Power to the People

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.

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Smart gets Dumber

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.

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Big Switch 6: Virtually there.

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.

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Ruminations on Taxis

Taxis in Manila do one of two things: If you're standing there waiting for a taxi to appear, they hide. Sometimes they'll drive by with the light on, but they won't stop, because that just means they forgot to switch the light off. You can wave your arms around, shout, whistle, whatever you like, but … Read more

Message from Above

I was in Church the other weekend attending a mass. As I'm not a religious person, my attention was beginning to wander. Some birds had taken up residence in the roof, so I was watching them for a while, which struck me as mildly odd. Then the choir started up to lead the congregation in … Read more