Rainy Days in Hong Kong through an iPhone 6

So, I flew to Hong Kong couple weeks ago to do some work. For me, Hong Kong is boring since there are only bricks, buildings, shopping, density, crowded, not so nice weather (for me).

Nevertheless, there are things which make Hong Kong keep interesting. It’s density, crowded people are nice subject for street photography.

But, it was raining everyday! And since i only had -literally- 1 afternoon and less then 9 hours the next day before my flight back to Jakarta, I don’t have much time to explore. Only manage to walk across Nathan road and some alley around it. Took ferry from Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island (roundtrip, twice! :P). And finally using Airport Express train from IFC mall to go airport.

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Selamat datang di iPhone & iPad, Mozilla Firefox

Penantian panjang itu akhirnya berakhir. Mozilla akhirnya secara resmi merilis browser Firefox 1.2 untuk perangkat iOS yang meliputi iPhone, iPad serta iPod Touch secara global. Versi pertama dirilis sekitar bulan September 2015, tapi saat itu hanya untuk AppStore New Zealand saja. Yah, untuk test the market dulu lah.
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Fitur-fitur Firefox iOS kurang lebih sama seperti yang di desktop. Mulai dari sinkronisasi dengan Firefoxnya untuk mengakses history, tab, password serta bookmarks, tab management hingga private browsing.

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[#31DaysOfDecember] 21 – For Sale

Plan to sell these gadgets.

All in good conditions and complete set with box etc, better check your self :) You can email me at nuri dot abidin at gmail dot com or Line-me/mention me in twitter @nurikidy

Nikon D600 & Nikkor Lenses

It’s hard, but I’m using my Fuji more and practically this FX Nikon only used for photo studio only. D600 will be a package with 3rd party battery grip and additional battery. Lenses are sold separately.

Fujifilm X-100s

4 continents, many immigration stamps in my passport, 1 camera. Including hoods, leather case, 2 additional batteries.

Traktor Kontrol Z1 

IDR 1.8 mio full set in very very mint condition :)

macbook air is not included :) it’s sold separately :)

last update: June 16, 2015

Bon retour au Paris

About a decade ago I spent almost a month at Paris. For business trip. Still remember how we rush every morning to catch trains to Anthony. Since we lived around Porte Maillot (zone 1), it need about 1 hour+ to be at Rue Jacques Rueff, Anthony (zone 4).

Around 19h afternoon, we’d be back to zone 1. Usually I will spent the night wandering around St Germain or Quarter Latin, usually with Mas Hanny. The rest of the group choose to go straight to nearest McD and back to the hotel. If I have nothing to do (usually Friday night) i walked a long Champs Elysees, from Arc de Triomphe to Louvre back and forth. You could walk through Place de la Concord to Jardin des Tuileries until you reach the Louvre pyramids, or turn to rue de Rivoli and come back via Quai des Tuileries following the river banks of Seine.

There were funny things also. We ended up having dinner in an Indonesian Restaurant (the owner from Surabaya) in rue de Vaugirard where we actually wanted to go to Pigalle *rofl* Edhiem phone fell of the metro platform and he jumped down to take it while people were screaming. It was Siemens something, the most expensive phone at that time (well compare to what displayed in stores around Paris). My colleagues brought so many bread from hotel breakfast for snack and lunch because they couldn’t eat salmon steak everyday like I did. Hey, it’s big yummy salmon steak with delicious french fries and I like it. I asked nobody to eat what i eat :P And it’s only 10 Franc (or less, i forgot about it).

This September, I’ve got a chance to visit The City of Light again. Air France now has direct flight from CGK to CDG with 2 hours transit in Singapore. But i miss ANA :( The (japanese) food, the entertainment, smiles and hospitality of the cabin crew. Well, Air France is OK, but nothing special actually.

Landing at CDG around 7h, very long queue in the immigration with only 5-6 officers on duty. Took me 1 hour to pass the immigration. FYI, French immigration is well known as the “friendliest” immigration for Schengen visa holder. Try to enter via Frankfurt, you’ll be asked many questions.

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long queue

CDG

CDG

CDG 2E arrival Hall

CDG 2E arrival Hall

Basically, there are 3 ways for you to get to downtown Paris:

  1. By taxi, you’ll enjoy the ride, watching the view from the suburb of CDG area until entering the classic city of Paris. But it will cost you about EUR 50 or more. I used it a decade ago so not for this time.
  2. By bus, it will cost you EUR 10, and the stop point is at Paris -Opera. There are also EUR 6 bus with stop point at Paris-Nation or Paris Gare de l’Est. Not my choice. Travel time is about 80-90 minutes and I’m not planning to wandering around Nation/Gare de l’Est with my luggage.
  3. RER B. This train will take you downtown in 30 minutes, cost EUR 9.75. I can stop at Les Halles and change to Metro 11 to take me to my AirBnb apartment. But I choose to stop at St Michel – Notre Dame instead.

The RER B station is located 1 floor below the arrival hall. It’s easy to find it, just follow Paris by Train sign. If you’re wanting to buy a simple train ticket to Paris and you have a [label style=”red”]smart chip credit card[/label] or [label style=”red”]Euro coins[/label], you can use these [label style=”green”]green Billetterie[/label] vending machines to purchase such tickets. Don’t worry, there are also vending machines where you can exchange your 5-10-20 euro notes to coins.

Paris by Train

Paris by Train

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going to train station downstair

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Billetterie for purchasing ticket to downtown Paris

And this is what i’ve got… vending machines are not at service. I thought there are strike from SNCF employee. Employee/labour strikes happened quite often in France. Heard some officers said that RER might not operate that day so we have to use bus. Arrghhh!!!

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en service but not in service

en service but not in service

After getting your train tickets, you can continue to turn towards the train platforms which will require descending another set of escalators or stairs onto Level 1. The Paris Train platforms are marked as “Voie” (“platform”) 11 and 12 and also show “RER B Paris par Train“, the Regional Express Network trains that operate between Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Paris city centre.

My RER was got delayed because of the incident, so i have to wait until 12h to get on the train. Such a waste of time. But finally we knew that there were accident in Le Blanc Mesnil that interrupt the RER B traffic from/to CDG2.

So, spent my lunch time around Notre Dame and rendezvous with Winstem an hour after that. I’ve managed to ‘smuggled’ packs of tea for him hehehehehe :) You wont find Teh Poci in there :P

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me & winstem across Louvre

After that, me and Winstem go to 96 Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, the place where i will stay for the next 7 days. Thanks to Airbnb :)

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that’s my dinner, a tripod long sized sandwich….

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being a Parisian, live in a small but very nice flat & neighborhood.

Bon retour au Paris, la ville de la lumière, la ville de l’amour

These are some photos from my X100s

Apple Live Chat Support … Speechless…

Last week I have very funny experience with Apple Live Chat Support. My iPhone 5 is having problem with the sleep/lock button (as well as many others, i think iphone4 users also having same experience but with the home button) and perhaps because of that the front camera also acting weird. It ‘crashed’ the camera app whenever you witch from rear to front camera.

Being an Apple iPhone user in Indonesia is sucks at some point. There’s no Apple Store here. What I’ve done was digging any info I can get first, then contact the apple support. I just want to know their opinion about the problem I had and ask for the Apple authorized service center.

And this all I’ve got. The officer in charge told me to GO TO an address New South Wales AUSTRALIA while I’ve explained in the first time that i live at INDONESIA. Based on the ‘zipcode’ it just 15.6km away. (*@^(!*($)%!%)$)

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Apple oh apple…. speechless…

Maybe because Indonesia and Australis is next to each other, an address in NSW is all I’ve got. Otherwise I might get an address in South Africa or Boston for example where my zipcode can be used also to locate a store :)

Membuat iPhone dan iPod Touch kamu jadi Motion-Based Music Instrument

AUUG Motion Synth

The Motion Synth: Turn Movement into Music
-auug.com-

Awal 2012 lalu saya berkesempatan sharing di acara bertajuk Wikufest.
Saat itu saya coba highlight apa yang bisa kita gunakan dari ponsel, barang yang saat ini bisa dibilang selalu ada di jangkauan kita.

Kunci-nya sih app.
Contoh yang saya berikan waktu itu di antaranya pemanfaatan ponsel untuk bisnis VAS, monitoring status mobil, main musik juga buat militer :)

Nah sekarang ini ga cuman app ajah yang memaksimalkan potensi sebuah smartphone. Tapi ada hardware-hardware pendukung yang jadi komplementasinya. Pernah dengar atau tahu aksesoris fitnes bernama Nike FuelBand atau Jawbone app? Rekan kerja di kantor sih keranjingan hacking bikin drone, trus kontrol via android device.

Nah berikut ini berkaitan dengan musik. iOS device + musik sebetulnya kombinasi yang sudah umum, namun perangkat satu ini sangat unik (saat ini).

Namanya  AUUG Motion Synth.
Ini adalah sebuah project di kickstarter yang cita-citanya mengubah iPhone/iPod Touch kamu jadi sebuah instrumen musik yang baru dan cukup unik. Kamu bisa memainkan nada maupun menggubah suara cukup dengan gerakan tangan saja (motion).

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Selain itu AUUG juga bisa mengontrol software di komputer kamu secara wireless. Di juha bisa mengontrol perangkat-perangkat musik non-wireless lewat kabel MIDI. Kompatibel dengan iPhone 4s++ dan iPod Touch generasi 5 dan setelahnya.

Penasaran?
Lihat video berikut dan silakan meluncur ajah ke http://www.auug.com/

Antara IM3, iPhone4 dan Fixed Dial Numbers

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Saya punya sebuah iPhone4 yang praktis sekarang bisa dibilang nganggur sejak saya menggunakan iPhone5. Well, ga sepenuhnya nganggur sih. Sewaktu traveling ke Jepang + USA + Singapore justru iPhone4 ini jadi ponsel utama. Kartu-kartu operator lokal di negara-negara tersebut saya pasang di iPhone4 ini. Phone working fine, yah iOS 6.1.2 sepertinya membuat iPhone4 bekerja sedikit lambat untuk beberapa aplikasi. Yang paling berasa saat maenan instagram. Selebihnya baik-baik saja.

Nah hari ini saya mo masang kartu operator lokal. Jadilah saya malam ini maen ke Giant + Lotte Bintaro mencari SIM card perdana simPATI dan ga ada yang jual. Alasan standar sih “lagi kosong”, but who knows? Akhirnya saya iseng-iseng beli paket perdana IM3 ajah seharga 10ribu di Sentra Ponsel Lotte Bintaro.

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Keanehan terjadi saat saya mau mengaktifkan perdana IM3 ini di Sentra Ponsel. Network tidak terdeksi. Setelah ngubek-ngubek setingan iOS, reset setting tetap saja No Services. Karena saya ga mo ngerepotin mbak yang di Sentra Ponsel itu akhirnya saya bayar saja dulu n pindah ke 7-11.

Kejadiannya adalah begitu pasang perdana IM3 yang terjadi pertama kali adalah muncul notifikasi “Fixed Number Dialing Activated”
Apapula ini? Seumur-umur pake iOS ga pernah dapat pesan kaya gini.

Yang lebih aneh lagi pas browsing ke situsnya Indosat disebutkan
“Bagi seluruh pengguna handset, pastikan Fixed Dial Number (FDN) di non-aktifkan saat melakukan aktivasi untuk menghindari kegagalan registrasi prabayar. Jika terjadi kegagalan registrasi, gunakan handset lain.”

Halo? Handset lain saya cuman iPhone5 dan ga ada jaminan saya ga akan ngalamin kejadian yang sama secara sama-sama pake iOS cuman beda versi saja. Kemudian mo aktivasi pake smartphone ajah kok beribet amat sih, harus pake handset lain segala?

Jadilah saya nyari tau apa itu Fixed Dial Number (FDN).
Menyimpulkan dari Wikipedia dan berbagai thread forum yang membahas problem yang sama di berbagai handset,

Fixed Dialing Number (FDN) adalah sebuah layanan yang ditanam di SIM card GSM. Jadi dari operator nih bukan dari pabrikan ponsel. Saat FDN aktif, SIM card tersebut cuman bisa nelpon ke nomor-nomor yang sudah kita daftarin ke FDN. Layanan ini berguna misalnya buat orang tua yang pingin batasin pemakaian ponsel anaknya cuman boleh nelpon/sms ke nomor-nomor tertentu. Tidak semua SIM card mendukung layanan ini. Kalo kita mo make pun kita harus ngisi PIN yang tiap SIM card berbeda dan PIN ini hanya disediakan oleh operator. PIN nya juga beda dengan PIN standar SIM card yang 1234 itu.

Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with the phone. Dipasangi Axis, simPATI, kartuHALO, Ready SIM USA, sampe terakhir Hi-Card Singtel ga ada masalah. As matter of fact, I’m still using the SingTel Hi Card.

Dugaanku sih Indosat ngaktifin fitur ini untuk ngerestrict kartu perdana supaya ga bisa nelpon sebelum aktivasi. Lha masalahe gimana saya bisa aktivasi wong jadinya tuh kartu malah masalah di iPhone4 saya, diapainpun sampe reset all setting tetap saja “No Service”.

Akhirnya saya beli perdana lain buat membuktikan teori di atas. Di 7-11 saya beli perdana XL. Sialnya XL ga punya microSIM, dan sevel ga punya pemotong SIM Card biasa ke Micro SIM :( Moga-moga ada SIM card cutter di rumah, kalo ga kepaksa ke kantor deh besok demi motong SIM card doang :P

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ah, a note from samsung.com

Not all SIM cards have a PIN2 code. If your SIM card does not, this menu option is not displayed. You must obtain your PIN2 code from your service provider

Perfect :)

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update

Ternyata ada MicroSIM cutter di rumah dan kartu XL nya berfungsi dengan baik  mulai dari aktivasi sampai kirim SMS di iPhone4 ini :)