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How to work with Packages at Taiwan's convenience stores

A service provided by the major convenience store chains in Taiwan is to use their network to send a package from one store to another.  This post is an aggregation of information about working with packages across the various chains.  Family Mart To know when to receive your package, visit the Famiport tracking site , enter the 11-digit tracking number and pay attention to the status, which is listed with the most recent status at the top of the page. You will see the following in order:   訂單成立未寄件  - paperwork completed 已完成寄件 - sent from the origin 貨件前往物流中心 - on the way to the distribution center 貨件抵達物流中心 - at the distribution center 貨件已完成理貨 - sorted 貨件等待配送中 - awaiting delivery 貨件進行配送中 - out for delivery 貨件配達取件店舖  - delivered   If you see 查無訂單資料 your tracking number was not found in the system. Check you are copying and pasting the correct number (11 digits).    7-Eleven To know when to receive your package, visit the tracking site , enter the tracking number and pay attention to the
Recent posts

Citizenship.tw, a brief overview of the ways to get Taiwanese citizenship

 Did you know there are four different pathways to Taiwanese citizenship? Many people confuse the new "High Level Professional" route with the very different "Outstanding Contributions to Taiwan" pathway. It is now achievable for qualified professionals to obtain Taiwanese citizenship without renounciation. Having gone through the process, I created a brief overview of the various methods and requirements, check it out at: https://citizenship.tw/ As always, contributions welcome !

Taiwan's Employment Gold Card: FAQ

This blog post has been replaced by TaiwanGoldCard.com.   TaiwanGoldCard.com is a site I've been working on with Eric Khun and other members of the Gold Card community to share our experience applying for the card and moving to Taiwan. Enjoy!

Straightforward security enhancements for your apache2 webserver

If, like me, you've got a scrappy Linux host lying around to run a few websites you're probably interested in taking its security up a notch from the standard install. Assuming you're running the highly common apache2 and iptables, see the links below for some surprisingly straightforward configuration tweaks to improve the security of your webserver. Add HTTPS with Let's Encrypt If it's been a while since you've looked into certificates, you may be surprised to learn you can get them for free from Let's Encrypt. There are many guides around, but it is well and truly time to join the HTTPS-only movement: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-apache-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-18-04 SSH Cipher gardening You're probably already using SSH keys, have disabled password login and are using denyhosts or failtoban. However, have you ever considered reducing the number of ciphers your server accepts to just the most secure? Te

How to Order Masks using your Digital Citizen Certificate

 Taiwan offers a smart card to adult foreign residents that can be used to verify their identity online. This allows some government services previously only available in person to be provided online, including: Tax return submission Applying for credit reports Accessing healthcare data from the NHI Requesting a police check Certificate of Entry and Exit dates from the NIA Ordering Face Masks Sounds great! However, the system relies on some ironically insecure/outdated technology, a mishmash of different browser plugins and very few support staff know about its existence. Here's a tip on how to use yours... How to Order Masks using your Digital Citizen Certificate During epidemics, Taiwan has a system where you can order surgical face masks online for delivery to your local convenience store. It's very straightforward and takes only a few minutes to order Get a Digital Citizen Certificate and set it up in your card reader Login to the eMask Ordering Syst

The Story of LLRP2HRP - Part 2

So, this brash American dude who ran a relay race event decided to go fancy. None of this using phones to manually scan NFC chips for race timing. He was going to have chips in bibs. He convinced another organisation that also ran races to chip in some funding ... and then went online. He found an RFID reader system. The kind of ground mats that you run over, that connects to a box that goes beep. It was from China. It was insanely cheap. Like fall-off-the-back-of-a-truck cheap. It was delivered, hardware checks out. It came with no software. Last time , we'd figured out that it also provided RFID tag information using a proprietary binary protocol and were trying to lock down exactly what that was. It was one of the most arduous Google sessions I've had for a while. Trawling the entire web for some document or code that probably only existed inside an office in Shenzhen. But I found something! It was amazing, because of the source, and how perfectly it fit my n

The Story of LLRP2HRP - Part 1

So, this brash American dude who ran a relay race event decided to go fancy. None of this using phones to manually scan NFC chips for race timing. He was going to have chips in bibs. He convinced another organisation that also ran races to chip in some funding ... and then went online. He found an RFID reader system. The kind of ground mats that you run over, that connects to a box that goes beep. It was from China. It was insanely cheap. Like fall-off-the-back-of-a-truck cheap. It was delivered, hardware checks out. It came with no software. Commence epic yak shaving side project! The reader is a Hopeland (previously Clou) CL7206C4 . Basically an ARM9 box running (amazingly) Familiar Linux v0.8.3 with a 2 2-port UHF transceivers . The transceivers are based on the Impinj R2000 platform, which is a popular platform for race timing. I pulled a venerable Thinkpad out of a draw and plugged it into the ethernet jack and fired up wireshark. No DHCP requests, but some documentat