If You Could Only See

just a little flashback from karaoke night at #mozsummit 2013 #santaclara

If you could only see the way she loves me 
Then maybe you would understand 
Why I feel this way about our love 
And what I must do
If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says ...
When she says she loves me
 Well you got your reasons 
 And you got your lies 
 And you got your manipulations 
 They cut me down to size 
 Sayin' you love but you don't 
 You give your love but you won't
 **back to reff**
 Seems the road less traveled 
 Show's happiness unraveled 
 And you got to take a little dirt 
 To keep what you love 
 That's what you gotta do 
 Sayin' you love but you don't 
 You give your love but you won't 
 You're stretching out your arms to something that's just not there 
 Sayin' you love where you stand 
 Give your heart when you can
 **back to reff**
 Sayin' you love but you don't 
 You give your love but you won't 
 Sayin' you love where you stand 
 Give your heart when you can
 **back to reff**

[SF Trip] Downtown San Francisco in less than 8 hours

ciplaz_20131029110058_92418

Afternoon already, we have no much time to explore The City by the Bay.
We didn’t even have enough time to find and buy some souvenirs nor have a proper dinner :( So lets go through the checklist then.

  1. Union Square
    The area got its name because it was once used for rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark.There is a wide variety of hotels, cafes, bars, restaurants, shops, etc., that are unique to San Francisco. In Union Square you will have a mix of locals, business travellers and vacationers. It’s like a transit area. Transportation is quite easy in here because you have subway or bus stations around you.It’s also an expensive area. You can see famous brand stores/restaurants in every corner. It’s like a collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and beauty salons in the United States.And what we did there was … enjoy the afternoon, when the sun is calming down, warm with cool breeze, watching the activities around the square.

    After that, @Rara79 need to find a post office to buy postcards and stamps. So we go to Macy’s coz it has one. Nope, we didn’t buy anything, see the keyword “expensive”. Need to save more bucks for other things he he he he.Chinatown actually is about 1-2 blocks away, perfect place for hunting souvenirs in a budget. But like I said, we don’t have time to go there.

  2. Cable Car
    This is a must have attraction my list. So we took one next to Macy’s down to the Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s nice ride actually, but since the cable cars was kind of full, i only got a place at the rear. The best spot at the front and side of the car have already been taken :(

    There are some souvenir shops around here. It’s cheap, sort of. Well you could have 5-7 postcards for only $1 before tax. Some key chains and many other stuff. I’m sure you’ll get cheaper and more options in Chinatown.

  3. Fisherman’s Wharf
    Fisherman’s Wharf gets its name and neighborhood characteristics from the city’s early days during the Gold Rush when Italian immigrant fishermen settled in the area and fished for the Dungeness crab. From then until the present day it remained the home base of San Francisco’s fishing fleet.It’s getting dark when we arrived, so basically we spent very short time here. Just walking around the corner, we miss the chance to see the sea lion, only watching the Alcatraz (closed due to the government shutdown).In addition we (me actually) also need to catch the time to take photos of the golden gate bridge at sunset. Since we taking bus will take forever to go there, just missed the sunset taking a taxi was the only option.
  4. Golden Gate
    You are not in San Francisco if not visit the Golden Gate . That’s what we did, visit the 76 years old bridgeNobody warned us that the wind around the bridge was so cold. I should have known about that when I was at same situation at Eiffel and The Great Wall.So, my camera remote were basically dead coz the battery was too cold to operate. It also needed a moment to set up the gear for long exposure shot properly. I just couldn’t stand the cold wind and it made everything worse since i have to push the shutter manually with my trembling cold hand :(Don’t have much time since the taxi meter is still running.

    After spending about 15 minutes around the bridge, I’ve got nothing worth to be published :( With a huge disappointment, I ask the taxi driver to take us to Pier 39.

  5. Hard Rock Cafe SF at Pier 39
    I went here because one of my colleague asking me to buy a city tee for his collection. Bought some souvenirs also for people at #Room41. It’s dark, it’s windy and we’re hungry. Dinner around here is quite costly, so we took Finnan suggestion to go back to fisherman’s wharf.The food stall mentioned by Finnan was closed already, so we pick random restaurant.Geez, the American food portion is crazy!!I ordered normal pasta (well just look the menu and it seems to be face for me to eat) with a shrimp salad as appetiser. Haven’t finish it yet when the pasta came.
    OMG, the plate is like 30cm long (no, not you @naivee) with 2 chicken fillets size of my palm each. It’s for 2-3 people here!!

After dinner, me @Rara79 and @Eriskatp back to the Caltrain Station to get the last train back to Santa Clara. It’s a day that we spent most of the time on foot. I hope my lil sis Eriska was not feeling tortured. Well this is the way we enjoy the new place. Sorry sis, but I’ve warned you before he he he he.

Moral of the story:

  • Start explore downtown SF early in the morning since most of the place are nice to be visited before night time (IMO).
  • Try to be the first cable car in queue, so start from the Market Street, pick the best seat.
  • Better rent a car to go to Golden Gate area and spend enough time there specially for composing the photograph you want.

as usual you can find more photos in my [button color=’pink’ size=’small’ link=’http://flickr.com/photos/nuri_abidin/’]flickr[/button] account :).

Also feel free to leave your comment here ^_^

[SF Trip] Visiting Mozilla Space San Francisco

mozspacesf-logo7 Oct 2013, Summit over the night before. Most of us will fly back home, back to daily routine office, college, shool etc. Some will spend another day or two just for sight seeing. Let say, Jan from Holland going to surf at Santa Cruz, Ash’kary from Bangladesh have a road trip to east coast.

Me? I’ll be spend a day at San Francisco with the girls (@rara79 & @eriskatp) First stop is Mozilla Office San Francisco, @rara79 has appointment with Emily (the one from WPR tables next to Mozilla Indonesia table in MozFair day #1).

It’s kind of late. Based on my checklist we should go to SF from Santa Clara CalTrain station maximum at 9am. We board at the train around 11am. And the first thing cross my mind when inside the train is … Source Code movie. Also met Rizki from Yogya at the train.

CalTrain took about 1hr 30min from Santa Clara to SF and cost you about $9. From SF Caltrain Station we need to take a cable train to get to Mozilla SF office at Harrison St. Cost you about $2.

The weather was perfect (OK, it’s lil bit chill) for walking down the street. MozSpace at SF is nice, I wish that someday we could have one at Indonesia.

Met Emily, have a little tour inside. Josh already busy with lines code in his big monitor screen. William playing pingpong at 7th floor :) The view from this floor is amazing. I’m willing to stay overnight almost every night with this view :P I can imagine it’s getting prettier in the afternoon with all the lamps around the bridge and the building around.

From MozSpace SF, we go to Twitter office. Another $2 using subway.

That’s all for MozSpaceSF visit, as usual you can find more photos in my [button color=’blue’ size=’small’ link=’http://flickr.com/photos/nuri_abidin/’]flickr[/button] account :)
 

Mozilla Summit Stories:

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8 Hours at Narita, Japan

After spent about 8 hours flight from Singapore, I still had 8 hours layover at Narita International Airport waiting for the next flight to San Jose, USA. So, I did a small research before about Narita City (going to Tokyo was never be in my plan). I love history, things that are old, ancient, vintage. Therefore, I prefer to go to places that still have relics of ancient history, especially before the end of the renaissance.

Ok, what would Narita offer to us?
Well we have plenty of choices actually regarding to what some people say that there’s “nothing” around Narita City. From Narita-san Shinsh?-ji temple to Sawara Town also known as “Little Edo”. Due to my time calculation and try to be rational, I decided to visit only Narita-san Shinsh?-ji.

It’s very easy to go there from Narita Airport. You need only JPY 250 one way/person to take JR Narita train + 15 to 20 minute walk from JR Narita or Keisei Narita Stations. This is a tricky part because it could take more than 30 minutes to reach the temple gate. It it so far away?

Don’t get we wrong. It’s only 800m straight to the temple. In fact, because you’re enjoying the walk so much that could make you lost time.

The road to Narita-san Shinsh?-ji is known as Omotesando. But at the both side of the road there are numerous shops, restaurant, inns. From what i’ve read, it’s there for more than 300 years.

Too bad we’re there at 9am. Most of the shops/restaurant still close or the owners are preparing the shops to be opened. I wonder if I was there at 3pm upward, weather getting cooler (it was hot), lamps are turned on, and people wearing kimono greeting their customer. I could imagine my self being in the era described inside Eiji Yoshikawa’s books :) There are so much to tell, better you go there your self :P I want to go there again.

So here we are at the “main course” :P

Narita-san Shinsh?-ji is a Shingon Buddhist temple located in central Narita, Chiba, Japan. And It’s BIG!!

Temple in Japan usually is a complex contains several buildings. Well not to mention it also has garden, pagodas, a small forest i could say. At some place you have to walk through stairs and it’s pretty high.

It was founded in 940 by Kanch? Daisojo, a disciple of Kobo Daishi. The temple became importance starting in the Edo Period (1603 – 1867), when it gained the patronage of the Tokugawa Shogunate. I recommend you to read book “Taiko” by Eiji Yoshikawa. You’ll see a piece of Japanese ancient history that is worth to be studied later on.

You see, the temple is more than 1000 years old. It’s amazing, and what amazed me more is that it still there in one piece (well, IMO). The Japanese did a very great job for keeping this heritage like it is today. It’s like an upside down when I look back to my country. There’s no much left…

Narita-san is one of Japan’s most popular destinations during New Year’s Day. And why is that? Umm, japanese has different way to celebrate new year (that 1st january new year). They usually stay at home with the family, eating traditional food and other activities. After that they had hatsumode, the first shrine to visit of the new year. Narita-san is one of the destination for that even from long back then in the Edo era.

At that days, people will walk about 64km from Edo to visit temple at Narita. To nourish the tired pilgrims, many unagi, or grilled eel, shops were opened. And you’ll still see many “eel restaurant” down the Omotesando Road. Don’t worry @belutz, you’re safe bro :)

I could’t wait for March 2014, I’ll be at Osaka-Kyoto-Nara-Kobe. The Old Japan, meanings more temples, more castles.

As usual, you can view more photos at my flickr or facebook account.

Subeteda ne, domo arigatou gozaimashita

note: some photos from my iPhone

Mozilla Summit 2013 – Day 03

In the previous posts (in Bahasa Indonesia but i’ll post the english version if you want it) you might feel that i’m trying to write a report about the summit. Well I did try, but actually it’s more to sharing my feeling, the exiting being in the summit and the whole topic in the last 3 days. The new tech that most of them I barely know, the people, the project, the cause, the vision, the values of Mozilla and being a Mozillian and so on

This is it, the last day of the summit.
Felt like it was just yesterday the summit begun. There are still many people i’d like to meet, talk, discuss and plenty of things need to be learnt. But more important is i need to contribute more. And join more groups also :)

Therefore I specifically attend the SuMo (Support Mozilla) class to meet Rosana and Madalina, the wonderwomen behind SuMo Projects and the other fellow SuMo as well. Andi @belutz and @rara79 also join this class. I’ll make the post about it later.

In the afternoon, we had a visit to Mozilla HQ at Castro Street, Mountain View lead by Pascal Finette. It was only for the first 50 person who signed up but i think we had excess passenger :P So, 50 people using the bus, the other 2 or 3 people taking taxi he he he.

After the closing speech, this summit end with a dance party where Gen Kanai being the DJ that night and played a lot of nice music :)

As usual, you can view the rest of the photos on my flickr
Mozilla Summit Stories:

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Mozilla Summit 2013 – Day 02

Antri kopi pagi *slurrrp*

Halo halo
It’s day #2 of Mozilla Summit 2013.

I choose to take less photos but take more notes because there’ll be a lot of interesting topics in day #2. I mean technical related topic because we have Innovation Fair. Up until the second day, this summit is a perfect reminder of how brilliant the mozilla contributors are and and a wake up call how much of a n00b I really am. So much to learn and it’s like burning me inside (in a good way).
Yosh!!!
Keynotes di hari kedua ini penuh demonstrasi produk. Sebut saja ada WebRTC, Simple Push, Firefox OS Marketplace, App Manager, AppMaker, Shumway, games berbasis HTML5.

And then The Innovation Fair!

I saw many projects – i mean [highlight]AWESOME PROJECTS[/highlight] – that i (probably you too) haven’t heart before. If you’re there you know what i mean, there were “WOW!!” appluse, whistle everywhere in the room. And there are also gasp, interviews, note taking, asking questions rapidly like a machine gun to the developer because their projects are just simply … awesome.

Some of them might say “Ah, it’s just a toy. I built it for fun coz at that time i have nothing to do
Daaa,
kalo iseng ajah dah sekeren itu gimana jadinya kalo mereka pada serius :P
Beneran, jadi ingat ke masa-masa lalu waktu bisa alokasi waktu senggang untuk bikin project-project iseng/experimen ^_^ (apa lagi kalo lihat film Code Rush :P). I’m trying to get those days back to my life now! FTW! :P

Saya mulai dengan [highlight]Lantea Maps app[/highlight] yang dihubungkan dengan kontrol fisik dibuat menggunakan MaKey Makey. Developernya bilang ini cuman proyek iseng saja, Makey Makey mengingatkan saya ke maenan bread board dengan segala printilan elektroniknya di kelas teknik digital-nya Pak Bambang sewaktu masih sekolah dulu. Si kontroler Makey ini tugasnya untuk zoom out/in serta geser layar kiri kanan atas bawah

Belajar bagaimana tim Jepang yang sukses membajak satu display untuk demo HTML5 game lengkap dengan xbox controller. Perangkat gamenya sendiri dibuat menggunakan Panda Board. Tim Jepang juga mendemokan gesture control menggunakan sensor leap motion (dan saya lupa order barangnya padahal yg jual di amrik juga :( ). Ini semacam versi primitif gesture control di film Minority Report lah. Gila emang tim Jepang ini.

photos by bkerensa
photos by bkerensa
photos by bkerensa
photos by bkerensa

Ada Talkilla, project ini adalah salah satu contoh penerapan WebRTC. Nah kalo kamu pingin nyobain Talkilla, tinggal akses ke sini. Cuman, kamu harus menggunakan Firefox 25 ke atas.

Ada [highlight]Appmaker.[/highlight]
Appmaker ini semacam WYSIWYG GUI/IDE untuk membuat Firefox OS app. Masih dalam tahap pengembangan tapi sangat-sangat potensial. Di versi ini kamu sudah bisa menggunakan beberapa utama dari WebAPI HTML5. Cukup drag and drop juga untuk membuat layout tampilan app kamu. Yah bisa dianalogikan kaya pake Ms Visual Studio, Dreamweaver n sejenisnya deh :)

Panda Chassis & Mozpool, sebuah proyek yang merakit kumpulan Panda Board menjadi semacam blade server. mounting rack chassisnya ini adalah project open source yang disebut sebagai Panda Chassis itu tadi.

photo by @belutz
photo by @belutz

Firefox Metro, ini touch based browser yang optimized untuk perangkat Windows 8.x. Designnya alus banget dan minimalis, ini yang bikin saya tertarik. I love simplicity.

[highlight]Firefox Australis[/highlight]. Ummm, sama kaya Metro mending kalian nyobain sendiri atau lihat video berikut deh biar tau gambarannya :)

OpenNews, ini bukan produk fisik/aplikasi. Dimotori oleh Erika Owens, OpenNews adalah sebuah gerakan yang mengajak kita untuk membangun sebuah ekosistem yang membantu kegiatan jurnalistik berkembang di era open web ini. Erika kerenn :P

Dan masih banyak lagi yang saya ga sempat mampir *dan saya menyesal berat ninggal kamera di kamar, untung masih bawa voice recorder karena nyatet sudah ga sempat juga, keburu exiting*

Karena sibuk ngider serta “interogasi” dari satu meja ke meja lain, di hari kedua ini saya praktis cuman ikutan 1 kelas fulltime. Topik kelas di hari kedua ini ga kalah banyak dibandingkan hari pertama. Namun ada satu ganjalan. Sebenarnya saya berharap perwakilan dari almamater sekolah saya bisa join kelas 3D GameLab Open Badges. 3D GameLab Open Badges ini dapat digunakan di proses belajar mengajar terutama di sekolah. Lisa Dawley yang memberikan materi di kelas ini backgroundnya juga dari pendidikan.
Tapi sayang orangnya entah pada ngilang kemana, jadi cukup kecewa  sih. Padahal ini kesempatan yang could only be one in a lifetime. Mumpung di sini gitu loh *sigh*

Di akhir acara hari itu saya join kelas “Level Up with Firefox Student Ambassadors” yang herannya ga ada aktivis FSA Indonesia yang join kelas ini. And  I was like the only one that has no relationship with any education institution in the class. Buset deh he he he he.

Eh engga ding, si Rara kan dokter n di akhir kelas ada @eriskatp ma @akkuderry yang kemudian muncul. Sayang mereka ini statusnya masih highschool student, sementara FSA untuk studentnya lebih nyasar ke level mahasiswa. Tapi program FSA ini terbuka juga untuk guru, jadi level SMA pun masih bisa masuk.

Di hari kedua ini, acara malamnya terbagi menjadi dua.
1. Maen ke Great America yang temanya hari itu soal Haloween.
2. Nonton film Code Rush yang menceritakan sejarah project Mozilla

Tadinya pingin ikut ke Great America, tapi apa daya harus remote kerjaan kantor. Cukup banyak hal yang harus di review plus kayanya saya jetlag-nya telat, jadi kesempatan lah buat nambah waktu tidur :)

Great America
Great America Halloween Haunt!

Tapi ada satu hal yang membahagiakan peserta dari Asia di hari kedua ini. ADA NASI di menu makan malamnya!!! Nyicip nasi putih + kari ama nasi briyani deh (entah briyani/tandoori pokoke nasi! –mode wong ndeso asli–)

What an exiting day

Mozilla Summit Stories:

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