Saturday, June 30, 2007

Large Purchase

My brother, who is visiting Jakarta in-between jobs and burning up excess leave, came by to stay the night at my place because he wanted to meet some friends in Jakarta, and going home to Serpong simply isn't practical. Along with him he brought some birthday gifts, a digital camera (something I have always been postponing on buying myself) and an iPod Shuffle (the newer, smaller one). Great presents man! thanks.
On the same day, we went to ITC Fatmawati to get him an Indonesian number, as I he needs one and I'm giving my beloved RAZR V3X to him and just get a cheaper Sony Ericsson model for testing various stuff for work (if I ask the office to purchase it for me, it will just take forever); I also got a memory card for the digital camera; 1 GB would be more than enough for my habits. I think a lot of things would require the occasional documentation, especially the days ahead :).

I have been very stressed out at work, apparently, and have been disappointed with a lot of small, unimportant stuff in work and life, that the new and old things in my life have lifted up the dread a little. But if there's one thing that I'm looking forward to, it's November :).

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Thunder

I think it's been quite a while since I really, really ranted, complained and cursed on my blog. Really long time. But the period comes and I just complain about everything, and not without reason.
According to a lot of people, I am noticably more stressed out than I usually am, and for very good reasons. Work has been a total hell; the pressures of a multinational music company expecting more and more sales in a declining and 80% piracy market is finally taking its toll. All hopes are for digital music to eventually take up most of the business, but the current state of things is a total mess. Partners are uncooperative, thinking they own the music business (which they don't), other parties are just trying to make a quick buck by suing everybody and see who breaks down and pays. On the consumer side, a lot of people are complaining why MP3s should be protected from copying when CDs are not (which some are, and in a lot of cases the CD medium, which is already 20 years old, was complained by consumer rights boards because the protected CDs could not be played on some computers. People do not even remember that the CD format was widely used way before CD writers were commonplace, so it's sort of an outdated format), and wanting high-quality music for free. Of course, the same people would buy high-quality clothing or electronics for the premium price, but why pay for music, right?

All of this is piling in my head, not to mention all the expectations of my company (and my bosses)... hmm....

Sunday, June 17, 2007

The Official Krayola Website

Guys, if you have time, feel free to visit The Official Krayola Website. It's something I whipped up using iWeb, because, frankly, I've lost my touch a bit using Dreamweaver, my former weapon for constructing websites.
Last Friday I had to make a new HTML page for one of the projects I'm doing, but I had some help with the graphics and my HTML editing was slow at best; I forgot all the shortcuts and principles I used to use when making HTML layouts. I was planning to make the Krayola website next, but the task of going though the usual process was daunting. My fingers were simply not that lithe anymore using the standard applications I used to use.
After a visit from Saski and her parents to my house in Serpong, I kicked back and tried my hand with iWeb. I always knew about it, but for a former web designer, using one of those easy one-click applications to create a website was simply shameful, haha! It's like trying to create an attention-getting flyer using Word, and I always thought that iWeb was similar to Microsoft Frontpage, which really really tries to make web publishing easy but loses everyone in the process.
iWeb, of course, is the Apple solution for "the internet for the rest of us". It's as simple as putting together a presentation on Powerpoint, and it helps you get the links, pictures and other stuff organized well; and there's a lot of templates you can work with (not necessarily just graphic templates, but things like podcast page, photo page, blog and so on).
So it took me about 2 hours to construct and edit the Krayola website as you see it now, with a few minor changes along the way.

It's not mind-blowing cool or anything, but it should serve its purpose for now.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Stealing Time And Time Stolen

Work is a necessary part of the human society, where the basic idea is that a person does something to reach a goal. The activity can either be digging for treasure (with the obvious goal of finding treasure), or toiling away at the rice paddy fields to get crop, which part of it can be traded with another person who works on making clothes or growing fruit.
Society has developed as such where rather than having to look for someone to trade our day's work, we just work for money that can be traded for anything we want, provided we have enough money. The cycle has developed as such so that some people work to create demand out of one product so that their money can become the others', and thus consumerism was created. Even discussions on consumerism are sold; now anything is sold as long as there is a market for it.
We create sciences, studies and research to improve ourselves, to try to raise the quality of life; and once we succeed at attaining some certain goal -- somebody, somewhere will definitely sell it. We are all stuck in the global cycle of capitalism and consumerism.
I'm not saying that it's either a bad thing or a good thing, it's just that we're stuck. It doesn't even mean that our culture, now virtually global, is in stasis; a lot of great innovations (and a bigger multitude of unnecessary junk or services) was created this way. It's just that... we're all almost obligated to participate in the cycle to perpetuate our lives.

So here I am, stuck at my desk, working at something that I actually like doing, but still working, to make sure I have enough money to take back home and pay for the various bills and leisure items (anything other than food, clothing and housing is leisure, because a lot of people don't have all three). Thus my time is dedicated mainly to work, and time from personal endeavors afforded by the money I earned from work, is stolen.

So why start at all?

Human history is full of futile endeavors and lost causes, and claims that 'the journey was more important than the destination'.... and I stand here as a solid supporter of that. Simply put, we do our best in our lives to doing what we think is right, and leave the rest up to the Big Guy above.