Posted via web from Sabil’s posterous

My Heritage Softtail. Yey! Too bad they will need few days to get the papers ready.

Posted via web from Sabil’s posterous

Oh damn. A ducati showroom next to the office. Just when my bike arriving in Jakarta. God of HD, strenghten my heart!

Posted via web from Sabil’s posterous

Kopi Luwak at d’Excelso shop served in a cute dispenser.

Posted via web from Sabil’s posterous

Dm lagimakan sarapan siomay sambil nunggu istri di salon.

Posted via web from Sabil’s posterous

Ever since I’ve started living in Jakarta, I have always been in the service business. The first thing I tried to do (unsuccessfully) was selling a Hospital Information System as a freelance. I failed selling it to big hospitals, but I moved on. I then tried selling different kind of things as freelance sales until I got my first big break in 2007, when I got a contract to build a Data Center for the Police Force.

I got good commission out of it, but I lent most of it to someone who I thought could return it quickly (with handsome interest, of course). Well, that was too good to be true. I still consider it as a stuck-investment that will eventually pays off, but one of my best friends assured that I might as well consider the money is gone.

So, I was back in square one.

Then, in mid 2008, I got my second big break. But then I decided to get married, so about one-thirds of the commission I got went for the wedding. One-thirds of it I keep for my savings, a married man has to be prepared, you know. And the rest of it went to what I consider investments.

One of the so-called investment is to lend it to (yet another) someone whom I believe is going to pay me quickly (Uh-oh, de ja vu), and the other one is to trade stocks. Guess which one already paying off today? The stocks, of course.

While I’m still waiting for the other “investments” to pay off, I keep getting profits from the stock market. This is because I have a competent partner in the field, a high school friend who went to school for this kind of stuff. He executes the trades, I simply need to approve or disapprove any trade.

I get around 3 to 5 percents per month out of the stocks. It’s good enough for me. But then I thought, many people I know would love to get that kind of return on their investments. The highest rate for bank Cash Deposits interests are at around 10% p.a., so that’s less than 0.8% per month.

So, I decided to offer them a chance to invest in the stock market. Me and my friend would take commissions out of the profits we get. We would need to setup a new company to manage the investments. I think it’s doable. I will sell our investment products to close friends and acquaintances, where I can give my personal guarantee to take care of their money.

I’m still considering between two investment package to offer, though. Would people prefer a set rate of return, i.e. 3% per month? That way, I will then be responsible cover the difference if at certain month the investment is less than that. But they will be missing out of a chance to get more if the investment performs better, i.e. 5%. Because I will take the 2% above the specified rate.

Or would they prefer, whatever the return, simply take my commissions out of it, and they receive the rest? That way, if the investment is performing poorly, I have no obligation to them. But they will get more if the investment is performing above average.

This is where I stop writing and start thinking.

*Image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Banknotes.jpg

-Sabil Ardie-
Sent from a Blackberry® on XL network

Posted via email from Sabil’s posterous

Since id-mac is looking to update it’s logo, I had a plan to launch and announce the new site to id-mac on the last day of the new logo submission date, June 14. But I forgot that id-mac has its email system hosted by google apps and the person who has the access to google apps configuration page is another core team member, Yuza. So, I have to wait for him to set up the email system before we can redirect the dns information to the web host. So then the planned date passed by.

I took advantage of the delay today to make the logo voting system. I was planning to have a survey at polldaddy.com for members to vote. But the only problem with polldaddy.com is that a free account can only have 100 people responding to the survey. So if 100 members already voted, I would have to make another survey. The voting system I created is set up within the WordPress system as pages. I use runPHP plugin for WordPress and set up a MySQL database. The database keeps the members’ email, the votes, and the time the voting occured. This way, not only all the 3700 members of id-mac can all vote within the same system, but I can also make sure only the members can vote and they can only vote once.

It took me about 4 hours to develop, and I really like it. I hope the new site can be accessed soon, because the new logo was supposed to be chosen by the end of this month. I want to give members 7 days time to vote, so June 20 is the deadline for the new site to be up. When the new site is up, it can be accessed at http://www.id-mac.org

I have to clearly state right now, so I won’t be misunderstood, that I have nothing against the language itself. But I have a major problem with the way it’s being used in the real world.

As a former web developer (though I still develop websites, I don’t do it professionally), I have a track record of developing JavaScript free sites. The reason for this is that I believe that a visitor has to be able to navigate a website whether they have a JavaScript enabled browser or not.

Why anyone in this day and age would be using a non JavaScript enabled browser, you say? Well, where have you been?

Firstly, JavaScript is the one helping sites popping up those unwanted ads (Annoying). Secondly, if you are on Microsoft Windows, JavaScript can and will inject a Trojan into your computer. Thirdly, mobile web is the trend. I’m not talking about people on the move with their laptops, but people who are accessing sites on their mobile phones. The last and the most significant of all is that data mining is on the rage. Do you know that those ad banners you see and many websites help companies like doubleclick to keep track on what sites you are visiting?

The way I see it, a visitor should be able to get whatever they are looking for on a website regardless the medium they are using to access it. Would it be a text based browser like lynx, an old Internet Explorer on Windows 98 (Honestly, people are still using these!), web browser on a Blackberry, or a Safari on the latest Macbook Air. Don’t you think so? Or are you going to discriminate some of them?

Of all the bad decision you can do as a web developer is to have your navigation bar a JavaScript bar. I know it’s pretty to have a menu slides down as a visitor hover on it, but if a non JavaScript enabled browser used to access it, the visitor won’t be able to navigate properly or at all.

If JavaScript is unavoidable, you are responsible to create an alternative, non JavaScript version of the site. That’s what Gmail has been doing quite well. As soon as Gmail detects some problem, it would offer a HTML only version.

Also, if you are on Firefox, you may want to check http://noscript.net/. It’s a plug-in that will allow you to choose whether to enable JavaScript on given websites.