Leap On!

Source: http://blog.h34dup.com/?p=1559

A very beautiful piece of visualization.

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

I have been playing Civilization IV for quite some time, and so far it is one of the best games I have ever played. Its deep gameplay is based on how civilizations survive, so strategies employed for the game, common reoccuring scenarios, and AI behaviours somewhat represent how governments of the world behave.

Size matters

A nation with larger territory usually wins over the smaller ones---but only if it is managed well. The more cities you have, the greater the cost for maintenance. However, more cities mean: Read more »

• more productivity, and productivity usually means everything: troops, buildings, or MONEY. So you can have bigger military force, boost education and research, or turn one city to a money-making machine to make up the cost for other cities.
• more population, so you can have political advantage and force the UN to agree with you on everything.
• more (natural) resources, so you can have competitive edge on trade or making citizens happy. The Arabian oil is a prominent example. If only the Middle East is one country...

Seven people, two years old, no funding, success. That's the elegant 37signals, creator of splendid web-based applications and the tradition-breaking Ruby on Rails framework.

And they wrote the book "Getting Real" about how great they are in managing small team. A genuinely interesting read for web developers, programmers, designers, and entrepreneurs; much more if you're small bits of (or aspiring to be) all those.

I feel that this is the right time to expand the wings of my web development skill beyond Drupal, and so I have been looking for a right framework to work on.

Python-based frameworks

Please note that I have very little experience with python, so my opinion here might differ with pythonic (or anti-pythonic) zealots. I gained most of the information here by browsing and reading the documentation of numerous projects, so my view is more-or-less a layman's or newcomer's.

The python language has garnered quite an interest for me: simple and intuitive, pseudocode-like feel, very high level, general-purpose, embraced by open source community. Much better than PHP, IMHO.

The state of web development in python, however, is somewhat disappointing. There are several major frameworks competing in different levels of service, confusing new users and fragmenting the community. Read more »

So I've been enjoying myself in this vacation time, yay! :) Besides playing games and simply have fun, I still have quite a few "serious" plans to keep myself productive, so boredom won't come. My to-do-on-vacation list still had quite a few items, and in this atmosphere it's not going to deplete very soon ;)

Okay, back to the topic. I feel that I have not contributed that much into my major (well, my to-do list has nothing to do with pharmacy), so in this spare time I made the Drug of the Day page.

What this page does is that it redirects you to the Wikipedia page of one of the best money-making drugs in the world. Each day it will redirect you to different drug, so bookmark http://leapon.net/dotd.php and you can study about one new popular drug everyday. For example, at the time of this writing, the drug of the day is valsartan (marketed under Diovan by Novartis), an angiotensin II receptor antagonist. Of course I haven't really learnt that much about drugs, but wikipedia pages are very nice for learning something new. Read more »

This case of David Widjaja Hartanto is driving me crazy. This whole week I have been in constant barrage of information and request for comments from friends and even family about this case. Wow.

This loss of life must be shocking and we, people who share common bond with David albeit weak and small, share our deepest condolences for David's family.

Today I received an email containing a letter which supposedly was written by Klemens A., David's friend. Seems that this letter (in Indonesian) has fallen into many hands so I won't post it here. I will translate portions of this letter that fascinate me most, and have my say.

My subjective opinion and recent development are also added.

Note: I am an NUS student with Indonesia nationality. So bias is inevitable. Also note the disclaimer at the bottom of this post.

About the slit in the wrist

From the letter: Read more »