Free and Easy Ways to Help Good Causes

Ever wondering how many clicks you do daily while you surf the internet? How many times do you try to find something using a search engine?

Would you feel better if while doing those routines you could actually help good causes in various parts of the world? If you think that's a good idea here are some fast, free (and perhaps fun) ways to contribute -- albeit in miniscule portion -- as a conscious citizen of the world.

1. Free donation by clicking

The Hunger Site and its five siblings (the Breast Cancer Site, the Child Health Site, the Literacy Site, the Rainforest Site, the Animal Rescue Site) are the oldest of its kinds as far as I remember. The sites are sponsored by many advertisers to fund their causes. It appears from their statements repeated in each of the sites that '100% of sponsor money goes to charity' or '100% of sponsor advertising fees goes to our charitable partners.' These partners are independent charitable organizations like Nature Conservancy or MercyCorps and several others.

Another site which gives free donation on your behalf when you click on it is Ripple. It has four buttons to click: to help for access to clean water, to fight poverty, to educate people, and to finance a microcredit. Sponsors include Oxfam and Grameen Foundation, the pioneer of microcredit concept introduced by Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel laureate. To learn more about microcredit read this and this wiki.

Care2 is perhaps the largest online community with common objective of helping the planet Earth. It currently has more than 7 million members with various activities and campaigns in protecting the environment, improving health and caring for human rights. The website has 11 click-to-donate buttons for us to supports the causes for free. You need to sign up to become Care2 member if you want to keep track of your cumulative impacts.

2. Free donation by searching the internet

Using a search engine like Google or Yahoo to find resources in the net is something natural that we do in our surfing activities. Wouldn't we feel much more excited if we can change that routine as another way of helping a charity? If you agree you'd better check GoodSearch, a search engine (powered by Yahoo!) which donates 50 percents of its revenues to charities and schools. Users can designate charity of their own choice from the long list of organizations and schools. They can even propose for a new charity to be added to the list.

If you can get away from Google and start trusting Yahoo! you should find this alternative worthwhile to try or even to make as your default search engine.

3. Donate free rice by playing vocabulary game

I was not too convinced with an idea of giving 10 grains of rice for each word I get right in a vocabulary game. How many grains would it take to make a bowl or plate of rice? But as I am normally addicted to word games, spending few minutes on the site has been a worthwhile time-waster alternative.

This site has been operating since early October 2007 and donating more than 100 million of grains of rice daily to the United Nations World Food Program for cumulative of almost 4 billion of grains of rice as of today! I am not sure how FreeRice will match these numbers in terms of tons or kilograms...

If you want to go one step further, practicing microcredit by giving loans to small business entrepreneurs in the developing world -- from Indonesia to Tanzania to Ukraine -- is a viable alternative. In this scenario, Kiva is a site worth visiting. It lets you connect one-to-one with small businesses in the developing world which needs low/no-cost microfinancing to advance their activities. Kiva partners with microfinance insitutions all over the world to reach its goals.

The process flow works like in this diagram (taken from Kiva's website):

How To Back Up Your Blog

You've been working hard on your blogs... brainstorming for ideas, spending hours doing the research, compiling your thoughts, and polishing your words... Surely you don't want all those efforts wasted due to unexpected circumstances like crashes, hacks, etc. Bad things do happen and they rarely let you know in advance. So set aside few of your precious minutes to get prepared for them by backing up your blogs.

Fortunately there are several free, fast and easy ways to do so. Here are what I have done so far to have a peace of mind.

1. If you use Blogger the easiest way comes with its setting.

You can activate the back up by email each time you publish new entry by entering your email in the BlogSend Address inside Email tab on your blogspot setting.

2. Use BlogBackUpOnline

This web-based back up is my favorite so far. You just need to sign up and add your blogs to the its dashboard. You can add as many blogs that you have but the quota on the free account only allows up to 50 MB of storage. To give an illustration, the current size of this blog you are reading only takes less than 1 MB of storage on their server.

You can have full back up once you have added your blogs to the list and then daily backups on scheduled time (that you can set) will back up new and modified entries.

This site also gives you an option to export the backups to your own computer.

3. Use Blogger Backup Utility freeware

This freeware from CodePlex provides a viable alternative to back up your blogs. The setting is straightforward: add your blogs, select drive location on your computer to save the XML files, save all entries as one file or one file for each post, etc. The only obvious difference with backing up using BlogBackUpOnline is that you have to do it manually... no automatic backup at scheduled time.

4. The last alternative works if your blog is hosted on new version of Blogger. I found this simple approach in an unofficial website about Google operating system. You can either display all your blog entries on the original format:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

or on the XML feed format:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000

And to back up your comments:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000

The number '1000' reflects the max number of posts you want to display. You can check the current number of your blog posts on the blog dashboard.

You can then save the output of either approach above to your computer. If you are more paranoid than most people, you can proceed further to Furl it to save them online for your back up of backups.

The Sweetest Music to My Ear...:-)

Catch the Rainbow

We believed we'd catch the rainbow
Ride the wind to the sun
Sail away on ships of wonder
But life's not a wheel
With chains made of steel
So bless me come the dawn
Come the dawn

(Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow -- Catch the Rainbow, 1975)



It'd been a long while since the last time I saw a rainbow... until 2 days ago, near my house -- exactly on my dearest wife's birthday...!


PS. If you'd like to enjoy the complete song click on the widget below...

Catch-the-Rainbow....

...and here's the full lyrics...


- Rainbow Lyrics

Illogical Logic (Tentang 'Rasa Sayange')

Gambang Suling. Soleram. Apuse. Ampar-ampar Pisang. Bubuy Bulan. Gundhul Pacul. Manuk Dadali. Sing Sing So. Tanduk Majeng. Yamko Rambe Yamko. Butet.

Siapa yang tak kenal mereka? Itu semua hanya sebagian kecil dari banyak sekali lagu daerah yang sangat familiar di telinga kita, termasuk tentu saja Rasa Sayange yang sekarang jadi hit antarbangsa Indonesia - Malaysia. Kalau pun kita tak hafal lirik mereka, tune-nya tak akan pernah lepas dari ingatan kita. Indahnya lahir dan besar di negara yang kaya budaya seperti Indonesia...

But wait.... Jangan heran kalau menyusul saudara mereka Rasa Sayange, lagu-lagu tersebut mungkin akan bisa ditemui di iklan Petronas, AirAsia dan perusahaan-perusahaan Malaysia lainnya. Wow... kok bisa?

Sabar, jangan keburu emosi... it takes a HUGE IF untuk bisa terjadi... yaitu kalau saudara-saudara kita di Malaysia berpikiran dan berlogika deduktif induktif yang sama dengan M. Veera Pandiyan, penulis aktif dan editor salah satu media Malaysia yang biasanya cukup cerdas dalam tulisan-tulisannya... But not this time...

Dalam tulisannya di koran terbesar di Malaysia, The Star, tersebut, Veera menunjukkan kalau dia perlu refresher course Logics 101. See below kutipan dari tulisannya:

But most Indonesians don’t realise that Malays, who make up the majority of Malaysians in the peninsula, are not “Malay” as in the context of people from the Riau province on the eastern side of Sumatra, which include Batam, Bintan and some 3,200 other islands.

Not many also know that under our Constitution, a Malay is a political rather than ethnic definition – a person who practises the customs and culture of the Malays, speaks the language and is a Muslim.

So, based on ethnic considerations, the majority of Malaysians are in essence Javanese, Bugis, Banjarese, Acehnese, Minangkabaus, Bataks, Makarese, Malukus, Sunda, Bawean, in addition to the Malays from the Riau region.

The roots of these diverse groups are so deep that the languages, dialects and patois are still spoken in enclaves.

So, is it really such a big deal if they consider their ancient folk songs as part of a shared heritage?

So, bersiap-siaplah penggemar dan pemilik lagu-lagu daerah-daerah yang sudah disebut Veera di atas... Menurut Veera adalah sah-sah aja mengklaim kepemilikan bersama lagu-lagu daerah tersebut dan bahkan menggunakannya untuk iklan komersial perusahaan-perusahaan Malaysia karena nenek moyang Malaysia kan juga berasal dari suku-suku di Indonesia... Ok, paling tidak Yamko Rambe Yamko boleh merasa aman karena orang-orang Irian nggak pernah make up majority of Malaysians...:-)

Seandainya logika ngawur ini dituruti, bukan hanya lagu-lagu daerah Indonesia yang aman dari klaim tetangga dekat kita ini... Nantinya makanan dan minuman daerah dari mulai rendang, gudeg, ketoprak, empek-empek, bandrek, dll dengan mudah bisa diklaim sharing kepemilikannya dengan tetangga serumpun ini... Belum lagi pakaian daerah, alat musik (misalnya angklung sudah mulai ditampilkan dengan bangganya di salah satu lokasi turis utama di KL seakan milik mereka...), musik daerah juga, tarian daerah, dan masih banyak lagi pernik-pernik budaya luhur kita...

Mudah-mudahan saudara-saudara kita di Malaysia tidak sengawur Veera dalam bernalar...

Seakan masih belum puas dengan pembelaan dirinya soal Rasa Sayange, Veera lebih jauh lagi menyerang Indonesia dengan argumentasinya mengenai pemakaian simbol-simbol Hindu dalam kehidupan sehari-hari di tanah air:

For example, would it be fair to argue that many aspects of Indonesia's heritage – like its ever-present symbol of Garuda, the imposing statues of Ganesha or Bhima which stand outside buildings, or the majestic sculpture of horses pulling Arjuna’s chariot in the middle of Jakarta – belong to Hinduism and India?

Mungkin kita perlu menyadarkan beliau bahwa berbeda dengan kasus Rasa Sayange, kita tidak pernah mengklaim ownership terhadap Ganesha, Bima, Garuda, Arjuna, dll itu... Bahkan kita tidak pernah meng-hak-i kepemilikan bersama simbol-simbol tersebut berdasar asal usul nenek moyang kita... Kita tetap dengan gentleman menyebutkan asal-usul mereka dari budaya Hindu atau India... Veera, just look into the Indonesian school textbooks before you ever make such an erroneous and misleading statement.... And please never try to impose superiority on your writings by putting the following line:

Just how would Indonesians feel if they were accused of “stealing” from India’s much richer cultural heritage? (emphasis from me...)

Mungkin Veera perlu kursus singkat mengenai cultural study atau antropologi... adalah tabu membandingkan keluhuran budaya satu bangsa dengan bangsa lainnya, selain juga nggak ada metrics-nya, dan tidak sepantasnya seorang penulis profesional mengangkat hal ini...

Veera, I know that as an Indian you are very proud of your culture... But how far do you know about Indonesian cultural heritage aside from its Indian influences and symbols? And how do you measure a culture's 'quality' and richness in comparison to the others? All Indonesians admired Indian arts and cultures. They are undoubtedly among the finest on earth... but you should know that even a bit of arrogance and too much of self-pride will only spread taints on it instead of elevating it as a culture is created by and reflection of the people who live through, preserve and protect it...

Day 9 & 10: Survived 'the Loneliest Road in America'

Day 9: 3 April 2007

Leaving small town of Hurricane in Utah, we had to deal with a small problem... decision... Life is about making choices... this one was no exception.

We could go as planned to Las Vegas -- which was only 2 hours away (see map above) -- and enjoy its beautiful lights, glamorous night life, cheap delicious buffet dinner, and maybe spend few small changes for fun in the casinos.... And then California would be close from there... It would all be easy drive from now on if we decided to take this direction...

But wait a minute... it's only the 9th day... we still had 5 days to go... we could have much more fun than spending a dull night in LV and drive easy way to southern California! My wife and I had been to LV before and didn't find it worth returning to, and my kids would not be allowed to enter the places anyway... so why even bother stopping by...

So in a flash we crafted the idea of going up north and followed the road less travelled. More precisely and extremely, it's actually the road LEAST travelled.... Nevada's Highway 50, dubbed 'The Loneliest Road in America,' spanning for 400 miles from town of Ely to Fernley, with not much life along the way. For more details on this historic road, see this and this.

So today we were kind of relax and preparing our physical and mental for this trip to long solitude. We drove only 180 miles for the day to small town of Nephi, Utah. We stopped by a small historic fort called Cove Fort and took a free tour inside this small fort built by the Mormons to provide protection and refreshment to travelers to the Wild West during mid 19th century. By 4.30 pm we already checked in a Nephi hotel (a very nice Best Western Inn). My kids had a chance to spend much time in the playground. I was so sure they must have really enjoyed the break from routine go-out-morning, check-in-the-hotel-at-night for the past eight days.


Day 10: 4 April 2007

We were a bit nervous starting the day, imagining driving hundreds of miles thru open spaces, some high elevation passes, ghost towns, and few quiet towns, with not much life, traffic, rest areas, and things to see and enjoy, and got to get out of this long loneliness before the night became too late... let alone with two small kids...It was more than 200 miles from Nephi in Utah to Ely in Nevada. As we got closer to Ely, where the loneliness was supposed to start, the intensity of life along the road was indeed sharply diminishing... It began a bit early, about 50 miles from where we started in Nephi on the town of Delta... Not much life was found between Delta to Ely for 150 miles, but there were still some cars driving in the same or opposite direction with us... making us feel good that we had companies... But as we reached Ely, the solitude had begun...

Ely was said as the largest town in eastern Nevada, but to me it looked like a small town with only one main road passing its downtown. Ely is the closest town to Great Basin National Park. This historic town had some casinos. It had a train museum and there was a tour on its Ghost Train.

We picked up 'the Survival Guide to the Loneliest Road in America' in the tourism (Chamber of Commerce) counter located in one of the historic casinos. It's nothing more than a passport-size notebook with brief history of Highway 50 and description of the five towns along the way. At the back of this 'passport' there is a place where we are expected to get it stamped at these five towns. Once completed we can send it to Nevada Tourism office to get the survival certificate signed by the Nevada Governor, a pin, and a bumper sticker. Those are the proofs that the holder has passed the test of long loneliness and boredom on 'uninteresting and empty' 400-mile Nevada's Hwy 50.

We didn't spend too much time in Ely. We headed west 75 miles to the next town, Eureka, an old mining town. This town was also very quiet, but more peaceful than Ely without the sounds of the slot machines. Some old buildings were still standing. The old opera house and courthouse were located on the main street. The Eureka Sentinel Museum where we got our survival cards stamped used to be the office of local newspaper with the same name. All these old buildings were dated 1879.

Continuing our drive 70 miles to the west we reached smaller town of Austin, said to be named after Austin in Texas. Several miles on the way to Austin we found some signs showing what more than a century ago were the Pony Express trails, the mail service carried by the horse riders (instead of stagecoach) across continent. I couldn't imagine the challenges that these riders had to deal with during the time, the Wild West era. Speed riding the long, rough, quiet terrains and route alone with their horse only as their trusted friend, with so many obstacles which could cost their lives, was certainly not a career path for everyone. For more details on the history of the Pony Express, see this and this.

Austin is smaller compared to Ely and Eureka, but when we got there we felt that it was more lively yet peaceful. We stopped by a small cafe and had very delicious milk shake. Some locals in this town flocked in the cafe and can be seen on the streets, unlike in Eureka which was a bit larger but very quiet. I also read that Austin was one of Central Nevada's most popular mountain-biking areas as this served as gateway to the nearby Toiyabe Mountains.

Half an hour later we continued to what people said as the loneliest and most boring part of Hwy 50, a 110-mile route to the next town, Fallon. We didn't see much difference with previous parts of this highway. Same loneliness, same empty and open spaces, but not really made us bored. One of few objects located along the way, which we skipped due to time, was Sand Mountain, which was popular for ATV riders.

Once we reached Fallon, we felt right away that this was the end of the loneliness. This town was the largest of all five main towns along the highway, and definitely the liveliest. Farms and ranches were found on the outskirt and around the town. The Top Gun school, featured in Tom Cruise's early movie with the same title, was located here. Fallon was also one of Nevada's premier bird-watching areas. All these have drawn people to come, stay and would never make Fallon fit into the category of a lonely place.

Twenty seven miles to the west was the last town on the west listed on the Survival Kit, Fernley. It was just a regular road trip town with plenty of roadside motels, casinos, restaurants and gas stations. We reached this town slightly after dark. We felt that we still had extra energy to reach the next bigger city to stay overnight, Reno -- 35 more miles from Fernley -- so we just passed Fernley, of course after we got our 'passports' stamped. Around an hour later we already checked in a motel in Reno, feeling so relieved and proud that we had passed and survived the long test of loneliness, boredom and driving endurance. It was a heck of endurance test as we drove 540 miles for the day, the longest on a single day during our trip. We had now easily passed 3,000 milestone for the total mileage of our road trip.

So now you are probably wondering whether Hwy 50 is really very lonely. I would not say 'I would say so....' as fortunately we decided to take simple statistics when we got to Ely, the gateway to the loneliness from the east side of Nevada. We counted the number of vehicles that we met, either same direction with us (from east to west) or the opposite direction from Ely to Fallon. The tally was not surprising and only confirmed the validity of this highway as the loneliest road in America.

The total vehicles that we met from opposite direction from Ely to Fallon were 63 vehicles and 1 bike (very courageous biker!). That means we met a different vehicle from opposite direction once every 6 miles!

But that was nothing compared to the number of vehicles running in the same direction with us from Ely to Fallon. We counted very carefully and there were only 20 different vehicles going with us along 400 miles. That means we met a new fellow traveler only every 20 miles!!!

Ok, so it was really lonely there... but was it 'uninteresting and empty' as Life magazine claimed in 1986, which then made this road widely known and promoted as 'the loneliest road in America'? I think it depends on what type of traveler we are. The real adventurer would love to explore every details of the road and visit all objects along the way. There are many things to enjoy within 400 mile besides the five towns, like Lehman Cave, Charcoal Ovens State Park, Toiyabe Mountains, Great Basin National Park, Grimes Point/Hidden Cave -- an archaeological site housing many prehistoric Indian artifacts and petroglyphs --, Pony Express trails, sites and remains, and also some ghost towns. Definitely an interesting place for real adventurer....

For family travelers like us, we would love to come back and explore further someday in the future. But for now, we could not hide our pride of surviving the loneliness while enduring the physical driving test on this most infamous road in America, not to mention that we brought with us two brave little boys -- whom we were really proud of for their patience, cheerfulness, understanding, and strength during the trip.... they were just cool....

To see the slide show of some pictures I took along the Highway 50 please check this out.

Day 7 & 8: Tour De Rocks...

.... or to be more precise, these two days were literally the Tour de Canyons and Cliffs. That's it, all were about rocks...

Day 7: 1 April 2007

We left from Flagstaff in the morning and headed north 70 miles on road 180 to the main entrance of Grand Canyon in the south rim. It was a two-lane road passing the pine forest, with elks, deers and foxes were visible all the way to Grand Canyon. Traces of snow were still found in higher parts of the forest.

We started like most tourists, directly going to the south rim and walked or drove from point to point. This was my third trip here (and second for my wife and first for my kids) but we seemed couldn't get enough of it, although we still limited ourselves to 'beginner's trip'; we didn't go backpacking from point to point or took an arranged tour down to the Indian Reservation. Its beauty and grandness stood there having passed millions of years of changes in the earth. Really spectacular... it just shows that we as human beings are so tiny and vulnerable on the face of the earth and the universe, let alone before its Creator...


From the south rim we drove 40 miles to the east rim onto its main point, the Watch Tower or Desert View. The view was no less breathtaking, especially since it was almost sunset when we got there.

Just slightly before the sundown, we decided to go up north to the nearest small town to stay overnight. We took Hwy 64 and unexpectedly found scenic views of Little Colorado River Gorge almost all the way 60 miles on this road. Extremely beautiful... This is probably one of the littlest known of the most scenic byways. Only very few cars were ahead or behind us. However, some empty Indian markets were found on the roadside. They were probably open during the day.

Exit from Hwy 64 we entered Hwy 89 seventy miles on the way to small town of Page in north Arizona, close to the border with Utah. The views must have also been wonderful, but it was too dark for us to enjoy.

Total drive of the day: 230 miles.

Below is slideshow of the pics of Grand Canyon and vicinity. All I can say is that some or most of them probably don't do justice to the grandness and beauty of the Grand Canyon, especially as it was difficult to take nice pictures and produce natural colors with regular digicams (Canon S3 and Sony Cybershot) during high noon under the bright sun. Some of the better pictures were taken when it was almost sunset in East Rim of the Grand Canyon. Please also note that it looks like Slide.com reduces the quality of the uploaded pictures for its Flash slide (it's free service anyway... how far should I expect from them?)

Note 06/10/2007: I had to remove the slide show as it was a memory hog. To see it on the Slide server please check this out.


Day 8: 2 April 2007

Town of Page is small, quiet, not close to major cities, but very worthwhile to visit. It is home of the huge Glen Canyon Dam, one of the biggest dams in the US. As in its name, this dam is located in the Glen Canyon National Park, another marvelous canyon. Page is also close to Lake Powell, the second largest man-made lake in the US.

Finished with the visit to the Dam and appreciated the beauty of the canyon and Lake Powell (from a scenic point named Wahweab) we continued our drive on the highway 89 to the west. In a short drive we already entered the state of Utah ('the people of the mountains' in Ute Indian language). The scenic views of Grand Staircase-Escalante mountains were accompanying us until we turned to small byway road 9 which passed through Zion National Park, our next destination.

Frankly, I was actually almost tired of all these rocks though very much loved their natural beauty... Almost 2 full days of only rocks and I am not a geologist to begin with...:-) But then again I was becoming speechless as we got closer to Zion... The soaring towers, monoliths and cliffs ahead, left, right and behind us as we passed through it were so amazing... Unlike Grand Canyon, the beauty of which we appreciated from the top looking down the canyon, in Zion we were really 'inside' and became part of it. We were so miniscule being surrounded by the grandeur of the massive walls of millions of years of rock formation. The feeling was different... we were so powerless down there... It's a complete submission to the nature and the Almighty....

We took the shuttle tour to half of all the points as it was getting dark close to the sunset. Wild turkeys were seen along the road and on trees after dark. We then headed to the town of Hurricane, 30 miles from the park, and we stayed overnight there.

Total drive of the day: 140 miles.

Day 5 & 6: Santa Fe and On the Way to Grand Canyon

Day 5: 30 March 2007

I swear I'm gonna live forever
Tell my maker he can wait
I'm riding somewhere south of heaven
Heading back to Santa Fe
It's judgment day in Santa Fe

Bon Jovi "Santa Fe", 1990

Santa Fe is definitely not close to heaven, but it is quite mystical and beautiful at the same time. We spent the whole day Friday exploring the city, drove around and walked all along its marvelous downtown.

All buildings in downtown have distinctive Southwest architecture. Not a single high rise building exists. The landscape is not typical American downtown. The streets are all narrow, mostly only enough for one car each way. The shops and galleries are neatly designed and even the sign boards seems like regulated, all match perfectly with the surrounding environment. The small plaza in the mid of downtown reminded us of the plaza in old western movies with Mexican background. Besides the art shops, we found a lot of locals selling Indian crafts and arts in a dedicated place close to the plaza.

The snow rain which was still falling when we were there made Santa Fe much more 'post-card' beautiful.

Santa Fe is a city of art. There are so many art galleries around the city. The artworks are widely range, from traditional Indian, Mexican and Southwest arts to the modernism. This is almost close to heaven for art enthusiasts and collectors.

Speaking of art, we can't discuss about Santa Fe and New Mexico without talking about the prominent late artist Georgia O'Keefe. She's been like a great art ambassador of New Mexico to the world of modern art since her move to New Mexico from New York in the 40s. We visited the museum dedicated for her, the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, right in the downtown.

I am not an expert in art nor its interpretation, but having visited the museum, seen her works myself (before this I only knew her from books, publications and documentaries), I found this artist quite inspirational. Her life story was about a tireless search for the meaning of life, until her death at the age of 99 in 1986. I can't imagine how New Mexico looked like in the 40s when she moved there permanently as she found a lot of inspirations there during her previous visits, leaving her estate in much more glamorous New York City, after the death of her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

Her words described the philosophy behind her paintings:

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of this life.

That's after she found her abstracts had been misinterpreted by critics as about sensuality and sexuality. She then moved to realism, so now an apple was an apple, a pear was a pear, a skull was a skull, in her artworks. And she didn't want people to read them:

One paint what is around. It is easier for me to paint it than to write about it and I would so much rather people look at it than read about it.

To sum it up:

From experiences of one kind or another shapes and colors come to me very closely.

So not to change this blog to become art review...:-), we finally concluded our day in Santa Fe a couple of hours before sunset and we continued our trip 180 more miles to the west. We stayed overnight in Route 66 town of Gallup, still in New Mexico.

Total drive of the day: 220 miles


Day 6: 31 March 2007

We started the day by driving around Gallup. The town is small so it was fast to complete the round.

An hour driving to the west we already crossed the border of Arizona, the Grand Canyon State. We didn't do a lot of stops. We continued all the way to Flagstaff (another Route 66 town mentioned in the famous 'Route 66' song, made popular by the Manhattan Transfer and many other singers).

This town is about 80 miles south of Grand Canyon. We initially planned to stay in the lodge inside the Grand Canyon Park, but they were all booked up when we called them. Based on our experience, practically there was not a nice place to stay between Flagstaff and GC, so we decided to call off the day and take a rest in Flagstaff. We explored Flagstaff before we rested. This is a nice town surrounded by ponderosa pine forests. At the background is the San Fransisco Peaks, the highest elevation peaks in Arizona, with snow still decorated its beauty from a far. No wonder that this town is chosen among the top places to live in the US.

Total drive of the day: 200 miles, and we already passed 1,500 miles, half of our total plan trip.

Day 4: Albuquerque & Sandia Peak

Today was the day for my kids. They'd been wanting to see, feel, and play with snow... and too bad Houston never had snow... the most it had was ice at the peak of the winter on December last year and they were already happy with it... We already planned to go to Big Bear in California early this year, but then my stay was extended in Houston so our hope of finding snow was kind of vanishing...

Imagine how delighted we were when we could still find snow in spring here in Sandia Peak, about 10 miles from Albuquerque...

At the elevation of more than 10,000 feet, it was cold up there in Sandia. The main attraction is actually the Tramway... it is said as the world's longest aerial tramway. The ride was smooth and the view from the tram and from the top was breathtaking... But for the kids, it was snow which drew their full attention and energy...

The ski area itselft was already closed for the season, although snow was still abundant. That was enough for my kids... We spent few hours playing with snow... with the only break was lunch at the resto at the peak... it was called High Finance... don't know how it got the strange name, but good thing is that 'high' here only related to the elevation and didn't refer to the meal prices... they were priced just like any other restaurants...

Few hours later we took the tram down to the base and we drove back to Albuquerque... We spent several hours driving around the city... We stopped by at several places like the Central Avenue where the historic Route 66 was located... several buildings still maintained their old sign boards to make the street looked 'vintage'. We also enjoyed the unique Southwest architecture of a lot of houses and buildings we found in all parts of the city.

To complement for the day for the kids, we visited the Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, which was just opened 1.5 years ago. The museum displayed the history of balloon, the balloon school (how to make a balloon, etc.), the science behind the balloon, and several real big balloons, including one which travelled across Atlantic. Albuquerque is the place for annual International Balloon Fiesta, which takes place on October.

An hour before sunset we decided we had enough with Albuquerque and we headed 60 miles north to Santa Fe. We stayed overnight here.

Total drive of the day: 100 miles only

Day 2 & 3: Leaving Texas, Entering New Mexico

Day 2: 27 March 2007

Walked around Fredericksburg, enjoying its German influence... Visited the Enchanted Rock, the huge granite dome (it's not pink as said in its publication, at least at the time we were there)... so huge it's visible from so far... wished we could climb it as many people did that day... maybe next time when the kids grow bigger....

Continued drive to Amarillo... passed small town Brady... so many bluebonnets found along the road... and strangely also some vultures... this is not a desert, wondering what these birds of death were doing there....

Passed Abilene and stayed overnight in Lubbock, home of Texas Tech Univ... Between Abilene and Lubbock we found countless sucker rods (for pumping oil from the ground) and windmills (for generating energy/electricity)... the wind was indeed so strong there...

Total drive of the day: 380 miles

Day 3: 28 March 2007

Continued to Amarillo... passed small town Tulia (with its slogan: home of richest land, finest people... wow...), took some snapshots of the Cadillac Ranch, a roadside artwork, a modern light version of the prehistoric Stonehenge in England... that's probably too much of an exaggeration....

Finally after driving 861 miles for the past 3 days, we entered New Mexico in the afternoon. Again, we found many windmills along the road. Stopped by the Route 66 monument.

Getting close to Albuquerque, we were greeted and surprised by cold wind... maybe too cold for spring... At the sundawn we reached Albuquerque and stayed overnight here...

Total drive of the day: 420 miles.... so now we are already past 1,000 miles... 1/3 of the plan trip...

Note: As a pic speaks louder than words, I will add some later to my posts when I have more time to select from hundreds I have taken so far...

Day One: Leaving Houston...

Left Houston @3pm.... blame it on the kids....:-)

Destination: the Enchanted Rock

Route: I-10 to Luling, TX 80 to San Marcos (bought something quickly in the Outlet...), enjoyed the ride to Fredericksburg through scenic byway Texas Hill Country Trail... rain most of the time... reached Fredericksburg slightly after sunset.... stayed overnight here....

Total drive today: 250 miles

Beautiful bluebonnets and other spring wildflowers were found along I-10 and some parts of TX 80 and the Trail...

WOW...

Many thumbs up for Java Jazz organizer!!! The plan showcase for Java Jazz 2008 is nothing short of a WOW (with huge capital letters...). See poster taken from their website on the left (with my own highlights...).

For me personally, where else can I have a chance to see my favorite jazz heavy weights like guitar virtuoso Al Di Meola (last seen him perform in Austin 14 years ago!), The Manhattan Transfer (seen them in LA 1991, Jakarta (1999?)), and ones I've never had a chance to see: Pat Metheny, Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Larry Carlton and Basia.... all of them in a single big event? And what could be more irresistable than seeing them all in my own country...?

Hope that I won't be on trip on March 7 - 9 next year... or I may have to decline for the favor of this once-in-a-blue-moon gathering.

PS. Note for the organizer: some of these giants' names are misspelled. They should be Abraham Laboriel, Stanley Clarke, Erykah Badu, Kazumi Watanabe, Rene Olstead, Pat Metheny.

Hanzo:web, An Alternative to Furl

I wrote about my favorite social bookmarking tool, Furl, almost a year ago. It is still my favorite tool, but since last week it is not the only one that I use for bookmarking and archiving at the same time. That was when I found out about Hanzo:web.

Hanzo:web does what Furl has done and more. It saves not only certain web page like Furl, but can save the link only (bookmarking), the context (page with its direct links), and even archive the whole site including its links (though it is limited to paid members).

Hanzo:web is generous enough to give its free members with 100 Mb/month of websites archiving (Furl is currently giving its free members a total quota of 5 Gigabytes). That is more than I ask for as I normally only save articles and news, and never have a need to archive context or even a whole site. For the latter I rely on the Internet Archive with its wonderful Wayback Machine, which as of now it says it has saved 85 billion pages from extinction!

The way Hanzo:web works is the same with Furl. We use their button or bookmarklet to save a link, web page, context or site, tag it and put some comments (Furl has another feature for rating a web page, which Hanzo doesn't have yet in the moment...). One cool thing in Hanzo:web is its collect form, which albeit so manual that we have to paste the site and the title, it saves us from dependence on the bookmarklet or toolbar button. This way we can save to Hanzo:web from any computer without having to install the tools (for example when we are in an internet cafe, airport lounge, etc.). It is ashamed that Furl never thought about it. It should be an easy thing for them to add.

However, as Hanzo:web is still in beta, there are many things that they need to improve to make it a better social bookmarking site. First of all, the saving speed is not stable yet. Most of the time it is slow. I just tried to save an article and it has taken me more than 2 hours to get it archived. It is already on the list of my archives but I can't still open it. Two hours is probably very rare as I was able to have my articles saved properly within 5 minutes last week. Still very contrast in comparison to Furl, which saves web page within a snap.

The archive list in Hanzo:web also has a lot of rooms for improvement. The only filter there is by tags. No filter by date. No multiple selection tool to move the tag, make it private/public, send email or delete the saved pages like in Furl. No saving to zip file as well for all archives. No recommendations or 'hanzomates' (people with similar tastes). Definitely there are many homeworks for Hanzo:web to prove their value.

Hanzo:web does give us a promising future and rare alternative on free archiving of web pages, which as far as I know, has been dominated by Furl.

For me personally, I still cling to Furl as my favorite archiving tool, but once a while I keep an eye on Hanzo:web for their development.

Roadtrip Plan with the Kids

Sepuluh hari lagi berakhir sudah tugas di Houston yang dimulai 4 bulan yg lalu (yang cukup sibuk sampai blog ini terbengkalai nggak pernah diupdate). Now it's time for break and for fun.

Berhubung kali ini keluarga ikut di sini sejak 3 bulan lalu dan terutama buat nambah pengalaman anakku Adit dan Afif yang belum pernah roadtrip jauh kecuali sejauh Yogya - Jakarta, KL - Singapore atau KL - Penang, kali ini aku dan istriku Fitri rencanain untuk waive aja flight dari Houston ke LA dan diganti driving.... Di bawah ini route maps rencana kami. Permanent linknya ada di sini.

Jalan-jalan kali ini cukup ambisius idenya mengingat 2 pesertanya masih kecil-kecil, Adit 3.5 tahun dan Afif 19 bulan.... Tapi karena kami alokasikan 14-15 hari penuh untuk jarak sejauh lebih dari 3000 miles (= 4.828 km) dengan 12 tujuan utama sepanjang jalan (termasuk Santa Fe, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Yosemite, SF, Santa Barbara), lewat 5 states besar, kami hitung-hitung cukup reasonable. Dulu semasa belum ada anak-anak route yang kurang lebih sama pernah kami kunjungi dalam 7 hari saja.

Rencana kami berangkat dari Houston tgl 25 Maret dan sampai di LA kami targetkan tgl 7 April. Tgl 9 April kami akan terbang malamnya ke KL.