java

  • Yogyakarta, Indonesia

    Yogyakarta, Indonesia

    After making the long trek by bus across Eastern Java, Jan and I finally made it to the cultural capital of Indonesia, Yogyakarta. As the cultural capital, the town is filled with vendors selling locally made silver jewlrey, batiked textiles, and a whole host of other artwork and handycrafts. Jan and I only had one…

  • Indonesia’s Prambanan, Surviving After The 2006 Java Earthquake

    Indonesia’s Prambanan, Surviving After The 2006 Java Earthquake

    After sunrise at Borobudur, Jan and I headed over to the Hindu Temple of Prabanan. The temple’s design and construction is a stark contrast to the looks of Borobudur. Although the main temples still stand, Java’s 2006 earthquake destroyed almost all of the peripheral temples, leaving only foundations. Reconstruction efforts continue, and we were lucky…

  • Sunrise at Mt. Bromo

    Sunrise at Mt. Bromo

    Leg two of our journey across Java took us to the foot of Mt. Bromo, a stratovolcano that lies smoking inside the Tengger caldera. Pics. After a long enough drive from Mt. Ijen to the mountains surrounding Mt. Bromo, we arrived in the mountain town of Sukapura to check in to the Yoschi Hotel. Nestled…

  • Mining Pure Sulfur in the Smoking Crater of Mt. Ijen, Java

    Mining Pure Sulfur in the Smoking Crater of Mt. Ijen, Java

    High up in the mountains of East Java, Indonesia, Mt. Ijen’s crater smokes and bubbles with sulfur gas. The sulfur hear leaks out of the volcanic crater in a giant plume of smoke, and local miners, wearing little more than gas masks, collect the sulfur and hike it out of the crater on their backs.…

  • Exploring the Batik Markets of Yogyakarta, Java

    After taking part in Ana and Andang’s beautiful wedding, I went the next morning with my group of girls to explore Yogyakarta’s Batik industry. Yogyakarta is knows as the cultural capital of Java, and one of the crafts that they do there is Batik. A few shots from our explorations: Waking up in the morning…

  • For Twitter, New Server = Lower Latency

    For Twitter, New Server = Lower Latency

    After switching to a Java server called “Blender”, Twitter really cut down search latency. Good to see that they’re migrating away from Ruby over to a Java server. Hopefully this will allow them to continue to scale, and keep latencies low even in mega crunch times, such as natural disasters or political uprisings.. In the…