TekMunchie

My family is a regular Starbucks customer. We normally visit Startbucks  at UP-Ayala Technohub on weekends. The branch is a one of the place were you can relax and forget the stressful life living in Metro Manila; the blood-boiling traffic, the everyday crimes that might put the Philippines as one of the most dangerous place to live and the pollution that will choke the life out of you. But we Pinoys are resilient, luckily. Even in a depressing situations we can still smile and crack a few jokes. Sense of humor is really flowing in our veins. We are the third happiest country in the world based on Gallup International survey and it shows, right? Technohub is not as crowded as the malls. Trees are plenty and there's a pond with lots of fish and few ducks; sadly, kois are gone. There is also a big area where kids can ride their bike or scoot around. There are restaurants too; Kanin Club, Amici, Pizza Hut, Yellow Cab, Kenny Roger Roasters, Army-Navy and Tokyo Tokyo just to name a f...

We're back at Shrimp Bucket in UP Town Center in Katipunan. This is our 4th visit to the place. The food are great and price is not over the top. The place is a small, so you might have to queue before getting a table. Happy eating! Front of the restaurant. Along Katipunan road... Salad for my wife... Fried chicken for my daughter... Tasty shrimp with salted egg... For everybody. Prices seems fair...

I decided to upgrade my tablet (Ipad 4 retina) after using it for almost 4 years. Ipad 4 is quite good. Although display is not as good as the latest Ipads and not as light, still it is one of the best Ipad of its generation. On thing that I really don’t like is the weight. It is tiresome if you hold it for a long time or when you use it for watching movies or just browsing the web. Also, it has large bezel, really large. As an upgrade, I bought an Ipad 2017. It is light, very bright screen, loud and it's the cheapest Ipad. Of course, for Apple to bring down the the price, it has to cut corners. There are two things I don’t like about this Ipad. All of them is related to the display, i.e. display doesn't have anti-reflective coating which make it difficult to use a well lit environment even if you crank up the brightness level. It is like like watching in a mirror where you can see what's behind you. Worst, the screen is not laminated which add reflectiveness to the di...

We went to Legazpi last October 2017. This is is my first time to see the city although I was born 6 hours drive from Legazpi. The trip also served as 'break-in' for our newly purchased car. I drove 8 hours from Manila to our place in Bicol where we stayed overnight and left for Legazpi the following morning. The travel to Legazpi is quite nice as the weather is cooperating. The road is in good condition but there are roads that go through the center of towns that has heavy traffic. But that similar experience when we travel from Manila to Bicol. I booked our stay in  airbnb for 1 night. The description in Airbnb is quite different form the real one. The road going to the place only fit 1 car and it doesn't have a good parking space. The worst part is that the attendant knocked at our door early morning to ask me to move the car because the van will need to move out of the parking lot but it is parked at the back of the car park to the right side! It is the other c...

We went to my home town November last year to visit my Father. I was born in Camarines Norte. We live in one of the barangays near Sta. Elena and around 45 minutes drive to Labo.  During my elementary years, we always swim in the river every lunch break (it is like picnic for us). At 1pm, you'll see us having red eyes and wet shorts. The teacher would notice but doesn't care much. Another place I found is the Imee-Irene twin falls near Sta. Elena in Camarines Norte. The place is about 15-ish minutes drive from our Barangay. It was built from the help of the local government but unfortunately, it is not properly being maintained. From the main road, there is a concrete road going to the falls. 50 meters from the end of that road, you need to walk to a muddy and slippery road. Still, the Barangay will charge 20 pesos per person. Daytime robbery, isn't it? There is no cottage. You will have to find an area to put your things. There is a toilet where you can change y...

Diagramming is one of the frequent task I am ask to do as a Technical Architect of the 3rd largest Fintech company in the world. Designing a software requires creating loads of UML diagrams to show different processes of the system. Diagrams like component, sequence, class and deployment topology are some of the common diagrams that you will find in software design and implementation documents. These diagrams help the developers and implementor quickly understand the end to end system processes. Based on my experience, when someone ask you some technical things like interaction between systems, explaining them with diagrams tend to help them quickly grasp what you really wanted to convey.  I used different diagramming tool like MSVisio which is easy to use but a bit expensive. I have one installed in my laptop but was removed when our office IS pushed the Windows update to my laptop. I don't know why, perhaps due to the license cost. I tried different free UML diagramming too...

Commute in Manila is a nightmare. Roads are dangerous for both drivers and pedestrians. Road signs are confusing and intentionally hidden so that traffic cops can surprise unsuspecting souls and 'milk up' some coffee money from them - we called them 'Buwaya' (crocodilus) due to their big stomach and thick skin. According to the Government, our economy is losing 3.5 billion pesos a year due to traffic. That's a lot of money for a country that has a great need to generate money to feed its people. The worst effect of traffic is in people lives. My colleague live in Bulacan and most of the time his travel takes around 4 hours from his place to our office in Makati. Another 4 hours from Makati to Bulacan. He spend half of his day on the road instead of spending it with his family. I think that is unacceptable. Government should continue to strive for a better road and better mass transport system. People deserve better. I know, Digong is really up to the challenge. ...

Let me try some thought experiment... Newton discovered unseen force called gravity which is what keeping us nailed to earth. Einstein correctly predicted that the gravity is cause by the mass of the sun creating a ‘huge bowl’ to the fabric-time.The planets follow the surface of the bowl which explain why planet revolves around the sun. If the ‘huge bowl’ is being created due to the mass of the sun, what will happen if the mass of the sun deminishes? Will we see planets escaping from sun’s embrace? Or gradually, they will move away from the sun a as the space-time bowl is becoming shallower? Would that mean, human will be wiped out due to cold even before the sun gets big and used up its fuel? What do you think?

My daughter requested a guitar because she wants to learn playing the instrument. We went to SM North to and buy the guitar at JB music store for 900+ pesos. She picked the gray-ish color. It is a beginner's guitar and with the price, I would say, the quality is average. But you can buy the same quality guitar at RJ music store at slightly lower price. One thing that she doesn't like is the strings which is painful to the fingers since they are very 'hard' (not sure if that is the right term though). So I checked Amazon to get some 'soft' guitar strings. Luckily, I found Earthwood that has a good reviews. I ordered and ship the item through my-shoppingbox.com. After almost 15 days, I received the strings. I replaced the old strings and tuned them using an Android App. It really made a big difference playing with Earthwood strings. It is more forgiving to the fingers and has a better sound quality (I am not a musician - just an opinion).  My daughter is n...

Youtube released an update to its IOS App. You can now change the theme to dark mode which is gentle to the eyes especially when you are lying bed watching your favorite channels or Netflix movies or episode. It prevent flooding of lights while your better-half is trying to catch some sleep :-).  The feature is not yet available in Android the last time I checked. I am sure Google/Alphabet has a good reason why they decided to released the IOS update before the Android. So, for Android phone users, a bit of patience is needed :-). It is easy to activate the dark theme. It just need enabling of the toggle button in the setting of the App.  To enable dark theme, go to Settings and enable dark theme toggle button. Easy, yeah? Immediate change to dark color. Very nice. So, your Youtube App from this theme... To this beautiful UI. Agree?

Looking for a affordable USB charger that provides ample of juices? Why not try the affordable 35-watts Mi 4-port USB charger? It is only worth 499 pesos much less than Anker 5-port USB charger with the same output capacity. Charging my 12-inch Macbook with an Ipad charger via Anker USB to USB-C cable. It takes generations to charge the laptop. Charging my laptop and Xperia phone in Mi 35-watts USB charger. Awesome! Here are some pictures of the 35-watts Mi 4-port USB charger.

Millionaires are made last year, literally! Young people who believed in the power of technology and invested in bitcoin made themselves tons of money. Filipinos also dived in the frenzy to get a little bite of the pot of technological gold. Investment groups in Facebook were flooded with bitcoin related posts dimming the PSE related talks. In the company where I am working, I have a colleague who bought bitcoin last year at around 5K-ish and sold the at 19K-ish! Lucky him as he was able to get out before the dive to 10-11K USD. It even bottomed at 5K-ish. Currently, the price is playing at a 9K - 11K range. Who knows it might fly to all time high this year.  Some Investors, projected the price to hit 60K this year. That would be a big jump from the current price. I also read a news that people who 'hodl' bitcoin will sell them at 200K which means holding the coin for a couple of years before realizing the profit. Maybe bitcoin can realy become the new 'gold' w...