Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Argh, this is so frustrating. With Zoom and with Teams but not with Google Meets and Slack, you can get a nice virtual background. Since we’ve switched to Slack for phone calls, the question is how to get those back. It also appears on macOS does not work with FaceTime or Safari which is really…

Ok these really come in two forms. If you have prints then you want a nice flat bed scanner. If you want the highest quality though and you have negatives then you want something that can handle negatives and ideally has something called digital ICE which can remove scratches in the file emulsion (it’s a…

Man, life is complicated. I have no less than five different Métis’s of getting COVID codes. It is literally raining incompatible codes. But the goal is to get it all working where you can just flash a code on your phone and it works everywhere. So here’s a rundown at least for me of the…

When you get a new iPhone and then jump on a plane here are the crazy things (that people done tell you) you need to remember to do: Data roaming for whatever reason is not coming through. This setting is actually really buried in the interface. Settings > Cellular > Data Roaming needs to be…

YOu can now activate for your vanity domain and have it go to your iCloud account and up to three other vanity domains see Apple  or just go to iCloud Custom Domain and this is really handy for my @tongfamily.com and other single use. Twitter feeds and email news letters for anyone engaged in AI, Well, since the…

Well this is for the commercial laden version of Paramount but it’s eight $60 fit the next year. So not bad when combined with the half off you get with Amex for three months. It’s a little annoying that unlike Netflix you don’t get a discount on premium. The commercial free version. I plan to…

OK, this should work for most systems and after a year, I’m shocked at how well everything works. It took me a weekend to update the scripts that I have for installation as there are a few differences, but it is incredible how well it really works: If you are using a dotfile repository (which…

OK, so I made a mistake a while back, I was taking a bunch of ML classes and ended up creating a subdirectory course in my personal repo rich, but that means I’m carrying around 1GB of data that I basically never use. In the old days, this was really hard to fix, but as…

Well, Paul was asking so just how fast is the new MacBook Pro with M1 Max. Well, it was a good question, so a little digging, but some questions: When was RAM slower than the current SSD transfer speeds? How has that ratio of level 1 and level 2 each to ram storage to the…

Well, I’ve been experimenting with using Canva for presentations. It has a really great integrated library of elements and integrates animations way better than Google Slides. But here are some tips: At least on Safari, Canva is a super pig. It can hang entire system spinning. However, the dedicated MacOS application you can get with…

The :g command and it’s reverse :v This Global command is quicker than the typical :s/old/new/g instead the syntax is [range]g/pattern/cmd which is way more general. For for instance, if you wanted deleted all the lines with with world “hello” in it, you type :g/hello/d And there is reVerse version so, :v/hello/d means delete all…

So I keep forgetting how useful macros (and registers are) or repetitive things. Basically, Vi has 10 numeric registers and then alphabetic registers. If you want to see them then type :registers and you can see what is stored there. There are two ways to use them. The first is to stick thinks into a…

In the same way that there is essentially just one mechanical watchmaker, one sunglasse maker and one optical company, there is an incredible concentration in the home theater maker. Like skis and other passion projects the key is to find an independent group that cares about the product. And not a gigantic conglomerate looking for…

Argh this is so complicated and the problem is so silly. So one of our phones is working and the other wasn’t. The short answer is so silly: The checklist What was happening is that I would go to the site but there are a host of requirements to make this work: Enable wifi calling.…

Ok, this has been a problem for the last three months. When I lost my Unifi Dream Machine Pro controller because it was hung, I was an idiot and just did a factory reset. I tried going to the Reddit group, also sending a ticket, but it looks like the geniuses hang out on the…

Well, the various covers and cases are not out yet, but one thing to really consider is AppleCare. With traditional AppleCare for $249, you get three years of coverage and if you use the right Amex or MasterCard, you get an additional year added. But for a device that costs $4K, it might make more…

Well, dual SIMs is a useful feature if you have a work and home number and want to get calls on one phone. Of if you travel a lot and want a local sim. The trick here is that starting with the iPhone XS, Apple supports an eSIM, that is an electronic SIM, so no…

First of all hat tip to Sam on this one. With the new iOS 15 you get both widgets and an App Library so you don’t get endless pages of icons anymore. But the question is how to use all this effectively. Getting it right with Focus, Home Pages and Notifications Right now, I have…

Well, the really cool feature Universal Control where you can just have one keyboard and work across multiple Apple devices isn’t yet here. It turns out it less magical than you think but still awesomely cool. So even without this new feature you can use your iPad as a second screen. Pretty valuable when you…

Well, in the US things are pretty (unfortunately) locked up. Yes, there are some pre-paid carriers, but the triopoly of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are pretty incumbent. And although for us, T-Mobile works out well, it depends on your coverage. Things are a bit different in Canada, particularly in Quebec. There Videotron is tearing it…

OK, the Y-Combinator SAFE invented in 2013 (we used it back in 2014) and then updated in 2018 to the “post-money” SAFE is a great example of an simple idea that is actually kind of hard to calculate unless you spend some time with algebra. Most of the sites like Carta or Andrew Jenkins, are…

Well, now that prices for televisions and things are coming down and the supply chain normalizing, it’s a good time to think about that 27″ monitor that’s slowly dying (look at you ATong), so here are some good things to look at from Rtings.com, which is still the site I really like for real world…

OK, so we’ve had this Brother HL-L2380DW which is an all-in-one printer. It is a laser and given that we almost never print, that is really the right choice. An inkjet will just jam and not work if you don’t print regularly. However, despite the fact that we have not touched the firmware on the…

Well, it’s been about nine months since I’ve written a significant python program and I have to admit I’ve forgotten a ton of things and I’m reminded that I never did figure out the right way to package things, so during the last three weeks, I started with the simple stuff, but now I’ve ended…

If you are buying a bunch of computers, you might consider the small business discounts for Apple. Given how much Apple gear I see companies buying. There are two hassles. When you sign up it will barf on the phone number you supply. It needs a specific format but doesn’t tell you want it is.…

Well, now that we have a farm of a zillion HomeKit devices. Going away for a while reveals the weaknesses. The problem so far is that these devices have what I would call computer reliability but not it should just work like a lightbulb reliability. Some examples: UniFi Protect and Access. The biggest disappointments. The…

Well, it’s been all over the internet, but Apple did launch some truly powerful chips in their new MacBook Pro lineup. The M1 Pro is 10 cores (8 performance and 2 efficiency) with 16 neural engine cores and between 16 up to 32 graphics cores. Plus up to 64GB of memory. What’s a nerd to…

OK, I know, I know, I still have two sites that are on multiuser WordPress (in addition to this site). I’ve migrated just about everything but two sites. But a good reminder was the JetPack reported the three sites down (the umbrellas sites and the two remaining subsites) on DigitalOcean. As a reminder the quick…

If you are thinking about getting a projector instead of flat screen. Basically the way that the math works is that a 1000 lumen projector will give you 1000 lux against a square meter. Or to do another conversion 1 lux is 1 lumen per square cm. But there are lots of measures of what…

Well two things are true in life Hanlon’s Razor is not a bad one. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately exposing by stupidity. Hanlon’s Razor But absolute favorite rule for working in big companies is: Always postpone meetings with time wasting morons Dilbert channeled by Scott Adam’s And I could resist. Thanks Calvin…