Commitment is about doing whatever it takes.—Anonymous

Diki Andeas: It's comical. It's chicken. It's Chickenstrip

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Ikram Putra
Contributor/Bandung

At an important press conference, the President was in the middle of his speech when suddenly a shoe went flying toward his face.

Having managed to duck away from the “missile”, the president said to the attacker – a man in chicken costume – “Haha! Missed! Why don’t you use a real weapon, you chicken!”

Then the president threw his shoe back: “Dodge this!” Thank goodness this appalling episode – however familiar it may sound – only took place in one of the stories of Chickenstrip, an online comic strip available at www.comicstrip.org

[CORRECTION: I’m so sorry it should’ve been http://www.chickenstrip.org].

With around 400 visitors per day, the comic-blog is now getting more and more popular.

“I was quite surprised to learn about the number of visitors,” said 30-year-old Diki Andeas, the author of Chickenstrip. “I never thought many people would like it.”

Surprisingly, Diki views himself as a “serious person” despite his laugh-inducing comic strip. The soft-spoken Diki, a web programmer for an IT company which he co-founded with his friends and is based in the West Java town of Cimahi, said he drew comics initially as part of his blog.

Chickenstrip usually deals with IT-related issues, reflecting the author’s daily life and environment. But once in a while it also features funny episodes on topical social situations. For example, when one of Diki’s colleagues became a father, he drew a comic about the “so-called IT father” who chose the name of the child from Google and searched Wikipedia for the meaning of fatherhood.

Based on his addiction to Plurk (a micro-blogging site where one can post minute-by-minute updates), Diki produced a comic about a spy who knew everything about his suspect’s daily activities.

It turned out that instead of putting the suspect under 24-hour surveillance, the spy simply decided to follow the suspect’s activity by reading his Plurk status.

Diki also drew a comic about someone dubbed as an “Indonesian IT expert,” claiming he found the original version of the Indonesia Raya anthem. The expert thought he could still become famous as few people knew that the song could be downloaded on YouTube.

It is not without reason why Diki chose a man in a chicken costume to be the main character. His first blog was located on the now-defunct www.dipatok-ayam.com (bitten by chicken).

As he moved to www.diki.or.id in 2002, he had already been known as “Diki of Dipatok Ayam” and he stuck with the particular animal. The comic strip first appeared at this site.

Diki, a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) enthusiast, said he “was playing around with InkScape and decided to draw a comic with it” for the first time. InkScape is an open source graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator.

“I didn’t have a scanner so I drew straight on the computer – and I still do it that way.”

Diki said his drawings are heavily influenced by Dilbert, a comic series about office life, and the IT-related userfriendly.org, creating a combination that turned out to be successful.

“I think one of the reasons why people like to read Chickenstrip is because I share the same sense of humor with them,” Diki said, adding that sometimes he receives feedback saying “I don’t think it’s funny” or “I don’t get the joke”.

Apart from programming websites and blogging (and visiting his girlfriend over the weekend in Jakarta), Diki is currently finishing his first book on the uses of Web 2.0. Diki references the comicstrip in the book and it is slated to publish this year.

Contreng atau coblos? Jilat!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Daripada ikut berpusing ria memikirkan tatacara pemilihan 2009 – ada yang pengen mencoblos logo partai, ada yang pengen mencontreng, ada yang malah pengen abstain – lebih baik kita ikuti saja tatacara yang diperkenalkan website Momochoco ini:




Dijilat saja!

Bukan logo peringatan kemerdekaan

Friday, January 16, 2009

Jangan salah sangka sodara-sodara. Gambar-gambar di bawah ini bukanlah logo peringatan hari kemerdekaan RI:

17 Agustus 200517 Agustus 2006

17 Agustus 200717 Agustus 2008

Empat logo ini — yang dari tahun ke tahun bentuk, jenis huruf, dan mottonya selalu sama — adalah logo peringatan MASA KEPEMIMPINAN SBY-JK.

Tahun pertama mereka menjabat, ada satu bendera. Tahun kedua, ketiga, keempat, juga begitu. Berani taruhan, menjelang 17 Agustus 2009 akan ada logo serupa dengan lima bendera!

PS. Dasar culas.

A day at Plaza Semanggi

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

This is the situation: You are an Indonesian, made and born in this beautiful Indonesia. One day you went to this shopping mall in Indonesia and after eating some Indonesian food, you needed to go to the restroom in that particular Indonesian shopping mall.

You needed to go there. To use something in the restroom. You needed to go there badly. And after stepping in to the small room here’s what you saw:



Everything seemed fine for you, at first. But in a second you realized that there was no TOILET PAPER. No WATER TAP and no NOZZLE located next to the toilet, also. They all just disappeared.

You opened the lid and hoped to see a SMALL METAL NOZZLE in there designed to squirt water. But no, you DIDN’T see the bloody bidet.

You began to ask yourself: So how am I exactly gonna do it here? It’s like going to a war without bringing any weapon.

Maybe they were trying to save the trees by not providing toilet paper any longer, you wondered. Maybe this was some kind of environmentally friendly toilet where they stopped giving users access to water, you pondered. Maybe for the sake of fighting global warming the flush wouldn’t even work, now you began to panic.

So you closed the lid really slowly. You grabbed your cellphone and took a picture of the goddamn toilet with it.

Instead of joining the “Save the environment, save the world” movement, you decided to simply blog about it. For you, the whole idea is just STUPID.

Amor di Milan, Love di Tokyo

Friday, January 09, 2009

Saya sedang melihat-lihat album Facebook milik Trufi Murdiani, redaktur pelaksana harian Radar Tanggamus, ketika menemukan foto ini:



Meski foto ini diambil di Milan, Italia — dan saya tak pernah ke kota itu — rasanya foto itu kok begitu familiar ya. Seperti pernah lihat.

Ternyata benar. Setelah saya tanya Batari, dia bilang dia punya foto yang mirip. Bedanya, yang ini diambil di Tokyo, Jepang sekitar setahun yang lalu. Ketika dia meninggalkan saya untuk menimba ilmu selama lima bulan (curi-curi curhat hehehe).

Diajak bergabung ke Gmail

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Barusan saya mendapat email dari seseorang. Isinya seperti berikut:
Saya telah menggunakan Gmail dan menurut saya Anda mungkin ingin mencobanya. Berikut adalah undangan untuk membuat account.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ratna Dwi Jayanti mengundang Anda untuk membuat account Gmail, gratis.

Untuk menerima undangan tersebut dan membuat account Anda, kunjungi
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-6126e24271-efe238f743-427904efe9

Setelah Anda membuat account, Ratna Dwi Jayanti akan diberitahu alamat email baru Anda, jadi kalian bisa saling berkomunikasi lewat Gmail!

Bila Anda belum pernah mendengar apa itu Gmail, Gmail adalah layanan email berbasis web (ada fasilitas mesin pencari pula!) yang menawarkan:
  • Kapasitas gratis berukuran 2.700 megabyte lebih (dua gigabyte)
  • Fasilitas mesin pencari Google yang bisa menemukan email apapun di account Anda
  • Keunikan cara mengelompokkan email, di mana email dan balasannya diatur dalam "percakapan"
  • Perlindungan spam canggih dengan memanfaatkan teknologi Google yang inovatif
  • Kenyamanan, tidak ada iklan besar yang mengganggu, hanya sejumlah kecil iklan baris dan daftar halaman terkait yang sesuai dengan email yang sedang Anda lihat
Supaya paham serba-serbi Gmail sebelum mendaftar ke layanan ini, kunjungi:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/id/benefits.html

Kami tetap berupaya meningkatkan kemampuan Gmail tiap hari, jadi ada kemungkinan kami akan meminta saran dan komentar Anda dari waktu ke waktu. Kami harap Anda akan menyukainya sebagaimana kami juga. Karena layanan ini akan semakin bagus saja.

Terima kasih,

Tim Gmail

(Bila URL di atas tak bisa diklik, salin dan tempel URL tersebut ke bilah alamat di browser Anda.)
Masalahnya, email undangan tersebut dikirimkan ke alamat email saya yang MEMANG SUDAH di Gmail. Aneh banget kan?

Buat apa “tim Gmail” mengundang saya lagi – dan memberitahukan Ratna Dwi Jayanti tentang alamat email saya? Kan dia sudah tahu??

Ada-ada saja deh.

Dicari: Penulis papan atas

Friday, January 02, 2009

Di situs Craigslist ada yang mencari penulis artikel. Bukan sembarang penulis artikel, melainkan penulis papan atas!

Lihat saja persyaratannya: Harus bisa menghasilkan tulisan dalam bahasa Inggris yang bagus. Harus bisa membuat artikel yang unik dan lulus “tes keunikan” (entah apa maksudnya). Harus bisa menulis tentang antara lain perjalanan, hobi, kecantikan, kencan, dsb. Selanjutnya, harus bisa mengarang setidaknya 500 kata tiap tulisan.

Syarat yang berat sekali bukan? Apalagi dalam sehari si penulis artikel ini harus membuat 10 tulisan. Bukan main. Ckckck.

Tapi tak ada yang mengalahkan syarat berikut: Setiap artikel akan diganjar $1 dan dibayar lewat PayPal.

Krik krik krik ... Menulis 5000 kata sehari untuk $10?

Selain mencari penulis papan atas, rupanya mereka juga perlu yang berhati baja. Dan pastinya, yang sudah bosan sama duit.

tentang saya

tulisan sebelumnya

arsip

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