Arriving in Manila

We flew to Manila, from Los Angeles, on Sunday the 21st. One of the first things that was nice was the free wireless Internet provided by the Asian carriers in the LA terminal. Getting there early we were able to get our seats (nice big aisle exit-rows!) and then hang out and get work done.

The Philippines Airlines flight over left at ~10:00pm, so we flew into the darkness, being chased by the sun. The flight actually landed at ~4:00am in Guam for refueling, and then continued its way to Manila. We approached the Philippines at daybreak, just before sunrise. As we crossed over the first edges of the Philippines, it was a combination of islands and then the mountains of Luzon. The mountains turned into a large flat valley, and then the density of grey structures began to grow. Slowly, the grey started to overwhelm the green and we had started to cross over the outer edges of Manila. As we continued to descend, the grey color took over ... it was impressive to see the sprawl of Manila below us.

We landed and got off of the plane, walked into the terminal and passed through immigration ... very uneventful. We had both packed in only carry-on, so we had no luggage to claim ... instead we headed right out into the hot and humid air to look for our car.

The first thing that hit me as the humidity wrapped all around me was the smell of smoke. Everywhere. Like a fireplace nearby kicking out the smoke of burning wood. I had been told about this ... it was the smell of forests being burned in Indonesia. Some of my contacts here indicated that a month ago it was a constant haze that was almost unbearable. Even today in Iloilo I am greeted each morning to the same smell as I leave my hotel room.

I'll write more later ... have to catch the high speed boat to Bacolod!

[tags: philippines manila iloilo bacolod]

Blogging from Iloilo, Philippines

I've been telling myself each day this week that I was going to post ... and I'm only getting to it right now. I'm sitting in the Amigo Terrace Hotel in Iloilo, Philippines ... and after completing a whole ton of work, I'm now ready to post. I'm in the lobby restaurant ... on wireless.

I'll probably break this into a whole set of posts ... there is too much to write about. It's been a very cool trip so far, and a lot has changed since the last time I travelled in this region. I've never been to the Philippines before, but when I was with Novell I visited a number of Asian countries ... Singapore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand ... all amazing places. But these trips were in the early 1990's and predated the penetration of the Internet. What a huge difference. I'm floored. The Internet is everywhere.

So where exactly am I right now? I'm at the hotel here in Iloilo. I've been here a few days after visiting Manila ... we stayed in Makati ... then visited Baguio City. Tomorrow we'll be heading over to Bacolod for the day ... then another day back here in Iloilo, before heading back to Manila and home.

I'll write more ... it's been eye opening. An amazing trip.

[tags: philippines manila makati baguio iloilo bacolod blogging internet]

May CTO Breakfast

It is time for another Phil Windley CTO Breakfast. It was a smaller group, but some good conversations - both technical and philosophical. Some good talk about business and team management.

I walked in and there was a conversation about "in the net" storage. Bruce Fryer from DiGiSENSE brought up JungleDisk ... which looks very cool! This solves one of the things that I have wanted for a while now. I've been backing up my various laptops and home computers to a server at my house. On Windows I'm using a very cool tool called Second Copy that I found years back. Second Copy provides very customizable copying profiles to mirror date from my hard disk to almost anywhere. So each night when I go to bed I ensure that I set up a Samba share to my Linux server in the basement. Second Copy kicks off after 2:00am and replicates several designated subdirectories from my machine to the server. It also will create "archive" copies of any changed files ... keeping the last {x} copies of changed files. The one hole in my model is that I don't currently have "off-site" backup. With JungleDisk it appears that I can now consider automating the replication of my server storage to Amazons S3 storage in the net!

I really didn't take too many notes today ... the conversations were too fun! I started to fall quite behind in my typing. We talked about Identity, and that VeriSign has added an OpenID service. This is a good thing as it is showing the growing momentum in Internet Identity.

The web site World Mapper was brought up. This is a very cool site that shifts the sizes of the various countries based on a number of criteria. I really like maps and checking out the statistics of the world ... this site has great information.

Someone brought up the "the Lost experience" ... which is a very interesting way that the TV show Lost is now attracting people to the commercials by embedding puzzles into these commercials. Hollywood and the Networks are now starting to learn how to leverage the net ... finally.

Too many other conversations ... I just wasn't committted to blogging it all today. It was fun to be with the group, and I look forward to next month!

[tags: cto ctobreakfast philwindley digisense jungledisk lost centered secondcopy]