Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

I kind of give up these days, anytime there is bright sunlight it is hard to see. And when I look at my Kindle Paperwhite, I just wonder if there is a better way. Well, it turns out they are niche products, but e-ink (which is a patented technology) is available from third parties as…

Ok, if you are setting up a large installation and have to use wired because the system does not support wireless for things like GPS RTK systems or there are jitter problems on WiFi, then you are going to need some long-ass cables. So how long can you actually go: USB Cables. The main thing…

OK here is a strange error. I hope you do not get this. Occasionally, our Unifi Dream Machine flags a push to GitHub as an information leak. This manifests itself as hang when trying to do a git push or git pull. The fix is pretty simple (although the Unifi Console UI keeps changing), but…

OK, some more crazy Vim tricks. I have vi sets so that a window pops up with lint errors and this can be annoying. Turns out there is a hack to close windows quickly. Normally I do a CTRL-W CTRL-W to get to the window and then can do a zz to close it. but…

OK, this is a strange problem, but I’ll document it for myself. I use Veracrypt to store my ssh keys and other things. They are actually protected by passwords, but as a safeguard, I also store them in a secure Veracrypt mount that is in turn in a Google Drive so I can share it…

Wow, the ASUS X13 (2022) convertible notebook is a nice nVidia GTX 3050Ti thin and light notebook. It is on sale for $1300 at Best Buy right now and it has a Ryzen 6000 processor with 16GB of memory and 1TB hard drive. There are some things that are hard to do: Turned the thing…

I’ve been using the Juno Jupiter Pro for a while now. It’s a pretty awesome dedicated Ubuntu laptop. The main limitation is that it is 3.5 pounds but it does require a large brick so really it’s more like 4 pounds. It does have 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD and an nVidia RTX 3050ti.…

OK, it used to be that you would just dump anything you don’t need into the garbage and it would find itself in a landfill. Well, we are far from those days, today, every day there is regular waste, there is green waste and there is recycling plus lots of other special things, so here’s…

Do you know how sometimes one thing leads to another? In my case, it started with climate change which leads to 90 degree plus days in Seattle which leads to wanted to sit outside instead of swelter indoors which leads to wanting to write some code outside which leads to trying to get better colors…

We have a WaterCop system at home from the ancient days before Apple HomeKit and also an old lighting system. The first one has false alarms and we can’t ever tell which sensor actually triggered since they all feed a single sensor into the alarm system. The lighting system has failing switches so things like…

One of the cool things that GitHub handles pretty well is changing your company’s organization. For instance, if you have a secret name, say Acme, then you create an organization and your main repo could be in git@github.com:acme/src, but what if you want to change your name? Then you just click at the top and…

OK, inspired by the really cool Commitlint project which ensures you don’t just type “fix” when you do a git commit, I learned about a standard Conventional Commit format to make the lines useful. Basically, you can load into commitlint a standard set of rules for a pattern that looks like this: This seems silly,…

Well for a variety of crazy reasons we just drove 11 hours to Montana. It was a great trip and an easy way to see some beautiful country (with suitably scary revelations), but one of the highlights was listening to the LensRentals Podcast. I first started using LensRentals an incredible 9 years ago and they…

Well, now that the rendering of LaTeX worked, might as well get diagrams working the same way. It’s the same idea, there is a WP Mermaid plugin and there is both Gutenberg block and there is a shortcode [ mermaid ]. Note that after you install a plugin, you need to restart any edit session…

Well, there are two good options: Use the Unicode characters for mathematics in simple one-line formulas and then add the Greek keyboard for things like pi or π by using the Globe icon ???? to switch to Greek and type a p. On a Mac, you get these with CTRL-CMD-Space or ⌃-⌘-Space and then go…

Well, I’ve been putting off buying a new Apple Watch for years. We got the first Series 1 and it was hard to figure out what to do with it (this was before it became more fitness-focused and was supposedly a general application and notification platform). Like all first versions, you could see the promise,…

OK, it’s been three long years since I’ve used a dedicated bare-metal Ubuntu machine. The last time was with house-made machine learning machines when the Titan was a big system, but we were amongst the first to build quad GPU machines running the then very new Ubuntu 14.04. Now of course the world has matured…

In these days of high gas prices. I was curious to see what the real energy cost savings are right to now. Back in 2017, we had the option to get a $5K rebate or unlimited free supercharging. This was because they dropped the price of the car by $5K before we took delivery and…

Ugh, I’ve been trying to limp along with an Apple Watch Series 3 and it’s been hard. The thing doesn’t last very long battery-wise and is slow. Also at some point, I took a huge piece of glass out of the right corner but it still worked. Finally, it has begun to seize up. What…

I can’t believe how dependent I’ve gotten on two features. The first is iCloud Share Tab Groups, this gives you a single view of all your tab groups across all your devices. This is super convenient for those of us with multiple chores. Like taking care of Mom, the home, and having a non-profit and…

There are very few WiFi channels and most are congested, so the quest goes on for more spectrum and channels to avoid everyone else WiFi Access points. The 2.4 GHz band, the ISM band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical), is super crowded with only three non-overlapping 20MHz channels at 1, 6, and 11. And when 5…

Docker has become the default for lots of reproducible build system, but the sad thing is that although you get a defined image, the specification, the Dockerfile itself, is not reproducible. That’s because most Dockerfile do not have pinned dependencies: This is a simple example that starts ubuntu, installs some python junk, and then you…

Well, now that world has moved so far over to USB C, there are so many more choices of chargers. You can get a USB C charger with 200W and multiple connectors, but it is super confusing what works with what. And when you plug multiple devices in, how much power do you get out.…

This is one of the more confusing aspects of WordPress. Yes, I know, I’ve transitioned all the sites that I own to Hugo (except for tongfamily.com and calvintong.com), but I’ve been stuck on WordPress for a simple reason. Editing a Hugo site is a big pain. There is supposed to be a Netlify CMS but…

Well, the new MacOS Monterey adds third-party device support for battery life. This is great, but unfortunately, the Anne Pro keyboards that I have don’t honor it. They always report 100% battery even when dead, the only reliable way to tell battery life is to start the Obinskit utility and see what it says. As…

OK, two quick random things that have made my life much better just from discovery USB Copy Crashes. I’ve had full crashes on my Synology DS1812+ box which I’ve never seen before. The entire UI locks up, the machine is on, but doesn’t respond to ssh and doesn’t do anything. Finally tracked this down to…

OK, my Chrome extensions have been a complete mess. (As have my Safari and Firefox ones but that’s another story). The main issue is that with Safari, there is no central repository of extensions, so you have to configure them on each device. And, with Chrome I have lots of user identities because Google Workspace…

Well, if you are a student and need a Mac or iPad for the Fall will be announced this Friday to get a gift card worth up to $150. They used to do a free set of AirPods, but now it’s a little more flexible and you get 20% off of AppleCare. With the MacBook…

If you need a laptop and are going to do machine learning and AI on it, then you pretty much need to have a Linux laptop with an nVidia processor. This is a pretty narrow market, but there are two big choices: get a Linux pre-installed laptop from the big boys or go for a…

Ok it’s been incredibly rainy here in Seattle and I’ve forgotten how complicated it is to get to this stuff running again here’s a guide from last time The BBQ Guru UltraQ is expensive but excellent and the BBQ Ring Is really useful. Make sure to clean your Kamado grill throughly and the bbq probes…