Category: "Opinions"
WordPress is still worth to use
Wix and Shopify are very popular. That is a cloud website builder. You can use them to build a website very easily. Even you can hire some professional to do that for you. The main advantage is they are cloud solutions, so you do not need to have a server and maintain the CMS. That is much easier for small business. So, a lot of businesses which are using WordPress are moved to them. However, WordPress is still worth to use. Nowaday, WordPress is very user friendly now, there are a lot of drag and drop style builders for WordPress. For Us, who are with some programming experinces, WordPress is very customizable, it can do the things faster than Wix and Shopify, and we can build extra easily too. Lastly, there are a tons of pre built web templates for WordPress. So I think that is still worth to consider as your CMS.
Intel NUC 8th gen i7 as my development box
During Black Friday sales, I bought a 8 Gen i7 Intel NUC. It got i7-8559U CPU, which is not bad. I got it around AUD$500. It checked 8th gen vs 10th gen is not much different. At the best, that is only 10% more powerful, that is more in gaming. As a development box, that is good enough. Then I bought my 500 m.2 hardk and 32 GB RAM for $277, they are on blakc friday specials too. I found the system is very good. It is quiet and very powerful. I found it even is faster than my work laptop, 8th Gen i7 XPS with 16GB RAM. Maybe, the RAM played the major roles, because I mainly anulgr apps.
Yes, I know the most ideal box, should be a full-size ATX with a desktop i7, but it will cost around $1000. Now, I can build under $800!
My New Lockdown Gadget - Chromecast
Although we are getting our live back to normal, but that is still a new normal. I am still not able to go my church in person, due with the government COVID regularations. And I think that has to been like this, protecting everyone. Thus, every sunday, I need to watch a youtube livestream of my church. That is too bad, I got 16 years ago TV. It cannot use YouTube. At the end, I bought a Chromecast from JB Hifi for $59. That is a very reasonable price to make my TV to watch YouTube. Moreover, I can cast 7Plus or ABC iView to my TV, so I can watch the news anytime in my TV. So, that is a very useful tool for me under the "New Normal"
Free Email Forwarding Service
If you bought a domain and you do not want to buy a web host for doing your email service or you are doing a service which is only providing website hosting wihout email service such as shopify, then the simplest solution is email forwarding service. Recently, I found a free one ImprovMX. They are free to up 5 domain and 10 alias. You only need to point MX record to their server and put TXT record with a random string to verify the ownership of the domain name. That is very easy to use!
The way to watch TV
In the past, we watched TV via an antenna. We needed to follow the station time table to watch the programs. I still remember I had a video recorder to record any programs I missed by using a timer to set the recording time.
During recent years, in Australia, our ways of watching TV are changed. Now, we watch TV via the internet, not via an antenna anymore. A lot of friends had some online TVB subscriptions, such as Netflix or TVBA. Even some people like us not willing to spend on watching TV. All free-view TV stations are available on the internet. We can watch the live broadcast via the internet. A lot of newer TVs have built-in FreeView app, that is very easy to navigate via your TV remote. For us, they got an old TV. But I had a Raspberry PI, which can act as a TV box to connect the internet from our TV. Also, in Brisbane, some areas have not a very good TV signal. So, watching TV via internet is more stable. Moreover, some stations have free Program On -Demand service, so I can watch the programs I like in any time I like!