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The “Fail?” Whale

Aug 15

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in inspiration, web-technology | 1 Comment

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Meet the “Fail Whale”…

The Fail Whale, originally entitled "Lifting up a Dreamer" by Yiying Lu

The Fail Whale, originally entitled "Lifting up a Dreamer" by Yiying Lu

the image that is shown when the infamous micro-blogging site, Twitter, is overloaded.
For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it is a social networking site where users can post a 140-character long of sentences, to express and announce anything from the party they’re gonna attend or about the movie that they just watched, pretty much like your facebook.com’s status updates or the karma-driven plurk entries at plurk.com.

Twitter is currently down for unplanned maintenance *doh*?

Most sites show a relatively boring and annoying “not found” and “site currently down” page to their users during down time or when their user stumble upon a broken link.

Twitter, however, chose to express empathy to their users during down time. Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, chose an illustration, that best illustrates the teamwork at Twitter working to resolve the problem, on iStockPhoto a while back.

The Fail Whale Artist, Yiying Lu, photo by Nick Cubbin

The Fail Whale Artist, Yiying Lu, photo by Nick Cubbin

The image is an image of a flock of birds (associated with the Twitter bird) are lifting a smiling whale from the ocean. The effect was found so effective and so touching. The users are entertained by the cute smiling whale being lifted by the flock of birds, instead. Some users suggested that they give the whale a name. Later the whale finally got a name: “Fail Whale”, a name coined by one of the fans and twitter users.

The Fail Whale

The “fail whale” became so popular, that it spawned lots of fans, fan sites, fan pages and groups. One fan, even contacted the original creator of the “fail whale”, Ms. Yiying Lu to inform her of her work that is now popular among twitter users world-wide. Ms. Lu, who at first is unaware of Twitter when she first created and uploaded the illustration to iStockPhoto, suddenly has gained a lot of supporters and fans of her artwork. I can only imagined the surprise and the excitement she felt when she found out that her work is used on a very famous micro-blogging site.

Soon, fans found out the real back story of the “fail whale”, which was originally named “Lifting Up a Dreamer” and was intended as an e-card for her friend overseas. Ms. Lu suddenly became as famous as her friendly smiling whale.

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HOME… a documentary about Mother Earth, our home planet

Jun 5

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in green, inspiration | No Comments

Celebrating World Environment Day,

an UN (United Nations) programme to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. A 90-minute film beautifully shot and made by filmmakers Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Luc Besson. You’ll see the wonders of Earth (the shots were beautiful and breath-taking, I thought I was looking at a painting, wow!) and the damage made on Earth by humanity. It is a reminder and a “soft” wake up call for us living on Earth, especially with the apparent global-warming and climate change we are up against now. Official Site: http://www.home-2009.com/us/index.html

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“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Feb 20

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in inspiration | 2 Comments

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

If you haven’t seen this movie, you should notice that this movie will “steal” almost three hours of your life. IMHO, it would be a three-hour of your life well-spent on such a wonderful movie.

After watching this movie, I believe some of you will treasure and appreciate your time and your life even more.

The movie starts with a scene where a dying old woman is lying on a hospital bed. She tells her daughter of a story of a blind clockmaker whom made a clock for the city hall (or perhaps the train-station? I’m not sure where the clock was erected) that rotate backwards (counter-clockwise). You should pay attention to this litte prologue, because you will see this very same clock again in the movie, near the end.

Then the old woman makes a request to her daughter to read a diary for her. Unbeknown by her daughter, this diary turned out to be the life journal of someone very dear to her.

Okay, I don’t want to spoil the story for those of you who haven’t seen it yet. Those of you who don’t mind spoilers, just go ahead and “read more”.

Some might say that the first part of the movie was rather slow and boring, but hell no, it was the most wonderful part of the story. You will see the true nature of people. Some are afraid of the unknown. Some view the unknown as a miracle, a gift from God.

A child was born somewhat prematurely, and he was born with the appearance of an old man despite of his age. The mother died when giving birth. His father was sad and panicked when he saw the baby had a face of an elderly man. Despite his wife’s dying wish, he gave away the baby and abandoned him at an elderly foster home.

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So the story of this mysterious baby unfolds for the next two hours. The baby, like the clock in the prologue, age backwards, the more he ages, the younger his physical appearance becomes. Read the rest of this entry »

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How much does it worth?

Feb 18

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in inspiration, management | No Comments

Good question.

How much does it “really” worth to you?

A glass of water in your everyday life? Cheap, right?

How about: a glass of water when you are lost in the desert? Priceless…

Today, my friend has shown me a website that “calculate” how much your domain worth. Okay, the site shown that some of the sites are worth thousands of dollars. Hmmm, sounds lucrative, right? But… will someone actually buy it?

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Time Management

Feb 12

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in inspiration, management | No Comments

randy-pausch

The most common excuse that you probably hear or even say a lot is “I haven’t got time…” Isn’t it? :)
“I haven’t got time for… this… and that…”
“I wished that I had more time…”

Time is your most valuable resource that you cannot buy back. We should manage our time even better than we manage our finances.

Randy Pausch’s Time Management presentation

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758

76min video (at video.google.com) [Note: total filesize 177MB]

[click here for the HTML version]

Please go to the late Prof. Pausch’s homepage and watch his other presentations.
For those of you, whom haven’t heard about Prof. Randy Pausch… he was made famous for his “Last Lecture”: “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”

Hmmm, I must go do something else… I’ll get back to this subject later… enjoy the lecture in the mean time. :)

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Barack Obama, Fulfillment of a Dream

Jan 20

Posted by Dedy Sofyan in inspiration, politics | No Comments

Barack Obama, Fulfillment of a Dream…

a History in the making, a new Dawn of Hope and Change…

When I first saw Obama’s speech about change, about optimism “Yes, We Can!” Wow! No, I am not an American citizen, but I was moved and amazed.

This is THE leader… the kind of leader any nation could ever dreamed of… Even my nation could use such leader to pull the nation out of harm’s way and recent crisis.

For the last few days and weeks, you could watch Obama’s tribute to the late Abraham Lincoln, and the late Marthin Luther King, Jr.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Abraham Lincoln

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

19 January, Martin Luther King Day and today, 20 January 2009 is the day of inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, a new day in history. The day Martin Luther King’s dream: “a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” came true to even greater extent.

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And so, the whole world watch… on January 20, 2009… a dream of hope and change… came true… and so help us God that this dream can be shared and spread to the entire earth. =)

[UPDATES]

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Before you click play, just a note: This video is 133.95MB in size. =)

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References:

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