18th Moon Station

Choice and monopoly

Often we hear the pro-choice crowds called out about the need of alternatives and the need of competition for the benefit of the consumers. Monopoly is something bad.

Not like I believe competition would make things instantly better though because around here the business often just offer nothing better than their competitor and protect themselves from their enemy and prey, the consumer.

But what would happen if we did fall into a monopoly actually ?

Well... look no further because we have an example in the current age.

Anyone checked the price of the new Leica products ?

May 1st for public holiday!

Warning: this is a joke post came from several minutes of shallow inspiration in the solemn room of deep thoughts (read: toilet box).

In the spirit of the S.O.S day (more known as the Mayday), thought of reasons to make this day into a public holiday. Why a holiday ? Won’t it make even more workers go down to the streets ?

At least in Indonesia, maybe that’s not the case.

A photogenic city

As the election for Jakarta's new governor is closing, the newspaper made a continuous theme on the metropolitan section. Basically it's trying to remind peoples about the problem that the elected governor should be doing (not that he'll be doing it, anyway). It sums up into:

• Traffic that got worst while the city lack of any popular mass public transportation system.
• Flood problem that's almost like the city's yearly festival. This one will got forgotten since it's almost the dry season.
• Trash, although this seems to be relegated to the neighbouring city.
• Public space.
• Public safety, especially after the recent motorbike gangster incidents.

Anyway, about the public space (and city planning in general), I still find it hard to believe Indonesian would do it. First and most important thing:

Public space is not cash cow, private commercial space are.

That alone, in my opinion, made it impossible to have a city where the peoples can look almost to the horizon and see the wide open sky above. They can't walk in a well designed landscape under shades of trees. All those cost money to buy and maintain, especially in the profitable plots where private sectors can get huge amount of money the banks stole from public.

Comparing to city abroad in developed countries, the city is clean, cool, has open space and even the more packed area still has its charm (mostly cleanliness and character). Summarizing it all, a photogenic city.

Well, there are such place in Jakarta, but that's on private owned land and instead it's burdened to the rich peoples who can afford living in the expensive plots for the LUXURY of having open park nearby instead of the tightly packed dense populated areas. In fact, visiting several of those areas recently, it really made me feel grateful that the place I live now at least still have much sky to see.

But the only solution would be a firestorm downtown though. There's no way the city can be re-designed without being razed down by force majeur. The compensation money would be ridiculous if it's going to be done legally.

The Wall

There are two kind of Fortress… or have you ever thought that basically a Prison is an inverted Fortress ?

A fortress protects us from threat outside, the same way as a prison protects us from the threat “outside” (or we call it inside because it’s relatively surrounded by our freeman zone).

Wouldn’t it be the same with the so-called Walled Garden ?
We hate walled garden that kept us from going outside.
But… what about a walled garden that kept every of those poor soul outside of our luxury ?

Gamed price

When going around in Jakarta, banners and billboards advertising properties are common sight. Seems like in this difficult time, the only segment you can rely is those who has excess money (lower class can just go to hell?).

One of the things in those advertisement is the statement that in xx days the price will go up. Say who ? The developers, and everyone will just follow their lead to pay.

The demand is created because many peoples are not buying home, they're buying investment and thus raising price is an important thing. I think it throws them into irrational mind and follow the lead from the developers that want to keep on bubbling the price of their products.

They raise the price by themselves and in the end they say it as if the value of the property itself raise up to magnificent proportion naturally. Making better housing even more out of reach for the common isn't it ?

[Add]

There's a column in the local business newspaper (Kontan) with a related issue. Is the property price in Indonesia bubbling ?

The writer, which I believe is far more experienced in business investment than the ignorant-me, think that it's not a bubble in Indonesia. At least, many peoples in Indonesia used cash payment instead of mortgage like in the west. The problem is how the house owner later use the property itself, because they could leverage and bubble the value themselves.

Although, being a business newspaper, I think there's also an interest to ensure and promote local investment so the idea IMO is giving a peace of heart that property is still a safe place to plant all those excess cash.

The short idea about developers keep on raising price of premium location without regards of supply and demand ends inconclusively within several paragraph before the end.

I still wish it would reach saturation point and spiral down for those who actually need the housing to live in.

Retro

Today, we’re checking an old title for re-release. The management seems to be trying to capitalize on old popular titles, those that are “true and tested” for lifeline. Well, the fact that the industry has changed also have part in it.

New titles are coming out like Soviet production line. Among it, the “quality” is getting less than what they used to be.
No, I don’t think so. But with so many coming at once, they have lost the closeness feeling. Back then, there’s only so much entertainment you can have and they’re your close friends. Now, they’re something off the shelf, regardless of quality.

Then from another field that became my hobby, camera. Retro camera design has been stirring the news, especially with Fuji’s new product.

What’s with that retro anyway ? Some that I’ve heard is…

Photo appreciation, am I doing it right ?

One of the question I often had to myself when about to finally find a comment for photo posted in the internet is... am I doing this right ?

Other than image critics which give (harsh, trolling or constructive) input to the photographer, appreciative comments often is about the character of the picture, composition of the picture, or how the photographer managed to capture a great or even perfect moment in that picture. About how deep the meaning contained and the sophisticated concepts, or techniques. It's about the man behind the gun.

Ignoring redundancy

Is really a bad thing... at least I felt it currently. What's supposed to be three to four layers of security is reduced to one.

Trust is a nice way to say it, time efficiency is another way. But in the end, I think I realized there are weak points where trust should be replaced by worries. I mean, imagine digging a cave and skipping the bars because there are parts that's strong enough to support the cave. But in weaker places, those support bars should be installed before further strengthening.

Anyway, I just hope things could be solved in relatively smooth way

Out of my elements

For a batch of updates now. I hasn’t have the time to write down stories from the last few weeks. Today, since I’m down with (hopefully just) a cold, lets track it all back.

This is from three weeks ago, an event called the Brightspot Market. It’s a market event for young designers to directly present their design in physical form to their target audience, the young and hip community.

Personally, I’m coming just for the pictures. Being in this kind of place really made me feel like out of my element and I don’t have good prejudice on them either.

Well, in my eyes at least, the target are peoples with high self-consciousness and doesn’t take self-identity lightly. It’s as important as part of pride.

Young, fresh, rebellious, out of the box, all of it like promise of a bright future up ahead compared to the shithole of petty workers who just live and wait for death to come.

Being part of the movement that “care” and “make changes” to the world, not the powerless losers who has given up on the world. A hero to the world.

Frankly it’s still something I find hard to understand, as much as the “American Dream” kind of thing.

Embrace and Expand (part 2)

How about a social media client first ? I always wanted a place where I can almost do all my internet services from.

Imagine…

• A full Facebook & Twitter client, complete with file upload services and a lot of extendable functions.
• An RSS reader with deep integration of commenting services such as for Wordpress.com, or Disqus. You can comment from the client and read other comments from the client too.
• Check-in client for various services that can monitor all the locations from single interface.
• Media upload and browser client for services like Youtube, Flickr, Picasa.
• …all of this ever expandable with modules that can be installed to the system.

And not to forget is a dedicated community that will quickly develop the clients for more obscure services. As the smartphone platform war has shown, service providers wont bother with smaller platforms, so you will have to take matters to your own hand. But the majority is not developers. Sadly, there’s also developers who only want to do what they think is cool when they have the time, so this is nigh impossible.

One of the best services I ever had is FriendFeed for one single killer-feature. Virtual friends. This make the service into a specialized RSS reader grouped to “Person”. I always love this feature because it address a grave issue of social network, they want to spread virally and force you to invite friends before the service can be enjoyed. If your friends don’t want to bother, you’re all out of luck and the new place is just a dead failed ghost town.

Early adopters, who’s enthusiastic to have their friends joining should have the ability to prepare the land.

• Prepare the “virtual friends” and curate sources before inviting their friends to join. This way, when that friend joined they won’t feel troubled because they’re “alone”. They will get stream of information from their friends from the time they joined. Why not just use Facebook and Twitter integration ? Because we need something more than just a Facebook/Twitter client.
• Prepare the account and connections, because their friends wont bother connecting their services. They want it to just work and since they’re invited, they would expect it to be all prepared.
• Help with setting up and troubleshooting user-side things.

The point is, make the whole service work out of the box without much need of setup.

After the mass is secured, then expand the feature and functions. Play nice with the other services, but also give added value that peoples would want to use.