Life in a Community Quarantine - A COVID-19 Update 1

The Philippine government announced community quarantine over Metro Manila last week. This is just a dress rehearsal for an island wide (entire Luzon) quarantine because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I live in a town of 600,000 people close to Quezon City, Metro Manila. There are checkpoints set up a scant 50 meters away from our house. The public transportation system is now closed. I can see the main road from my room window and 2 minutes pass before the next vehicle so that's really weird. I walked early morning yesterday to buy bread and fruits. I had to walk more than 2 kilometers to see I am not going anywhere. Yes I did get my pandesal and mangoes, no worries. How long the food will stay stable is anybody's guess.

Mother and I are communicating with my brother and sister through internet. We have electricity and water. Utilities are available. The ATM at Alfamart (the local grocery) is offline. The usual reason for that should be obvious. It is the only machine in the barangay and everyone wants to have their cash in their wallets or purses. There's food. Some items are scarce like bread and alcohol / hand sanitizers. I'm about to do a pharmacy run for mom's medications.

M Roger visited us yesterday for help financially. I gave him 1,000 pesos for the emergency. Everyone needs something. But it still the first week, this thing is just starting. Most people are coping.

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Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.

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