Categories
Umum

Password Manager: Let’s Give Bitwarden a Chance!

I have been using password manager since 2017 since I think there should be an easy, secure, and handy mechanism to deal with passwords. Of course, by using password manager, life is a little bit easier.

And, I chose LastPass. Last year, I still renewed my premium subscription for US$36 per year. LastPass works really well, but at the same time I am sure other password manager applications — like 1Password, DashLaneKeeper — share similar quality of features. But, it’s about choice.

Most “popular” password manager applications also offer similar subscription price, around US$36/year. My LastPass subscription will end next April, and I am thinking of moving to other application that does its basic jobs like storing password (of course!), generating good passwords, and managing credentials in categories/folders. Also, it should be also work on multiple devices and browsers.

After reading many articles, I decided to give Bitwarden a try. And, I read pretty much information about Bitwarden. One of the big differences with other password managers is that Bitwarden is open source. The other reason is on the pricing. It’s only US$10/year for personal use, or US$40/year for personal (family/organization).

My decision is not related to LastPass’ upcoming plan regarding the limitation for the free account since I was a paying customer since day one. According to a blog post:

We’re making changes to how Free users access LastPass across device types. LastPass offers access across two device types – computers (including all browsers running on desktops and laptops) or mobile devices (including mobile phones, smart watches, and tablets). Starting March 16th, 2021, LastPass Free will only include access on unlimited devices of one type

LastPass blog: Changes to LastPass Free

From the interface point of view, it’s not that beautiful — at least compared to LastPass. But hey, it’s about the features. As long as it works for me, I am fine with the interface.

About Bitwarden:

  1. Bitwarden official site
  2. Bitwarden on GitHub
  3. Bitwarden apps (desktop, mobile, including CLI)
  4. A detailed review about Bitwarden. CNET has some basic comparisons of multiple password managers.
Categories
Umum

Few Things You Need to Know About The New Yogyakarta International Airport (YIA)

According to the news, the new Yogyakarta International Airport will be operating in late April 2019. For the first phase, some airlines like Garuda Indonesia, Air Asia Indonesia, and Silk Air will have their inaugural flights.

I will not talk about the controversies, but one thing for sure: there will be a new airport to support the ‘current’ airport that is too small to handle millions of passengers per year.

Location

New Yogyakarta International Airport is located in Kulon Progo Regency. Yes, it’s still in Yogyakarta Special Region. See map below. “So, is near the city center?”, “Is it far from Adisutjipto International airport?”, you may be asking.

I personally haven’t visited this ‘new’ airport. As a citizen who lives not far from city center, — I define Malioboro area as the city center here — New Yogyakarta International Airport is quite far.

In a very normal traffic, I can reach Malioboro area for about 25-30 minutes by car. Referring to Google Maps, the distance between Adisutjipto Airport and Malioboro area (I use Tugu Monument as the point of reference) is around 9-10km.

Leaving for your destination from Adisutjipto should not be difficult also as you can find taxies easily. Or, you can use ride sharing transportation like Go-Jek Indonesia or Grab. If your destination is also available using Trans Jogja bus, it might be a solution also. Even, if you need go to directly to Solo city for example, the train station is just outside the arrival area.

Compared to the above route, the distance from the ‘new’ airport is ‘only’ around 48km (I pick the ‘shortest’ route provided by Google Maps).

How far is the New Yogyakarta International Airport?

If you could not figure out yet how far is the new airport, let’s see some other contexts for comparisons. We will use the distance between Yogyakarta Tugu Monument as the starting point and Google Maps to measure the distance.

So, distance from Yogyakarta Tugu Monument to:

How to get there?

I think Damri as the bus operator will server the route to the new airport, and the train from PT KAI as well. But, I think it will take a little bit time. Renting a car might be little expensive. Taking Go-Car from Go-Jek or Grab is a reasonable option. Conventional metered-taxi, probably. It will cost more, I suppose. I checked the fare for Go-Car and Grab, it is around IDR 180,000-200,000.

Categories
General

New App Store prices increase by round 30% for some countries

Early this month, Apple started to have new pricing for the applications in the App Store. Apple sent out an email informing the new pricing for some currencies, and the currency I’m using right now for my account is Indonesian Rupiah.

Within the next 24 hours, the following changes will be made to pricing on the App Store.
To account for changes in foreign exchange rates, App Store retail prices will be increased for the following currencies:

  • Australian Dollar
  • Indian Rupee
  • Indonesian Rupiah
  • Turkish Lira
  • South African Rand

Additionally, retail prices for Israeli New Shekels and some price tiers for the New Zealand Dollar will be decreased.
Price adjustments on the App Store are made periodically due to changes in foreign exchange rates. Within 24 hours, you will see the new Pricing Matrix in the Rights and Pricing section of Manage Your Apps on iTunes Connect.
Updates to iOS Paid Applications and Mac OS X Paid Applications contracts will be available on the iTunes Connect website. To view all current and outstanding contracts, see Contracts, Tax, and Banking on iTunes Connect.

This adjustment is because of the exchange rates for some currencies. Right now (when I write this post), based on XE.com, the currency rate is “1 USD = 11284.6 IDR”. To see the historical data of the currency change here’s a figure taken from XE.com (click to enlarge).
Screen Shot 2014-04-06 at 1.00.44 AM
Now, the new price for applications had been published. See these two before-and-after screenshots.
apple_price_1_before
apple_price_1_after2
Now, let’s see the comparison:

  • Old: IDR 9,500. New: IDR 12,000 (Original price: $US 0.99)
  • Old: IDR 19,000. New: IDR 23,000 (Original price: $US 1.99)
  • Old: IDR 39,000. New: IDR 45,000 (Original price: $US 2.99)

The price increases around 30% from the previous.

Categories
General

Going with MacBook Pro with Retina Display

MacBook with Retina display

This month, I finally decided to buy myself a new MacBook. And, I chose MacBook with Retina display (15-inch model). It was not an easy decision for some reasons. The first reason is that it’s pretty cheap (compared to the other laptops in the market). The second one was about a decision whether I need to fix my old MacBook or buy the new one.

What happened was that my old MacBook Pro (13-inch model) was not working for the hard drive reason. One day, it stopped working. I could not get into the system. I tried to boot in Safe Mode and did some initial checking. The hard drive was not detected. Not good. Last year, I got the similar issue, and got it fixed by eStore (one of the Apple Authorised Service Provider) in Jakarta — I bought my MacBook Pro there too — by replacing connector cable. Everything was working great since then.

About my old MacBook Pro

I bought my first MacBook Pro (and, it was my first Apple product) when I was in Jakarta, replacing my old Toshiba laptop. I worked at Fashionese Daily (It’s Female Daily Network now). It boosted my productivity, helped me working with my jobs. I spend hours in front of the computer everyday, and having had a good device is not an option.

When I had another role at another company, worked with some coders (in Jogja and Jakarta), it still helped me with my jobs. The most important part is that: my MacBook Pro improves my productivity. Period.

But, why MacBook Pro (with Retina display)? Isn’t it expensive?

When Apple introduced MacBook with Retina display last year, I was thinking of having one one day. Anyway, I like the fact that the display is great. Before Apple came up with iPad 3 (with Retina display), I had a plan to buy an iPad 2. I was curious how the display comparison between iPad 2 and the New iPad. After seeing with my own eyes, I would blame myself if I chose the iPad 2.

When I visited Jakarta and while I’m in Jogja, I visited some stores selling Apple products. And, I looked and compared the MacBook Pro products. Yes, they’re different. The display IS different. Not only that, the technical specifications are also better.

Using it for about two weeks, so far it works really great. Probably, the most “annoying” part is some applications/images are not beautifully displayed — since it’s not working great with the Retina resolution. But, I have no complains with the speed, bigger screens, and details

Categories
General

Ten Things Why Nokia N8 Is Better (than iPhone 4)

Ten Things Why Nokia N8 Is Better (than iPhone 4). Comparison on these subjects: price, design, video call, HDMI + Dolby Surround, memory, USB On-the-Go, usability (reception issue), sensor, Xenon flash, editing software & Ovi Maps are free (Symbian^3)

Categories
General

Videoblogging, anyone?

I decided to start a videoblogging now. When I am with my camera digital, sometime I capture videos and photos. So, why not bring the videos online? I know it is probably not popular — especially in Indonesia. But, why not?
After doing comparison steps among some video hosting providers like Vimeo, YouTube, blip.tv, Yahoo! Video, Google Video, etc, I decided to host all my videos to Vimeo and embed to my videoblog. I capture all videos using both camera digital and my mobile phone Nokia. Just in case you find a low-quality videos, you know the reasons. :)
My videoblog is built using WordPress and Viper’s Video Quicktag plugin with template modifications — also some other plugins. Right now, not every video has a story/descrption, but I will add some later. Okey, here is my videoblog URL: http://video.orangescale.com

Categories
General

WordPress 2.7 Admin Color Scheme

WordPress 2.5 already provide two types of color schemes for dashboard. They are “Classic” and “Fresh“. By default, you will have the “Fresh” color scheme. It’s light shades of blue. If you like the darker blue, you can switch to it by choosing the “Classic” style. If you haven’t touch this area, this setting can be found on your profile page. Just click your name on the top right navigation.
wp26-scheme
In WordPress 2.7, we can do the same. The color schemes available to choose are “Blue” and “Gray” (default).
wp27-scheme
Right now, I choose the “Blue” scheme. Look at these picture for color scheme comparison.

Categories
General

Find Low Prices Online

BeatMyPrice.com is a people-powered site to compare product prices found in the internet. If you like buying stuff online, this should be helpful. For example, you want to buy ipod touch 32gb; check the price comparison at BeatMyPrice.com.

Categories
General

Internet Browser Memory Battle

I have some internet browsers installed in my PC and laptop like Opera, Firefox, Flock, Safari (for Windows) and also Internet Explorer. For my OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, I only have Firefox and Opera. Among those, I only use two browsers regularly. For the other, I only use it for web development purposes.
Even I — think — I have enough memory to run some application at the same time, I love when those browsers do not eat too much memory. So far, I like Opera and Firefox (I use the latest version). Not only that I feel comfortable using them, but also because they have good memory management. If you want to reader some detailed analysis, there are some articles on the internet. Here are some:

The good think is that… I use my favorite internet browsers, and they’re also good. Nice.

Categories
General

Feedburner Subscriber Comparison Tool

Feed Compare
Using Feedburner, we can find out easily about how many subscribers we have. Not only that, Feedburner can also help us handling the bandwdith usage caused by our feeds. There is a service called Feed Compare. It’s a service to compare number of feed subscribers. This online tool can be used easily. Just provide the feed name (or full Feedburner URL) and click on the “Compare” button. Right now, it seems that it can only compare four feeds at a time.

Categories
General

Blogtools interface

MT vs. WP vs. TxP: Interface comparison.