My thoughts on things in April 2025

I haven't been posting here a lot recently, but I'd like to give some thoughts regarding some things going through my mind. 

AI tools like ChatGPT

AI tools are certainly becoming more and more a thing of our daily life. Playing around with creating images, reassuring vocabulary etc. Even becoming an essential tool at work in many ways. Despite there are mistakes here and there, the development over the recent years is quite astonishing. The difficult part will be like finding the right balance.

The end of Skype

Yes, Skype is actually ending next month. I can see why since Microsoft also has Teams and maybe wants to rather focus on that. I just made the switch a few days ago, the transition was mostly flawless. It has been a long run with Skype. Especially during the last 10 years Skype while travelling and now living abroad it has been an essential tool to stay in touch with family and friends. It's the end of an era and let's see whether everyone will make the switch to Teams or rather uses alternate options.

6 more months of Updates for Windows 10

I might be a more crazy example, but I still use a Lenovo laptop which I bought almost 10 years ago. It's certainly getting slower and a reinstallation even failed when I tried a few months ago. An upgrade to Windows 11 is not even possible due to hardware limitations. So maybe it's time for a switch later this year. For work I already use Windows 11 and can see its benefits, but haven't gone too deep just yet. Still, certainly interesting that an operation system which was supposed to be the "final" Windows will no longer be supported. Will be possible lead to lots of hardware trash. I know even people who bought a new laptop in 2020/21 won't even make it through the new hardware requirements. It feels timing-wise a bit early and certainly a better date could have been found. It doesn't need to be as long as the life cycle of XP, but still not ideal - as many people certainly won't make the switch and may become an easy target. We will see if Microsoft goes through with that.

Evernote - We had a good run

I used Evernote since 2012 and the app has been really useful to me throughout the years, but recently developments force me find other ways.

Crazy to think about that I started using the app already 12 years ago. The appealing point was that I could create things like personal To-do lists on either phone or PC and keep them synchronized. Was ideal for planning travels or just keeping personal notes for things you shouldn't forget. I even used it sometimes for longer texts such as fanfiction stories.

All good, but I think it was earlier this year things became more difficult for free users as the amount of notes was reduced to around 20 I think. Was still fine with me. There were only a few notes which I would regularly update. So I exported old ones into html files and just kept using occasional notes. The pop-ups all the time were quite annoying, but was still fine for the time being.

Maybe I was too optimistic while others already smelled the fire. A recent change now only allows only one free device per user. And that made the app no longer useful for me. I will now go with a very simple and free alternative: GoogleDocs.

It does everything I need and it's not justifiable to have a monthly subscription for synchronizing a few KB of text files. A shame, but there were are. Will the paid model work in the long-term? Time will tell, but I won't be a part of it.

Beijing Airport and the Firewall...

An 8 hour stopover in Beijing, not the first time, so I was aware that using things like Google, Facebook could be tricky. I installed NordVPN on my phone as well. In 2019 it allowed me to avoid the firewall and at least I could send some messages. But not so this time at the end of 2023...

By now, also NordVPN was blocked and I couldn't connect to any country. Didn't really think of a Plan B, thought it's just 8 hours, no problem. But then I saw my flight is getting delayed by an hour. Also no big deal, but would be nice to inform my sister who was going to pick me up. 

As Google and Facebook things don't work... I remembered that I still got a Yahoo mail address... But I need a SMS verification code to login - which I couldn't receive there...

Creating a new email address with some German providers ... No, even though these websites generally worked, the providers blocked China from creating new accounts.

Interestingly, despite the firewall I could still receive push messages like from WhatsApp, but of course answering them didn't work.

Then I thought that probably TikTok would work... Well, of course PlayStore doesn't work either.

Since I'm ironically still using a Huawei phone, I could use its specific app store. And then I saw Snapchat.. And I know that my sister uses it.

Installed it, luckily no email verification needed and as the app searched through my phone contacts, I could easily find her. 

Problem solved, but my sister was quite surprised to see me on Snapchat...^^

Extend your Japan Visa online, but don't use Gmail!

With having finally the option to extend my Japan visa online, I thought I'd give it a go this year. But I ran into some interesting roadblocks...

First off all, a MyNumber card (マイナンバーカード) is required which I already got last. 

Then you need a card reader for your PC which can read the MyNumber card. In my case I got the 接触型ICカードリーダー from Goppa. 

Once everything's connected you need to install the JPKI利用者ソフト, and also add the browser plugin (such as from Google Chrome).

Some little font issue...

To ensure that the card reader works, I connected my card and opened the JPKI software to check. Interestingly, despite my PC having been set to Japanese language, sometimes letters could not be properly displayed.

Solution: In "Control Panel > Region > Administrative > Change system locale..." the language needs to be set to Japanese with ""Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" to be unchecked.

Following that things like my visa expiration date could be read from the MyNumber card properly. Everything can only be read after entering your PIN(s) of course.

Then it was time to go to that immigration website and create an account (登録).

During that process you fill out basic information such as where you live.
After the final screen (Step 3) the screen displays a message that I should receive an email to continue - and which should also allow me to create a password for the account.

I'd also recommend making a screenshot or writing down the 認証 ID. Especially considering what happened next...

The Mail to Change your Password...

I waited a few days to the next weekend where I still didn't receive an email. So I tried to use the "Change Password" option to trigger the email to be resent. As expected nothing happened.

Following that I emailed the support email address which is mentioned on that site. About 24 hours later I got the answer that it's not recommended using so-called フリーメール (free email services) such as Google, Hotmail or iCloud.

As that Immigration website uses a system which restricts access to overseas IP addresses.

Wow. That wasn't mentioned anywhere on that website.

At that point I wondered which email provider I could actually use. So I started researching online, but since that system is quite new, it was hard to find any information regarding that topic. 

Luckily I found an article on spouse-visa.jp explaining the whole process (which was luckily just posted the day before), where it's mentioned that Yahoo email addresses (assuming ending with co.jp) can actually be used.

Luckily I created a Yahoo address at some point before, so I rechecked whether I could actually log in again.

Following that I called my local immigration office as recommended in the previous email in order to change the email address of my already registered account.

However I got advised to call the number of that other company doing the support of that site. So I called there as well, but they actually cannot change the email address and told me to call the Immigration office again.

So I coincidentally ended up with the same guy as before again, but after explaining the situation I got send to another co-worker.

Here I finally got the chance to change my email address, but that person advised me that it's not recommend to use any free mail service, even Yahoo would not be possible.

Mail services coming from a phone provider such as Softbank should rather be used.
However I insisted on using a Yahoo address for now and in case it still wouldn't work, I could call again. The guy on the other side then kindly changed my email address as requested to my Yahoo one.

He said it could take around 30 minutes to a few hours for the changes to take effect.
I was quite hopeful that it would work, but you never know, so I went for a walk, came back and in fact after a bit more than an hour even a confirmation email for the "email address change" had arrived on my Yahoo address. 

I tried the password reset and even that email arrived immediately.

From here on onwards I could continue to fill out the forms and upload all the documents I had prepared. Also here I kept using my Yahoo address as further mails regarding my visa would go there as well (keep checking there occasionally or forward it).

Such as the final confirmation mail which came the day later.

Now my new residents card should be on its way soon.

Canon IJ Scan Utility settings get overwritten by default settings - Fix

The Canon IJ Scan Utility is a common tool to receive documents from a scanner on your PC - which I use for quite some years already. You can set it up in a way that for example PDFs are getting automatically attached to a new email. But how can you prevent that your settings get overwritten?

I set up this tool for my parents before, since they only use the scanner to be able to send certain documents via email. However occasionally these settings seemingly get overwritten by the default settings. Not sure whether they accidentally hit the "Default" button or something else is causing it... 

However, after fixing it a few times manually I starting looking for an permanent solution. As I could find nothing via online search I got an interesting (old-school) idea myself.

I had to find out where there the settings are actually saved and it's here:

C:\Users\Andy\AppData\Roaming\Canon\IJ Scan Utility

In this folder there are two files:

UICOM.dat
UIVER.dat

And if you apply changes within the software the time of the "last change" affects these two files. Which led me to the following plan:

1) Set up the Canon IJ Scan Utility settings in the way it should be permanently used

2) Close the application

3) Navigate to the folder mentioned above

4) Go to the Properties of each file and mark "Read-Only"

5) Confirm for both files

6) Now you can test it:
- Open the Canon IJ Scan Utility
- Go to settings, reset settings to default
(Note that the settings initially indeed get reset to default, but...)
- Close the software
- Reopen it
- The default settings are gone, you previously "Read-Only" settings are applied (as the software only reads from these files when it opens)

Hope this can help you! In my case it did! :) 

Global Protection suggesting Windows VPN Settings...

As a GlobalProtect installation and configuration should usually work quite smoothly I hit by a little roadblock... 

After GlobalProtect is installed I should usually get the dialog to enter the VPN connection settings. Instead I got the following message:

"To establish a VPN connection, select the GlobalProtect VPN configuration from Windows NETWORK & INTERNET VPN Settings." 

So GlobalProtect basically wants me to use the local Windows network settings instead of its own. Initially I couldn't really follow, but I figured that I may went too quickly through the installation.

Once I downloaded the Global protect the installer went straight to the Windows Store and I mistakenly confirmed that following message:

So "accidentally" I installed it the Windows Store version which didn't work in my case as I used a special download before.

Correct would be: "Continue installing from outside the Store".
And then the application worked the way it should...

Just a little thing you easily overlook trying that just before going to bed after a long day...

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