rich
rich
@rich@richtong.org
6,889 posts
3 followers
  • iPhone and iPod downloading

    Now that there are so many devices and I’m using a laptop with a small hard drive (80GB), it is really hard to keep iTunes synced because you need to use half disk just to keep music, so you really want to have iPod or iPhone have its own libary and just add to it…

  • Importing MovableType 3.32 entries into 4.1

    OK, here are some gotchas when you have 3000 entries like me: # My hoster, Bluehost.com, seems to have some sort of limit. Or maybe it is MT that does, so only about 2,000 entries actually import properly. Unlike WordPress, you need to specify ahead of time what is the input format. So click on…

  • Mac Scanning

    OK, now I’m going to retire our old ASUS laptop I use for scanning images with an old Minolta DiImage 5400 (now discontinued, but still very functional as a 5400 dpi slide and film scanner). Fortunately, the really great “VueScan”:http://www.hamerick.com is available in a Macintosh version, so I don’t lose anything going to a MacBook…

  • Old tongfamily links back up

    OK, it took some time to realize that my backup of the original tongfamily.com on MovableType were incomplete. I didn’t get anything from the old root directory that was past index.php (strange since I don’t recall deleting anything from the original share, but somehow all kinds of things are missing). In any case, all the…

  • Look and Say Sequence 1 13 1113

    !

  • More Mac Utilities

    OK, just catching up as I finish the install of the new office and home networks. Here are some more super useful Mac utilities: * “Wireshark”:http://wireshark.org. This is a protocol analyzer that used to be called Ethereal before trademark problems. You use it to get really deep information about what is actually happening at the…

  • Playing old Console Games

    The iPhone hackers have a bunch of emulators for old NES and other games. There is a whole industry of folks at “ROMNation.net”:http://romnation.net which let you load all kinds of old games. The most interesting emulator is called MAME (which runs the old arcade games of the 1980s). Pretty fun to play with. Kids love…

  • HD Camcorders

    Well, time for another look, Jim asked me about camcorders once again. Six months ago, the tradeoff was really great HD quality but only on miniDV tape with the Canon HV20 (now updated to the “HV30”:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-HV30-Camcorder-Review-34401.htm) or you could go with the convenience of a hard disk in standard definition like our Sony SR-100 but…

  • Fritz Chess Program and online Chess

    “Fritz”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Fritz I’m learning is really an essential chess program for learning. The latest version is Fritz 11 which was reportedly released in November, but no one seems to be selling it. The main feature is that you can input a game you played during a tournament and it shows you from its database of players…

  • Sitemeter widget for WordPress

    Sitemeter widget for WordPress | Ring Of Blogs If you want to add a Sitemeter widget to WordPress sidebar you can use this plugin. True, you can just paste the sitemeter code into a text widget but when you are using WordPress MU that will not work. WordPress MU will not allow to paste Jave…

  • Using 802.11n on late model Macbook and Macbook Pro’s

    The chipsets inside these computers are programmable for wifi. They originally shipped just with 802.11b and 802.11g (these are relatively lowers speed at 11Mbps and 54Mbps respectively). With the new Airport Extreme and Time Capsule, the Apple base stations can now run the ever better “802.11n”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11n (actually, it is called draft n since the standard…

  • Apple Airport Utiilty 5.3

    Apple has this strange concept where when they ship a new piece of hardware like the “Time Capsule”:http://www.apple.com/support/airport/ they update their controller utiilty called Apple Airport Utility, but don’t make it available on their any site or their search engines according to “Discussions.Apple.com”:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6725431&tstart=0. So make sure you keep your CD when you install! Also, while…

  • Linksys WRT54GL to Apple Time Capsule Conversion

    Now that the Time Capsules have come in, we’ve upgraded our office to use this incredible Wifi+Router+1TB File Server+Backup Server and now I’m working on fixing all networks. Main issue is that I’ve got way too many static IP address devices, so here’s a list and how to get away from static IP addresses to…

  • Canon Pro9000 attached to Airport Extreme does not print

    Canon printers have never really gotten along with Macs. I wish I knew that before I bought my i9900 at home and Pro9000 at work. Apparently for instance, ou can’t print over the network. Things are a little better with the Pro9000, but apparently, it is very difficult to get them to work off the…

  • 2008 National Junior High Championship

    Time to sign up, starting March 4, registration costs go up. The “National Junior High Championship”:http://main.uschess.org/tournaments/2008/jhs/ is next month at the Hyatt Regency at the DFW Airport. Time to sign up. It’s way more convenient being at a major airport, but the thought of four days of airport food are pretty, well, depressing.

  • Comment Spam

    Well, this affliction is terrible. Even in the last two days, I’ve had one good comment and the spammers found the new WordPress blog and started spamming it. WordPress like MovableType doesn’t have much protection. Here is what I did and you should too: # Registration. Require user registration before a comment goes in. #…

  • WordPress Widgets and Archives

    OK, unlike MovableType, WordPress doesn’t automatically generate an archive.php (which is a list of all your posts), so for default templates, you get a 404 page not found error. To fix this isn’t easy to figure out, but essentially, go to Write/Write Page and make sure to name the “page” exactly Archives then it will…

  • Archives

  • Welcome to the new tongfamily.com!

    Well, the switch is finally done. I got mainly held up on the WordPress strange rewrite difference from MovableType. If you want to see the old site, it currently lives at “richtong.org”:https://richtong.org, but eventually, I’ll just put all the old files into “old.tongfamily.com”:http://old.tongfamily.com

  • Becareful WordPress automatically rewrites domain URLs

    So this is all a bit tricky particularly if you want to keep everything running. Here are the weird things you need to remember when transitioning. Some are DNS peculiarities, others are WordPress peculiarities, the biggest one being that WordPress unlike MovableType controls the URL rewriting, so even if you point say “tongfamily.com” to the…

  • Clearing Mac DNS Cache

    I’m in the middle of switching hosting providers. One problem is that when you do this and your host changes, you have to clear your DNS Cache (this is what maps names like tongfamily.com to IP address like 69.206.2.3). On Windows, there is a command line, _ipconfig /flush_ that you run. On Mac OS X,…

  • Two best iPhone application out there

    I completely toasted my iPhone the other day, so I had to do a complete rebuild. This has gotten way easier, here is all you have to do: # Turn on iTunes, plug in your iPhone and install the latest 1.1.4 release (no more painful going up and down) # Go to “Ziphone”:http://ziphone.com and run…

  • About

    This is Rich’s fine and wonderful creation. An amazing 14 year old history for this blog that started first with FrontPage and its simple extensions in 1996, that then became a MovableType blog in 2002 (one of the first!) and now in 2008 has become a WordPress blog with Gallery for photos. For more great…

  • ChinesePod

    !

  • Wyclef Jean and Keep Holding On

    OMG, I just love “Sweetest Girl”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Vol._II:_Memoirs_of_an_Immigrant by Wyclef Jean. it is terrific Hip Hop for those of you who like that kind of stuff. Check out the “video”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=7PxBGHjABnU I’m also listening to “Avril Lavigne’s”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Lavigne “Keep Holding On”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Holding_On

  • Identity Theft, Fraud Alert and Credit Monitoring

    If you are unlucky enough to have your wallet stolen, it isn’t the $50 in it, it is that the thief can sell your identity on the internet to just about anyone. So, what can you do about it. First, you can place a 90 day credit alert for free, but of course every thief…

  • REI Deals

    Hey, if you are buying lots of gear, now’s the time to do a few things. First, if you know an REI member, if you sign up this month for $20 fee, you get a 20% off for a non-sale item. So if you’ve been eyeing something that is $100, now’s the time. Also “REI…

  • Headphones

    !>http://www.headphone.com/productphotos/small/0020331310_2560.jpg! After our most recent trip, nearly all of our earbuds have simply died. Usually, the little cable breaks, so what to do if you need a lot of these and they take abuse. “Headphones.com”:http://headphones.com has some of the best reviews I’ve seen. It is how I originally got the Etymotic ER-6i and ER-4p and…

  • Cracking Airport

    Well, this is sure confusing, I’m trying to get an older Snow Base Airport (not the Airport Extreme) to work right. Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5 comes with a new Airport Utility v5.2 to manage the Airport Extreme but not with the older Airports (code named Snow Base). In fact, this utility is really hard…

  • God Dag. Kan du saga det igen

    Seems like everyone who skis is Swedish sometimes, so good to know from “Speakswedish.co.uk”:http://speakswedish.co.uk some common phrases. I’ve no idea how to pronounce it, but “good day Sweden” seems like a good phrase to learn. When I was there, some other good ones are: | Swedish | English | | ja | yes | |…