What a climb that was!
November 21, 2004It’s been a week since we hiked Pulag, but my head is still in the clouds, and my heart is still in the mountains. First off, I’m unbelievably proud of my sons. Here’s Aralt (age 5) and Caolan (age 7) on the summit of Pulag, the second highest peak in the Philippines, on a bright glorious day (it had been raining miserably the day before, on our way up to camp).
The sunshine was a big and pleasant surprise! The views were awesome. It was Caolan’s third time up, and the previous two times it was raining horribly.
It was quite an accomplishment for Aralt, who can be really quite fragile. Here he is, scratching his hand on some talahib at 9T feet. Buti lang, kasama ang nanay!
But we made it! And here we are clowning around on our way back to camp:
This was a very well planned operation, and I think several factors contributed to Aralt’s success:
- Those boots that were made for walking! (in knee deep water). Dry feet mean no blisters on long hikes, and these waterproof boots (purchased online from Land’s End) did the job magnificently!
- A huge Eureka Kahuna tent. You don’t realize it, but kids as young as Aralt can quickly get claustrophobic in a small tent. When the weather’s damp, miserable, and freezing, you have no choice but to keep the kids indoors. A huge tent gives them room to clown around and play in, keeping spirits up for the summit hike.
- Good fleece jackets, and good sleeping bags! The equipment sold locally isn’t made for Pulag temperatures. You need winter clothes. Let me repeat that - you NEED winter clothes! The thermostat may not read zero degrees Centigrade, but the wind chill is awesome, and it feels more like 15 degrees Farenheit.
One final note:
Those Sealskinz gore-tex socks were major winners! It kept my feet dry for 8 hours on the first day, but it finally gave in after 3 hours of hiking on the 2nd day (they didn’t dry out overnight as the humidity was too high inside the tent; it rained all night)..
iPod Photo
Apple’s just released their latest incarnation of the wildly successful iPod: it’s called iPod Photo and it lets you view (what else) photos on the iPod’s 2 inch color screen (64k colors). SRP is $499 for a 40G model. Personally, I’m not impressed, but i can tell you what’s probably in store in the next version: iPod Movie! It’s a simple matter to modify iPod Photo (eg - no additional hardware required) to play movies. In fact, i’m surprised that Apple hasn’t done this yet. ) They’ll need to increase the screen size though to at least 3 inches. (2 inches is way too small to enjoy a movie).
Today, I probably watch more movies that are downloaded off the Internet than from DVDs. (For instance, I have all the good table tennis games from the recent Olympics). Since I have far more bandwidth that I can use at the office, we’ve installed MLDonkey, which is one cool cool piece of software for enabling offline downloads. iPod Movie would save me the additional step of burning the movies to DVD (so as to take home to watch). I’d rather keep the movies on my desktop and just sync them to my iPod whenever I’m about to travel or go on a long trip.
Note to Apple: modify iPod Photo so I can plug a USB card reader (eg compact flash, memory stick, SD, MMC) onto iPod, and be able to import Photos from my Digicam while traveling. It’s a pain to have to import first into a Notebook, then sync the Photos into iPod Photo. When I to Europe this summer I noticed that people were starting to bring tiny notebooks around for the sole purpose of importing photos from their digital cameras for viewing. To me, that seems like overkill. Better to just use an iPod.
Good luck Sayas!
November 20, 2004
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On the right is Isaias Seronio, who recently accompanied us on our trip to Mt. Pulag. (which was a blast, by the way). Isaias (Junjun to mountaineering friends, Sayas to table tennis friends, and Isay in the music scene - he’s a drummer in a jazz band) was instrumental in rescuing one member of our party who was suffering from hypothermia. A few member of our group had decided to try out the Akiki “killer” trail and had found themselves deep below the summit by nightfall. They summited around 830 pm then had to brave strong winds (at 36 degrees F) to make the 1.5hour hike back to camp. One member of the group was only dressed in shorts and had run out of food and batteries (for the headlamp). Sayas was the one who helped bring him back to camp.
Sayas will soon be taking a leave of absence (from UP Diliman) to attempt to qualify for the RP Table Tennis team that will compete next year in the South East Asian Games (which are to be held in the Philippines). We wish him a lot of luck! Only 2 slots are available in the singles event. I believe Sayas is now currently ranked sixth and is still far away from the top player (Jonjon Ebuen). But one thing for sure though, if he makes it to the SEA Games, he’ll have a lot of cheering fans from our Mt. Pulag group!
Simply the best blogging product on the market
November 19, 2004Our i.ph website is just about ready to launch! I really can’t wait. This product is probably the single most impressive product I’ve worked on in a long long time. (and that’s saying a lot). It took us two years to develop this product, and I believe it’ll make quite a splash. You be the judge! Check out http://i.ph and get your own i.ph domain. (i.ph is a domain for individuals; it comes with built in blogging, photo/video gallery, webhosting, and webmail/pop3 hosting).
G-cash is a winner
November 16, 2004Looks like G-cash is a winner. Unlike Smart’s SmartMoney, there’s no need for the user to change SIMs. The transaction fee (for mobile users) to convert G-cash into cash is relatively small - only 1%. For merchants, the fee is 0%. Globe will sweep your merchant funds into your bank account daily. (This works only for a few banks; BPI is obviously one of those banks, but I understand Union Bank is supported as well).
And Globe has an XML API that allows online merchants to accept G-cash payments by using a virtual SIM. This means that an online merchant won’t need to use a GSM modem to transact with G-cash mobile users. No worries about an employee prying the SIM loose from the GSM modem the transferring your G-cash to another mobile.
Converting one’s prepaid load into G-cash won’t happen right away though; this is because globe merchants buy credits at a 14% discount from Globe. Hence P100 in your prepaid SIM means P86 in Globe’s coffers. There’s also an accounting problem here in that Globe prefers to look at that P86 as ‘profit’. If that P86 is still convertible to G-cash, Globe will have to modify its accounting system to track how much of its ‘profit’ is still convertible to G-cash, and how much of it is real genuine bookable profit.
The converse (converting G-cash into prepaid credits) will happen more quickly though (and very rapidly). If I have G-cash in my SIM, and I needed to buy prepaid credits, all I’d have to do is send G-cash to an Autoload Max vendor, and he can then send me my prepaid load via SMS. But I’ll bet Globe is working on a way to provide this service directly, thus saving Globe 14% in commissions.
Next step will be to integrate G-cash into the ATM network, so users can easily transfer cash from a Megalink or Bancnet bank into G-cash. Once G-cash becomes really popular, you may see Autoload Max merchants selling prepaid credits at far less than their 14% spread. (Eg - a P100 load, that cost an autoload max merchant P86 to purchase, might be sold for only P93).
Some final thoughts
- Globe should introduce the concept of having a “holding period” (say 24 hours) on g-cash transfers before said g-cash can be used. Suppose for instance that someone held you up at gunpoint, demanded your G-cash MPIN, took your mobile, then proceeded to transfer your G-cash to his own mobile account. This money should be frozen until such time that you can inform Globe that you’ve been robbed. Globe should then introduce the concept of “friends & family” so that all g-cash transfers to known “friends and family” won’t be subject to holding periods. This way, people will have more confidence in keeping large amounts of cash in their G-cash accounts.
(clarification: if you’re a merchant, and you receive G-cash, it’s still as good as cash. The fact that it’s been transferred to your account, means that the cash has already been subjected to the appropriate holding period. It just means that you won’t be able to use this cash for another 24 hours, unless you’re a “friend” of your client).
Needless to say, we at DotPH will be implementing G-cash in a big way.
