Tired with Telkom Speedy's less than average ADSL service I decided to start monitoring my ADSL modem line download rate. More explanations on the website in the about section.

Here's the link, check it out: http://speedy.duaduniaku.com/

Every Telkom Speedy customer should log into their ADSL modem and check the actual data rate speed they are receiving. Supposedly we were on the "Game" package but then I realized that the game package should offer a 1024 Kbps download speed and 256 Kbps upload speed. Since we signed up with Speedy our upload speed has always been 128 Kbps.

After we complained with Telkom it took them 3 weeks to correct this problem. On top of that they upgraded us to the more expensive "Executive" package, which offers 2048 Kbps down and 512 Kbps up. I've paid for the Executive package last month only to see that my download speed is still 1024 Kbps down and 128 Kbps up. Just a few days ago they adjusted the upload speed to 256 Kbps. But I'm still on the game package and paying for the executive package. What gives?

Besides the service is horribly expensive. The executive package comes close to 1 100 000 Rp including taxes. An insane amount for a service that is quite unreliable. Every time it rains the ADSL line goes down. And it rains a lot in Jakarta. They don't seem to understand that ADSL is a very sensitive technology, sensitive to line conditions and distance to the ADSL aggregator. You should see the conditions of the copper lines here. It's a miracle there's any connection at all!

Back to my first point. Everyone should log into their ADSL modem. Usually you can find it at http://192.168.1.1 (the address of your default gateway). The login should be 'admin' and the password could be 'admin' as well (by default I think) or your phone number at home. It could even be blank. If you have the type of modem I have, you can go to the device status page and check the line data rate of the ADSL connection.

See screenshot

I also advise you to change the admin password. When your connection is down because of rain or bad conditions, log into your device and check the SNR margin. I believe these values depict the quality of the signal on the phone line. Usuall when the ADSL connection fails, it's because these values are way too low. It's also possible that your data rate speed drops because of bad line conditions.

Check these values and complain to Telkom Speedy if they do not reflect the speeds you are paying for!

A quick help for people who are developing GWT (Google Web Toolkit) applications on Mac OS X. GWT uses Safari for its development hosted mode. When I tried to ran it today, I got the following error message: "GWT quit unexpectedly while using the libgwt-ll.jnilib plug-in".

The problem has been fixed but will not be pushed until Safari 4.0.5. The bug report can be found here.

And a solution is posted in the comments.

Hope this helps out anyone experiencing this problem. It is not your code! I also thought that it was due to a coding error. in fact many thought so.

The European Union has just ratified a new law that makes the Internet fall under the list of services considered to be of "general interest". The law that governs this list of services (which includes water and electricity) protects residents from being cut off by the supplier. Every EU resident is guaranteed by law to have use of basic services like electricity, water and since today also Internet. Here's the article (in Dutch).

In contrast today, here in our home in Jakarta, our water well dried up. The water table level has dropped below the point our pump can reach and we will have to make our well deeper. We live in a suburb of jakarta, about 16km from the center. Yet there is no public service water network to which we can connect. Let me list some of the things that we use water for, because it's something I'm so used to being available and then suddenly you realize what you can't do: wash (clothes, house and yourself of course), provide a living environment for fish (pond), use the toilet in hygienic way, ...

Digging a deeper well is not really a long term solution and it has some dangers of its own, as this article dating from 2007 warns about.

Another serious problem in Jakarta is power. This week we started off with a power outage that lasted 7 hours in the night from Monday to Tuesday. Try to keep your food fresh (refrigerators have to be < 8 degrees C constantly to keep food healthy to eat). And try to sleep without air conditioning or a fan in a tropical climate.

Then they cut of the power for another 4 hours on Tuesday afternoon. Totalling a power outage of 11 hours in a 24 hour time frame. What's worse, the state owned electricty company PLN said Jakarta will suffer blackouts "indefinitely" because of "budget constraints" as explained in this article.

I don't know where this is going. I used to be optimistic about life here, but I don't see any signals that anyone is busy trying to improve things. Legislators of this country fall asleep in the general assembly instead of passing laws. Corruption makes money disappear into the pockets of filthy rich people instead of being used for developing much needed infrastructure. Where is the waste / water recycling plan? Where is the water distribution development plan? What is done about the electricity shortage? Building new power plants? Ha! From what I can tell from the article's I've read regarding this matter, it's not that there is not enough power being generated; it's the distribution network that cannot handle the amount of power that needs to be distributed.

A few months ago some transformers blew up in electricity substations. Overheated (probably because of aged equipment and bad maintenance. Have you seen some of the buses that drive around in the city??) because they were running at 90% capacity (PLN's safety standard is 65% capacity). Note to the people in charge: When you plan to build new power plants, make sure your current network can support the added capacity. In other words, look at the whole picture.

This place needs a strong ruler, someone with a "no bullshit" attitude and legislators who are litterate. Politicians should be academics, not army generals or businessmen.

Thus far my rant and personal opinion on things.

Watched The Big Lebowski again the other day, ah what a movie. Legendary.

I checked out the original motion picture soundtrack and I was very disappointed. Two songs I think they should have defintely included:

• CCR - Looking out my back door
• Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas

I'm testing out the new blog engine code for this site. I've updated Rails to version 2.3.3 and added some improvements. It's now possible to find older posts using the tag cloud on the side. This still needs some work though.

I've also updated the syndication feed. Switched to an atom feed now.