Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Well, Steve asked me what’s the best way to document your bike tour. He and Deb are going on an awesome ride across America to raise awareness for stroke. So what are the tools you need for the road: Helmet and Bicycle Cameras There are quite a few action cameras with bicycle mounts that you…

OK, well there is always a bridge too far. In this case, I go the Keychron K6 hot-swappable which is a really nice Bluetooth keyboard that costs just $85 from Amazon but the next step is to actually take the thing apart and stick foam and tape into it. Long story short, it turns out…

OK, this post is long involved and very specific, but a few things, with Comcast really dropping the year long contract price of the 1.2Gbps to $90/month plus $30/month for unlimited data, that’s quite an incredible deal, when you realize this is just $5 more than the 900Mbps and $10 more than 600Mbps. So in…

Well, it’s that time of year again, so after the 2020 list of really great olive oils that are also available on this Amazon list, its time in 2021 and we’ve settle on some favorites, but its a good time to read Best Olive Oils from the NY Competition to see what’s wonder (gold medals galore) and available generally (eg Amazon) so…

OK, this took a while to figure out. But, I’ve had a Rega P3 turntable that is plugged into a Rega Phono Mini that suddenly stopped working. It was strange the LED looked on but no sound came out. Finally, the hint for debugging is that a phono preamp amplifies the low signal generated by…

OK, time for my annual, I really don’t like Comcast. They just love to raise prices without much notification and then you always have to go back and sign up for a new annual plan. So today, the issues are that I was on a $80/month plan for 400Mbps (and a lowly 10Mbps up but…

Well, this replication stuff sure does work, so now from a Synology, here is a backup strategy that is pretty good for me: Synology Redundancy and UPS Well, this isn’t really back up, but to increase the reliability of any disks, you really want them RAID protected. That is when you write to the disk…

OK, one maddening thing that happened is one of my MacBooks has a tiny, as in 256GB hard drive. This is just too small for most uses particularly if you have lots of iCloud Photos or big github repos. I have both, so what are some solutions? Slim down the random files Well, if you…

OK, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the new payment scheme where rebate sites like Topcashback.com and legal settlements give you this tiny amount of prepaid Visa and Mastercards. Other sites just let you put in a Paypal account or give you an Amazon card directly. The problem is that you…

Well, I’ve been using Synology for more than six years now and I have to say what started as a small shell on top of base Linux has become a really nice easy to use interface. Note that these notes are for the older DSM6, I haven’t had time to upgrade to the new DSM7…

We were introduced to these amazing morsels called Calissons while in Provence. It’s from Aix en Provence and doesn’t take too long to make the main ingredients are very simple. The nice thing is that you can make them dairy-free as well. Old Fashioned and Manhattens Ok, I was suddenly in charge of making drinks…

Well, six years ago we got our Anova Sous Vide and it worked pretty well, but with the pandemic, we got it out again and one thing we didn’t do well got a vacuum sealer, so the bags would just leak. Turns out there are a huge number of these sealers around now, but ironically…

Well, we ended up getting two of these and beside deciding whether to get AppleCare or not (you probably should particularly for the steel version) Aluminum vs Steel Well, there is a huge markup if you decide to go steel, but it is shiny and looks really nice. Net, net I would say go with…

Now that the dry spell for Thunderbolt 4 docking stations seems to be ending, I will say the Razer TB4 that I got late last year is good, but it has relatively few ports and there is an issue with my LG C9 and it is not quite syncing when the MacBook goes to sleep.…

Well, I’ve used lots of different mouse pads during the pandemic and I have to say after of that there are two kinds which are wireless qi charger enabled and right now I don’t have a recommendation for them: Corsair MM1000. This is actually my favorite mouse pad but it is currently unavailable. The main…

OK, hold the comment that the best flip flops are the Dollar store kind, if you really want a comfortable set then I’ve tried lots of different styles and I think Outdoor Gear Labs has it right. Olukai really does have an amazing collection of nice flip-flops. I tried the Olukai Hokua and they are…

Well we got a bunch of nedrelow accessories for Christmas and I have to say that while expensive, they are just awesome; Magic Sleeve Duo. This basically is very simple, it’s felt with magnets sewn around the side, so you can stick your ipad in it and then it folds open as a really nice…

If you have an iPhone with MagSafe, you should really get a MagSafe car mount. This includes magnets that hold the phone and then you don’t even need to plug it in each time. I’ve tried the ESR haloLock mainly because if was only $35 and it works well. The magnets are strong enough and…

Man, this is a really fast moving world, but basically both Amex and Chase have been raising the prices of their premium cards a lot so you have to really keep base with the deals to make them worth it: Walmart+. You can get the monthly Walmart+ members costing $12.95/month for free with the Amex…

Well, the first WiFi 6E devices are finally arriving. As an example, the still in early access Ubiquity Access Point WiFi 6 Enterprise (U6 Enterprise) is available. At the maximum, it has 4×4 MU-MIMO in 6, 5, and 2.4GHz. It does need a 2.5Gbps Ethernet connection to really make this work and the new 2.5Gbps…

Certain electronic devices can’t get by with the normal NiMH batteries, for instance, our Brother P-touch PT70BM label maker needs 1.5V and it won’t work with normal rechargeables so you need to install Lithium batteries if you want a rechargeable solution like these USB rechargeable AAA batteries from Pownergy or buy an ugly wall wart.…

Well, I would never have thought it, but in addition to being a cesspool of negative thoughts and cat pictures, Twitter it turns out is becoming the place where new papers and work get announced. But of course, you have to be smart about the feed that you are using, so Springboard has a great…

OK, so Apple just announced their equivalent of Netflix Party, called SharePlay, so you can now watch movies together with friends over a FaceTime chat, but it is bizarrely complicated to figure out how to do it. There are application-specific ways to do this using Disney+ Watch Parties, but this is a more general way.…

This is actually very hard. Originally, when Apple had a five-camera limit on HomeKit Secure Video recording, we had two accounts both with Apple One on them. One had two houses in the family with three cameras. And the other five cameras. We also had Meross smart switches, Philips Hue lights, and HomePods which were…

Turns out that you would think that a simple drag and drop would suffice. Well it turns you guessed wrong. Here are the steps to take your nice video and make it work for Zoom backgrounds First of all, there are a set of requirements in the base hardware and the Zoom version for backgrounds.…

OK, last month, the big victory was getting Gogo Inflight to finally work on my iPhone 12 Pro Max with Alaska Airlines (I don’t know if it will work elsewhere, but it does work now). Now, the next confusing mix of solutions, but I finally got it to work by turning off NordVPN and most…

Wow, this is one confusing mouse. I got it over the simple Apple Mouse for one reason, it has Qi charging in it, so you don’t have the flip the mouse over on its belly and charge it. Otherwise, it is pretty much a huge pain because it is targeted at the gaming community. But…

Well, we started with a general list of USB adapters from PC Magazine. These are actually really hard to find because most desktops today have a WiFi adapter. So I start with a list of good USB Adapters and settled on the TP-Link T9UH is the most common for $50 at Amazon. But it turns…

Ok, I have a great we have an Ikea light that is a little strange. The shade disintegrated. It is ten years old and had a plastic shade that literally got so brittle it just broke apart. The system is really different, rather than having a harp, the shade actually mounts below the lightbulb. I…

OK, during the pandemic, I’ve been putting off the day when I need to fill up my drive again and now I have 10GB free in a 42TB disk array. Yikes. Fortunately, the disk system (a Synology DS2413+) has 12 drive bays and there are two free ones. The system runs as two RAID10, so…