My Tech Life

Some of us are preparing to establish the Indonesian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation. Well, perhaps it will be more accurate to say the affiliate of Wikimedia Foundation. But then I suck at legal details. As planned, I will be listed as one of the founders.

I have not really do much other than paid my share of the initial funds, and attended the early meetings (and do not much other than listening, piping, commenting the odds and ends…). But I am more than happy to help a bit. There are not many good free content in Indonesian language found in the Internet. The foundation aim to push the creation and distribution of such content. I still think the Indonesian Wikipedia, for example, can and should be improved, but it is now a popular source of information for Indonesians. I hope there will be many more such useful content.

For example, I would like to see a good open university course materials (like MIT OpenCourseWare), a repository of Classical Malay literature, in public domain, and a good collection of oral literature from across Indonesia (Aceh, Batak, Minangkabau, Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Buginese oral literature will be a good start).

I hope the Foundation can encourage the creation of such content, or cooperate with other institution with similar aims.

I have been loaned a HP 2133 Mininote for review a few days ago. For inexpensive subnotebook class, it is much more better designed than its competitors. The keyboard is roomy and wide enough to type quite speedily. In fact, I’m creating this posting on the Mininote. It sure beats the likes of Asus Eee or Intel Classmate, or the VIA Nanobook models.

This unit runs Windows Vista Home Basic, which perhaps rather heavy for the VIA C7-M processors. The processor is roundly criticised in every review I have read on the Internet. I haven’t used the Mininote long enough to feel it, though.

My main gripe with the subnotebook is the touchpad buttons placement. Surely, if you want to save space, you can just get rid the touchpad altogether? Just use trackpoint, dammit.