Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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,…

OK, you can great a very good monitor for $500, but if you want something that is great at HDR, then it is more like $1K for an LG C2 monitor, but what if you want a professional really accurate system. Well, then the monitors increase dramatically in cost. For instance, the Apple Pro display…

Yes, it does seem that every year, there is yet another update to the Mac that means lots of upgrades, the god news is that if you like you can write a script that does it all. I have one call update-annual.sh that does these things: Operating System update. While you can click on settings…

Well, I made a mistake, we’ve had such a good experience with the Lo & Son’s original Travel Bag O.G. 2, it was so reliable with a lifetime warranty. In fact, after 10 years, we actually got a second one that is a little larger. The mistake was that they have dramatically extended their product…

Ok, I don’t often do this, but when I go out and review things and buy them, I nearly always have a quick set of thoughts afterward when I initially install the products, so going from a buying guide to a quick review to a long term review is the plan. You will also see…

OK, this is going to sound nerdy, but doing things around the house or going to a construction site, you should think about these things, so from head to toe, what should a person get: Work Gloves, if you are doing really heavy work then the big leather gloves are great, but if you are…

Well, one thing that I realized I lost the other day was a really cool Leatherman Squirt multitool. I had forgotten it was attached to my backpack and it ended up in the TSA find more stuff locker. So to finding the right kit for those hikes. There are a couple of choices: Multitool. The…

With the pandemic, we got serious about air filters and measurement, here are some notes after using some key tools in the last two years: Air quality monitor. We actually have two of them the Eve and the Kaiterra Laser Egg Plus which was one of the first monitors. There are now lots of them,…

We just love the TeslaCam feature on our car. You plug in a high-reliability miniSD card into the USB hub and. you get continuous loop recording, you get recording on honk so this is just great. In fact, you should probably have a Dash Cam for all your cars, so the big question is what…

Well, we just spent three days out of cell phone coverage in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies, so here are some lessons and things to bring for that situation: Whistle. This is a location that is completely out of cell phone range and there are lots of bears about it, so safety is a…

Ok, this problem has really been bothering me, but I use four levels of python virtualization. I don’t need all of these but they are from history, so they are: Homebrew installation. YOu can install multiple versions of python with brew install python@3.8 for instance. I don’t use this that much, but it lets you…

Well, it’s an interesting time in the Apple lifecycle, basically, the next generation chips are out, so the iPhone 14 Pro gets the new A16 in 4nm and the low-end MacBook Air and Pro 13 get the new M2 in 5nm. So the performance improvements are massive, about 20% for M1 to M2, but still…

Well, I’ve already written how you can edit and shoot an entire wedding video on the iPhone 12 Pro Max with the included iMovie, but just this week, I did a series of “dailies” from a hiking trip that went really well. We were completely off the grid, so all the photos had to be…

OK, we had a six-hour-long power failure here. Fortunately, Seattle City Light does a great job keeping people informed if you have access to the Internet at their outage page. You just call (206) 684-3000 to report one. And in our case, we were down from 930-1630 or so. The other interesting thing was that…

OK, early this year, I did some research on how to get HDR and Spatial Audio working on the Mac and iDevices and things have gotten a little better but to remind people, there are two cases, dedicated applications that are available on the iPhone and then on the Mac, there are dedicate applications like…

Ok, there are times when I want to organize a collection of MP3s as a single anthology. That is I want to override the individual album names and also rename the files so they all go together. As an example, if I want all the Billboard Hot 100 songs of 2000 in a single place,…

OK, most of the Unifi recommendations are that you turn off automatic frequency assignment and then do it, yourself. Of course there are very few guides that tell you exactly how to do that, but basically, there are few ideas that I use. The Basics: non-overlapping channels There are six 80MHz 5GHz channels. We try…

Huge thanks to @matthew for this tip. But someone who shall remain nameless accidentally stepped on their gossamer gear trekking pole and the bottom third snapped leaving part of it inside the telescoping system. This thing has a friction fit joint. And while Gossamer gear has an awesome repair site to get the lower piece…

Wow, this was really hard. The basic problem was I think the directions have changed quite a bit, but the main trick or problem is that with Android 12, you actually need to put a physical SIM into it to “trick” it into giving you an esim (aka SIM2), so the steps are: You need…

Ok, here is a very mysterious problem for you, with an M1 MacBook Pro, I suddenly could not connect my Bluetooth keyboards. For full context, I use three different (yikes!) mechanical keyboards with Bluetooth depending on my mood. Two are AnnePro2 with Gateron Blue and Kailh Box White switches and then I have a Keychron…