Category: Miscellaneous

I am 9955m in the sky, make this post using Air Canada’s WIFI. The speed is good!

I switched to Freedom Mobile yesterday from Fido, at the cost of a hard credit check. I am satisfied so far. I don’t see any issues with the signals in Toronto/Scarborough.

I will pay $35 for 50GB. In contrast, I paid $43 for 35GB with Fido. Most importantly, Freedom Mobile gives me free US roaming, which means that I do not need to worry about paying expensive roaming fees ($12 per day at Fido), just to trigger the roaming by mistake.

It is not Black Friday yet. However, the BestBuy worker gave me $100 BestBuy gift card to compensate for the $45 activation fee and said I could get a price match should there be a better deal on the actual Black Friday.

Use my referral code: https://referme.to/panc-16

My website is up again.

When I woke up this morning I got an email from Jetpack Monitoring saying my site was not responsive. Checking the internet, I learned that there was a fire alarm in my website’s data centre, in LA. The fire alarm forced the power to be shut down.

Around 12:00PM EST, my site is back running. First such incident in 8 years since I started my first personal website.

News were saying Presto would be coming to Apple Wallet in July this year. Today I saw this search result in google titled “Presto in Apple Wallet”. They even have a picture to promote it.

But when I clicked, it said 404 not found. Guess they are testing something. Hopefully it’s a good signal that Presto support will come to Apple Wallet very soon!

I updated to the iOS 18 beta (iPhone 15 Pro) when it was announced early this week. I am very impressed by the new features of this update! It’s all about customizability.

iOS 18’s Customizable control center

I was an Android phone user until December 2022. That’s being said, I am a pretty new iPhone user. I have been used to the iPhone and the Apple Ecosystem, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes miss the customizability of Androids.

This iOS18 gives me back some customizability I used to have – customizing the control centre. And I’d like to say it’s even better because I can customize the size of each “Control” (you see how large the Media Control is?).

Customizable Home

Now we can decide which two icons at the bottom of the screen.

And it’s integrated into the wallpaper settings. That’s being said, you can have different sets of “controls” for different wallpapers.

More choices of Charge Limit

Before iOS 18 we can only limit the charging up to 80%. But now with iOS 18, we have much more choices. Better for your battery health!

FaceId protected apps

Now your iPhone is safer in iOS 18, because you can now use Face Id to protect apps.

You can either make an app “Require Face ID” or “Hide and Require Face ID”.

The first option makes it required to pass Face ID every time someone tries to open an app on your phone. The notifications will only have a preview in this case.

The second option hides the apps in a “Hidden” folders in the App Library. It won’t show up in the search results as well.

Redesigned Gallery

iOS 18 comes with a re-designed gallery app. It looks surprisingly different than the old one. We can customize the layout of the library.

But where is the Hidden Folder?

What am I still looking for as a previous Android user?

Focus mode

Focus mode! When I used my Galaxy S20, I could turn on Focus Mode, and all muted notifications would be indeed “muted” – I wouldn’t be able to see those notifications in the “Notification Center”. But using my iPhone, every time when I open the notification center (by scrolling down), I see the notifications from the muted applications.

Fonts

Using my Android phones, I could change the fonts of my phones, globally. I don’t think iOS 18 supports this feature.

Smart Lock

I have been missing this feature since early 2022 when I made the shift to the Apple Ecosystem. I hope that Apple can consider this feature in the near feature.

Issues/Bugs

So far, I have seen the following lists of issues/bugs:

1. I can not access Screen Time in Settings. Every time I click Screen Time from Settings, Settings crashes, and I am redirected to the homepage.
2. When I use the larger icons (which is also a new feature), the icon of the Contacts app will be blank. This issue only exists in dark mode.
3. Sometimes I experience a slow refresh rate, but that’s not very often and I think it’s okay considering it’s the first beta of iOS 18.

Why does Esso put a big “Forgot Password?” button like this? I think it’s very easy to press the button by mistake.

My domain panchen.ca was registered in Google Domains. However, all domains registered in Google Domains will eventually be migrated to Squarespace. My domain was migrated to Squarespace on May 28 this year.

I didn’t want my domain in Squarespace, so when the day came, I started to transfer my domain away from Squarespace. However, the process didn’t go through – I could not get the email containing the transfer auth code. My email on file was a Gmail.

I was trying to reach out to the Squarespace Support. I did manage to chat with them, but they were not really helpful. They said they would work on a fix on this problem, but they could not promise me or share with me personally when I might be able to get the transfer auth code.

I googled myself – some people had the same issues and said it was because their emails were somehow on the blacklist. I guessed it might be because I was using a Gmail, and my Gmail was associated with the old Google Domains, which might have stopped the transfer auth code from being sent.

I then changed my email on file to my university email. I requested the auth code again. This time, after ~3 hours (note that with other registrars the auth codes were usually sent instantly to me, including Google Domains), I got the auth code. Interestingly, it was sent from Google Domains, not Squarespace.

Then I transferred my domain to NameCheap.

It’s super interesting to learn that Walmarts in the states do not accept tapping. I was in Syracuse at the night of April 29. I had around two bags of items. I was ready to pay with my iPhone. The cashier told me I could only use cash, physical cards, or Walmart pay – I had to go back to the hotel to fetch my physical credit cards and came back again!

Another key difference is that Walmarts in the states didn’t charge bags – they were free, but made of papers.