught me?



[Luke's ship sinks into the swamp.]
Luke Skywalker: We'll never get it out now!
Master Yoda: So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say.
Luke Skywalker: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
Master Yoda: No! No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
Luke Skywalker: Alright, I'll give it a try.
Master Yoda: No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
[Luke attempts to pull the ship out, but only with minimal success.]
Luke Skywalker: [panting] I can't. It's too big.
Master Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes, even between the land and the ship.
Luke Skywalker: You want the impossible.
[Yoda raises Luke ship from the swamp.]
Luke Skywalker: I don't…I don't believe it!
Master Yoda: That is why you fail.

Ghost Rider

Forget Nicolas Cage.
What you see is a real "Insane Rider" feared like a ghost by all driver on the track.
It's the hundreth time he done something like that.
A shame for my country, but to be honest, it can't be better until the monopoly in driver association erased.

The 2es00lu7ions

I just read this from PlanetF1.com
Reminds me to reveal my New Year Resolutions...

---

F1 New Year Resolutions

Monday January 08 2007

The New Year is a time when people face up to problems and resolve to try something new.
PF1 has developed some New Year resolutions for the people in F1. They should try these.

Ron Dennis
Find out how to get to the podium at each grand prix. It's been so long since any McLaren personnel have been required on the podium to receive the winner's trophy that they'll need instructions on how to get there. Then again it might not be necessary in 2007.

Robert Kubica
Ask the engineers at BMW to design the 2007 model around him and not Nick Heidfed, that way ickle will have no way of reaching the pedals.

Kimi Raikkonen
Start learning how to love pasta and chianti and quit the rollmop herrings with a bottle of vodka chaser.

Felipe Massa
Slip Kimi Raikkonen's engineers a crate of vintage champagne (before) that all-important first race.

Christian Horner
Never ever promise to do anything involving nudity. Unless the bet is about David Coulthard winning the World Championship, because we believe that's a safe one.

Max Mosley
Also promise never ever to do anything involving nudity.

Bernie Ecclestone
Try an exciting new haircut. Only the Monza banking and the Silverstone grandstands are older than Bernie's haircut.

Nico Rosberg
Promise not to use your team-mate as a braking aid on the first lap.

Jenson Button
Go out, trim the beard. And never ever ever return with it. That's ever.

Lewis Hamilton
Don't answer any questions which include the phrase "...first black driver".

Rubens Barrichello
Start asking about DTM contracts in 2008 before Coulthard gets in first.

Charlie Whiting (FIA Race Starter)
Try doing it with your eyes open and see if it's any better.

Williams
Smile, it can't get any worse.

Fernando Alonso
Start taking choreography lessons - because the dance on top of the Renault we saw last season was way up there with David Brent's from 'The Office'. (Rhymes with Pit)

Ant Davidson
Don't get into a fist fight with anyone except Takuma Sato

Juan Montoya
If you're lucky you'll have 10 years at the top in NASCAR. If you're unlucky, you might have 20.

Jean Todt
Relax, you are STILL the most important person in Michael's life after his family, he STILL has the framed photo of you in his office, yes he WILL be on-line during grands prix, yes he WILL come and visit Maranello, and GO to the restaurant with you, and he
promises NOT to flirt with any other motor manufacturer, promise, cross his heart etc etc.

Hermann Tilke (FI's official circuit designer)
If you're designing a new circuit for India, let's have a 360 degrees loop like in Hot Wheels.

Flavio Briatore
Learn to speak English and be understood - maybe using Mark Blundell's Talk English Proper available from Amazon.com.

AD

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LOL every time I read the Tilke section!


Now it's my turn to unveil my resolutions for the upcoming 300 days...
Some say there should be parameters for goals, so here they are:


1. Closer at least 7 parsecs to God
2. Closer at least 99 relationship-meters to my family
3. Closer at least 1 love-meters to my crushes
4. Earn at least $200 from any source other than parents
5. Gain at least 5 kilograms of my bodyweight
6. Make at most 1 enemy
7. Play at most 20 videogames (less entertaining and more brain-training only)
8. Read at least 17 books (fiction & non-fiction)
9. Write at least 1 complete-significant-reliable-story
10. Watch every single F1 races live (be one of witnesses of racing history, or should I say... legend)
11. Pass every single subject at university in one semester (fail to do so since the first time I study at University)

Easy boys, those may looked like jokes, but believe me, those are real!

I'll try my best to do every single one of it...

Will be added if necessary. But editing parameters is strictly forbidden!

Happiest Moment This Month

On 11 December 2006:






Helps my feeling for upcoming final exam...

FORZA LAZIO!!!

Ignites This Engine

An engine block needs to be kept on running to maintain its performance.
Therefore, this entry just to keep this engine running, nothing more.
Past weeks I worked some paper for two subjects and also some assignment. In the spare time I did not spend it for browsing the internet much, and this engine-blog was inoperative for some time.
Now let's ignite it, let the engine on fire again.
No massive update and nothing important to share. I just played some game in my spare time.
I installed 3 games to test my new VGA, but actually just 2 of them really test them.
They're Black & White 2—a kind of RPG-Strategy-Hybrid game, GTR 2—the best racing sim today, and the last but not least (as I craved to it last month) is Civilization IV—a turn-based strategy game which allows you build a civilization of an empire from stone age to information age.
It was Black & White 2 and GTR 2 which really force my VGA (and inevitably, RAM space) to the limit.


Okay, just let me review them (this is a personal review, very subjective):

~Civilization IV is quite light to be played but when it comes to the very end of game, it begins to burden RAM space as well as CPU performance.
Since I played Civilization series for the first time, I found some difficulties to understand the game overall. Yes there’s a tutorial and it quite helps but in the end, you need some deep knowledge of the game which, until now, still holds me.
I like it though, the game is interesting and you can imagine how a civilization grows from time to time.

~Black & White 2 is a torture of hell for the whole computer. You need every best stuff installed on your computer. It says you need only 64 MB of VGA memory and 512MB of RAM space. Just don’t believe it.
When I looked at the process viewer while the game’s running, it consumes almost 1GB of RAM (while mine’s just 512MB). And some lag occurs when I turn all video settings to the high level (if you wonder what’s my VGA, you should scroll down the page to my previous entry). The game is very interesting. Here, you become god. You can do everything to your world (only a little part of world actually), and everything on it.
The concept is simple, are you gonna play the game like RTS and put everything to war, or play it like Sim City or other Tycoon games—build and grow your world.
I’m not continuing the game for now because it’s quite boring after three or four mission (one mission could keep you 6-10 hours in front of computer). In addition, the game needs a lot of time when it’s loading something, especially when you go to a new map. You can make a cup of coffee, stir it gently, drink it calm while reading newspaper, wash the cup when you finish... and guess what... you’ll find the loading screen’s still there!
My suggestion, don’t wait when the game’s loading new map.

~GTR 2 is a heaven for someone who loves racing simulator. The tagline of this game reveals it: Get Real.
This game is an official game of FIA GT Racing Championship.
The GTR first was sold limitedly so everybody was dissatisfied with it. And now it’s being sold worldwide. The game come with much updates eventhough the season to be played only season 2003 and 2004.
It’s quite tough for VGA and RAM because it’s shows much detail in the graphics and played more sophisticated AI’s than common racing games. I think you’ll need 1 GB of RAM to play it with full features as my 512MB RAM didn’t make it.
This is a game for someone who really addicted to real autoracing—not indiscipline racing on the street. If you used to play arcade racing game like Need For Speed series, you’ll find this game—no, sorry, sim—a bunch of hell.
If you’re a rookie for racing sims, don’t worry, all you need’s just a constant patience as it provides you a Driving School session which will teach you everything from big nil to great number of skill. But if you have no such patience, just uninstall it and go play Need For Speed Carbon (How good is it? I’ve stopped playing NFS since the awful NFSU2).
And because it’s a sim, please, have a racing wheel. You won’t drive Ferrari’s with your poor keyboard, will you?
I think we’ll never have a better racing sim like this for next 2 years, so if you really Need For Real, buy it! (The original one if you could... I don’t like promoting piracy ;p)

— p.s. I’ll update some best screenshot from those games...

New Kit On The Block

Finally...
After weeks of frantic moments with my computer, I got it all right again.
I changed my overheated VGA card (PowerColor FX 5200) with a new one.
After many hours asking everyone expert in computer hardware and searching reviews on the internet, my choice was concluded to HIS® X1600PRO powered by ATI™ Radeon® X1600 PRO which—according to those experts—is the best chipset for VGA in the mainstream class today.
My first concern was the cooling system, so I don’t have to cope any overheat issues anymore. And thankfully that X1600PRO chipset is installed on the best cooling system at the market: IceQ cooling system by HIS®. Although it’s better to modify the CPU case for cooling system, but since I don’t have any interest in doing that, I was very sure this VGA card is the best solution. The price, though, quite sucks my savings. But I hope it will give a new high performance for my computer graphics processing.

Poor O’ Nicky - Fool O’ Dani

I don’t know what was Dani thinking when he took out Nicky Hayden at the opening lap of Portugal GP today. I’m observing him since the beginning of the season, and I saw him changed his style after Hayden has big points lead, back at the middle of the season. It seemed that he rides more aggressive than ever and tries to show that he is not an incapable-rookie compared to his teammate. Right now I don’t remember where else, but I still remember he was doing the same thing at Sepang: Fighting Nicky strenuously as if Nick were his biggest rival (or maybe I fact he is).
OK, I know it’s not F1. In MotoGP, team is no. 2, your top priority is yourself. But Dani, you are out of your mind! It was just very opening lap and you rode as if it’s last lap. I think Nicky deserve to be furious with you.
To be noted, today’s race is a fine example for what I wrote at “Nick vs Vale” section, when I said Rossi is an entertainer because he is always fighting wherever-whenever he’s on the track. You saw Rossi, even he’s on the safe zone, did not bother to ride very very beyond of his capacity when Toni attacked him at the last laps. He was risking his valuable points for what, I don’t know, but certainly he knew what he was doing.
And another thing to note: Congratulation for Toni Elias, may your career goes well from now on. Always great seeing a new face on the top of podium.

Tongue Exercise

In this modern day, we see more and more people feel not enough with their language skill. They want to expertise more and more foreign language eventhough their proficiency in their mother language is still poor. I thought they want to be smart-looked within their foreign language ability. But again, I was wrong (very often when you see people from your narrow point of view). I’ve made much conversation with those who learn foreign language, and regularly asking their motivation of learning that.
I have some sort of statistics in my mind but never tried to arrange it. And right now I write it here to arrange it and, hopefully, give some extra thought for them who’s on the way learning a new language.
This is the list, sorted by quantity from greater to lesser (amount of people I knew who try to understand a little/learning/learned/expert it):

1. English
Not a surprise. This is a global language so people urged to learn it as soon as possible. Many people believe (so do I and I think you too) this is the most important foreign language. So, the reason is clear.

2. Chinese
Many said this is the second important future language as China now is growing fast and will be the next superpower country, so then people want to take advantage of it and start with learning it.
But actually, many of people I know learn this because they are in Chinese lineage and feel the need for knowing their basic heritage.

3. French
They seemed learn this language for style, pride and intellect-looking-manner, because you will be seemed so dumb when pronouncing “Peugeot” as “Peiu-jhot”.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but they really like the part of pronunciation. And some people said this is the most artistic language in Europe. So, if you love Europe, learn this!

4. Programming / Computing
This is surprising. I’m not trying to joke, this is for real. In this information era you must consider this language as legal language. The reason people learning this is, like I mentioned above, this is an information era, so you need to know how to interact with computer and make it helps you to solve problem.
In this part, I mean markup (HTML or else) language too, which means, you blogger are—aware or not—learning this language.

5. German
Some of them are looking for continuing study there. But most of them said this is the easiest language for you who want to learn a new foreign language.

6. Japanese
Anime bombardment is encouraging their fans to learn Japanese language. And several of them are in love with Japanese culture.

7. Dutch
Similar thing with German, but this language isn’t easy for sure. And maybe another reason is many ghosts from Old Dutch who had conquered Indonesia for 3.5 centuries possessed some of their mind.

8. Italian
They said this language is quite unique and have some sort of artistic style just like French. Also, people who are involved in classical music or orchestra/opera (I’m not sure what is it called) seemed urged to learn this language.

Note:
- I exclude people who take formal education for those languages, such as Higher Education of French language, Faculty of Language/Literature at University level, or IT department (for computing language).
- Notice this: Almost all of them learn a language with a general reason: They are admiring the country (mostly the culture) of origin of the particular language.
- With exception of no. 4, females are dominating. I don’t know what are male doing to improve their skills, but maybe not in language.


If you’re wondering what are my selection of those language, I have already thought of learning these in not too distant future:

- English (I need much improvement particularly on grammar side =! )
- Chinese (the same reason with what I mentioned above)
- German (if and only if I continue study there =p )
- Italy (just in case I live there ^^ \/ )
- Latin (for God’s sake, this is the mother of all language, why don’t anybody try to learn this)

Nick vs Vale

Estoril, 15 October 2006

It will be a thrilling battle between Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden.
If I were a gambler, my money will be on Rossi. Why?
Because Nick is pathetic. Since he won US GP at Laguna Seca, I didn’t see him fighting again. He rode his bike very conservative, trying to hold his big point’s advantage over Vale. Even if he won this year’s championship (very unlikely, except Vale’s M1 is in trouble again or something called forse majure strike him again), I don’t see him deserve it. Okay he has a good rider with a best ride at the moment, but no one will be satisfied with him when he gets this year’s trophy with such performance.
Vale though, even if he fails to hold his world title, he will be loved by fans because he does his best everytime he’s on the track. He’s not just a rider, he’s also an entertainer.
So, Nick... if you want to win the championship with such great honor, please, fight on the limit!
Let’s hope the battle goes on until final GP at Valencia...