Skip to main content

Philippine Lockdown 2 ("O mighty, despair!")

It is 2021 in Manila and we are again going back to another lockdown. COVID-19 cases are surging the past 3 weeks in and around the capital city, Metro Manila. Thirteen thousand Filipinos dead of the corona virus and its variants and complications. And we are back in square one. This is just awful and horrible. 

How awful? The economic situation is at its most dire since World War 2. Philippine debt is now at 9.8 Trillion Pesos, that's 54% of the Philippine Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 
GDP growth plummeted in the first lockdown (March 2020). Filipinos found a way to earn money to buy food, pay their utilities and rent. The government lifted some restrictions. With this surge, the government is going the lockdown path once again. 

The vaccine against the corona virus is trickling down to the medical frontliners and I doubt the younger ones will ever get it by Christmas this year. Medical experts advise continuing with social distancing and masks even after you get vaccinated. That big rebound won't be palpable until herd immunity is reached. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Password Issues On Ubuntu Login

I found myself unable to enter my login credentials when prompted to do so in Ubuntu. I think I might have changed it then forget about it. I've been running the current session for more days than I should have. I forget. So what's the solution to my problem. How do I get in to my system now? It involved getting into the grub menu somehow. I am uncertain as to how to do that exactly in your system. So there's a couple of ways to do it (finger's crossed). When booting at system start, use the esc key or the shift key. The first one worked for me. The timing is key. Wait until the bios banner shows then hit the esc key once. I am using Ubuntu 22.04.4 here. I have a current version of grub. The grub menu will give you options and the one you want is: root. Yes you want root privileges to set the root password. It should give you a terminal access where you can issue commands. Type: #mount -rw -o -s remount / ==> this command mounts the filesyste...

Pacman Has to Get Better

I finally got my printers working. I got cups (and cupsd in the /etc/rc.conf) I installed hpoj and a group of printer drivers. So to get my Arch linux to recognize there's a usb printer connected to my system I have to run a daemon (ptal-init setup) and include it in /etc/rc.conf. That finally enabled (after a reboot) my GNOME control center to acknowledge that there is indeed an HP-3900 at the end of my usb port. The real personal story behind my saga with a printer is pacman. It is now throwing 'network not reachable' everytime I start it. Every download and sync. I ran --debug and ping ip addresses and so far I will conclude that it's a really really slow ftp server. The server is so slow pacman is timing out connections. It's unusable guys. My first rolling release distro and I've decided that Arch rises and falls with the performance of their package manager. Great distro for the DIY community. But sorry I can't recommend Arch linux to my mother who jus...

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.