racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

I’m a MacHead once again. Just got a pre-owned Mac Mini G4 (1.25GHz, the first generation!) a few weeks back, which I upgraded to 1GB RAM. Plus there’s the new Samsung SyncMaster 940BW which I recently acquired for a relatively low price (ask me where!).

I’m using it as my main work machine these days. It gets a bit claustrophobic on the Asus Eee when you get used to working on large widescreens again.

I’m launching a ton of blogs this November, and I need 10 writers who can write for me for 12 months. This is mostly copywriting work, and the posts are to be short posts on a wide variety of niches/topics. Compensation is okay by Philippine standards, and is of course commensurate to the effort put into this project. Perhaps it’s good enough to leave your day job especially since it’s a telecommute/virtual office position—so you can save on the usual expenses related to commuting to work.

I also need one technical person who can take care of installing and maintaining blog software for me.

I have talked to a few people, and some are on my shortlist already. But most of these slots need to be filled still.

While I wouldn’t require a PhD in creative writing or any degree whatsoever, I would need prospective writers to have a good grasp of the English language. I wouldn’t require you to be Filipino or in the Philippines, either (there’s always PayPal!), but keep in mind that you may not expect the compensation to be enough for a full-time undertaking if you’re from an expensive city like New York or Tokyo.

If you are interested, please do email me at jangelo (at) racoma (dot) net. Please send a copy of your resume (online, inline or as an attachment), and links to your blogs or other writing works.

This starts in November so I’ll be able to assign these by middle of next week.

This is for a friend of mine. He’s looking for an intelligent PHP/MySQL/JS programmer who can work full time on a telecommute/virtual office/home based position. By intelligent, I assume he meant someone who could not only code, but someone who can lay out the vision and execute plans for a particular service or web app on his own, or on coordination with others.

He should be able to do something like this:
http://vbskins.com (simple paypal IPN, JS newsletter/shopping cart,
GD-image manipulation, user registartion, etc).

Pay is very attractive at approx. $2,000 per month, depending on qualifications. That’s about 3 to 4 times the usual rate for experienced PHP programmers here in the Philippines.

Do email me at jangelo (at) racoma (dot) net if you’re interested. Be sure to send in your CV and samples/links of prior works.

Enthropia Inc. / Bloggy Network are in need of programmers. Here are the requirements and the compensation:

• Extremely proficient with PHP/MySQL, and preferrably good with Javascript, specifically AJAX
• Pay is $750 to $1,000 per month, depending on skill and expertise.
• They are guaranteed the position for 1 month, with a very good possibility it will turn into a permanent position.

This is a telecommute / virtual office position, so you can work from anywhere (and it is assumed you have the hardware, software, and connectivity for this). You can send me email via my contact form or send a message directly to jumpbug (at) gmail (dot) com.

My DSL connection has been really slow for the past two weeks or so. Some colleagues of mine who also use SkyDSL are also reporting similar problems. Thing is, we people rely on the Internet to work, do business, and earn money.

Here’s an email I recently sent to SkyDSL customer service. If you have been experiencing slow speeds on your SkyDSL or Bayantel DSL (essentially the same) accounts, please don’t hesitate to call them up or send email. Their address is csdip@bayantel.com.ph .

Dear Bayantel/SkyDSL,

I’ve been having very slow speeds and unreliable connections on several of my SkyDSL accounts since about two weeks ago. I’ve been getting very high latency and low speeds, and this has badly affected my productivity (most of my work is Web related). I called up 411-2000 but the CSR I talked to said there were no outages or maintenance operations being done on the network. Still, I’ve been getting bad performance, regardless of machine (both PCs and Macs) I use, and on two locations.

Here are some details.

On both my apartments, I use Sky DSL bundled in with my telephone subscription. One 768kbps and one 384kbps.

768K – username (xxxxx). tel no (xxx-xxxx)
384K – username (xxxxx). tel no (xxx-xxxx)

Both of these are along Maginhawa St. in Teachers Village East Quezon City.

Here is a sample traceroute output (to gmail.google.com, one of the sites I find quite slow these days). I was asked by the CSR to send these over for your analysis.

Traceroute has started …

traceroute to gmail.l.google.com (209.85.139.107), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1. 192.168.2.1 (192.168.2.1) 7.345 ms 2.492 ms 2.396 ms
2. 202.78.96.116 (202.78.96.116) 32.113 ms 35.902 ms 34.489 ms
3. 202.78.97.157 (202.78.97.157) 28.060 ms 32.474 ms 22.195 ms
4. 210.4.2.195 (210.4.2.195) 24.580 ms 23.940 ms 22.066 ms
5. so-1/1/0.ig3.lax1.alter.net (63.114.59.105) 330.247 ms 334.106 ms 325.866 ms
6. 0.so-7-0-0.xl1.lax1.alter.net (152.63.112.250) 328.786 ms 392.810 ms *
7. 152.63.57.78 (152.63.57.78) 329.267 ms * 328.802 ms
8. 0.so-6-0-0.br1.lax7.alter.net (152.63.112.41) 327.186 ms 321.951 ms 327.682 ms
9. lap-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.1.145) 206.683 ms 202.827 ms *
10. bur-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.213.109) 203.963 ms 211.153 ms 205.584 ms
11. sea-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.1.186) 216.476 ms * 218.024 ms
12. * sea-edge-08.inet.qwest.net (205.171.26.74) 222.415 ms 218.789 ms
13. * 65.121.106.86 (65.121.106.86) 242.668 ms 240.028 ms
14. 72.14.239.12 (72.14.239.12) 1467.341 ms 1513.570 ms 1480.514 ms
15. 72.14.233.37 (72.14.233.37) 1465.196 ms 1461.246 ms 1466.459 ms
16. 209.85.250.69 (209.85.250.69) 242.306 ms 209.85.250.65 (209.85.250.65) 1511.369 ms 209.85.250.69 (209.85.250.69) 241.461 ms
17. * 72.14.239.190 (72.14.239.190) 242.521 ms 72.14.239.194 (72.14.239.194) 1513.615 ms
18. * pr-in-f107.google.com (209.85.139.107) 1503.991 ms *

And here are some speedtest.net results.

The first one is using the Bayantel server in QC:

Download speed: 763 kbps
Upload speed: 701 kbps
Latency: 106 ms

The second one is using a Hong Kong server:

Download speed: 50 kbps
Upload speed: 41 kbps
Latency: 580 ms

This third one is using a San Jose, CA server:

Download speed: 132 kbps
Upload speed: 126 kbps
Latency: 243 ms

Notice the big speed difference. With this, I think we can perhaps initially rule out any problem from my end to your end (meaning between my computer/s and Bayantel) because connection from here to the Bayantel server (using speedtest) is fast. But connection to the rest of the world is slow.

I hope you can help out with resolving this problem. This is particularly unfortunate to people like myself who rely on the Internet to do work and business. And I have had several colleagues complaining of lost productivity due to slow speeds.

Regards,

Angelo Racoma