[Justice] must not merely be done, but must also be seen to be done.

The concept here is simple: in a proper system of justice, persons appointed as judges not only be impartial, but they must also be seen as impartial.

Therefore, the impartiality of a judge is questionable who appears to be friendly with any politician, no matter how just he claims or pledges to be, or is, in making decisions in court. The appearance of justice is just as important as justice itself. It is not the case that one is more important than the other; for without one, the system of justice is compromised.

I have reflected upon this a great deal, and thought of an analogy for the realm of love, that goes as follows:

The loyalty of a man towards his woman is questionable who appears to consort with other women, no matter how loyal he claims or pledges to be, or is, to his woman. The appearance of loyalty is just as important as loyalty itself. It is not the case that one is more important than the other; for without one, the mutuality of loyalty is compromised.

Related: On love and logic

It makes my blood boil, it gets my heart racing.

It gets me nauseous. It spoils my appetite.

It makes me hopeless. It makes me cry.

It is what you know and I know.

It is not worth repeating, every time.

2.

It makes me thankful I am still alive.

It reminds me that no one is worth depending on, or hanging on to.

(Other than God.)

Absolutely no one.

Namun, apakah rasa cinta dan kasih sayang itu, jikalau bukan sesuatu yang datang hanya dari Tuhan? Siapakah yang bisa mengatakan “aku mahu cinta” lalu mengharapkannya dari permainan dunia, wang ringgit, dan perasaan dan kepercayaan yang luntur? Apakah cinta suatu permainan, yang berunsur suka-suka? Atau suatu perjudian, yang bergantung pada nasib? Atau suatu komoditi yang boleh dijual beli, dengan harta dan hadiah?

Aku fikir tidak, sama sekali.

Bagiku, cinta itu suatu perjuangan. Perjuangan mengenal diri, dan mengenal orang yang dicintai, dan mengenal Tuhan, Punca Segala Cinta. Perjuangan untuk mempertahankan niat, tujuan, punca, dan sebab cinta. Perjuangan yang memperingati kemuncak cinta yang pada suatu ketika adalah tempat terjadinya kita, dengan kuasaNya, dari segumpal darah. Perjuangan yang memperingati detik lahirnya kita ke dunia, yang diiringi doa, harapan dan Cinta yang melimpah ruah. Cinta yang telah memberi kita kehidupan hingga sekarang, dan juga cinta yang akan terus mengalir hingga ke akhir hayat, hingga ke akhir zaman, dan hingga selama-lamanya. Cinta yang hakiki, yang tidak akan pernah mati.

Oleh itu, jahanamlah mereka yang memperolok-olokkan cinta. Dan jahanamlah juga mereka yang tidak menentang, atau sebaliknya memberi sokongan, secara langsung atau tidak langsung, kepada mereka-mereka yang memperolok-olokkan cinta. Demi Tuhan, aku akan menentang kesemuanya mereka dengan keras, dari segala arah.

Sebab, aku yakin, ini suatu perjuangan; bukan permainan.

Watch the video, read the lyrics.

It’s not your usual “Yes We Can” bullshit coming from your usual “I Got It From My Mama” guys.

Remember: everything is less of what it is than what it suggests.

Visit the Flobots website. I quite like the video on their video page.

Let the other voices soar
For I am just another thorn

Malam-malam seperti ini aku berjaga mencari erti. Sebab, everything is less of how it seems than what it suggests. Masih ada persoalan. Masih ada pertanyaan. Sebab, segala yang zahir itu menyelindungi segala yang tak zahir. Sebab, segala yang mustahak itu perlu difikirkan masak-masak, agar rancangan kita tidak rosak.

Malam-malam seperti ini aku masih termimpikan taman Chairil. Tak lebar luas, kecil sadja. Bagi kau dan aku, tjukuplah. Kau kembang, aku kumbang. Aku kumbang, kau kembang.

Ketjil, penuh surja taman kita
Tempat merenggut dari dunia dan ‘nusia

Tiada lain.

‘Dua sadja.

Yang paling membingitkan saya ialah apabila saya sudah memberitahu di mana letaknya kemarahan saya, tetapi ada orang yang masih mencari-cari. Ibarat kisah si penggali tadi, saya sudah memberitahu di mana letaknya harta saya, tetapi dia masih mencari di tempat yang sama (yang saya sudah beritahu).

Kemarahan saya itu ibarat harta saya. Saya tidak mahu menunjukkannya kepada sesiapa, dan saya tidak mahu menerangkan kepada sesiapa di mana letaknya, atau bagaimana mencarinya.

Biarlah orang yang mencari itu terjumpa dengannya kali pertama, lalu menjauhi tempat letaknya kemarahan saya. Jika orang yang sudah tahu masih mencangkul-cangkul di tempat yang sama untuk mencari itu benda, maka bersedialah untuk dipekakkan oleh nyaringnya bunyi kemarahan saya.

Taman punja kita berdua
tak lebar luas, ketjil sadja
satu tak kehilangan lain dalamnja.
Bagi kau dan aku tjukuplah
Taman kembangnja tak berpuluh warna
Padang rumputnja tak berbanding permadani
halus lembut dipidjak kaki.
Bagi kita itu bukan halangan.
Karena
dalam taman punja berdua
Kau kembang, aku kumbang
aku kumbang, kau kembang.
Ketjil, penuh surja taman kita
tempat merenggut dari dunia dan ‘nusia

Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar

(Mac OS X Tiger users only) You have battled with your Prism app just to visit the Firefox Addons page to install Adblock Plus. You click the install link: the addon file downloads, but after that, you get a message saying,

Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Prism 0.9.

The hacker in you sees that there are a few options:

1. Bug Politely request the Adblock Plus development team to include Prism in the list of supported browsers.
2. Trick Prism into believing that the addon is compatible.
3. Disable compatibility checking in Prism.

I am too impatient to do (1), and I haven’t figured out how to do (2). So I decided to do (3):

1. Install the Prism for Firefox 0.2 addon.
2. Close all running instances of Firefox or Prism.
3. Find a file named webrunner-prefs.js in your computer.
4. Edit that file in a text editor, adding the following line:
   

   pref("extensions.checkCompatibility", false);

5. Save and close the file.

Now try installing Adblock Plus again. It should now install successfully, albeit with a warning that the addon is not compatible. (But who better than you to decide if an addon is compatible, right?) When you restart Prism, Adblock Plus should be present when you open the Addons dialog.

Kindly feedback if this worked for you.

Tip: This works for other addons too.

9 Jun 2008: Gejolak Jiwa Wanita

Ulasan

Seperti yang saya jangkakan, Berita Harian bukan akhbar untuk masyarakat. Sebaliknya, ia memasyarakatkan unsur-unsur kurang sihat yang kebanyakannya jelas diambil dari pengaruh barat. Bukan sahaja ia menyampaikan, malah, dalam tulisannya ia juga cuba merasionalkan (rationalise) unsur-unsur demikian supaya lebih mudah ‘ditelan’ oleh masyarakat.

(Oh, kononnya filem ini “mencungkil masalah rumah tangga dan juga komitmen serta kesetiaan pasangan dalam melayari bahtera cinta”. Wahhh, bagusnya! Kalau begitu, sila siarkan filem ini di Suria kepada masyarakat, lebih-lebih lagi kepada pasangan-pasangan Melayu yang baru bercerai dan remaja-remaja Melayu yang mengandung luar nikah. Bodoh.)

Dari tajuk filem itu sahaja, kita sudah boleh membuat jangkaan tentang isinya; jika kita benar-benar mendalami isinya, pastinya ia tidak terlalu berbeza dari jangkaan kita. Filem yang memaparkan gaya hidup seks bebas sekumpulan wanita sekawan ini jelas sekali bertentangan dengan nilai-nilai dan aspirasi masyarakat kita.

Sekali lagi saya katakan, Berita Harian bukan akhbar untuk masyarakat.

Mari kita tubuhkan media bebas (independent) untuk masyarakat Melayu di Singapura!

Download

Changelog

• NEW: By popular demand, an “Administrators see everything” option

For more info

• WPlite page on Wordpress.org
• WPlite home page

What is Quranical? Actually, it’s just the short form of “Quran on iCal“.

What is Quran on iCal?

One day, as I was tinkering with my iPod mini, particularly, the underused Calendar feature, it just struck me, the idea of carrying daily Quran verses on my iPod.

The question was: How do I get the verses on my iPod?

Recalling the previous Quran app which I had worked on, I set out to make an app which helps to generate an iCal-formatted calendar file containing Quran verses. The app would allow the user to choose the number of verses he or she would like to read per day, which chapter or chapters she would like to study, and the starting date. The calendar file or link can then be added into iCal, which can subsequently sync with my iPod through iTunes.

After a few hours of work, I got exactly what I envisioned on my iPod:

And so I called it Quran on iCal.

Go try it out for yourself. Tell me what you think.

Another possible application

On Google Calendar:

Selang beberapa malam ini, aku berfikir dua kali sebelum masuk tidur. Masih ada yang belum dilaksanakan, masih ada yang belum diluahkan, masih ada yang terbungkam di dada, dan otak kepala. Kalau inilah malam terakhirku, aku benar-benar tidak rela membazirkannya begitu sahaja. Mahu saja aku teruskan perjuanganku sekarang juga, sampai pagi esok.

Namun, aku sudah letih. Sudah beberapa malam tidurku tidak lena, memikirkan hal ini dan itu, bergusti di dalam benakku sama ada aku harus bingkas bangun dari tilamku yang sedap empuk, lalu kembali ke meja, meneruskan perjuanganku, huruf demi huruf, kata demi kata.

the guy who put his hands on you
has got nothing to do with me
and the bruises that you feel will heal
and i hope you come around
’cause we’re missing you.

tak guna berbicara dengan syaitan
yang kuncunya guam sarban berjambang
dan hakim songsang anjing suruhan
menghina gugurnya darah pejuang

tak guna menanti mampusnya syaitan
kerana itulah yang dijanjikan:
bahawasanya kita ‘kan terus ditekan
oleh syaitan, dan anak syaitan
dan juga cucu, dan cicit syaitan
hingga ke hari pembalasan.

Since no one else will take me seriously, I will take myself seriously.

I will be different from now on.

God, give me the strength to be resolute.

Luckily, there’s Mozy.

Mozy offers free, secure, automated backups online. A free account gives you 2GB of space, or if that isn’t enough, you can opt to pay as little as $4.95 a month for unlimited space. The backups are incremental: this means that only changed files are uploaded, so that the space used is minimal over a period of time.

You’ll just need to download the Mozy client (Windows and Mac versions available) and leave it running in the background. At first use, you’ll be asked to select which files you want to backup. After that, you can either leave Mozy to do the backing up whenever your computer’s idle, or you can also start a backup manually anytime. It’s that simple.

Even better is its referral system: If you get a friend to use Mozy, you AND your friend get an additional 256 megabytes of space EACH. So that’s 1GB for recommending the service to 4 friends, and your friends benefit from the arrangement too. A good bargain, isn’t it?

So help me and help yourself to get 2GB + extra 256MB free by signing up for a free account and entering my referral code: DDCGTM.

Note: The free 256MB will be credited after you have made your first successful backup.

New features:

• Support for Wordpress 2.5.
  Everything still works fine in the latest, finest version of Wordpress.
• Disable by Feature.
  Save some clicks by quickly disabling menu and meta items by feature.
• WPlite options page bookmarklet.
  Hide WPlite itself, but never ever lose it.
• Available on Wordpress.com Wordpress.org. (thanks, Ryan!)
  Get notified of updates automatically from Wordpress.

Get it now:

• WPlite page on Wordpress.org (new!)
  
• WPlite home page

It turns out that this is not due to Flock itself, but a common security configuration of web hosts: web hosts block certain XML services to reduce the chances of server attacks. A simple way to do this is to impose security restrictions on commonly named XML API files such as “xmlrpc.php“. Thus, obviously the workaround is to rename the file to another name not containing the original file name, such as “secret.php” (and not “myxmlrpc.php”).

Naturally, Flock will not be able to autodetect the renamed file, so you will have to configure it manually. Enter the URL to your renamed file (e.g. “http://mydomain.com/secret.php”) and choose the “Movable Type” API. Next, enter your username and password, and your blog would be added successfully.

I do not guarantee that this will work on all web hosts, but at least another person has managed to get it working this way, albeit not with Flock but with Windows Live Writer. (And how was I able to recall this other person? Through the marvellous search feature in Flock, of course.)

A little review

So much trouble to add my blog, but I will not be posting to my blog through Flock so often, because Flock doesn’t support Wordpress’s native tags (I am not sure about Wordpress.com). I find Flock’s feed reader a tad clunky compared to Google Reader, and staying connected to people on the web isn’t as exciting as it is hyped about by the makers of Flock (or maybe I don’t have that many friends). The features I think I love most are Flickr and del.icio.us integration; ‘might’ because I haven’t taken much photos of late, and I have stopped using del.icio.us since quite a long while.

I am falling, say my name
And I’ll lie in the sound
What is love, but whatever
My heart needs around

And it needs you too much now

—Trespassers William, Lie in the Sound