The Elixirs of Afterlife

I think of elixir as a liquid, a drink to extend our life. If you have played The Sims 3, I’m sure you’ll be familiar. In the game, the Elixir of Life resets your age to the beginning of the life phase, like young adult. Unfortunately, if you’re doing this repeatedly you might get bored. But not in this life.

Sharing is caring. And by sharing, you will make people happier, and eventually you become happier too. Maybe become more peaceful. In Islam, you can give particular ongoing charity —we call it Sadaqah Jariyah — and reap rewards and blessing both in this worldly life and Hereafter.

The Color of Purple

Purple. As they say, it’s a color of luxury, sensuality, and passion. But sometimes can also picture gloominess and sadness. It depends on the context and the specific kind of purple you’re referring to.

Well, in this case I think it suits the former: luxury, extravagance, and wealth. The imagination of being someone who has all the things desired is so. . . intense when I see this kind of purple. It’s like a dream that mostly will never come true; when you want something, you have all the capabilities in the world to achieve or acquire it.

MILC – MILC is Liquid Conditioner

Setelah beberapa saat memutuskan menggunakan solusi yang bernama Tetanen — ada di bagian paling bawah — kami memutuskan untuk mencari ide lain. Hal tersebut dikarenakan ide Tetanen tidak sepenuhnya berasal dari masalah yang ada, namun lebih kepada sebuah inovasi baru. Ide ini pun baru kami peroleh minggu lalu setelah mencoba melihat ide-ide pada Blynk namun tidak ada satu pun proyek dari situs tersebut yang diperoleh. Ternyata, terdapat suatu hal yang mungkin belum pernah tersentuh IoT sama sekali.

Proyek ini akan diimplementasikan menggunakan Arduino dan dikombinasikan dengan WiFi Module. Secara singkat, ide kami bertajuk “IoT Dispenser”. Saya tahu, mungkin ide ini terdengar aneh, tetapi saya akan coba jelaskan.

Latar Belakang

Setelah sekian lama, belum terdapat inovasi yang sangat berbeda dari dispenser yang sering kita gunakan sehari-hari. Ya, mungkin harganya semakin terjangkau tetapi dengan pernah maraknya IoT dan berbagai topik IoT yang diambil — seperti Smart City, Smart Car, dan lainnya — yang cukup besar dan terdengar luar biasa, cukup mengherankan bahwa belum munculnya ide IoT yang membahas mengenai perangkat rumah tangga, seperti kompor gas, kulkas, dan lain sebagainya. Ironinya, hal tersebut lebih dibutuhkan oleh rakyat menengah ke bawah daripada hal-hal yang terkesan mengawang-awang seperti Smart City, namun implementasi IoT perangkat rumah tangga secara khusus belum juga ada.

Pada kehidupan sehari-hari, penggunaan perangkat rumah tangga yang terkoneksi — terintegrasi pada sistem Smart Home — pada akhirnya diperlukan juga oleh orang banyak. Kami mencoba mewujudkan IoT dispenser karena sebagian orang memerlukan panas pada suhu tertentu yang dihasilkan oleh dispenser. Setelah dipikir-pikir, dispenser juga dapat diberikan fungsi lainnya, yaitu membuat minuman khusus seperti kopi dan susu.

Deskripsi Sistem

Komponen utamanya ialah Arduino dan WiFi Module, tetapi sampai hari Rabu tanggal 29 Maret 2017, komponen lainnya sebagai penangkap data dan aktuator belum benar-benar ditentukan.

Intinya, sistem dapat membaca suhu air panas pada dispenser dan menentukan suhu berdasarkan keinginan pengguna. Sistem dispenser ini juga dapat mengeluarkan air pada jumlah yang presisi tergantung perintah dari pengguna yang dimasukkan pada smartphone mereka.

Untuk fitur membuat minuman lain, tentunya diperlukan penampung khusus yang dalam hal ini merupakan penampung bubuk kopi atau susu, kemudian dipasang pengaduk khusus pada dispenser. Penuangan bubuk tersebut juga berdasarkan takaran yang diinginkan oleh pengguna.

Catatan

Versi sebelumnya silakan lihat di bawah ini . . . . (tidak dipakai)

Symbiosis in Social Media

A process of trading mainly should be symbiotic, both to the sellers and buyers. It’s how things work: we buy things we want from sellers we trust to receive benefit we expect for as long as possible without having to buy newer things again. But things are a little more complicated when we’re talking about social media.

We use social media because we gain several benefits — perks, if you will — from using them. We can share our opinions, our current life, even our personal and private aspects of our lives in real-time across the world, surpassing any boundaries and distance without any charge or fees for the rest of our lives — well, almost all. 

Meaningless Toil

Toil is a long hard labor. And this worldly life is only a big toil towards our eternal life, as stated in my religion. And to be able to inhabit Heaven, we have to make our life meaningful — sorry if I’m preaching to the choir.

But one of the things I hate in this life is that it can take only one particular action to render a toil meaningless. For instance, failing to formulate a comprehensive bachelor’s thesis means you’re wasting your 4 years of life at college. Or when someone’s so consumed at work, maybe one failure or depression can lead to suicide, which literally leaving everything you’ve worked so hard for meaningless.

I’m trying not to sound complaining. It’s just that how can only one action can determine someone’s destiny. They say that good intention and hard work lead to culmination of a beautiful results. But I think that sometime, one’s toil can be destroyed with only just one small event. And that is terrifying.

Ordinary Life

Ordinary life sounds boring. Plain and repetitive, even maybe tedious. So many people have said that life is full of beautiful things to be seen, great places to be explored. They say you can enrich your knowledge and experience by living out of ordinary.

But not me.

Ordinary life may seem lifeless, but it somehow is appealing. You don’t have to keep exploring; you already have your own rhythm of life — wake up, go to work, improve, rest, and repeat. You don’t have to risk losing anything; ordinary life is already fine as it seems.

Changing Toward Obscurity

I used to like rain a lot, back when I was in high school. At home, I could shower myself under the rain and enjoy the cold and soothing sensation of rainfalls. It gives me the nostalgic feeling —like all of my past memories are fused into one. But right now, it makes me rather, let’s say incensed.

Last year, almost every day in Bandung was raining. Although I like rainfall, but I think this is abnormal and unusual. It is a common knowledge that Indonesia has 2 seasons and 2 seasons only, wet and dry season. The absence of dry season is making me terrified.

Acceptance of Choice

This is a picture of the arguably one of the most famous college in Indonesia, if it still is. This college is surprisingly small, compared to college like Universitas Indonesia or Universitas Gadjah Mada. But, the circumstances that led me here was rather complicated.

I was accepted for a 4-year scholarship at Universitas Telkom because I was ranked at the third place when they held some kind of acceptance test. I have to admit, it was out of luck and though my parents were so proud of me, I felt hollow. It was —sorry if I’m being too cocky — too easy.

Minimal Effort, Maximum Result

One of the things I constantly hate about the world is the fact that some people work way harder and longer than certain people, yet it’s painful to know that for the rest of their life, they won’t make even 1% of the money that the 10 richest man in the world make in the average 1 hour.

I think they somehow achieve a divine state of what the title said, “Minimal Effort, Maximum Result“. I do realize that they also have substantial effort in changing the world and reaching the states that they’re in now, but it seems that they now can live in peace knowing that they can live without working for at least a year, unlike most people.

What if I Do Not Want to be Labeled?

Recently, I am thinking. Some of us human tend to label — categorize, judge, you name it — other people based on what we’re thinking about them. And unfortunately, no matter how much they’ve changed, or at least tried to, we still decline to accept that they have actually improved their behavior.

And this is what bugs me right now. And this has gone for my entire life — my parents labeled me according to the circumstance applied at the moment. Mostly, they compared me to both of my older sisters and they labeled me lazy or stupid because my GPA is currently way below them all.