I will slowly move the pages from atanone dot net site, and slowly I’ll populate this site and let my other site deal with my new adventure on how to make money online, and using the money to continuesly support some charity works that I could help.

Please visit my new site.

A former colleague and a dear friend of mine, Dr. Junibakti Sanubari passed away last night (Christmas day in Indonesia) at a hospital in Bandung while visiting his daughter in college. They were on their way home and stopped by his sister in law’s home in Bandung.

I met Dr. Sanubari almost 20 years ago while he had just completed his master degree from Phillips Institute of Technology in Eindhoven, Netherland. He was the first graduate from the then 29 years old Department of Electronics Engineering at Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU) in Salatiga, Indonesia. I was a new Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at that time. Soon after he came back from the Netherland, we managed to get him a fellowship to have a short stay at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. At that time, my former Proferssor at the Graduate School of Opto-electrotecnhiques and Laser Applications at the University of Indonesia, Prof. Mahoki Onoda from Tokyo Institute of Technology made it a habit that every time he visited the State Universities in Indonesia, such as the University of Indonesia in Jakarta or the Bandung Institute of Technology, he would spend some time in our department at SWCU. Furthermore, with the strong support of my mentor, Prof. Toshimitsu Asakura of Hokkaido University (at that time), we managed to obtain few more scholarships from the Ministry of Educations (Monbusho) of Japan under the so called Inter-university exchange agreement or U-to-U program and made it possible for a few of my colleagues to work for their doctorate degrees in various Japanese University, including Hokkaido University, Muroran Institute of Technology and Tokyo Institute of Technologies. Dr. Sanubari was one of the scholarship recipients and indeed he did a good job there, obtained his doctorate and went back to become an instructor at his own alma mater.

After I moved to the United States, he visited us twice. Once, while I was doing my own doctorate at Penn State. I took him to visit Niagara Fall since it was only 6 hours from our home. Later, when I moved to Huntsville, Alabama, he visited us once more and I took him to visit the signal processing lab at Auburn University. Both of these visits were a side trip after attending the international conferences in the field of electronic signal processing. A few months ago, he emailed and told me that one of his student was doing some research on using fiber optics to probe the microphone vibration. I gave him some references on my early works, as well as related references by others, and that was the last time I heard from him. As of tonight, his name is still listed in the International Programme Committee members of SPPRA to be held in Innsburk, Austria, February 14 - 16, 2007. Most of his works co-authored by Prof. Tokuda of Nagoya Institute of Technolgy can be found in this page.

It’s hard to swallow, when someone younger than you passes away. After made a few phone calls this morning, I also found that another former colleague, Mr. Barkah Sancaya from the same department passed away four months earlier. It struck me like when I first heard that a dear friend of mine, my former college mate, Dr. Paulus Wiyanto of Bosscha Observatory in Lembang, Indonesia,  passed away more than a decade ago. He was only 42 at that time. Those friends early return to meet the Creator really broke my heart. But there is a time for every thing under the sun…..I don’t know what else to say.

I sent an email to Prof. Keiichi Tokuda of Nagoya Institute of Technology early this morning (last night in Japan) but I’m afraid that every body is taking their year end vacation in Japan. Tonight I called the department office (daytime there) and a secretary there, Ms. Yasuko Mikame was so kind and asked me to resend the email so she could call Prof. Tokuda, who was out of town today. I have since received an email from Ms. Mikame that she has forwarded that email to Prof. Tokuda’s secretary.

I just got off the phone talking to Dr. Danny Manongga of Satya Wacana Christian University. They just came out from the funeral service for Dr. Sanubari in Semarang, and his body was going to be cremated in Ambarawa at the same time I wrote this post.

Again, it was a sad, sad day for me. Two days ago my cousin Ros passed away, and I still could not get in touch with my sister who went to visit my aunt at the village of Silu deep inside West Timor. I once read that in the US, people don’t die. They simply disappeared and are forgotten. However, I couldn’t help it when I sit down to remember my dear friends or my cousin. The only thing I could say is, Rest in Peace, all my friends and cousin Ros.

“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air…..” ( 1 Thessalonians 4, 13-18)

My thanks to Mr. Reintje Saerang of Sydney Australia for the Words and my deepest condolence to the Ronabiha family for the passing of Mrs. Lodowika Ronabiha from my old hometown yesterday.

Three reasons, I told him. 

First, I would like to update my linkpage in a quick and easy way. In the past I tried to update by adding a what’s new section in my index page, but it was a tedious job. I need to go through editing, uploading process etc. With a blog, it’s much easier and I can update it individually without tying it to any page. This is a good starting place where I can learn the art of blogging and how to make money.

Second, I love to do volunteer works, such as maintaining the website of my church or helping people seting up the blog for their charity work. All these takes time…., and sometime I have to spend extra out of pocket money. After reading the various stories at John Chow’s blog, like this one, I thought, hm, may be I need to create a blog and let the blog collects some extra money to reduce my expenses after spending time working on these sites.

Third, the extra income that people can make from the Internet as described in John Chow’s posting is really amazing. This is what John Chow wrote about Jeremy Shoemaker:”If ever anyone can be considered an Internet marketing superstar, ShoeMoney would be near the top of the list. Jeremy Shoemaker is a search engine marketer who knows how to take advantage of both Google AdSense and AdWords. In the above photo, you see him with the biggest Google AdSense check he has ever received from Google. The income was earned back in the month of August 2005.”

I thought what Jeremy and others have made via the Internet were really incredible. Of course it all dependents on so many factors such as, how much time are you going to put in, how are you going to slant your site, etc. You can find all these factors described in one of John Chow’s article cited above and John will help to promote your site too if you you know how. However, my point is, there is a possibility to make money here. I saw so many technical sites in various fields on the Internet, some have already utilized the adsense and other affiliate programs, such as Heavens-above, CalSKY, just to name a few in the same techical field as mine,… but many have done nothing in that direction at all. I think a link to John Chow’s  “The Internet’s biggest Google Whores” page  may surprised them. I hope!

Isn’t it too late, now? My friend asked. I just shrugged my shoulder. “You never know!” When I said bye to him, suddenly the pharase, ”if you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re always right” filled up my mind.

I also went to signup to join the Force Usergroup. This is the group of Users of TheForce, a software remote shutter for coolpix cameras, and companion programs. I thought may be I need to use the software later if I buy a coolpix. The site also carries digital camera astrophotograpy information and gallery. 

Finally before retiring for the night, I checked my mailbox for one last time and I could not resist to watch some of the short videos in the links Kevin Fetter has provided. At the end of this lists, I also saw the link to Kevin’s Video Setup. A quick scan of the page prompted me to add this post rather than simply bookmark all the links I mentioned here. I thought it would be much easier for me to come back to search for the link here than going through my favorite links in IE. Thanks Kevin for adding that last link. 

One thing to add, Tom has another interesting project, from Waterloo to Batton Rouge, where together with someone hundreds miles apart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they had watched the Iridium Flare 3 minutes after Tom saw it in Waterloo, Iowa. You can follow Tom’s story here to find out more. May be we can start to track these flares across the country or who knows, how far it could go.

That’s why I turned on NASA select channel and listen to some of the voice traffic between CAPCOM and sometime between PAYCOM with the Crew and wondering if I could listen them talking about that experiment. Indeed I caught part of the conversations but most were the re-run from the real traffic I’ve already listened while I was at work. The only difference is that, I could listen at home without worrying someone was calling you from other loop. Suddenly NASA Select mentioned that the ISS will pass thru Houston. I remember seeing some of these passes on the list few days ago, so I then checked the Heaven’s Above for the Skychart from my hometown. Heaven’s above listed the magnitude at -0.3, and the path was good. I then went to CalSKY and verified the path again using the lat/long of my home. Too bad, I could not take a picture, but the brightness was much better than when I first saw it while it was only Zarya alone.

Few nights ago while preparing to take the Geminid meteor shower picture, I found out that the Bulb-setting of my Olympus OM-10 was not working. I was thinking of getting another camera that I could use for satellite photography with long exposure setting. That would be on my to do list and I will post when I find a good one. I thought this is a good site to start my search.

BTW, while I was typing this I also heard over the TV the voice of CAPCOM telling the crew that all the flight controllers at JSC went out to watch the same pass.

Disclaimer: The opinion here is mine and mine alone. 

This morning I found so many news about the Geminid Meteor Shower tonight. Here is what I found in Science@nasa that was posted yesterday:

“It’s the Geminid meteor shower,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama. “Start watching on Wednesday evening, Dec. 13th, around 9 p.m. local time,” he advises. “The display will start small but grow in intensity as the night wears on. By Thursday morning, Dec. 14th, people in dark, rural areas could see one or two meteors every minute.” …..read more

Space Daily, Foxnews,  CNN and other’s also have carried the news in the past few days. Earth and Sky even offers Top 10 Tips for Geminid Meteor Shower. I check the weather forecast, it seems that we are going to have clear sky. Hopefully I will not miss this year shower again.

At first, in order to compensate my omission, I thought I would simply add any new links I find to the personal linkpages. However, a simple link would not do any good. That’s why I decided when I started this blog that every time I visit a site, I would put a note on what I found there, then provide the link so people can visit that page easily. I tried with a ‘What’s New’ in my linkpage long time ago, but I had to edit a webpage for that purpose and that idea was soon be abandoned. While I was on John’s site, I noticed that John used the CalSKY data for all his observations. I then visited the CalSKY and I realized that it will take me few days just to surf that site alone. With the help of GoogleEarth, I then determined the exact lat/long of my driveway, and signed up as a register user at CalSKY site.

This is what I found in the Section Guide for the Satellite page on CalSKY.

Few days ago, while searching for other links, I also came across Thomas Fly’s site on computing sun & moon transit by ISS with the aid of J-Pass.  His work had been referred to by many others, such as Science@NASA or Hobby Space. 

After watching Kevin’s video, I thought about it then went to check Thomas Fly’s site. Back in June 2005, he said that his server was busted and he would be unable to generate new alert email. However, I still seeing various reports saying that they received Thomas Fly’s email alert. A quick look at this report brought me to Ed Morana’s site showing many amazing videos of ISS Transit over the moon. After jumping through few hoops and back to Thomas Fly’s site, I also saw the link to the ISS Transit forum on yahoogroups. A quick scan through the forum home showed that there were many recent information there, so I signed up to join the group. I tried to sign up for email alert at Thomas Fly’s site but the link was broken. I will post an update if I find the info from the forum.