I went snorkeling with my wife and 5 yo son during our vacation to Lombok earlier this year. Even though I was not so bad as swimming, I found out that snorkeling requires a bit of familiarization in order to fully enjoy it. However the wife and son were also enjoying it so much despite the fact that they can't swim (they wore life jackets while snorkeling). To make a long story short, we finished our vacation wanting to do more snorkeling and me wondering how a proper snorkeling activity should be like. That's how I found about freediving while surfing the internet, and I am so amazed by its simplicity yet, at the same time, physically and mentally demanding nature. I'm starting to think about learning freediving, even if it's just in the most recreational sense of it. So here are some useful resources I found about freediving. As usual, I put it here for my personal reference, and hope it can be beneficial to others researching about the same topic as well.
Freediving (also free diving,free-diving) is a form of underwater diving that relies on a diver's ability to hold his or her breath until resurfacing rather than on the use of a breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
More complete information can be found on the Wiki page. Starting Out
Taking a course to begin with is highly encouraged if not a must. However, DeepBlue.com has a comprehensive thread on How to start Freediving for those looking for preliminary information regarding the sport. Books covering aspects of freediving are also available. Two of the most well known are Manual of Freediving: Underwater on a single breath and Underwater foraging - Freediving for food authored by Umberto Pelizzari and Ian Donald, respectively. I found these 2 YouTube videos, both featuring each expert, explaining the basics of learning how to freedive.
Yoga (Relaxation & Breathing)
Freediving is closely related to apnea (breath holding) and relaxation. Freediving can also be considered as an extreme sport, but in contrast with the others, instead of rushing your adrenaline, you need to be in a calm and relaxed state of mind in order to freedive well. This is where yoga breathing and relaxation techniques come into play, and these 2 links should give you some idea:
Having work with Oracle databases, I regularly stumble upon incorrectly interchanged terms. The 1st is database and instance. A database is a collection of data. An Oracle database holds its data in a coordinated set of files stored on disk. An instance, on the other hand, is a collection of Oracle background processes and shared memory structures. Normally a database is mounted and opened by one instance, this misleads some people into perceiving database and instance as the same thing while fundamentally they are not.
The 2nd is user and schema. A database consists of multiple users that one can connect to. A schema is the set of objects (tables, views, indexes, etc.) that belongs to a user account. So again, these are essentially different.
My prejudice for these misuse is that when one knows a technical jargon, one will have the tendency to overuse it, in hope to be perceived as technologically advanced. "Database" and "user" are too common and sound less technical compared to "instance" and "schema", but these terms refer to different meanings. Let's use them appropriately.
It's been a while since I write here. :) Well, after my last post on Li-ion battery care, I stumbled upon other battery care articles that I find interesting. So here is the full list now (in no particular order):
Adi Darmawan jamming in the Donny Suhendra Power Fusion Trio at the Balikpapan Jazz Fiesta. He is known as the "bassist of a thousand bands" since this bass instructor is a frequent session player of numerous jazz groups apart from his very own: LIGRO.
I'll keep this short and simple. To access websites blocked by your internet provider, you can use Tor Browser. (You can download it and find related information on that link.)
One problem: Flash does not work with it. So, after a bit of browsing, here's one way I found to enable it (please note that Tor Browser is based on Firefox, play around a little and you'll have no problem following the steps below):
Navigate to about:config
Set "plugin.scan.plid.all" to true.
Right Click Tor Button.
Preferences → Security Settings → Uncheck "Disable Plugins during Tor usage"
Right Click NoScript.
Embeddings → Forbid Adobe Flash
Restart. Voila! (This will use the local version of Flash available.)
Where ever on this earth, Muslims face the Kaaba when we pray during salah. This direction is called the qibla. Basically, it's the direction in which a bird would start flying in order to get to the Kaaba by the shortest possible way.
This is interesting, because of the Earth's rounded shape, if you take a straight line from the Kaaba, through the center of the Earth, towards the surface across it, from here, the bird can fly in any direction and the distance to the Kaaba are all the same. Which means, here, any direction is the qibla! :) Now the shape of the Earth is not best represented by a perfect sphere, but an ellipsoid instead. But then still, from this place, the bird can choose 2 opposite directions that lead to the Kaaba with the same (shortest) distance. :D I wonder where that is!
So, the location of the Kaaba is at 21°25′21.15″N 39°49′34.1″E. Based on the image below from Wikipedia describing the latitude and longitude of the Earth
(and a little knowledge on how to convert the degrees-minutes-seconds coordinates to decimal degrees), we can infer that the location of this peculiar place is at -21.42254167, -140.1738611. Let's look it up on Google Maps! And... *drum roll
it's in the middle of nowhere (the South Pacific Ocean to be precise). Well...
I am the son of Taufik Rahman bin Mahlan. We don't always get along with each other, but he is still a hero to me. Better than any superhero, he's real. I remember when I was still in elementary school, my mom enrolled me in an English course, where the teacher once asked who my idol was. I answered, "My dad." She asked, "Why?" I said, "Because he's clever." Well actually not only clever, my admiration to my dad that time also revolves around his very good handwriting :) and his talent in arts: visual (I always envy his ability to draw and he's also a photographer) and musical (while not an expert, he can play several instruments alright).
My dad is always there when I need him. When I was working on my final project as the requirement to get my degree in college, my dad was practically my professor, providing me helpful advice more than my official ones. Currently I am in the middle of a very ugly chaos, and he is there struggling with me as well. To keep me sane, he thought I need a pleasant distraction and got me an electric R/C helicopter to play with:
It's a mini 3-channel coaxial-blade electric R/C helicopter (it's around 20 cm in length). A toy, but it took me a while to be able to control it properly. I've always wanted a R/C that flies, but they were expensive and very hard to play. Now that the Chinese made these somewhat durable little electric helis, well... it's basically childhood dream come true! :D
I keep the helicopter with me (I live in a different city far away from where my parents are), so my dad could not play with it although we know that he is fascinated by the toy as well. That's how my sister and I started to hunt the perfect R/C helicopter for his birthday present. We ended up with this one:
It's a medium-sized 4-channel single-blade electric R/C helicopter (the picture above is with the training gear attached, notice the pencil as the scale reference). We wanted something more advanced, and this one suits pretty well. It's still a toy (not even hobby grade I guess), but it resembles the real thing far better than mine and can be flown outdoors conveniently. Being able to do all the movements a 3-channel R/C helicopter does, a 4-channel R/C helicopter can also do the right and left cyclic rolls. We love it!
My dad's broad horizon along with his sound understanding about so many things is clearly his outstanding quality. But no less important is his attitude towards life. Probably that's how he got to the general director position of the company he worked with until he decided to retire. Having a professional life myself, I know for sure that getting there is nowhere easy. Being there might even be worse! I am not sure how to describe this and I think it would be nice to hear his side of the story. So he has this blog on Kompasiana, with a lot of interesting posts. This particular one is a brief autobiography of himself. You might know him better after reading it.
When I was small, I always said I wanted to be an engineer, because my dad is one. Now, I am one, although not nearly as good as him. But being an innocent child I was at one time, I thought I'd ask my dad what he wanted me to become. I was expecting that his answer would be, "I want you to be an astronaut" :) or something like that. Indeed, his answer was, "I want you to be a good person." I was confused at the time and went speechless... Now that I know more compared to the innocent me back then, I still go speechless everytime I remember his answer to my question at that moment.
Wanting to be like him is a high aim for me, so at least I guess I'll try to find out how to be a good person anyway. Thx, Pa!
