Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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…

OK, some quick notes, if you are way too focused like me on credit card savings, then the Chase Freedom quarterly bonus is pretty impressive, basically, every quarter they give you 5x points up to $1,500 in spend in a set of categories. You can find all of this at https://chasebonus.com and yes Chase has…

Well, I did a bad update to our Unifi system a few months ago. I forget the exact version, but basically 1.10 or a version like that was a bad update and 1.11 fixed this. This means that I don’t just say auto-update anymore for UniFi as there are lots of remote site right now…

Personally, I just really have owned a lot of bike lights. Starting with the Light & Motion NiMH Metal ARC that weighed in at over three pounds, but over the last 20 years, things have really stabilized around LED lights and they are small and lightweight, so here are some recommendations: Garmin Vario UT 800…

OK, this sounds crazy, but I have eight AirTags attached to my various sets of keys, even luggage, and backpacks. They really do work. I’ve been shocked at how long the batteries last. We got the first thing back in the middle of 2021 when they first launched in April and I’m shocked to see…

I normally do not use Google Chrome or google.com because it is so invasive, so I use Startpage.com which has Google.com search results without tracking, and Vivaldi which is the open-source Chromium with some extras. However, I’ve found today that I have to use Google Chrome for one specific use case. The problem is that…

Ok, want to get super obscure, I just converted a Word document into a Google Doc. This normally works super well, but it was driving me crazy that sometimes I would see a page break and I couldn’t delete it. And when trying to type it would have really strange behavior, I couldn’t for instance…

Well, I’ve been using vim for a long time and it has taken forever to get something that is stable and really fast. I know most folks should probably move to VSCodium (the non tracker version of VSCode), but if you are really married to two things: Incredible speed and there is nothing like a…

OK, I’m spending the entire Memorial Day weekend writing up patents and things, so being efficient has never been more important. So as I sit here typing away, it seems like a good idea to go through how to get this all set up properly for maximum efficiency. So here are the parts: MacBook Pro…

Ok, I’ve been using OBS for six months now particularly for those times when Zoom backgrounds are not enough (or when I’m using Google Meets which doesn’t have much in the way of backgrounds. Sadly, Slack video is particularly awful, it doesn’t understand virtual cameras at all). But here are some tips and tricks to…

We’ve been using various versions of the Philips Sonicare for years now and after the switch to the new brush type, they seem to work well. The main pain is that the battery does die after a while. Normally about 5-7 years which is actually not bad although they are not replaceable so the whole…

This is truly a pain in the butt. But, if you want to migrate devices from one house to another. Right now we work on no less than five homes across the extended family and this leads to all sorts of problems because each Homekit device works different and needs a different reset. The main…