Blog

Coffee Shops vs Coworking Spaces

December 2, 2019

I've been doing the digital nomad thing for almost 5 years straight now and I find that working in coffee shops works best for me.

Coworking spaces certainly have their pluses and will probably work better for those with a more structured schedule.

Below is a list of reasons I can think of where a coworking space makes more sense:

  • you work full time and have a set schedule
  • you need a quiet area to …

Renewing a US passport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

November 11, 2019

Renewing a US Passport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I've recently renewed my US passport while traveling in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I actually still had about 10 months left before expiration but I decided to renew it earlier as some countries require at least 6 months validity before they let you in. I didn't want to wait until the last minute.

Since Malaysia allows for up to a 90-day stay for tourists from the US, I figured this would be a good place to …

How to disable the Tab Hover Cards in Chrome

October 28, 2019

My Chrome recently got updated and a new feature that was introduced which I found very distracting and annoying is "Tab Hover Cards", where it displays a pop-up box whenever you place your mouse cursor on a tab.

To disable this function, type this in the URL:

chrome://flags/

Then search for "tab hover" and set the settings to "Disabled":

Disable Tab Hover Cards in Chrome and Brave Browsers

If you use the Brave browser, the steps above will also work.

The Joy of Refactoring

October 4, 2019

I spent a good part of last month refactoring a decent portion of the codebase of our Shopify data exporter app, EZ Exporter.

There are 3 main motivations I decided to invest this much time in refactoring:

  • Optimization.
  • Preparing the codebase for new features.
  • Reduce maintenance cost/complexity/technical debt.

Refactoring is the process of improving the code's structure and design, which I actually quite enjoy. I'm a bit of a minimalist and I find cutting …

How to connect an Xbox One S controller via Bluetooth in Pop!_OS 18.04 (Ubuntu 18.04)

September 22, 2019

In Pop!_OS 18.04 (which is based on Ubuntu), connecting an Xbox One S controller via USB works out of the box and detected by Steam automatically. No additional steps necessary. I've been gaming mostly on my laptop so I've just being using a USB cable so I won't have to think about batteries.

However, I've recently moved to a new AirBnB with a nice big screen TV so I wanted to try it out and …