Too Lazy to Do It Twice

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eureka!20262 min read

Too Lazy to Do It Twice

If a plugin can do it, why should I?

There's an old saying about giving a difficult job to a smart but lazy person, because they'll probably find an easier way to do it. I don't remember who said it. But I think I understand the idea.

I enjoy designing things. What I don't particularly enjoy is doing the same repetitive work over and over again. Take technical drawings, for example. Imagine I've finished designing a table in SketchUp. The geometry is there. The dimensions are there. Everything is already modeled in 3D.

But then I still have to prepare the technical drawings. Top view, side views, perspective, dimensions, layout, and finally export everything into a PDF.

Wait a minute.

All that information is already inside the model. Why am I doing this manually? So I made a plugin. Now I just select the model, click Generate Technical Drawing, and the plugin does the rest. Multiple views, complete with dimensions, exported into a PDF that's ready to send. You can download the plugin here

One click, and you get a PDF file.

Then my teammates saw it. "Hey, can I have that plugin?". Apparently, I wasn't the only one who didn't enjoy doing things the hard way. And that got me thinking. I've actually been making SketchUp plugins for two different reasons. Some are designed to speed up the process. They help me work faster while I remain in control of the creative decisions.

Others follow a much simpler philosophy:

If a plugin can do it, why should I?
For tasks that are repetitive, predictable, and can be handled through a set of rules, I'd rather let the computer take care of them. Of course, sometimes I probably spend more time developing a plugin than it would take to finish the original task manually.

But that's only the first time.

The next time I need it, the plugin is already there. And the time after that. And the hundredth time after that.
Eventually, I decided to share some of these plugins for free on GitHub. Nothing particularly revolutionary. Just little tools I originally made to make my own work easier.

If they happen to save someone else a few hours, even better.
Maybe I'm lazy. But I prefer being lazy once.

I build things, break things, figure out why they broke, and occasionally share what I've learned.

A child with family beside a birthday cake

Best website certificate for Desain Produk

Left to right: me and my mother — building a chuck glider at LT V Pramuka — the school magazine team — the .com bubble era.

I've spent much of my career on problems that look impossible at first. The useful move is to make the problem smaller: challenge the assumption, map what I actually have, and turn one mission into pieces I can solve.

The process

It often starts with a day or two of quiet thinking and a piece of paper covered in messy mind maps. I move things around, split them apart, and keep questioning them. The first map is rarely the final one. A shape shows up when the pieces finally sit still.

Before AI

I started on computers long before today's tools: BASICA in the MS-DOS era, then Pascal and Turbo Prolog. The interest was how a system thinks, not only how to write the program. Critical thinking is still the foundation. AI hasn't taught me how to solve problems. It has made it possible to prototype, test, and build much faster.

This site

A personal playground: part archive, part workshop, part collection of experiments. Projects, tools, freeware, things that worked, things that didn't, and the lessons along the way. Some of it is polished. Some of it is still a work in progress. That's the point.

Network operations

Head of NOC at PT Meganusa Lintas Buana. Operations, reliability, and infrastructure, and problems where real systems and real people depend on the outcome.

Technical leadership

Technical Director at Crea. Large-scale web and learning platforms, including ASEAN-related digital work. The job was turning broad, demanding requirements into systems a team could actually deliver.

Digital publishing

CTO at ZettaMedia. A portfolio of news portals and the cloud infrastructure under them, balancing technical decisions with what a normal operating day actually needs.

Creative operations

Director at INOVACE / TANCORP. An internal creative agency and a multidisciplinary team, connecting design, production, and technical execution.

Design and automation

At Avian Brands: design operations, packaging, brand experiences, factory communication, workflow automation, and tools that help creative teams spend less time on repetitive work.

Independent

E-ink publishing, interactive reading, browser tools, small games, creative software, and automation. Most of them begin with “What if…?”

Areas of expertise

Visual Communication & Graphic Design
Manufacturing Product & Industrial Design
UI/UX & Information Systems
Creative Direction & Brand Strategy
Project Management & Leadership
Process Automation & AI Integration
Problem Solving & Systems Thinking

let’s
build

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