sidudun

Good day,

I’ve been in blogosphere since 2007. From my first time there, sometimes I found a lot of blogs saying that blogger mustn’t copy paste carelesly another article to their blog. They were saying that blog content is a creation that must be respected. It means you couldn’t just duplicated blog content without authorization, reference, or at least a trackback.

Trackback

WordPress has its own trackback system. If a blog content leave a reference to another blog (usually as a link), the referenced blog will be notified. The notification itself usually came as a comment on the referenced post.

I didn’t believe that someone could do something like that. Just duplicating blog content without reference or a trackback isn’t ethical to me. I wasn’t believe until couple days ago. Someone just copy-pasted my writing. For your information, I also write at another blog. In that blog, I wrote a tutorial on how to build your own WordPress blog. I divided the tutorial into several posts. Each post referenced (or link) to the previous and the next step of the tutorial. So every post got a trackback from another part of the tutorial.

My posting there got a trackback from another blog. It used to be the usual trackback. But when I checked it out, I found out that the other blog has my post written on it. Just exactly as what I wrote them. The trackback was sent from the link that I created to link my tutorial. So if I didn’t divide the tutorial and create referenced to the part, I’ll never know that someone copy-pasted my post. This other blog didn’t bother giving a reference to my post (not to mention my own trackback).

I was furious. But I controlled my emotion and write a comment to that blog. I wrote as polite as possible, telling him to give a reference to my post. The comment saved as moderated. I couldn’t expect more, and I left it.

The next day, an email came to my inbox. It’s from the copy-pasted guy! He said (I translated and edited some part of it):

I’m really sorry for the repost.
I’ll delete the post right away. I just doing your tutorial, thanks for the article.

From the tone,  I guess he freaked out. So I calmed him and explained that I just need him to give a proper reference to my post. That’s it. I think that was the ethical way. And I didn’t hear from him anymore. The post also disappeared from his blog. I dunno if he is still blogging or not. If he’s not, maybe it’s my mistake too. Somehow, I’m feeling sorry for him. But at least, I got my own lesson.

Do you have any experience like this?

Hi..

Couple days back, I’ve got some inspirations for my blog design. So today, I created this theme: Blorange. Unlike the usual, I used some images for email, rss feeds, and search button. I played with some colors: variation of black and orange.

So, how do u think? Any suggestions?

Howdy,

People are good at learning by examples. It’s just like when one of my friend asked for my help. Her clients want to make an interface for data entry using Access (you can contact me if you need one ^^). They will use it to store survey data. They gave her an example from the last survey, hoping that she will make the new one based on that example. In fact, the new interface must exactly like the previous (or the example given).

So, we created the visual interface first. After it done, we must add some functions that prevent accidently alter to data entered. I must admit that this is my first experience writing code in VB. Have no choice, I dug deep into the example code. Not so long after I found this code:

Public Sub closeRecord(txt1 As Boolean, txt2 As Boolean, txt3 As Boolean, txt4 As Boolean, txt5 As Boolean, txt6 As Boolean, txt7 As Boolean, txt8 As Boolean, txt9 As Boolean)

idResponden.Locked = txt1
noPlot.Locked = txt2
Luas.Locked = txt3
JenisTanaman.Locked = txt4
Umur.Locked = txt5
Kecamatan.Locked = txt6
Desa.Locked = txt7
Dusun.Locked = txt8
Catatan.Locked = txt9

End Sub

This code used to set the appropriate text field’s status so that the entered data can’t be altered. Not until the user click an edit button. If the user click the edit button, the locked status will be set to False and the data can be altered.

This closeRecord function has nine parameters (really long for a function right?). Every single parameter set status for one text field. So if the interface has twelve text fields, the function will catch twelve parameters. See another function that called the function from before:

Public Sub RecordOff()

closeRecord False, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True

End Sub

How many True parameters are there? It’s not my place to judge this is a bad code or not. I was just thinking about another variations from the function.

The first variation that came to my head was setter-like function in OOP. Assuming that a text field is an object, we can split the function into nine function. Every function sets their own text field. It will looks like this:

Public Sub closeIdResponden(status as Boolean)

idResponden.Locked = status

End Sub

And all the other eight function for all of the text fields. It offers more flexibility. Just in case if we want to set just one of the text fields and not all of them. But, it’ll be less effective if we don’t want to set just one text field in the whole program. For this case, the function above will be called like this:

Public Sub RecordOff()

closeIdResponden False
closeNoPlot True
'and all the other seven

End Sub

Then, I came up with another idea. According to the function uses toward the whole program, all of the text field except the first was set to the same status. So, why we don’t just set the other eight text fields. Here is the code looks like:

Public Sub closeRecord(status As Boolean)

idResponden.Locked = False
noPlot.Locked = status
Luas.Locked = status
JenisTanaman.Locked =status
Umur.Locked = status
Kecamatan.Locked = status
Desa.Locked = status
Dusun.Locked = status
Catatan.Locked = status

End Sub

So it will just set the other text field well. The flexibility of the code will decreased, but it is okay for the whole program.

The point here is if you could decreased the flexibility as long as it will make the code more effective and didn’t violate the whole code. Just like the old saying, the right man for the right job. It’s just another function to me, what about you?

I’ll straight to the point.

Today I got an email from my thesis supervisor. Right now, he’s in Japan, chasing his Doctoral degree. In his email, he let me know that Monbusho scholarship is opened again. He also said that he’ll give me subject for the thesis research. He’ll talk with his supervisor there to give me chance. I know that I should be grateful about that. And I am, but somehow I feel anxious right now.

First, I’ve sent an application letter to UGM. My application letter will be selected on this May. And, if and only if, I make it, I’ll into the class in August. I’ve prepared my mind and determination for this.

Second, It has been six months since I got this hydropneumothorax. If I’ll go abroad, I think I should consults with the internist first. I dunno if my body can make it there. This is the biggest obstacle of all.

And the last things, I should prepare my documents and letters immediately. The deadline is on May 22nd. I should prepare my transcript and graduation letter (all in English), taking TOEFL (anybody know where I can take the test?), and studying new language.

So that’s my story for today. I wrote it down just to redeem my worries. I think I should pray more. Would you mind giving me your suggestions?

Weeks ago, I decided to track the visitor of this site using free services from StatCounter.com. The free services limited to 500 logs only, but it’s fine with me. So, Let’s play statistics this time!

Visitor's country

First things first, this is the image of the top ten country from where the visitors accessed this blog. The tracker caught more than 50 percent of the visitors came from Indonesia, my country. Maybe half among them were my friends (sometimes I forced them to take a peek at my blog, but it’s legal, right? ^^). Another reasons, I wrote some tutorials using Bahasa Indonesia, so they stumbled in this blog.

The second country goes to United States. That’s what I expected when I was thinking about writing in English. Another abroad country like Poland, Phillippines, Brazil, etc. were some side effects of this cause.

Popular Pages

Next, this picture showed this blog’s popular pages. I was curious, why the number one page didn’t show up. After I checked the details, the page was CodeIgniter: Removing index.php. In the second position, here it comes the homepage. I promoted my blog a lot at mailing lists, Facebook, and Twitter. I assumed that its visitors came from my never-lasting-promotion-efforts. Four pages (including the number one) among the top ten were a tutorial post. From this I concluded that tutorial posts will attract more visitors.

Entry from Search Engine

Last but not least, from which search engine my visitors came. From the statistics, most of the visitors used Google search engine, even from various countries. Just about nine percents of them used Yahoo! search to stumbled at this blog. So, I’ll optimized my upcoming post to be indexed by Google.

Well, playing with statistics was fun. But I couldn’t concluded more than that. I’m still learning at this. So, why wouldn’t you give me some words?