admin

Putting the Grate Back in Immigration.

by

Visa HellLast week I had to go to immigration to renew my visa. I'd been there a couple of months ago, and although the process was long-winded and expensive, it didn't cause me too much pain. Therefore when I revisited the office last week, in the Intramuros district of Manila, I was entirely unprepared for the seven circles of hell which awaited.

Last time I'd got there at around 11, and had to wait until 3.30 for my visa, which had effectively taken up a whole day. This time I hopped into a taxi at 7.30, before the inevitable traffic jams had a chance to build up, and was there at 8am when they opened. My first surprise was that I wasn't allowed in the building. At all. Two months ago I'd had no problems when I turned up wearing shorts, but since then they'd put up a cheaply photocopied notice saying "No shorts or sandals", and were refusing to let anyone thusly attired in the building.

Read more

Eee and Me.

by

Among all the hype for the wafer thin object of desire, the Apple Air, I have maintained perspective. While my Mac-oriented friends swoon and drool, I did the proper geeky thing and focused on the key question "What do you actually get for your money?" The design is superb of course, and that has value in itself, but for USD 1800, you're effectively getting low-spec hardware and a machine that's missing a few useful features.

I personally use a DVD RW for backing up files when I don't have access to a portable hard disk, or when I want a more permanent archive. I also install a lot of software, and alternative OSes, so I use it for that too. And not to mention the DVDs I play on it, so I'd definitely miss having an optical drive. However I do understand that the main reason for axing the optical drive is to keep the unit slim, so I can see why they excluded it. However, putting on a few more USB ports might have been a good idea, so you can plug in an external one along with your mouse.

Read more

Power to the People

by

Broken PylonThe Philippines is not blessed with the best electricity system in the world, and its certainly not the cheapest, so it makes sense in some ways that they're a little careful with it. But how that manifests itself is sometimes broken, sometimes scary, and sometimes a little of both.

Take for example the number of cars driving around without lights on at night. These are primarily taxis, jeepneys and buses, and its not in an "Oh its just past 6pm and I forgot to turn on the lights" sense that they do it, its in a "This electricity stuff costs money, so by driving around without lights on I will save up to 10 Pesos a day of gasoline." sense. Way to go.

Read more

Smart gets Dumber

by

So I probably didn't mention the incident last weekend when three Smart Broadband employees came and sat at my house and watched files download. I was demonstrating to them how slow my connection is, and the fact that it is impossible for me to download any large files, or watch any streaming media. I've been complaining about this for the last 5 months, on and off, so I was delighted to finally get some response.

Read more

Big Switch 6: Virtually there.

by

OK a quick recap from my last post, where I realised that then next step was going to take some explaining … A week or so went by without incident and it was time to consider the final stage: moving Windows to a virtual machine and getting rid of the old Windows partition. Here are the main stages.

  1. Make a windows install CD from the install files on the windows partition (Thinkpads don’t have an install CD, they use an Install partition)
  2. Install vmware on Ubuntu and make a Windows Virtual Machine.
  3. Delete the old Windows and IBM Install partitions
  4. Re-arrange the remaining partitions to suit the new arrangement.

    Read more