Welcome to this website!

#1 June 2026 / Week 23

Finally, it's the time!

Initial commit

Hi, my name is Ufal.

I am proudly to announce this website that acts like a zine called Summary of The Week. This zine will talk about any kind of things that interests me throughout the days and will be issued every week, usually at the start of the week.

Feel free to check out the other pages for further information, especially the About page. As I posted this issue, the RSS feed might be broken at the moment, so the link is not there yet. Come back next time when the next issue will be released.

It's Wednesday, 2 in the morning. I still sat on my desk, drafting the this website even though I haven't plan it to push it to Neocities yet. But I do have strong foundation for now. While I decide to not using a generator, whether made by someone else or by myself like my second website, I do make a generator for the RSS feed with a Python script because it's a tedious work if I want to do it by hand.

Being free

When I said I want to separate my saved bookmarks off Facebook and Instagram, I mean it.

I started doing this to be less dependant with my phone and in extend with certain platforms when it comes to keeping important things and information. Not to mention to reduce screen time even if it's just for a fraction of it.

I do have a publicly accessible bookmark page on my website, and at least that is even better than any save feature in any closed social platforms.

Sharing is caring and keeping is freedom, I guess.

C++ always wins

For a little bit of disclosure, I don't have any extended experience with the most of programming language, in this case C, C++ and Lisp. But I do have interest on them when... I want it otherwise. Today I watched a video by LaurieWired about on how C++ always wins over Lisp and a story about Richard P. Gabriel making some essays around it. I can't really able to conclude about what's on the video since I don't have any capability around the language. But I still have an interest about the history of computers and programming languages. You can read Gabriel's writings on his website at dreamsongs.com, by the way.

Sidewalk with shades

Car dependency is a common issue in some cities around the world, and cities in Indonesia are also one of those cities that suffering with this problem. I don't really want to talk about the political side of this issue that in fact is also the key on how the solution and act around it being implemented. But as someone who also have some interest in urban development and environment, let's talk about it.

In comparison to the United States, Indonesia has a different kind of challange on how to be able to achieve such kind of things. Many of those still fall into politics, legislation, and economy. As we might know, these two are different in many ways, so we can't just compare them side by side. But Indonesia alone basically doesn't have a guideline as comprehensive as the United States in terms of city planning. Despite there's a law that requires the people to ask for permission to build a building, the growth of the city is too organic and informal. Mixed-use, sure, but there's no clear guide on how to make such growth actually moving towards pedestrian-friendly area. The jump in population can't match the development of the city itself. Which is will requires most of us to use motorcycle just to move around because the street is unpleasent to walk to and also the lack of public transport.

Besides of that, if let's say we are talking about the smaller streets, we also have a quite big problem. The lack of shades. Since there's no law on how things should be build and develop. Trees? We don't care. Hot? Just blame the weather, I think. Can you just see on how some streets inside the Sebelas Maret University is actually pleasant to walk to because of the shades. Yeah, maybe it isn't comparable with the streets in the housing complex or suburbs, but they should be aware of it since ever. Although some parts of the university complex are also falls into the streets that's not friendly to the pedestrians.

That being said though, despite Indonesia being this big is unable to achieve such kind of thing in the average cities, some major cities already has more better experience for the pedestrians, but usually it happens in the core part of it. And for my current commute to my college, it's not surprising that most of the path I took isn't pedestrian-friendly, even though I live in the center part of Klaten and Sebelas Maret University is in Surakarta. Ir. Sutami is a nice main road that has slow lane to walk with at least.

There's no "go back" for Indonesian netizens because they are never had it once

We learned in the last couple of years that a lot of people, old and young, decided to try to off the grid from the mainstream and walled garden internet to embrace the small web, old web, indieweb, or any kind of similar movement. Being simple, being unique, and being you. But I don't really want to talk about how this kind of thing emerge, because there are a ton of articles and videos availabel out there to take a look at. But I really want to know this kind of thing, but in the eyes of Indonesian people on the internet. And it might going to surprise you.

Even though commercialized ISP has been established since 1994 by IndoNet in private sector and then 1996 by PT Pos Indonesia under the name Wasantara Net in public/state-owned sector, the majority of people doesn't have access to it. It could be economy issue, or education issue, or just simply having an internet access, let alone a computer is a privilege. I said this too broad and harsh, sorry.

But as we can see the later years we know that most of Indonesians (and also other people from other countries) get the access to the internet for the first time not from a desktop computer, but smartphone starting in the mid 2010s. A starting point to technology has been moving towards a different perspective. Someone who use a technology from a desktop obviously have a different perspective than someone who use a smartphone. Let's not start with how people can't even tell what is a file and filesystem on their phone. Thanks, Apple.

Let's go back with small web/old web. This kind of thing maybe was a niche too and not everyone use it. And yes, until today, it is still a niche. But back then, everyone on the internet are basically just using and exist with whatever they have. A personal website. Today is different, because at least someone you know have a social profile on a social platform. Not only that right now we are doing social platform, some of us started with smartphone and have no familiarity with the website in its naked form. Well, I mean, in a browser. But I started to think that this point is applicable to other countries too, even US, not just Indonesia.

But again, the condition in Indonesia was bad (too generalized). My first internet access was in 2010, I believe, even though my first computer was in 2005, when I believe I can start remembering things. I born in 2001, by the way. I'm an early zoomers. Some of the trend from the previous generation I took second-handedly.Which is including small web/old web.

Thank goodness, I can absord that kind of trend and mindset so I could start off my own journey making things on the web. But what about my friends around my age? As I said before, this kind of thing isn't not for everyone even back in the day. But today is different because everyone already hop on their social profiles instead of sitting in front of their text editor typing in HTML, publish the files, and hoping someone would visit them. No one never had a chance to feel that kind of experience, let alone wanting to spend some time playing around with it.

Unless they are a nerd, like me.