However perhaps I’ll start updating this blog again, in a few months perhaps…

However, a handy program called Wizmo by Steve Gibson (an assembly programmer) can do it. Just use this command:

wizmo hibernate

And all will be set! Wizmo can do some other power management related stuffs too so check it out.

First Call for Paper

Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Soedirman, Purwokerto, will conduct an International Seminar: Upland for Food Security on November 7-8, 2009.

Introduction

Increasing human population resulted in more demand on foods, fibers, energy, and settlements. Many fertile arable soils with easy access have been converted into settlement and industrial areas. Therefore, sustainable food production systems in marginal upland areas are one of the greatest challenges.

This seminar will examined local technology, new agricultural technologies, and many recent finding for food production and processing that might aid in efforts to achieve sustainable upland agricultural systems for securing foods, fibers and energy.

Participants: This seminar is open to academicians, researchers, practicals, students, general publics and interested parties.

Location: Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Soedirman, Jl. Karangwangkal, Purwokerto, Central Java, Indonesia.

Date: The seminar will be held in 7-8 November 2009

Registration fee: Participants willing to give oral presentation or poster presentation are requested to send an abstract and register in advance to the Organizing committee not later than 1 August 2009. The fee is US$ 100 for foreigner and Rp 350.000,00 for Indonesian. The fee for students is a half of the fee for non students. The fee covers materials and seminar kits and food and drink during seminar. Transportation, food and drink not in the seminar and accommodation are excluded. The Fee can be paid during registration on the seminar day.

Contact information and registration form can be temporarily found here.

And the full leaflet (PDF) can be found here

I think it would be nice if I could upload them so that I can put URLs on CVs and such…

So stay tuned…

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

Reading it, I smiled and really thought that there would be no blood whatsoever on the Wizard of Oz. However, from the very beginning Dorothy accidentally “killed” an evil witch:

… Dorothy said, with hesitation, “You are very kind, but there must be some mistake. I have not killed anything.”

“Your house did, anyway,” replied the little old woman, with a laugh, “and that is the same thing. See!” she continued, pointing to the corner of the house. “There are her two feet, still sticking out from under a block of wood.”

Two feet of a squashed person. Now that’s quite some graphic depiction…

And the story of the Tin Woodman is even more gruesome:

…the axe slipped all at once and cut off my left leg.

…my axe slipped and cut off my right leg.

…After this the enchanted axe cut off my arms, one after the other; …

…The Wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, …

And because children likes blood, the author gives them this last treat:

… and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting me into two halves.

Splitting into half??? That sounds very much like the fatality in Mortal Kombat, the game criticized for being very violent!

And when our lovely girl Dorothy asks the great Wizard of Oz to help her, what’s the answer of our kind Wizard?

“Kill the Wicked Witch of the West,” answered Oz.

I haven’t read all the story yet, but there are still many other bloody incidents I’ve found. Like when the Tin Woodman chopped a cat’s head (which was hunting a mouse), or when two beasts fell into a cliff and “both were dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks at the bottom” (does it really need to be described vividly???). Or how about the battle with the wolf legion, or when the Scarecrow twists the neck of the enemy crow?

All in all, I’m fine if someone wants to put violence in a story. However, deceiving the readers that the story will be without “nightmares” is quite bold.

To think of it, I’ve never thought the Harry Potter or Narnia series as being particularly violent. Is it because that the author of Oz promised that the story will be all wonder and joy, that my sense of violence became heightened when actually reading it? Is it even intentional, as a psycological trick to make the reader feel the richness of the violence more? Is the Wizard of Oz really more violent? Or is it really meek and docile as the author wrote compared to other stories before it?

At any rate, read it at the Gutenberg project, and enjoy the fun, uhm, horror…

Let me teach you. I’m a Slashdot lurker so I feel I’ve got some expertise in this area…

A: In Thailand, one Indonesian student threw a trash on the road and got fined!
B: Well, in Indonesia, even the police throws trash anywhere.
C: In Soviet Russia, the trash throws you!!!

The key is just to make some absurd statement

News: Sun open sources Java!
A: In Soviet Russia, the code opens you!

Yeah, sometimes it gets tiring, but you get the idea…

News: Obama elected to be the next president.
A: In Soviet Russia, the president elects the people!

Just one last…

News: Abortion rate is increasing!
A: In Soviet Russia, the baby aborts the mother!

I don’t know how popular this joke is outside Slashdot though, and I’ve certainly never read this joke in Indonesian or Japanese. But you can always try

What was more surprising is the fact that she (yes, a female!) has lost one of her back limbs! She only had one of those large legs for jumping! Well, that’s if she could jump at all in that state.

Of course the only sane thing to do was to pick her up and release her back into the wild. But she wouldn’t let me take her that easily! She hopped and hopped as I tried to catch her. With one jumping leg!

It took some effort before I could finally get hold of her. I just put her near the door and in a few moment she hopped skilfully outside.

Just think of how great that creature was. Losing one important organ but still being able to do so much, still being able to jump that high! Nature does indeed teach us humans a lot…

Anyway, go visit his blog. He has great articles like How to Draw a Girl tutorial which might be of interest if you like to draw or appreciate drawings.

“Enter the most correct answer!”

And here’s one of the questions:

(1) “A fraction which is equal to 3/5 is …”

OK. So, 6/10 is obviously a correct answer to (1). 12/20 is also correct. Even 24/40 is correct.

Here’s the million dollar question: Which is the most correct?

Of course it’s a silly question. The answer to (1), mathematically, is either “correct” or “incorrect”. And among those many correct answers, neither is more correct than the others.

So, the wisest path is for the book writers to change to command to

“Enter a correct answer!” or even more simple and beautiful “Answer these questions!”

Or perhaps not answer anything at all, since we cannot find the most correct answer :).