Plat nomer aneh2x

Plat nomer mobil di NSW itu kalau dilihat sepintas, seperti tidak ada aturannya. Sebenarnya, standar jumlah karakter adalah 6, diawali dengan tiga huruf lalu diikuti tiga angka. Yang baru2 belakangan ini biasanya 2 huruf - 2 angka - 2 huruf, biasanya diawali AB, AD, AE macam di indo hehe.

Atau kalau mau yang model Uni Eropa, jadinya adalah N xxxxx. N artinya NSW.

Atau kalau rela membayar lebih, ternyata bisa juga pesan sa-enak-e dewe, maksimal 6 karakter.

Misalnya, kaya'e ini ada orang yg lahir di Inggris tapi njuk merasa Australia sebagai tanah airnya:
* Pommy = orang inggris. Diambil di parkiran Eastgardens.


Atau, mungkin saking bangganya jadi pulisi, sampai2 plat nomor mobilnya dibuat jadi seperti ini: (sori burem, but i can assure you it does indeed say "POLISI")
Diambil di Brisbane.

Yang punya mobil ini punya semangat juang yang sangat tinggi, membela kebenaran dan jalan yang lurus :D
Di Marricville community centre, sesudah sholat Idul Adha thn 2006.


Sedangkan si pemilik mobil ini, hmm... entah kenapa mungkin dia memang chubby orangnya? Entahlah... sulit sekali menilai krn aku tdk berhasil mendahului mobil itu utk bisa melihat lebih dekat supir nya bener tembem gak...
Diambil di Anzac Parade Kensington.


Yang terakhir ini, ingin menegaskan bahwa mobilnya bukanlah gerobak atau andong. Tetapi sebuah mobil. Iya mobilnya adalah mobil. Got that... -_-"
Diambil di Anzac Parade Kingsford

On doing a PhD...

After jumatan i met mas AZ. He told me about his plans to end his study by the end of this semester. Which means... he won't get a PhD for it... but just a masters degree. "WHAT!?!?" was my response to this unbelievable and shocking news. I mean, oh come on. Why, mas? Why??

He said that he wants to stay here. In Sydney. So he reckons he won't need to have a PhD degree anymore. He has the cutest lil girl in Kingsford, he has a nice flat unit (he rents it though, not own it). He got married here, and he feel comfortable living here with his family. Oh yes, his wife is an Australian Permanent Resident.

His supervisor once asked him, which one would AZ choose, his study or his family. The answer seems obvious now.

This reminds me of my own father, Bapak. My little brother was born here when my father was at the last years of his PhD. But somehow my father managed to work it out, i mean, keep doing his PhD until completion. Oh yes, just to let you know... exactly 20 years ago, on 16 feb 1987, my brother was born. Here in Sydney. At that time, my mother too, was still working even after my brother was born. I remembered ibu used to work night shifts, so we can take care of Adnan (my brother) while ibu goes to work.

Back to my father. Do you know Bapak's favourite place at home? First, his desk. Yes, his desk. With piles of papers, folders, books, and stacks of pens on top of it. He would stay there, hours, doing everything from preparing lecture materials, or correcting student's exam papers, to reading heaps of university grant proposals.

Bapak's second favourite place at home is the living room where bapak reads the newspaper. I wonder why we still subscribe to that freaking stupid KR. Anyway, it still makes a good afternoon read. I mean, it's better than nothing.

Bapak takes his job home. You might have heard that some lecturers do not like to be disturbed at home. My father is the opposite. He likes to bring his work home. He even do not hesitate to SMS his students. Or call them. Yes, my father sometimes call his students, for example if he won't be able to come to class.

Guests who come to our house are mainly students. They often come in groups, for some thesis consultations with Bapak. One day, Bapak called me to get out to meet somebody, who turns out to be my high school pal!! Whatta? Apparently my father's student who came was my pal's girlfriend -_-" That's why he was there, at my house.

Shortly speaking, it seems clear enough that my father is indeed a hard working type of person. Not like me. (shame on you, irfan!) And no wonder he can finish his PhD quite on time.

On having a car...

The car i bought last year was a cheap car. As you would expect from a cheap car, it lacks some comfort that you would normally find on a "standard" car. It's not that bad though, the engine keeps running, the transmission is smooth, and the steering wheel seems to be light and responsive though there are no power steering on my car. The battery is top notch, the starter motor never lets me down, and the suspensions... man... it's even better than my friend's new Holden Barina.

But there are some other things that you must consider if you want to buy and own a car in NSW. You must put aside around $500 for the compulsory third party insurance, should you need to renew the registration of your car. You need to allocate some $350, minimum, for roadworthy certificates, new tyres, and other small services you may need before getting a new rego. And of course, a not too much $250 for the rego itself. And all of this cost, is the cost i must pay. Alone.

Alright, that's no problem. Money is not the issue. Well.. maybe to some extent, it is.

But the main complaint that i would like to put forward in this post is, by having a car, you will be deemed to have an extra responsibility to the society (i.e. friends). You should be able to carry other friend's luggage. You should be available to take your friend to the airport. You are supposed to pick up your friends, or take them to wherever they want to go. Because you now own a car, you will have the responsibility to be active in the group's activities, especially as transport volunteer.

It's not that i'm not sincere in helping you guys, but i just feel that the car i have.. instead of making more spare time for me to do this freakin' thesis, apparently i have less time now. Well, this may not be 100% true though. But this is, at least, what i feel... It is a real pleasure, and an honor, to be able to help anyone with my car. It is sometimes my duty to do so. But.. again... i may not have the time to spare... Not anymore.

Foto Opera House dengan Bulan

Foto ini diambil Jumat tengah malam kemarin, tepat sebelum kita* beranjak pulang dari "leyeh-leyeh" di Pylon Harbour Bridge yg selatan sisi timur. Tanpa diduga, bulannya tiba2 muncul, padahal tadinya tidak ada.

Lumayan lah, ternyata Pentax SP-500 warisan bapak masih bisa sedikit diandalkan untuk foto ginian... :D

Dan alhamdulillah, walaupun lensa tele ku sempat jatuh dan sekarang "ogak-ogak", kenyataannya fotonya masih lumayan tajem.

Cuma nyeselnya, kenapa ku harus makai film murahan Konica Minolta, yang ISO nya tinggi pula.. ASA 400...

* kita terdiri dari: ary, brian, lissya, anita, anton, ita, aya, lana, tari, yoga, fachri, aku.

Modeling the wires: a simple one

Speed or power. That was the question we asked on our last post. What if we want BOTH?

That's human nature. Human beings tend to be greedy. Sometimes a bit cruel too (e.g. i just squished a mozzy who wanted death: it bit me on my arm :D)

Back to interconnects, a fast and low power one that is. How do we get both of them?

In engineering, this daunting task is often called optimization. To do some silly optimization, one should model the problem with some mathematical expressions. To make life easy (that's what we engineers are here for anyway), modeling of physical properties and electrical characteristics of devices are normally made as simple as possible: simplification and approximation must be used whenever possible.

Alright, let us start with some maths from now.

Bakoglu, 22 years ago at 1985 modeled the wire system as consisting of a resistive driver, a lumped RC network as the wire, and a capacitive load at the receiver. You can read his paper titled "Optimal Interconnection Circuits for VLSI" for more details. From the way he drew the symbol of the load, which was the gate of a MOS transistor, it was obvious that voltage mode signaling was assumed.

A good approximation of the wire delay, he said, is:

T = 1.0 * Rint * Cint + 2.3 * (Rtr * Cint + Rtr * Cl + Rint * Cl)

and neglecting Cl, then

T = (2.3 Rtr + Rint) Cint

where Rtr = driver resistance, Rint = wire resistance, Cint = wire capacitance to ground, and Cl = load capacitance.

The driver's resistance, which is also the on-resistance of a MOS transistor is:

Rtr = (L / W) / (u * Cgox * Vdd)

And the resistance of the wire is a bit simpler, perhaps we all know this one from high school:

Rint = resistivity * Lmax / (Wint * H)

Wint times H is simply the cross-sectional area of the wire.

Now, he formulated the optimal cross-sectional area of the wire to be:

Wint * H = resistivity * Lmax / (2.3 * Rtr)

It seems that he chose the delay from wires to be roughly equal to the delay caused by the driver. Normally, the H is fixed for a certain technology. So the variable parameter we can play on is the width of the wire, Wint. The above formula enables us to find a minimum value of the interconnect width, with a reasonably low delay as possible. This idea is cited in Adler's paper "Repeater Design to Reduce Delay and Power in Resistive Interconnect" (1998).

Furthermore in his paper, Bakoglu explains about repeaters and inverter chains (cascaded drivers). Combining both will produce the shortest delay possible, where the extreme lower limit is the propagation delay of a lossless transmission line, where the speed is:

v = c / SQRT(dielectric constant of medium)

Interconnects... speed or power?

For general integrated circuit logics, why are low voltage being used?
- First reason: to save power.
- It follows CMOS technology scaling. That is, shrinking sizes of transistor dimensions. Which means, more transistors can be fit into a chip. Which also means, chips can get smarter, and faster at the same time.

But, what about low voltage interconnects? What about on-chip wires??
- Yes, their size won't get smaller. In fact, they will get more complex and probably longer since you will now have much more things to connect to inside a chip, and not to mention the fact that they make chips a bit bigger nowadays?
- So, yes. It's not a good news for interconnects. Yes, low voltage will save power too in the case of interconnects, BUT due to the above circumstances, longer delays will occur... and higher noise interference?

So at least, we had identified two contradictive problems for interconnects: speed and power.

Naturally, if you just follow the technology scaling trend without doing any clever solutions to the interconnect, then these interconnects will get slower and more power consumptive.

Now, it all depends on what is it that you actually want? Do you want speed? Or are you more concerned with power?

Cara bangun pagi

Bangun pagi itu kadang sulit. Ini ada beberapa tips untuk bisa bangun pagi:

1. Jangan tidur larut malam.
Kalau perlu, tidurlah jam 8 sore. Selama musim summer di mana azan isya' datang jam 9.30-an, bolehlah tidur lebih telat.

2. Tidur di meja.
Kalau terpaksa tidur larut malam, misalnya karena ada acara TV yg bagus,
cobalah untuk tidur di meja. Terbukti cara ini bisa membuat tidur pulas, badan segar, tapi tetap bisa bangun sekitar jam 4 pagi atau kurang. Coba buktikan sendiri. Pastikan meja cukup panjang dan kosong. Meja kelas atau meja di lab adalah contoh yang ideal.

3. Pasang alarm ganda
Maksudnya, pasang alarm di HP, di jam beker, dan di HP satunya lagi kalau punya. Pastikan semua memiliki fasilitas snooze. Dan jangan lupa untuk mengatur alarm pada jam yg pagi sekali, seperti 4.30 misalnya.

4. Minta dibangunkan teman.
Cara ini lumayan efektif karena setelah dibangunkan, otomatis akan timbul perasaan tidak enak ke teman kalau kita tidur lagi setelah susah-susah dibangunkan. Teman tersebut tidak perlu berada serumah dgn kita, karena jaman sekarang sudah ada telepun dan HP. Yang penting, jangan buat HP jadi silent, dan sebaiknya mesin telepun dipasang pada volume keras agar terdengar ketika kita masih tidur.

5. Carilah tempat tinggal yang dilalui rute bus.
Bus kota biasanya mulai beroperasi dini hari. Suara gemuruh bus kota di keheningan pagi bisa menjadi alat efektif untuk mengusik kita dari tidur.

6. Tidurlah di ruang yang terkena sinar matahari pagi.
Seandainya keadaan memaksa kita untuk ketiduran hingga matahari terbit, maka dengan tidur di ruang yang terkena sinar matahari pagi secara langsung akan sedikit banyak membuat kita terbangun secara alami. Jangan tidur di ruangan yang gelap sepanjang hari, karena badan akan menganggap bahwa hari adalah malam terus, sehingga 'tertipu' untuk menginginkan tidur lebih lama.

7. Peliharalah ayam di dalam rumah.
HP anda tidak perlu ada ringtone ayam berkokok. Pelihara saja yang aslinya. Lebih efektif karena lebih sulit dimatikan.

8. Pilihlah kelas pagi.
Jika anda masih kuliah, carilah mata kuliah yang kelasnya pagi, kalau perlu yang jam 9 pagi, atau jam 7 kalau di Indonesia. Dengan demikian, kita dipaksakan untuk bisa bangun pagi.

9. Carilah tempat tinggal yang sangat jauh dari kantor atau sekolah.
Lebih jauh rumah kita dari kantor atau sekolah, maka biasanya kita akan bangun lebih pagi, karena kita butuh waktu lebih lama untuk perjalanannya. Lebih bagus lagi, carilah tempat tinggal yang jarang dilalui transportasi umum, sehingga kita bisa lebih 'on-time'. Tempat2 yang ideal untuk ini misalnya Bankstown, Mt. Druitt, Parramatta, Marsfield, Sutherland, Liverpool, Blacktown, Hornsby, dsb. Untuk Jogja, contohnya adalah tinggal di Klaten, Wates, Pakem, Dlingo, Tepus, Solo, Magelang, dsb.

10. Minta dibangunkan ibu.
Bagi yang masih beruntung bisa tinggal bersama orang tua, minta lah ibu untuk membangunkan. Dan cara ini di antara cara-cara lainnya adalah yang paling enak dan menyenangkan, karena ibu biasanya akan membangunkan dengan penuh kasih sayang.

Pecel itu enak

Pecel itu adalah makanan yang enak. Pecel biasa ada di Jawa, terutama Jawa Tengah dan Jawa Timur. Makanan ini berisi sayuran rebus seperti kangkung, cambah, bayam, lalu ditambah dengan bumbu kacang yang lezat. Dimakan bersama nasi putih yang hangat dengan peyek atau krupuk, duh enak sekali.

Di Jogja, pecel kadang disebut SGPC, singkatan dari sego pecel, atau nasi pecel. Warung SGPC yang terkenal ada di dekat UGM, nama tempatnya lupa. Sebelah utara fakultas kedokteran hewan, persis di pinggir selokan mataram. Tapi di situ tidak terlalu murah. Kalau mau pecel harga ekonomis dan enak, mungkin bisa ditemukan di rumah2 penduduk, di desa terutama. Sekitar jam 5.30-6.30an pagi. Yang kutahu seperti itu, sewaktu KKN dulu di desa Bulu, Sukoharjo, ada ibu2 jualan pecel enak sekali, cuma Rp500,-. Padahal itu tahun 2001. Kalau pakai telur ceplok nambah Rp1000 kalau tidak salah. Lupa. Pokoknya murah sekali.

Di Surabaya lain lagi. Kalau beli pecel di warung, siap2 lah dengan air minum yang banyak. Soalnya, standar pedes nya di sana lain dengan di Jogja, jadi bagi yang tidak terlalu tahan pedas seperti saya, sangat disarankan untuk meminta pecel kepada penjualnya agar diberi lombok sedikit sekali. Pedasnya sedikit saja. Itu nanti akan terasa seperti pedas sedengan di Jogja. Secara default, mereka akan memberi pecel dengan tingkat kepedasan maksimal. Tapi ini bagus juga sih, bisa membuat badan berkeringat, lumayan mungkin bisa mengusir masuk angin. Katanya bisa untuk mengobati penyakit cacingan juga.

Warung pecel yang pernah kucoba di Surabaya ada di dekat hotel Santika, dan satu lagi dekat Gubeng. Yang di dekat hotel Santika sangat sadis. Rasa pecelnya sangat didominasi oleh rasa lombok. Membayangkannya saja sudah membuat air liurku keluar deras. Mengerikan.

Sebenarnya pecel itu mudah membuatnya. Tinggal beli bumbu instan pecel di White Lotus (bagi yang tinggal di Kingsford dan sekitarnya). Bumbu pecel instan biasanya masih padat, jadi harus diencerkan dulu dengan air panas secukupnya. Kemudian beli sayuran apa saja asalkan hijau, lalu tambah cambah, atau tauge, atau bean sprout bahasa sini nya. Belinya tidak harus di White Lotus. Boleh di Paddy's, boleh di Woolworths. Kalau mau dekat, coba ke IGA, semoga ada di sana. Sekali lagi, ini bagi yang tinggal di Kingsford dan sekitarnya.

Untuk menambah efek segar, pecel nya ditambah ketimun juga tidak apa-apa. Malah bagus. Setelah semua sayuran dan bahan terkumpul, sayuran2 tadi seyogyanya direbus. Di rumah. Timunnya jangan tapi. Kalau mau di rumah teman juga boleh, asalkan temannya tidak berkeberatan. Kemudian, nanak nasi sampai mateng.

Setelah jadi semua, ambil nasi dan taruh di piring. Masukkan sayuran2 rebus dan potongan ketimun dipiring tadi, lalu taburi semua dengan bumbu pecel yang encer. Pecel siap dimakan.

I spy... with google

Do you know someone and probably you want to know more about them? Well there's some good news, because you may spy on his/her life with the help from Google. (well this can be a bad news too)

Okay, as a start... try typing in your own full name in Google. Click Search, and even though you may not be a celebrity, you would probably find heaps of pages with your name on it. This includes mailing list archives, student/staff directory, your own blog, others blogs, discussion forums profile pages, and even friendster profile pages. If you had made a publication, or if your name made it through to the media, well get ready to get even more"exposed" to the whole public.

I typed in my mother's name, and Google showed me about where my mother works. I typed in my father's name, it also gave information on where my father works. I typed in some friends' names... Google showed me a glimpse of my friends' interests through the mailing list and discussion forums they participated in.

I typed in my own name, and ... what do you know... Aya's blog came second on the list, much higher than this stupid blog of mine.... :D