Samsung Philippines on Holiday Sale.
Actually saw the Samsung Galaxy S20+ on sale at the mall yesterday for ₱36,990.
This is super unfair for those who got the phones at their original prices. Continue reading EXYNOS Samsung on Holiday Sale for 2020
Garden Clay Pots on Hyperinflation
I’m quite baffled. What used to cost PH₱45.00 back in June 2020 for each of these 9″-size garden clay pots now cost PH₱120.00 each. Five months in and we’re looking at 167% increase in price.
Is it only our imagination, or are we seriously experiencing upsurge in the number of plantitos and plantitas in this pandemic season?
The Hapless Samsung Galaxy Note 20
The persistent Samsung ads about its Galaxy Note 20 on Facebook are getting annoying, they now even make Samsung look pathetic.
If Samsung didn’t make Exynos their choice of mobile processor in their Galaxy devices, including the Note 20 series, in the Philippines, it would have won me over.
But no.
No Samsung Snapdragon chip, no Samsung for me from now on.
How to connect to Google Cloud Platform web server via FTP?
With the absence of CPanel, managing your website on Google Cloud Platform is a bit tricky. Nevertheless, you’ll find that an FTP or SFTP connection to your web server will come in handy especially when you have plugins and PHP functions that break your WordPress website.
Here is the tutorial I followed and that worked for my case in connecting Filezilla on my desktop PC to my Google Cloud Platform web/file server:
Once you’re connected, you can find your WordPress installation in: /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs. This location is valid if you installed WordPress via the WordPress Certified by Bitnami and Automattic software from the GCP Marketplace.
Filezilla and Putty Key Generator are safe applications if you downloaded them from valid websites.
OnePlus 8 Pro vs. iPhone 12 Pro
This comparison is close to my heart for I’m about to renew my phone this year.
In 2017, I passed up on the iPhone 8/8 Plus/X and went for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 instead, primarily because of the price. Never regretted it. The Android of recent years is leaps ahead of its predecessors of the early 2010’s. Gone are the days of overheating Samsung Galaxy S2.
Anyway, the guy in the video above drew the following conclusion: Continue reading OnePlus 8 Pro vs. iPhone 12 Pro
Looking Back at 14 Years of Deuts.NET
I’ve just finished migrating my blog from WordPress.com to Google Cloud Platform. Along this process, I needed to do some housekeeping, and check for broken links. Thus, the Broken Link Checker plugin.
I was particularly interested in intra-site links especially images that might have been broken through the years. But I was greeted as well by broken external links, hundreds of them:
Websites, blogs, and pages that are relevant at that time, but eventually faded into obscurity. Those are the websites that Deuts.NET survived. If you look at the sidebar, you’ll see the long list of archive links. That makes up 14 and a half years of Deuts.NET. Looking forward to 14 more years to come.
Security Bank InstaPay Temporarily Unavailable
Security Bank may have been one of those generous Philippine banks who graciously waived fees for InstaPay transactions until at least the year 2020 ends, in order to accommodate seamless and contactless interbank fund transfers during this pandemic period.
https://www.facebook.com/BangkoSentralngPilipinas/posts/3411823422214796
Continue reading Security Bank InstaPay Temporarily Unavailable
Smart GIGA Pro Out! GOMO is the way to go!
In these new Giga packages of Smart, you’ll be allocated 3GB per day, and they expire, well, as often as, every day! Whether you like it or not, you’ll be forced to consume that much data in a day, otherwise you can bid them goodbye anyway.
In real life, however, we don’t stop, we GOMO! For P299, you’ll have 25GB of data that never expire. If you really are a heavy user, you’ll actually find this expensive, as this translates to ~P1,200 for 100GB, vs. Smart’s 114GB for ~P1,000. But really, don’t you bump into slack days when you’d wish you could hold on to some of your data?
We’re not even talking here yet about the much cheaper call and text rates should you opt to convert some of your GOMO data to text and/or call minutes.
So, unless Smart could find a way to compete to what GOMO offers, Globe will surely be the winner here.
How to Use Power Query to Pull Data from a CloudFlare Protected Website
I run Microsoft Excel’s Power Query daily in order to pull data from the BAP website for the USD/PHP rates for the day, which in turn I save in an Airtable database as a record for that day.
This week, however, it seems that BAP has implemented CloudFlare DDoS Protection, which helps it to combat DDoS attacks. Good for BAP, they can minimize what we’ve experienced downtimes in the past. Bad for me, now I’m getting 503 error in my query.
So how do we deal with this in Power Query? A quick Google search yields not much of a result. There’s one posted in June 2017 on Mr. Excel forum, 3 years and no one bothered with an answer.
Continue reading How to Use Power Query to Pull Data from a CloudFlare Protected WebsiteCan I use the GOMO Sim in a Pocket Wifi?
GOMO is so far the only cellular service that offer 25GB for ₱299 and that don’t expire. But is the sim only usable in a smartphone? Can I also stick it into a pocket wifi or a prepaid home wifi, to enjoy the unexpiring data?
I was looking for the answer around the web, but couldn’t find any. So I hit them up on Twitter, and here’s what I got:
So yes, you can use the GOMO Sim in a pocket wifi, Globe at Home Prepaid Wifi, or any unlocked/open-line wifi router device, only that you have to activate the sim first in a mobile phone (Android or iOS/iPhone) app.