Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

There are so many different variants of French press instructions but 28 grams for 16 ounces is nice and rich and there are some that are half that. Half that is way to yucky I think. And make sure the press is warm and the water is 200F and not at boiling.

Happy Birthday France! And a quick catchup on podcasting, the audio level seems better, there is less “breathing” but there is some clipping of the sound, so not all the way tuned. I also hear clicking as it comes in and out, this could be related to the Shure microphone to the Sony camera to…

OK, I figured out that you can’t use the very fast Apple Compressor unless you don’t have the proxy and do have the optimized (eg ProRes 422) files, but what I didn’t realize is that if you import some clips and do a quick edit and then try to run Compressor it will fail with…

I was thinking about buying a Spyder X because the Spyder 3 software no longer works, but then I found DisplayCal which seemed to crash the last time, but since the Spyder X costs way more so I thought I would try this. This doesn’t help the print calibration, but good to try. DisplayCal has…

Wow, what a great two days Amazon Prime was this year. Normally, I don’t find many things to buy, but this year, I see, but here is a post-mortem on discounts iPad, Anker chargers Sales are not really sales I got really excited when I saw iPads for sale, but the $100 discount is actually…

OK, time to look at Comcast bills again, my fairly reasonable bill at $100/month for 1.2Gbps/50Mbps has jumped to $133 so time to look at it. The big problem with Comcast is that you fall off your one year commitment and don’t realize it and then your bill rises If you look at the pricing…

It’s raining development completion tools. I’m still using vi (as the switch to code is delayed as I figure out how to use a GUI code editor, I’m so used to it being in line with my terminal). But, in the meantime, I was wanting to get off of GitHub Copilot since it cost $20/r,…

OK, for those of you with the Nexus card that allows expedited travel between the US and Canada, here are some things to know (in other words, don’t be me!) Nexus Renewal and make sure to Activate I made this mistake, unlike Global Entry, which when you renew, just works with your passport, you get…

Well, I bit the bullet today and upgraded our Apple Home to use the new protocols. The main issue is that it keeps complaining that one of my Macbook Pros, the 2017 model, has not been updated to the latest firmware. Also, my oldest Apple TV is not compatible, this is another case, where the…

OK, getting a Direct Attached Storage (DAS) is useful if you run out of storage and your Network Attached Storage (NAS). The main reason for this is bandwidth, if you use a Thunderbolt 4 DAS for instance, then you are running at 40Gbps vs Gigabit Ethernet at 1Gbps or if you are direct connected, then…

OK, this is a strange, but amazingly wonderful thing, there’s a WordPress plug-in that converts every post from a WordPress site into a Mastodon one. So now if you search for @rich@tongfamily.com on Mastodon or Pixelfed, you will see the latest posts from this website. Basically, it emulates a few cool protocols, there is webfinger…

Well, I just got the Elgato S60+ which lets my Sony A7R3 push 4K resolution output, but today, I finally got my Shure V83F microphone working. Hooking it up is actually pretty confusing since there are so many different ways to do it, but the short notes are: Setting up the filters for Shure VF83F…

OK, I’ve been running Tongfamily.com on Digital Ocean for the last five years and it has been fairly trouble-free (particularly when I added the 2GB swapfile) to prevent out-of-memory problems, but the last two days it has been crashing. It turns out that my simple installation with a 25GB disk has been running out of…

While you can get coffee from Starbucks or from Safeway, it’s fun to try some more artisanal varieties. I’ve JBC before and they have an interesting and rotating selection. Plus, you can get them with free shipping if you order three or more and there are various other deals. I am not a coffee expert,…

I had never seen this message before, but if you use certain advanced features then you have to get rid of your old devices. The two break points are using Advanced Data Protection which means that everything in iCloud uses end to end encryption. Including all york photos and things. The big trade off is…

OK, they just changed the way that Google Workspace works, it used to be free unlimited storage and now it is 5TB per person, so time to figure out how to move things away from Google Workspace. This got me thinking about what we really use Google for, the main thing is the spam filter…

OK, what is going on with the watch bands I haven’t gotten yet, so a companion to the last post about bands I’ve gotten, I would say I haven’t found the perfect set by any means, but Tech Radar has a bunch that I should try (these are mainly the name brands I’ve been thinking…

Well, there are a million Apple Watch bands out there from the incredibly expensive Roo ones that literally cost $2. I decided to buy an assortment based on the reviews out there and tell you that a $99 Apple band is really worth it. The main surprise is that the big standard Apple bands are…

Well, it’s been an amazing two months since our last set of Podcasts and we’ve been busy, particularly in many WhatsApp, Signal, and Discord chats, but finally, with new equipment (a new Elgato S60+ and a little impromptu time), we return. And of course we also have a Spotify Podcasters version that will also appear…

Ok, this one has really been bugging me. I’ve been using Apple Compressor because it is just way (like 10x faster) than Final Cut Pro > File > Share > Apple 4K. But, every so often I get this annoying RequestCVPixelBufferFrame (how user-friendly message). There is a lot on the Internet (and no, you shouldn’t…

OK, it is just incredible how complicated it is to get anything to work correctly, but this is a relatively advanced podcast studio where I want to use the high-quality 4K output (not from a webcam with its relatively crappy lens) but with a great Sony Zeiss 55mm F/1.4 lens. It turns out it is…

Wow, Daniel has his grandfather’s Rolleiflex, a truly famous 35mm camera from the last century. Super cool and I said, oh that looks like a Brownie. A quizzical look and I had to explain the Kodak Brownie (which looks superficially similar) was the camera that brought photography to the masses. This was the original camera…

Well, the last Ink Plus promotion means you have to spend $6K by June 20 to get 90K points which is pretty incredible. Here are some ways to use spend it. You have to do this within three months, so pay attention! Office supply spending is at 5x. So you can double dip if you…

OK, just a reminder as sometimes you get unlucky and your flight is delayed, you are going to miss your connection and you need a hotel. Here are the things not to do: 1. Don’t depend on the airline to take care of you, most of the time, without airline status you are just one…

OK, this is a miscellaneous list of silly bugs that thing that we all get to live in our daily lives. Fastboot in Android I have a new Android phone and somehow I managed to get a screen that just said “FASTBOOT” and I had no idea what to do. It turns out that if…

OK, if you haven’t been living under a rock, then you know presenting things on Zoom is usually a chore, the main issue is that if you have to show a video and you want it to be indexed, that is you just want to show a segment, Google Slides has this great feature which…

Well, I’ve had an old Nexus 5 and a Google Fi plan for emergencies, but now that I realize you really should have two phones with you, on international trips, I decided to turn on this plan. It is a minimal $20 plan with $10/GB, but it works well for emergencies. The problem is that…

Jon said, “Apple is definitely not that innovative”, but sometimes to me, its the simpler things that make innovation happen. A good example is trying to keep this house as smart as possible. It is definitely complicated. Two examples are trying to get the new Xiao Mi RoboRock S8 running. So for those of you…