Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

OK, there are many guides on the Fediverse, but celebrating the three-week anniversary of joining, I was talking with Paul and realized that I probably should write down the highly opinionated way that I’m trying to use it and also explain the basic architecture. It is constantly discussed as open Twitter, but it actually works…

OK, the weekly screwing around with your Mac updates. Here are some of the interesting things I’ve learned… Use APFS and GUID for USB Drives One of my Macs only has a 256GB SSD. That sounds like a lot, but I regularly run out of space and have when I’m home a RAID1 16TB array…

OK, we are using U.S. Mobile for cheap data. They are an MVNO for 5G on Verizon and for 4G LTE on T-mobile and with Verizon, you get pool plans that are pretty reasonable. Basically, $9/phone, and then you pay for the data pool you use which gives you 40GB for $80. So for 9…

Argh, why is it that nearly 50 years after the invention of the PC, just configuring a printer is so hard? We just got a new HP Neverstop Laser 1001nw and this is a tiny little printer, but the best thing about it was that setting it up for the Mac was a breeze. But,…

Ok, time once again for figuring out how to be productive to the max on the Mac, so first asking ChatCPT3, so straight from the collective mouth of the Internet and then culling to the most useful ones, but the ones that I use most often are ⌘-⌥- left and right arrow will move applications…

OK, I saw a post on Mastodon about open-source tools for photo and video editing and it reminded me that I’ve been using DxO PhotoLab for more than 10 years and it is time to see if the open-source tools have caught up. I generally liked DxO over Lightroom because their defaults seem closer to…

Ok, this has to be in the department of infrastructure breaks too much, but I never log in to my MacBook Pro 2017 that I use for backups, and to review here is how I handle backups right now based on the 2022 strategy which has been working pretty well, but it’s a six-layered backup…

I just listened to Why We Sleep. I don’t know how scientific it is, but it sure scared me. With an Apple Watch if you set the sleep time properly by setting your sleep time in the Clock, not knob do you get a notification to sleep as well as a wake up alarm, but…

Most of the time when I get a reference quality Blu-ray, I will use Handbrake to make an archival copy. I find that with a 60GB Blu-ray if I set it for H.265 MKV 2160p60 as the default and make a custom one that matches the frame rate. For instance, NTSC is a really bizarre…

Wow, who would ever have thought we would get to this, now this is Comcast territory so not symmetric, but I’m getting a 1.4Gbps download and a 40Mbps upload now. This required some significant changes to the network. I had been using an Arris SB8200 which is a 32×8 DOCSIS 3.1 modem that has two…

Well, now that we have 4K HDR finally setup (thank you for all those year of isolation), it’s time to find the best movies that show off the soundtrack and the 4K HDR. So here are some of the best scenes thanks to Digital Trends, Shane Lee, Denon, Cinelux, Whatnerd (Feb 2021) and What Fi.…

Well we just got a flat with our Tesla and what a nightmare. They basically don’t provide you with anything that you need so here are the just haves so you are not like me: The main thing to realize is that Teslas are not designed with any failsafes if you have a flat. The…

Since I last posted on the difference between .local and .localdomain where you get automatic naming from the hostnames, this really undocumented set of features has been useful and hard to debug. So some notes: Debugging .local Last year, the .localdomain was just the reflection of the hostname and appended to that domain, so for…

Well, all this time at home has meant that we’ve put a lot of smart home devices into the house. Last week we had a power outage and I can definitely say that while more powerful, these devices are not particularly resilient to failures like this (particularly the cheaper devices), but here are the problems…

So this has really been the year of the watch for me. With the Series 3 finally dying (because the screen finally cracked and then it died), I ended up buying a new set of smartwatches and it revitalized my interest at the other end of the Watch barbell, so here are my recommendations for…

If you are lucky enough to be a Microsoft Alumni, then you can join the Alumni Association which I really encourage. But what can you do with this, well, there are a few things: You can check that this all works at the Account Portal

Wow, this is one of those features that I thought was useless, but now this is super useful. As a reminder Continuity Camera is a feature where you can use the really good backside cameras of an iPhone instead of the crappy camera inside your MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is the near perfect laptop,…

Well one problem with the Mac is that it is a sealed box, so you need to get enough SSD space when you buy it. For instance, if I find I’m using 256GB regularly, then I will try to buy a 512GB Mac. And if you normally use close to 512GB, you will improve your…

Since it appears to be nearly impossible to talk about anything that isn’t just about how great “He who shall not be named” is, we are discontinuing autoposting to Twitter. Note that you can find me on “Media that cannot be named” by a search using “technology not owned by Twitter”. You know what to…

If you are thinking about stocking stuffers, the Zebralight is a great one, but you will want a good charger to go with it. I’ve tried quite a few and it definitely pays to get one that will last a lifetime you can get versions that support NiMH or LiPo in AAA, AA, and 18650…

John asked me an out Infrared thermometers. I was reminded I’ve love my Etekcity so much. It’s great when figuring out the temperature of your grill or pan. It’s not too expensive either. Just $29 at Amazon. Then my goto is Thermoworks as long as you don’t leave it on. But it’s super accurate I…

Wow now getting deeper into it. There are so many difference instances and they matter because it sets your local timeline. So if you have a specific group you want that’s great but unfortunately it’s complicated to shop for them. Here’s what I’ve done:

Argh, I can’t take it, now that we have a house full of terrific OLED displays (thank you LG for the B9, CX and C2!) as well as amazing displays on the road (thank you Apple for the MacBook Pro and iPhone 14 HDR screens), I really wish our smaller monitors were of the same…

Well, yesterday was a great day of cleaning action items, it was lazy work and exercise time for sure, but one filled with reducing the huge backlog of things that I had been meaning to do. That’s everything from Black Friday (soon to be Cyber Monday!) shopping to figuring out headphone equalization. Why headphone equalization,…

Well, ever since our Brother printer gave up the ghost with a software boot loop, we’ve been limping along with an HP Laser Printer and it has worked well. The problem is that we’ve really missed the automatic document feader (ADF) and scanner since there are still lots of documents we’d like to scan automatically.…

OK, now that the Twitter dumpster fire is pretty clear, it’s time to move on to some new techie pastures. So I’ve been experimenting with Mastodon for the last few weeks. It’s a strange environment that feels like the first days of the Web. But, basically, this is about Activity Publishing where there are lots…

Well, besides a high thread count, companies like Parachute have been pushing ahead, but there are quite a few niche brands to try and look at the many reviews of places. And the fact it is Black Friday does seem like a good time to try a few and look at Sleep Foundation, HGTV I’ve…

There are so many great deals, so take advantage here is a list of things I’ve been looking at:

OK, this is one of the most confusing things about the Family Sharing feature and the App Store. What I thought should happen is that if you are in a Family Sharing group, you should use see applications like Final Cut Pro appear as downloadable, but this is now how it works. You need to…