achida | english

I write email and reports in English, German and Indonesian. And it annoys me that there are no German umlauts, EURO and Sterling signs on the US keyboard of my laptop (Asus UL20A). I'd been looking for ways how to map those characters on the keyboard, but no simple solution was around. Until I stumbled upon this solution from Lars Michelsen . And it's so simple! Thank to Lars! Here how I did it following the instruction from Lars:

I've been an Ubuntu user for almost ten years now. I love its simplicity, light, fast and user-friendly approach. Sometimes I try Fedora and SuSE, but somehow both of them have always had problem here and there with my laptop (first Toshiba PM500 and then Asus UL20A ) and they never convinced me to move away from Ubuntu. Therefore I've always recommended Ubuntu to my friends and all of them haven't regretted it.

I'm very happy with the latest update of Android. First Google updated my Nexus One a few days ago via OTA. Suddently I saw Gingerbread 2.3.6 (GRK39F) took control of my phone. I was wondering, what was new in this version. I didn't see any. But here it is:

As if life hadn't been hard enough in the rural area of Ozark Mountain, the 17 year old Ree was suddenly left behind alone by her disappeared father to take care of her mentally ill mother and two younger siblings. Then Ree started a dangerous journey to look for her father, who was, apparently, killed by a drugs gang. The plot can be boring due to its slow pace, especially in the beginning. But gradually the story intensifies. For sure it is not a thriller, but the plot makes one feel the winter's cold. And the film does it slowly, until one feels it in the bones. Debra, the director, demonstrated that without sophisticated technology the plot itself can be a very effective tool to achieve the same. It was surely not an easy job for Jennifer Lawrence (Ree) to keep the film "alive" until the end. Yes, the whole film relies totally on her "solo" performance. But Jennifer proved that she was up to the difficult task. The film is probably not to everybody...

I was born on an island called Nias, the biggest of all islands  on the west cost off Sumatra. Although Nias is surrounding by sea, the Indian Ocean, people of Nias do not like fishing and eating fish very much. My village sit on one of the mountains in Nias. It is usually covered with clouds, but once the sky is free a stunning view of the landscape comes up. Besides this beautiful view there is nothing spectacular there. People are mainly small scale farmers.

Recently I read a book of Edmund White A Boy's Own Story . It is an autobiography written in novel style that made its author famous all over the world, especially in the UK and in Japan. It tells about the author's experience as a young boy until the age of 16, who had a problematic relationship with his father. In the first chapter the author narrates his first sexual experience with another boy when he was 15. He had had sex with girls and grown up women before, but this experience took him by surprise. Although Kevin, the boy he started the new adventure with, was 3 years younger, he realised that Kevin is "the boy", determined, independent and strong in pushing himself forward, while he felt himself was such a sissy. The author described his first sexual experience vividly and meticulously, so that one would think, this would be more of a novel than an autobiography.

Yes, they come! The android tablets are populating some gadget shops. Yesterday I visited two stores in Ealing Broadway shopping center: Currys Digital and Carphonewarehouse . First I entered Currys Digital. I was surprised that there were four android tablets: Motorola Xoom, Acer Iconia A500, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Advent Vega. The Toshiba Folio I saw few days ago had disappeared. Unfortunately I couldn't play with those tablets. There was no Internet connection, so it was useless to do a test, because without Internet connection it was impossible to play with browsing, email, contact, calendar, android market etc.. And inside there were hardly any apps.

At the CES 2011 in Las Vegas the whole show seems to be the tablet's musical. Will tablets devices replace the notebooks and PCs? No, Intel's Mooly Eden said to techradar.com . Tablets devices will be "a mainly complementary device rather than replacing the notebook". Maybe he is true. But from my own experience I would say it might be. I'll tell you why.