Why I Went Back to the Apple Watch After 7 Years

A few years ago, I stopped using my Apple Watch and decided to go without a watch altogether. The idea was to simplify my life. Everything I used my watch for, I could already do with my smartphone. My phone tells the time, has Suica for trains, and acts as a pedometer to track my…

Why I’m not Upgrading to the iPhone XS

Ever since I got my first iPhone, the 3G, I’ve been very religious in upgrading my iPhone at least every two years. What can you say? I was an Apple fan boy. I still am. This year, however, even if my iPhone 7 is already 2 years old, and the new iPhone XS just came…

SNS Review 2018

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…

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…