Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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…

Well, I’ve kind of gotten used to using Mac (my primary), Linux, and Windows with the same command line by using bash and zsh with the Mac and it works the same with Linux. With Windows, it’s way harder to use bash with Windows (I found that you have to think of WSL as a…

Potential solution to the blanking of the screen I think I found that the Cable Matters model 201388 Cable Matters needs a firmware update to work. But basically long story short the adapter has V 6.03 in it and the new update is 6.05 and so it’s updated. I also found a host of other…

OK, I’ve had two cases now where a HomePod just would not soft reset. In both cases, it would refuse to connect to the WiFi network. In both cases, it kept complaining that it could not find the WiFi network. I then tried the soft reset. This means you unplug the device and then hold…

OK, with the advent of lossless audio from Apple Music and other sources, it’s time to ask how can you get to the ultimate level of fidelity. I’ve been buying dedicated Digital-to-Analog Convertors DACs for a long time. And they have gotten really good. The first thing to note is that the original iPod had…

Argh, this has been so annoying over the last two years. I have an LG B9 television connected to a MacBook Pro M1 2021 and most of the time when I turn it on, the MacBook is not detected. Here are the symptoms: It sure feel like, the Mac is losing synchronization with the HDMI…

OK, I have a really nice minimalist wallet from Geometric Goods. It has a slot for an AirTag and one card that you can easily pull and then room for six more. The problem is that it also has a funny-looking fastener for it and I lost it. So I’m on a quest to find…

Well, I’ve been working on maximizing the American Express Platinum and Chase Sapphire Reserve credits. This is important as these cards are expensive at $550 per year so earning the additional bonuses really matters, so I’ve been working on making sure that every dollar is used correctly and not surprisingly, they make it hard. American…

Wow Ventura has an interesting feature called Continuity Camera, it lets you use a close-by iPhone automatically as your webcam. The picture quality is definitely way better than a MacBook Pro image and it does work very automatically which is kind of a miracle. If the Mac and the iPhone are on the same account,…

If you do not have space for the incredible LG C2 42″, then the pickings are pretty limited for good TVs, so you are in the range of computer monitors again. While you could get the $1,600 Apple monitor, it is just SDR and 27″. So, if you want a good value, Rtings.com likes the…

OK, I was away from my main keyboards for about three weeks and it was interesting to see what happened, the biggest thing is that after upgrading to Ventura, I could not get any Bluetooth connection to my Keychron K6 it would just not pair properly, so here are some of the things to do…

OK for security reasons, you cannot just convert a forked repo that was private into a public repo. I think the reason is the original repo might have contents that you do not want out in the public domain. But, if you have made a mistake and just want to force it to be public,…