Finally I’m connected again at home. Today marks the start of a new experiment: I’m going to use Skype and my mobile phone exclusively from now on. I had Cablecom digital phone before but was very unsatisfied with the quality. And I am not willing to pay the monopoly tax to Swisscom, because it’s too expensive for the rare cases where I actually use fixnet telephony. So now I’m using SkypeIn (as purchased in November when it became available in Switzerland) and of course the ever wonderful SkypeOut. The advantages are quite a few. First, I have a mobile “fixnet” phone line. Whether I’m at home or on my office, you can reach me at that number. Also the phone calls are forwarded to my mobile phone if I’m unable to accept the call (not tested yet). So in theory I should be reachable very easily under my “fixnet” number. Second, I have cheap rates (see also my comparison of last year - though in German and almost certainly outdated now). Both to Switzerland and Peru, the two countries that currently matter to me. And to about any other country on this planet. There are currently two disadvantages. One is that SkypeOut does not pass on my number when I call somebody. On my cell phone it shows up as “no number” while on a fixnet phone where we tested, it shows up as 044 586 00 00 (044 586 87 83 is my number). The second disadvantage has to do with my current headset. It’s a bluetooth headset which turns off after a few seconds of not using it. When I accept an incoming call it takes a few seconds for the headset to get activated again. That one is easy to fix, I’ll just buy a better headset. I’m excited about this change and very interested in how it turns out. Is anyone else using Skype exclusively? Or maybe there is even somebody in my readership who tried it ans switched to traditional phones again? ...

Sehr lecker.

It’s now almost official: Ollanta Humala and Alan García will get into the second round of the Peruvian presidential election. The official ONPE Web site states, that 98.872% of the votes have been counted. Ollanta Humala now got 30.7% of the valid votes, Alan García 24.3% and Lourdes Flores 23.7%. Let me give a short summary of the two candidates in the second route. Humala is a left-wing politician, former military commander and doesn’t seem to have very clear visions for the country. Mostly he wants to help the poor and has a few very drastic ideas. Some Peruvians fear that Humala would prohibit Peruvians from leaving the country, because he claims that mainly the rich Peruvians leave and thus the country gets poorer. García seems to be a bit more on the center, though his party APRA is counted among the left ones. His party has a long history as a strong opposition party in congress and García was himself president from 1985 to 1990 and his term is mainly remembered for extreme inflation, increased terrorism and general chaos. I haven’t yet heard good things about his term from any of my Peruvian friends. So it’s no wonder that in Peru the current saying solo queda elegir entre el sida y el cancer (it now remains to choose between AIDS and cancer) is very popular. It seems probable now, that García will win the second round, because supporters of Lourdes Flores are more likely to vote for him than for Humala. Many Peruvians feel, that at least they can get rid of Alan after his five-year term while with Humala it seems much more likely that he would try to stay in office for much longer. In that aspect, Humala is often compared with Hugo Chavez, who was originally elected in a democratic process but has since then used his powers to extend his term limit. That assessment has been repeated to me by several Peruvians. A current poll by the pollster DATUM currently predicts that García will win with 54% over Humala. But if we have learned one thing from the first round it’s that pollsters can’t be trusted in Peru either. The second round is scheduled for May 28. ...

I translated the KAYWA weblog software to Spanish. I’ll now blog a bit in Spanish as well here in order to keep my Peruvian friends updated. Just ignore the Spanish noise or subscribe to one of the single-language feeds.

El proveedor de weblogs de Suiza KAYWA ya esta disponible en español también. Eso significa que ya puede usar el interface de administración en los cuatros idiomas inglés, alemán, francés y español. Yo hice la traducción en español y por eso creo que no esta perfecto todavía. Si tu idioma maternal es el español y quieres ayudar en mejorar la traducción podemos darte una cuenta gratis de KAYWA. Si quieres una cuente de KAYWA puedes escribir me en los comentarios o por correo electrónico. ...

I still feel jet lagged from returning to Switzerland. One night last week I wasn’t able to sleep and the product were these beautiful night shots of the lovely city of St. Gallen. Taken from near the “drei Weiern” near to the restaurant Dreilinden.

Ich hoffe mal dieser Moblog funktioniert jetzt.

My future employer local.ch has gone live with the first public release two days ago. I actually worked for local.ch before as an independent programmer in my Arroba times and when the project didn’t even have an official name yet. I first had contact with that project on January 17 of last year. At that time there were some ideas and not much more. Now, a bit more than one year after those early ideas, the site is live for the first time. I for one am very excited. What you see now is a start. A good start I like to think. We will be able to give you a lot more services in the future. I don’t think we will run out of ideas any time soon. Other participants in the local.ch project have blogged as well about the launch: ...