Web is still here

World Wide Web, WWW in short or the Web to simplify, will not dead. The fundamental of web technologies remain the same after two decades which consist of hypertext document, client-side scripting, and cascading style sheet. It doesn’t change and will not change anytime soon.

The web is the best medium to start new solution for any purposes. The web could provide diverse multimedia application and information to its users. The web service could run anywhere without installing new application on users side. User only need to install a browser to connect to the web and not limited to GUI environment. User could accessing the web in Text User Interface (TUI) or Command Line Interface (CLI) using text based browser such as Lynx.

Mobile application isn’t a drop-in replacement to the web and just like its big brother, desktop application, any mobile applications are created for specific environment.

Home Lab : What virtualization product?

I am not solely work as developer but also as an IT Pro in few projects just to pay the bill. Working with new technology, creating test environment, and solving services problem are too demanding for my main computer. I know VirtualBox but the host system were taking too much memory and can’t allocate required memory for guest system.

One time, a friend of mine phoned me to sell his old and unused HP ML110 G5 server for good price. I took the offer and upgrade the memory to 8GB. I did a research for free or open-source hypervisor type 1 virtualisation solution on the market. I got three solutions which are VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, and Proxmox VE.  I throw off Hyper-V from the list because there is no free “official” client available to manage the host remotely.

I don’t need Enterprise grade feature. This is my pro cons list:

VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi is famous product among IT Pro. You could find plenty tutorial on internet.

PRO

1. Well known.
2. Free license key.
3. Console can be accessed from VMware Workstation or VMware Player with tricks.

CONS

1. Limited support for old server.
2. vSphere Client is Windows only application.
3. vSphere Client have no editing support for vm machine version 10 or newer.

Citrix XenServer

Citrix XenServer is great virtualization product but not for casual usage.

PRO

1. Free.
2. Support GPU PassThrough for Guest.
3. XEN is the best virtualisation by far. It’s fast.

CONS

1. Windows only client.
2. Too complex for Home Lab.

Proxmox VE

Virtualization solution on top of Debian Project.

PRO

1. Free
2. Support KVM (Hypervisor Type 1) and LXC (Container/OS Level Virtualization)
3. Web Based Management

CONS

1. Windows guest performance is slow compared to ESXi / XEN
2. Can’t mount ISO from client side, you must upload to storage.

All virtualization share common problem for importing/converting vm from desktop virtualization software like VirtualBox.

In the end, I am taking Proxmox VE as my virtualization solution because web based management system which I can use it on any operating system without installing desktop application.

nurasto.com domain after 13 years

nurasto.com domain is the first domain that I have. I take my last name for it and purposed to be a website that could sell my ability in web programming. I got some projects from this website and few projects failed to be delivered. I had no single plan to manage failure and to be honest I were very depressed at that time.

Recent day, I found something called Dunning–Kruger effect and quite sure that I was the victim of that phenomenon. I felt superior and over confident but actually I am overestimating my ability which made me wrote an article about Failure is part of freelance life.

Even in very hard time and keep staying under the radar. I am renewing this domain for few years and without no new content because I am afraid to act more destructive to my self. nurasto.com becoming very dull and virtually dead website. This is the main issue that I want to address.

In the near future, nurasto.com will only deliver English content. Any articles already written in my mother language, Bahasa Indonesia, will still exists. I will update the website design and make it mobile friendly.

It’s time to change and fix the problem. nurasto.com will change it’s purpose from freelancer website to be knowledge sharing website.

My 2016 Resolution?

I would like to say Happy New Year 2016 to everyone. Wishing everyone prosperous journey to come in this year. The year of 2015 has passed by with many stories both good and bad. Back in 205, I had a resolution “A restart” because my life was a miserable and messy for past few years.

In this year, the resolution is “POST & Boot”. In this mean time, I will checking my skills readiness and boot a new start.  I have plan to build a IT solutions company in this year. I will be more focus to entering middle and big organization while keeping the small business as a side job.

In the past, I was freelancer. My old friends and acquaintance still thinks that I am freelancer. In 2015, I am making a restart to be an entrepreneur and learn many ways to achieve that. It wasn’t easy and still in progress. Building a new company in Indonesia is quite tedious task. Indonesia doesn’t have OPC (One Person Company) equivalent like in India or some states in USA, in which the owner own all company shares, the company recognized by law and owner’s responsibility is limited by paid up capital.

I am still doing computer programming because it’s a long-time hobby. My company will focus on data center and IT infrastructure development. Software development still on the list and I am still consider whether the software development service will included as core service in the menu.

I am still looking for a jackpot and very happy working on it. I wish the best for 2016. Happy New Year!

There’s no magic on HTML 5

It’s not rare I found people talking about the magic of HTML 5. HTML is still HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), an hypertext doesn’t have power to create interactivity but more to data. Browser will read HTML file sequentially from top to the bottom and queue any elements like CSS, JavaScript, Images and other multimedia content to download.

In contrast to previous specs, HTML 5 specification facilitate semantic tags. Technical changes specified on that document are more to browser developer. Browsers tends to be permissive to unknown tag, it will degrade gracefully rather than showing errors.

In web developer perspective, we learn the specification and should be not force unnecessary idealism to much except on how the elements should be placed on right place, for example, we shouldn’t put form inside a form. Why? because it state on specification that the form elements can’t be recursive. That kind of idealism should be kept.

Another example, other web developers use header while you are not using it. You are using div tags, with id named header. Wrong? of course not but you’re not utilize the specification to the maximum level. Is it the content will be broken? Well, in short no.

HTML 5 doesn’t give you animation, CSS does. HTML 5 give you canvas place holder but doesn’t give you canvas programming, JavaScript does. Most importantly, HTML 5 doesn’t affect on how you code a web page. It’s still same thing for the last 22 years.