Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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…

Ok, hopefully you will never have to do this but we had a flat screen installed and during COVID we wanted to get a new one but didn’t want anyone at home so off to figure out to uninstall a flat screen The main trick is that behind the TV there is a latch and…

Ok starting with the pandemic and thanks to a great sale from Amazon I got a Kindle Paperwhite. Its the first kindle I’ve gotten since the very first original one with the keyboard. It was slow but it had a Sprint connection. In truth I never used it very much and I thought that the…

Well in the continuing quest to make this a HomeKit house, we spent some time looking for reliable garage openers that can be used with the Apple home application. There are quite a few smart garage door openers (and Wirecutter) but the best choice is not obvious. The Tailwind system is the most reliable because…

Well, again about a year ago and fixing the house was a good chance to learn a few things about making things work: Silicone vs Acrylic Sealants. The long and short of it is that in damp climate and where there is rain, silicone forms a water impermeable rubber seal. You can’t paint it but…

Maybe you are wondering why is Tong posting so Much well it’s simple. In the switch to iOS 15 suddenly I have a count of open tabs. I keep a tab when I want to note it for later. Let’s just saying that seeing that I have 286 open tabs (and factoids) is pretty daunting.…

Well because of COVID we ended up getting four home filters for various folks and we even got an air quality monitor from kaiterra to monitor it. Net, net these things seem to work. When we didn’t have one on, our internal air quality rose to 84 on US AQI but putting one in dropped…

Well, now that the RainMachine seems to be working, the next project is at another house where there isn’t any sprinkler built in so how do you build something that can be HomeKit compatible so you can say things like turn the sprinkler on and and other general conditionals. There are quite a few automatic…

Ok, now that I’ve been on the bike for a year now doing 2,000 miles on an indoor trainer, its hard not to do some study and figure out thresholds for training. There is lactate threshold where your muscles start generating lactate and begin to burn out. The main idea is what % of VO2max…

Well, if emojis weren’t enough there is a whole new category of symbols so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is a great well happy or smug shrug and in fact iOS 15 will replace the word shrug with this set. It’s called a Kaomoji or face mark because it uses the kanji characters in concert with a great imagination.…

Well if you headed off to Montreal it’s going to be very cold. It’s typically -5 C highs and -13 C so you really need a warm coat. Particularly when the cold winds move in. Or just use the Underground City to get around. But there are some good choices from Outdoor Gear Labs with…

For a long time I’ve mainly been trying to get lighter helmets but the latest trend is going aerodynamic. This really matters at higher speeds. Like over 45 Kph. The road bike aero helmet have really evolved and best ones are wind tunnel tested now. This is really important for triathlons where aero is key.…

Ok a big problem has been there are so many ways to do scripting and cd/CI pipelines. There are basically three different approaches: Stuff everything into GitHub actions. With Act you can actually run GitHub action locally. So when you combine this with pre-commit you can have a single method for controlling things. The main…

Ok we have way too many HomePods and recently two really started to act up. One kept on setting off timers and then when we tried to turn them off it would say that none existed. Another kept playing music and when you ask it to stop it would say nothing was playing. Finally and…

What an annoying beeping and an inscrutable message. Our other alarms beep constantly which I just hate. But this little plug-in co2 system dumps this strange code L6. It should be flashing alternately with the ‘0’ with a short beep every 15 seconds. The indication is to replace the 9v battery. And every 10 years…

With sales of vegan foods on the rise, check the environmental impact of plant-based milks. We’ve been wondering which of the many variants of milk are better Turns out that diary milk is pretty polluting so buying different milk and eating plant base proteins are the way to go. Macadamia milk and oat milk are…

You wouldn’t think you should ever have to really shop for these but I’ve had a few over the years. The Bike Rumors and Bicycling reviews are pretty accurate: SILCA Pista Plus. This costs a fortune (more than some bikes at $165) but you are buying a piece of history. The design is nearly 60…

Wow, it is just crazy how non standard and different and difficult HomeKit pairing is. Some like Wemo won’t pair with their native apps but with work. Others like satechi pair fine but do jot connect reliably to 2.4Ghz. Same with the Wemo. The Aqara did pair fine with the M1S hub with the native…

OK, I bit the bullet today and did the iOS 15 upgrade. It actually went quite well. The new iPad catchup to iOS 14 is nice. Having widgets on the Home Screen is great. Also getting iCloud+ is nice, if a little buried, you need to go to Settings > User Name > iCloud >…

OK, I need somewhere to stash all of these strange findings. First of all if you have Docker for Mac as of September 2021, do *not* install experimental new virtualization framework. I did and it apparently breaks docker pull for some reason that is mysterious. I actually did a full install and reinstall before discovering…