More and more, I am starting to lose interest with all these social networking services. Facebook has lost its appeal because my timeline has started to look like a long boring stream of babies, travels, and get-togethers of people I barely know anyways. Not to mention the persistent articles about Duterte or Trump many of…
Category: technology
Living with the Apple Watch in Tokyo
After a couple of years trying very hard to stop myself from buying it, I finally gave in and got me an Apple Watch (Series 3 GPS + cellular version). I guess I cannot forever use my strategy of telling myself next year’s model is going to be better. It also helps believing the LTE…
Search for the creamy bokeh
My wife recently got the iPhone 7 Plus and one feature it had that my non-Plus iPhone didn’t have was the portrait camera mode, made possible by those dual lens at the back. Using this, the iPhone 7 Plus could take portrait shots that digitally blur the background, i.e. bokeh, making it look like it…
Breath of Fresh Air
The other day, I spent a good couple of hours removing our old living room ceiling fan, and replacing it with this new one. This is the WF060 ceiling fan from a Japanese company called Odelic. After installing it and turning it on for the first time, we realized immediately it is a million times…
Sold my iMac for 29K yen
I’ve had my iMac for more than 6 years now, and after discussions with my wife, we decided it’s time to get a new one. Now the question is, what to do with the old iMac. Send it home The first thing to come to mind is to send it back to the Philippines. For…
Philippine Elections 2016 on Google Trends
I did a quick search on Google Trends with regard to our five presidential candidates and the result I got is interesting, but not at all surprising. If the Philippine Elections were a contest on who generates the most online buzz, i.e. “trending”, there seems to be one clear winner — Rodrigo Duterte. It’s not even close. Of…
Moneytree Review
I have been using Moneytree for a couple of weeks now since I posted my first blog about it, and I believe I am ready to give my short review. Who Moneytree is for? This is for both Japanese and foreigners living in Japan, who want to manage their personal finances including expenses, on their…
Tax Free Counters and 220v Rice Cookers
The other day, I went to visit BicCamera in Yurakucho and saw this floor plan near the escalators. Notice anything weird? In the English and Chinese translations, you can clearly see two items highlighted in red – Tax Free Counter, and 220v Rice Cookers. Tax Free Counter, I would understand why tourists would be looking…
Moneytree – Promising New Personal Budgeting App
On the way home from work, I chanced upon this article featuring how this small Tokyo startup is getting funding from big Japanese banks — Mizuho, MUFJ, and SMBC, not to mention Salesforce, which is one of the world’s largest technology companies. This is notable news in Japan because Japanese banks are notoriously risk-averse, and…
Too many symbol files
Just submitted my first Swift application to iTunes Connect. Xcode says it’s successful but after the build is automatically processed by iTunes Connect, I got an email from iTunes Connect saying I have “Too many symbol files”. Here’s the email I got from iTunes Connect. Dear developer, We have discovered one or more issues with…
App Store Reviewer Could Not Confirm IAP to remove iAd
My Message Scrambler App have supported iAd since I released version 2.0, which I released in March 2014. For version 2.3, I was planning to add a feature to permanently remove the iAd using In-App Purchases (IAP). This tutorial from Ray Wenderlich was very useful when I was implementing this, and I would highly recommend…
Apple Flyover Map of Minami-Senju, Tokyo
Looks like Apple maps already has 3D flyover maps of Tokyo. Not exactly sure when this was added but it’s good to know the city I live in now has this feature. See the picture below of Minami-Senju. It looks like a real picture taken from the sky, except when in the app, you can…
Enrico in Tokyo 