January 2008
A Power Crisis is Hitting South Africa →
Shades of Manila circa 1993; California 2001. Five hour rolling blackouts are hitting Johannesburg, Cape Town, and other areas of South Africa as ESKOM, the state utility struggles. Here’s one article, here’s another.
A Cape Town morning radio show that airs 6-9am will be interviewing me tomorrow to talk about Philippines, Asia, and California’s experiences with this problem. They are trying to...
Hey. These Are OUR Issues →
They’re talking energy in Davos, Switzerland today - with Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin leading the way.
Jeff Jarvis, a journalist my gosh, hangs right in there with the issues and presents a nice recap - I’m fairly impressed. Related posts No related posts.
Alex Ablaza and CFLs →
The SAIS Team, NRECA, and I met with Alex Ablaza last night at the Linden Suites and we talked for two hours about CFL (compact fluorescent lighting) program issues in the Philippines. Alex had just returned from Vietnam (came straight from the airport) where he was working on an ADB engagement related to an energy efficiency funding window for multiple southeast Asian nations. They are trying to...
Our Philippines. Our Context. →
Dave Snowden is so dead-on in this brief post regarding my own advisory philosophy and approach, that if you’re contemplating my services, go read it.
One of the reasons why I don’t do much USAID, ADB, World Bank, IFC type work here in the Philippines is that they often seem to be more interested in prescribing the process a professional (like me) goes through to find a solution than in having...
Turning Design Ideas into Reality
Flipping through this slide presentation on lessons learned from the development of Star Wars and figuring out how I can apply these to the Panay G&T Project. Notes so far: To create a better product focus less on end design, and more on “effects & results” of design get people talking together lower power cots Recruiting team: Broad and Deep generalists - passionate,...
GENERATION CHOICE FOR CUSTOMERS OF ELECTRIC... →
Meralco’s ERC Filings →
Kudos to Meralco. They are posting their ERC filings here. It’s in their best interest to do so. It allows them to broadly disseminate the full justification and rationales for their requests - in their own words.
Super! This is a trend that I saw happening in California over the past five or six years. The utilities themselves are posting both their regulatory filings and their power procurement...
PBR for Coops
Finished reading through “Performance Based Regulation for Electric Cooperatives in the Philippines” It includes a PBR Framework, several Technical Reports, and Consultation Papers. Dated December 2006. Prepared jointly by the UP National Engineering Center, NEA, Mercados Energy Markets International, and Trama TecnoAmbiental through a grant from the European Union. It was given to me...
DENR Carbon Credits program
SAIS Team meeting with Joy Goco, Carbon Credits program at DENR. 64 applications so far. About 35 approved. Cannot use ODA to purchase carbon credits. Most carbon credits sold under a Forwards contract.
MANILA ELECTRIC APPLIES FOR HIGHER TRANSMISSION... →
Can YOU Stop a Runaway Story? →
If a negative story about your firm (I’m thinking Philippine electric utilities here) hits the mainstream press and all you can do is issue press releases and hold press conferences, you’re going to be sucking wind like you’ve never had to do before. Because at least part of the conversation is going to swirl around, over, under, and through you on the net - and you wont’ be part of that. And...
Three Transco Towers Bombed →
For the third time in less then ten months, very large, lattice-steel, double-circuit 138 kV transmission towers - the highest capacity circuits used by Transco in Mindanao - are bombed. All in the same general vicinity. Here are two reports (seem to have the same information source) on the latest, New Year’s 2008, bombing of three towers in the same area. Luwaran.com and MindaNews
As usual...
Peco lambasted for holiday blackout anew →
Armed men bomb 2 power lines in Lanao →
Two power lines in Lanao del Norte bombed →
Brownout hits parts of Metro as Transco line trips... →
Indiscretion →
Euan highlights this comment from Earl.
And while online indiscretions may be a problem, among the upcoming generation those who have polished, indiscretion-free online personas will NOT be trusted because they not only have something to hide like everyone else, they are too good at doing it. Bookmark: del.icio.us Digg it ma.gnolia Yahoo MyWeb Google StumbleUpon Trackback URL for this entry:...
Armed men blast Transco tower in Lanao Norte -... →
why the "social object" is the future of... →
From my previous post:
The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.I’ve...
Right to Privacy is not about hiding a wrong →
Right to privacy is not about hiding a wrong. It is about living in dignity. The Administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has failed to protect privacy and has continued surveillance on citizens for the past years. These findings are included in the recent Privacy and Human Rights Report of Privacy International (PI) a human rights group based in London, England released last week. The...
Joho the Blog » Beginner-to-Beginner: FTP via curl →
More asshat posts in 2008 coming… →
Remember the learnings I put up yesterday. What was one of the key themes that I learned in 2007? That if you want traffic you must cause the metaphorical equivilent of a traffic wreck, right? Remember my seven Amazon Kindle videos? Here, let’s look at them again. Note which one got the most views: the one where I was a real jerk. This isn’t by accident. Human beings are attracted to conflict as...
Beginner-to-Beginner: FTP via curl →
Cyberduck works well for most of my FTP’ing needs. But sometimes I want to be able to automate an upload or a download without having to go through a graphical user interface. The Mac comes with a handy tool called curl. Unfortunately, I’ve had trouble finding instructions comprehensible to one such as I. (Here’s man page for curl. Of course, you can also see the man page by typing man curl into a...
Zed's So #{@expletive} Awesome →
If you don’t mind ‘bad’ language and a little bit of hate, go check out Zed Shaw’s rant,Rails is a Ghetto.
I’m not quite sure what his intent was with the article, I’m not sure that even matters. What I know is that it has shock value, it made me laugh, and that a number of things in it ring true with me, even if a bit magnified.
Zed and I have had at least a couple conversations about the Ruby...
Chalk one up for Citizen Journalism →
One of the big topics of discussion around the blogosphere this weekend was an emotional response to an Arizona RIAA lawsuit against an illegal downloader of copyrighted music. The music industry sadly continues to pursue legal remedy for its own malfeasance, and reports about various suits are commonplace discussions. Suing your customers is, after all, a highly crappy business practice.
Most of...
December 2007
Mastering A Craft →
For my first post of the year, I reproduce below a poem dedicated to several people I know here in the Philippines that will be spending 2008 “mastering their craft.” One is Walter
a compadre in Malaybalay whom I’ve never met in person but whose own end of year post entitled Life in the Plateau I found inspiring.
This poem is by Robert Bruce of Knife, Pen, Gun.
Loren Feldman (check him out...
Something to make you think... →
Something to make you think… I’ve been thinking an awful lot in the past few days whether I should post this entry or not. I tried to hold back but I couldn’t do it any longer. It’s been bugging me for the past week or two now, I might as well take it out of my chest and get it done and over with. Will it make an impact? If I post it on my blog, will someone…...
Rebels Raid Mining Firm In Southern RP →
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 01, 2008) – Communist insurgents attacked early Tuesday a mining firm in South Cotabato province in southern Philippines, where security forces are battling the New People’s Army (NPA), which is fighting for a separate Maoist state.
The raiders torched a building and destroyed equipment owned by the Sagittarius Mines Inc. in the town...
The Glory, Bliss and How-to of Screen Scraping for... →
Wired has an awesome top story today on the world of startups utilizing scraped data from big companies to offer new layers of value for their own users. It’s a roughly objective piece that I highly recommend reading but it was also inspiration for me to finally record a screencast on the subject (see below). I love RSS, probably more than anything on the web. If you’re not familiar...
