Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

OK, I got a bunch of keyboards over the last week and here now is the review of my favorites in classic reverse top 10 order. It is actually hard to review this since keyboards are a combination of three things, the keyboard itself, the key switches which make the clicks, and then the feel…

Well, with Matrix Resurrection out, I’m just shocked at how good it looks in HDR. A great reason to get a new television with these HDR focused films like No Time to Die or Dune coming out now. But it reminded me that I loved the Matrix screensavers when they were out for the PC.…

Well, I have a collection of sort of bright to super bright headlamps and four years ago, I got the Coast FL85 which is a 600 lumen super bright headlight that uses three AAA batteries. Sadly although it has a lifetime warranty even while used indoors, the switch finally failed. I also have a bunch…

Argh, this has been frustrating for two years, I’ve looked and looked for the Superhuman commands that would take you to the very top of a mailbox or to the very bottom and nothing seems to list it. But finally, I had the inspiration to just try the Vi equivalent command which are gg to…

OK, I have a Synology and I have to admit I use about 1% of the applications that are there, you can run docker containers, they have all sorts of dedicated applications, but to reduce the attack surface area for various SmartHome devices, I like to have purpose devices since the cost is relatively low.…

OK, it does seem like such a deep product but there always seem like a few new things to learn with vi. Here are some really useful ones. The g and z commands arrived because they were relatively unused. So here’s a quick list of useful ones zz. I’ve always know that with H or…

OK, I’ve been spending way too much time in the keyboard hobby, now that I have basically every variant of factory-made keyboards, it’s time to go off the deep end and build my own keyboard, so here is what I’ve learned for those of you who want to dive deep. Bluetooth Hot-swappable Keyboard I wanted…

OK, so all the Apple announcements last year, it’s hard to know exactly what to buy but here are some recommendations thinking about a typical user who does mainly browsing and using the Internet and then a more hard-core user who is into video editing, photography, etc. The main resource I use here is the…

Idk why but I keep buying these vintage keyboard recreations? Maybe just being bored in COVID isolation just make be more inclined to surf the net. I know, first world problems, but in looking at old keyboards, here are some wants: IBM Selectric keyboard. I still remember the first time I saw that crazy ball…

Well, all this technology is so new, it’s not surprising how hard it is to make it all work, but with HDR and multichannel audio to work properly is actually pretty hard. We’ve already talked about the first level which is getting the base MacOS to push out 120fps UHD HDR with full 4:4:4 chroma…

Wow, this is actually pretty incredible, but with macOS Monterey, you can route audio to *any* Airplay device, it appears to know how to make Airplay 1 devices like an old Apple TV 3rd generation play multiple audio, so when you go to Apple Music and choose the radio icon at the upper left, you…

Ok, happy New Year and it seems like looking for cool little apps time, some of the ones working for me are: Rectangle. Well, I’ve used Divvy for a long time and it works but it is paid. I tried Hammerspoon, but it was hard to get what I really want which is dividing a…

OK, this has always annoyed me, MacOS to be safe for ordinary people doesn’t by default does not let you look at so called dotfiles (like .bashrc) or hidden system files in Finder. This is usually fine, but there are some times when you need it. For instance if you want to drag and drop…

OK, I’m actually a little shocked I am using this mailer for the last two years, but it has been an incredible productivity tool. The main limitation is that it is Google Mail only as a backend and that it does not have a unified inbox, so your contacts for each account are separate and…

OK, I had this problem with my personal repo where I had copied a bunch of courses that meant I was dragging around a lot of git lfs content. The solution was to recreate the repo as a new “richtong” repo, but this meant that all the organizations where I’m working needed major surgery to…

OK, I have to say the strangest thing about Google Workspace (nee GSuite) is that they don’t have email aliases. Instead, the idea of a BBS (bulletin board system from the 1980s) is mashed up with a Newsletter and then get contorted into an internal email alias. Well, the need is pretty simple (but hard…

OK, now that I’ve been using it for a bit here are some simple tips and tricks for OBS When you first install it. To get the virtual camera working you need to reboot the machine. Thanks @mcqueen for discovering that one! If you have a font you like, you can use WhatTheFont to figure…

Well with the licensing change that Docker is making everyone seems to be looking for an alternative, but this got real when @alex realized that the Docker Desktop for the Mac does not work with Jupyter Notebooks running on AMD64 that is 64-bit Intel at all after v4.0 and they won’t fix it. It seems…

Well, it is going to be another long dark winter of doing Zooms, so what are the best things for lighting. We have one setup that works well for podcasting with a single key light and a good Logitech BRIO camera plus a nice microphone (which are now down to $150 from their $199 list…

Now that Apple has brought back the MagSafe 3 connector for the MacBook Pro 2021, it made me realize how much I miss this connector for two important reasons so off to look for magnetic connectors that fit USB C or Micro USB physical connectors. These connectors can be two pin so charging only, five…

OK, this was a confusing one for me. In the past, on macOS, when you clock on the Show Tabs Overview at the upper right of the Safari tab bar, I normally expect to see all the shared tabs from other devices. At least this is how it worked MacOS. It is now on the…

Well, every so often I review (Toms’ Guide) these things mainly because the online reviews are really not so helpful, so I installed the base and then tried a set of ad blockers again some test sites like: D3Ward. a pretty simple checker that is open checks the major ad sites, analytic sites, error trackers…

Well, thanks to @alex, who mentioned that he uses zsh and not bash, so I spent or wasted two hours understanding it. It is definitely cool and the high points are: Bash scripts still work. Unlike other shells, the syntax is close to bash and as long as your scripts use #!/usr/bin/env bash then all…

OK, spent an hour with Alex working on this problem. He has some docker images which will not build on Apple AARCH64 (aka Arm64) architecture because they are so old. But Docker apparently allows you to run and build containers that are multiarchitecture. The problem is that the current Docker for Mac v4.3 has a…

OK, so if you are a Zoom disciple, you can see virtual backgrounds and they even have Zoom apps that let you use anything from Pexels. In addition, they have super good keyclick suppression. So if you are using Slack Video or Google Meets, then you are really in trouble if you like typing while…

Most of the iCloud Family Plan is awesome. For $25/month, you get 2TB of family storage for up to six family members. You also get Fitness, Arcade and AppleTV. I don’t know that we use much more than the family storage and AppleTV, but it’s nice to have the other stuff. The most confusing thing…

Ok this is going to be highly subjective, but some opinions: MacBook Pro M1 Pro and Max. These things costs $3-4K and the AppleCare+ is $300 or so for three years. It will be four years if you use an Amex or other card with extended warranty. Personally I’ve found that about half of our…

OK, given how hard it is to get all the trimmings on a LG C9 was super hard, what about a new 2021 43″ Sony LED television which makes a nice “smaller” monitor. To summarize, here are the things you want to change: Overscan. This is an annoying default, but in old analog TVs, the…

OK, this is so embarrassing, I’ve had my LG B9 (I thought for years it was a C9, but it is about the same thing) panel for two years now (got as the Pandemic was happening in December 2019) and I’ve actually never had it optimized for output. The instructions should be similar for the…

Wow, if you want to feel good about life, then you have to watch 14 Peaks, wow what a movie (89% Tomatometer). Nims is really an amazing person and doing all Nepalese climbers are incredible in Mission Possible. Give it a try, but the stories are incredible, but what a great story. If you think…