Gray, a writer.
I’m still in the process of getting my photos scanned from a lab. It’s a long story; but to put it simply, it appears the lab was geared toward analog hobbyists, not mass album scanning. It would take few more weeks to get it all scanned. As for the restorative works, I don’t plan to…
I’ve talked about using dictionary in Shortcuts to handle data. If you started using one in a custom shortcut, there is one odd bit that may not be immediately obvious if you try to loop through the dictionary; it loops with the entire dictionary as the Repeat Item. It defeats the purpose of using iterating…
I recently started digitizing family albums; it was more or less a moral lesson on the importance of metadata. The lab did pull through. The stack of negative films my family had couldn’t be “scanned” in traditional sense, so we had them digitized in a photo lab. The results from the lab were underwhelming yet…
As I was upgrading to a new router this week, one of the things I immediately wanted to test was the existing ethernet cables and ports. As reliable as they are, cables and ports are also physical objects with lifespans. If cables running behind the walls are damaged, that’s a major headache; and if one…
Upgrading a router every few years takes more than what it should. The price tag on these machines is generally on par with entry-level smartphones, and smartphones with the average upgrade cycle of 4 years have better upgradability and migration softwares. Not to mention, all the manufacturers are eager to support migration away from the…
WiFi is the basic necessity of 21st century. We fight over it, much like cowboys have fought over lands to grow their, well, cows. Wild West is an unusual metaphor for WiFi, but my reasoning is that home networking markets lack transparency and control on how much these home-grown radio wave generators are sold and…
Apple started adopting biometrics in its devices beginning with iPhones, back in 2015. MacBooks released in 2016 were the first Macs that had embedded Touch ID Keyboards, and later an updated wireless keyboard with Touch ID was released in 2021. It’s been 4 years since the first Touch ID keyboard came out; and I’m yet…
If you are a fan of Shortcuts on either macOS or iOS, no doubt you would have encountered a similar problem as I. In order to load some data on to a custom shortcut, only sensible way would to do so is via a dictionary-type variable. But Shortcuts doesn’t make it easy to enter the…
My last TV, the one I had replaced just few months ago, lasted well over a decade. It was a 3DTV, (the one with the 3D glasses) but as far as the screen goes as a generic television, its panel wasn’t damaged even as I was planning to have it upgraded. It didn’t support HDR…
If someone asked me what kind of game Expelled! is, I would say it is a visual novel, or a mystery novel stylized in a video game. Its experience is akin to what many Agatha Christie novels were when I first read them —bleak, and justice served was not always what I would have imagined.…
Monster Hunter franchise had lots on its shoulders —it’s been 21 years since the first title was released in 2004. World, previous title for non-portable devices from 2018, had introduced new set of features to entice new gamers. Wilds, on the other hand, had to compete against plethora of other RPGs that are quite literally…
One of the rather recently added feature on 1Password, which I believe was both an oversight and the inherent flaw of the system, was PIN generation. The password manager was always capable of saving PIN codes, often only 4 digits long. Randomly generating one wasn’t supported until recently. To play devil’s advocate, it is only…
In my previous post, though I didn’t go into any details as to what limitations I’ve faced, I believe I’ve hinted enough that Apple’s Passwords app has missed the mark on the convenience features. One of which was rather shocking; the app doesn’t let a user generate a custom length password. The app is certainly…
I’ve been using password managers for a while, and I believe I started using 1Password beginning with either version 3 or 4. Inevitably when I say I am using 1Password, I’m not just talking about simply using an app; I’m talking about the entire password manager platform. 1Password has gone through series of audits, bug…
I’m not particularly a big fan of having a big system storage. Most of my machines usually have 1 TB or less, and when needed, I use external drives or NAS. If you are interested in playing with Ollama, especially with the new Mac Studio, one of the missing key features of Ollama is to…