Category Archives: Education

My college ?

EasyHotspot Logo

Umm hello again every body …
Its been a long time from my last post, now im back again with a bunch of stuff right on my brain. My thesis is not finished yet, BUT the apps its about ready to launch. Its a hotspot management system bassed on OpenSource Software, click here for more details. It will available for download on 17 Feb 08.

Ill hope both my mini thesis and the projects will be finished right on time.

In order to use the JS frameworks for my project, i need to understand how javascript works and how to deal with that. But why javascript ? in order to make an rich internet application .. PHP or serverside application is not enough. We need AJAX to be involved with. AJAX is stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. You see ? theres Javascript as a part of it …

According to this article , theres a few resource that good for beginners. Most of them is a an audio video media and the rest is readable media, sounds good right ? So here they are :

  • Douglas Crockford: The Javascript Programming Language - These four videos are a must-watch. If you’re new to javascript or are rusty, start here.
  • Dougals Crockford: Advanced Javascript - These are a little less useful but still very informative. They are less useful because Mootools creates a different kind of environment than Douglas is describing (he talks about native Javascript, and Mootools kind of changes this native environment and so many of his code examples don’t apply to Mootools, but you can still learn from them).
  • Joe Hewitt present Firebug - this video will introduce you to Firebug, a must-have debugging tool if you’re doing any javascript work (actually, if you’re doing any html, css, javascript, ajax, whatever; it’s awesome).
  • w3schools js docs and tutorials - a good place to learn how to use various native functions.

Im also recomended you to visit those resources, it is good for JS beginner like me …
Good luck

This is my time to give 100% of my attention to my final task. Indonesian called it “skripsi”, thing needs to be done by all graduate student as a final assignment. I’ve been working for about one year and i think its enough.

I choose “Perancangan Sistem Billing Hotspot berbasis OpenSource” as my title. So why billing and why opensource. The answers is simple, first billing system is the thing that ive been dealing with before, and the secondly is that opensource is good platform to make this happened. All i need to make this system is available in opensource technology. And the other thing is i want to try to contribute for opensource community.

This system relies on these software :

  • Ubuntu as the OS
  • Apache
  • PHP
  • Mysql
  • Chillispot
  • FreeRadius

Whats new ? Good question, my main attention is on the web interface to manage this hotspot system. The web interface (front end) is able to manage accounts, billing plans, hotspot settings and it allow you to make a postpaid or prepaid accounts.

The front end developed using CodeIginter framework and Scriptacolous JS framework. Coding never been easier with that guys … but still i have to learn that stuff from scratch.

I hope it will completed in the end of January 2008 … wish me luck guys !

In the beginning of my college years, i used to hear a lot about information system definition. The default question of most of the lecture was “What is Information System?, what is information, and what is system? Honestly that question makes me feel so bored. On and on and so on they asked about that, and we answered with the same answer (most of it is quite, LOL). But now i realize that definition is a basic understanding of software development.

Talking about software development, we cant separate it with its method. To make something we need to do something and there are several way to accomplished it. In the middle year of my college, i found the importance of analyzing and designing a system. At first i thought why should i draw a bunch of diagram ? Why not just ask the client what they want, write a simple task, write a code and viola i made a software ? But then i started to think, what if the software grow bigger and bigger, what about if i work as a part of a team, how to documented this system, how to make this code easy to understand so another people can start to modify easily ? This lead me to the understanding of importance of software analysis and design.

An information system understanding and also analysis and design is the most important issue. People who want to develop a good software must have a good skill on these point. Analysis and Design is all about to find a software recruitment and design it into a specific models that could ANSWERS the PROBLEMS. Thats why every developers needs to learn about it.

Some people might have difficulties to learn this kind of things. Some people might have trouble understanding its terms or maybe some others cant imagine how exactly the designers and analyst actually works. How do they capturing information, asking a necessary question, and then they transfer it into a such good system design that reflected the system needs.

Until these day, books is a common source for this knowledge. People forced to read a thousand pages of A&D books. Thats fine, and for many years books proven as a good guide for most people. But im considering another method. We often see a video tutorial, most people like it because vid tutor gives us a visualization of what we’re learning. There’re a countless vid tutor about anything related to computer tehcnology but i never heard vid tutor discussing about A&D / Software Engineering process.

Making a vid tutor about A&D is not a simple task. Actually it wont be a vid totur, but i believe it would be documentary film. A&D prosess is a long time process thats why i believe it can not be done as a vid tutor. Imagine theres a film describes about everything related to A&D process, started from signing the contract to finishing the project. Not only the conceptual things but also the technical things, such as drawing a bunch of diagram or even coding and using the CVS server (working as team).The other benefits is this film can show people how to interact with client!

Now what? I hope university can see this oportunity, especially UIN. As a university UIN has a good facilities to make this happens. They have a studio, cameras, lighting, and sound system. In other word they have everything to make a film! And the other good news is all of this owned by The Faculty of Science and Tech which IS and IT major are in this faculty. And i believe FST have a good human resources also, both lectures and students. The only things they need to have is desire to make something useful, a contribution to the educational community.

FINALY ! k sekarang mungkin udah jelas buat gw untuk kemana ! loh emang mau kemana sih ?? jadi begini ceritanya : dulu jaman jamannya gw ngeblog di FS , gw bingung mau farming skill apa ? semuanya serba nanggung … ! disana sini nanggung … tapi seiring waktu berjalan, jadilah si rafeequl rahman awan ini terkontaminasi dengan faktor eksternal dan dimotivasi dari dalem diri sendiri … yang singkat cerita gw mau farming skill di dunia web aja , sedangkan skill yang lain gw jadiin supporting aja / backup ! yang jelas pemahaman tentang system development harus terus di tingkatin yang pada prakteknya nanti gw mau ngandelin PHP (Zend, framework, AJAX, CSS) + any SQL database … trus buat desktop aplication gw lebih prefer .NET aja kali yah, ga mau muluk2 buat blajar JAVA … sementara PS tetep jadi kesayangan gw hehehehe

Pertanyaannya kenapa PHP ? nih alasan yang paling simple : apakah dikau pernah survey atas dirimu sendiri , kebanyakan kalo elo browsing,OS server yang dipake itu linux,bsd,windows ? hostingan kebanyakan pake webserver apa ? heheh jawab sendiri yah … udah gitu kebanyak web di internet pake serverside script apa yah ? even the bigest blog on earth use PHP :P hueeuheueh
Sedangkan kenapa .NET ? doh ini cara gampang untuk bisa nguasain desktop aplication, selain relatif lebih gampang dari yang lain dan banyak dipake sma orang2 (katanya ..)

Sementara itu gw butuh gadget yang bisa ngedukung kehidupan karier

gw dan semoga itu ga muluk :

  • MacBook NOT Notebook !
  • Prosumer Cam Dig
  • Motor, mungkin Sujuki Satrio (campuran jepang-jawa-betawie)

ya udah ah … masih ada side projects yang belum kamu orang layak tahu ! udah sana browsing ketempat lain !

Apa cengar cengir .. saya ga salah tulis ko, emang harusnya begitu ! ini dia nih , korban skripsi yang kena “skip” terus .. hiks hiks , entah artinya nyambung apa nggak ya nggak masalah, wong endonesa biasa kan suka main plesetan apa lagi nyambung nyambungin dah paling jago dah, tapi saya tidak jago !

Udah semester 8 , atau dengan kata lain udah semester banyak ..! berarti udah lampu kuning nih, gw harus buru2 lulus kalo nggak mau ketiban seribu satu masalah, salah satunya masalah harga diri , masalah finansial dan juga masalah waktu tidak lupa masalah kerjaan … jadi kesimpulannya gw harus cepet cepet lulus.

Supaya tidak bermasalah mari kita bahas satu demi satu permasalahannya …

Masalah Harga diri
pendeknya nih ye : malu lha sama adek2 kelas, udah brewokan masih kuliah aja :p

Masalah Finansial
Damn ! dari UIN ke Kantor itu makan ongkos bus dan ongkos perut yang ga sedikit, apalagi bayaran semesternya …kira2 1.625.000 (mungkin banyak mahasiwa pada bilang 1.650.000) sisasnya suka di tilep heuhuehe

Masalah Waktu
Jelas sekali sodara sodara, bahwa kuliah amat sangat menyita waktu. Aturan bisa kepake wat ngaji, belajar ato membantu orang tua eh malah kepake untuk kuliah… tapi yang ini masih bisa ditolelir karena kuliah ada perbuatan yang terpuji ! Menuntut ilmu guna membangun Nusa dan Bangsa, kuliah juga berarti meneruskan perjuangan para pahlawan yang telah terdahulu.

Masalah Kerjaan
Selama ini tempat gw bekerja sangat berbaik hati mau menginjinkan gw untuk tetap menuntut ilmu sampai tamatnya kuliah gw nanti , tapi bukan berarti itu tanpa masalah , masalnya waktu istirahat dan tenaga untuk mikir jadi ekstra kan, lagian juga kan gw juga mendambakan bisa kerja dengan normal layaknya para bujang karier …

dan yang hampir aja terlupa adalah masalah JODOH ! wadoooh kapan kawin euy kalo masih kuliah… heuheheuheu ya udah ah udah dibilang jangan lama2 di blog gw ! udah pergi sana ato cari blog lain yang lebih bagus :p