Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Wow, trying the latest BBQ gizmo for a Kamada Joe egg barbecue, a Wifi connected, temperature controlled blower and it works incredibly well. This thing is expensive, but it is basically a pit temperature probe and then three food probes. You connect it all up, then put a plate on it and a 10 Cfm…

Ok, I’ve been using a literally 10 year old Apple airport express to connect Apple devices to a stereo. But with airplay 2 out, one of the big features is that you can hang multiple airplay 2 devices together. So off to buy the way too expensive $99 airplay 2 compatible connector. This thing is…

Mini LED 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro production begins https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/09/mini-led-14-inch-and-16-inch-macbook-pro-production-begins And, series 7 watch for those of us with series 3 and an eight hour battery life 🙂

We’ve just loved the Magic Keyboard on the iPad Pro 12.9”. The thing is incredibly expensive ($349 for the 5th generation version and $199 for the 4th generation one), but it really works super well particularly with the touchpad support in iPadOS. So, now that we have it, it’s important that it remain protected and…

The Apple TV can send audio directly to your AirPods, AirPods Pro, or AirPods Max wireless headphones, letting you watch videos, play games, or work out with Apple Fitness+ without disturbing anyone else in the room. Here’s how. I never thought I’d need this but it is super handy. Supposedly you hold the Play button…

OK, quick ethnic happiness, I’ve been using a tried and true family recipe for BBQ ribs for a while. It’s not complicated, dump some Coca Cola, soy sauce, vinegar and honey into an aluminum foiled wrapped ribs and slow roast. But I decided to actually read up and am trying the New York Times recipe.…

OK, particularly with the pandemic, I’ve been just horrible with my wallet. When the iPhone 12 came out, I immediately got the MagSafe Wallet and since there were not many around back then, I got the way overprice Apple one. When you combine it with a clear MagSafe case, it works pretty well particularly because…

OK, this is a bit mysterious, but if you are trying to do data recording from the Mac, it is super convenient to be able have a GPS log with time stamps along with your video. While the Mac does capture time super well, what about location. Here is one way to do it (note…

OK I get this about three weeks or so on our new DigitalOcean Droplet running WordPress. The good news is the JetPack does inform you when it dies. On Bluehost, this basically has never happened. A restart of the droplet seems to help, but it would be good to figure out what is going on.…

OK, you are seeing a bunch of posts here that were accidentally put on my unused WordPress hosted blog. The problem is that the really great WordPress editor by default goes to their sites only. You can’t set a custom site (probably because they want to promote their own hosted system). Copy HTML to move…

The Markdown elements outlined in John Gruber’s design document. Two quick tips: If you are using the WordPress on an IOS device, it has two very different ways to integrate. If you choose the share button, then from the text actions, you can pick “Save as draft”. This let’s you simply bookmark things and then…

No I don’t mean the automatic kind, I mean the simple net with a pole, you wouldn’t think it would take so much work to get a simple thing, but even with Fakespot and reading reviews, things are getting past all these systems Do not get the POOLWhale despite the 5 star reviews Again, thanks…

Well, I discarded the keyboard as not usable because it doesn’t have arrow keys like the wired 60% keyboard and it didn’t have arrow keys like the dedicated keys on the Keychron V2. But, it turns out I was wrong about this and didn’t understand how it works. Net, net, while inconvenient as a daily…

OK, I think that this Homekit stuff is pretty deep and much of this doesn’t have a guide, but three quick things: Homebridge insights are that this thing actually works really well. It’s a simple node application and using a $50 Raspberry Pi is really the right approach from a simplicity and isolation point of…

OK, I confess, in our organizations, we typically have a single organization zoom account since there are not enough meetings to justify everyone having a paid account. This leads to all kinds of issues because of different defaults, but the short note is that you want Zoom meetings security to be set to the passcode…

OK, this thing actually works pretty well, here are some notes: Wow, it is way more dynamic than fixed watering so as the temperature shift here (Seattle is pretty unprecedented, in the old days, getting into the 80s was warm, but it’s been 109F and next week it will be 94F), but basically, it takes…

Wow, things are about to change alot in the communications business. There are two big things happening: Wifi 6E at 1GHhz at 6GHz. Ok, this has a horrible name, but basically, the US is about to open up 1GHz worth of spectrum in the 6GHz range. The implications of this are just awesome. Right now…

Well, in the never-ending quest to be efficient, one this that is a pain is that in normal vi, if you want to say change things inside a set of quotes, you have to go backward to the first quote with F” and then change to the next quote with ct” which means Find backward…

Well, I’ve always had good luck keeping Mac hardware going. In fact our MacBook 2008s still run (they are just so slow it’s not really worth it), but I encountered my first real hardware failure where it would not even boot into recovery mode. But if you get these symptoms, here are the things to…

Ok, getting down to the last licks on HomeKit devices, but here is the next batch. RainMachine is great, HomeKit glitch First of all, we’ve been using the RainMachine over the weekend and I have to say I’m impressed, it automagically works remotely without having to do a sign on and it is really cool…

Well, it’s iPad Pro (3rd Generation) since 2018 and have just loved it. There have been improvements with cameras and performance, but since this is mainly a read the Internet and research papers machines it has been great, even three years later. Smart Folio Keyboard good but not great When I got the Smart Folio…

OK, we are in the heart of the summer and I’ve always wanted to really smoke. Just to define terms, what most people call a BBQ is actually a grill since it applies lots of direct heat, then there is a real barbecue which is low temperate heat for a long time and finally a…

Well, time once again for the bi-monthly update on home automation. The main things are that we now have four different houses laid out with Apple Homekit as a base and here is what is working, some tips, tricks, and some traps that cover how to handle multiple homes, multiple users and gives a list…

Ok, in trying to finish gracetong.com, I’ve had a lot of little glitches with the template that is Wowchemy. This is a really nice quick and dirty way to get a resume up, but one big thing you give up when going to WordPerfect to Hugo is that many of the nice tools are not…

OK, I made a big error the other day, I’ve been using Wowchemy Academic and working with the sample site. The problem is that I wanted the latest fixes to the sample site but I had made lots of edits. Here are the big lessons on to avoid a 350 commit rebase! To keep something…

About the only time I ever print anything anymore are for government forms (they still need lots of paper) and passport photos. I seem to never even do print photos anymore, so as a result, literally, our printers seem to be “bit rotting away.” So here are some notes if you have these old printers:…

OK, time once again to look at the cost of cellular, last week, we had visited with Pete and Dave, so it a good time to review the cost of cellular plans. About five years ago, we switched from Verizon to T-Mobile. Thanks again, Mike for the “join discount” which was 20% or so as…

So, in an era, where there are widespread semiconductor part shortages, what should you do if you have a house like Dave’s that doesn’t have any Ethernet and gets uneven coverage from a single Access Point. And where there is *a lot* of interference from neighbors that makes it hard to get a clean signal.…

It is really hard to get any additional credits with apple.com or Best Buy for that matter, here’s one interesting hack:. The big issue is that with most rebate items there are lots of exclusions. Everything from electronics to anything well useful American Express has a promotion with Rakuten. If you sign up and spend…

OK, I’ve tried to stay away from SSH and doing command line stuff with Unifi, but this latest release (they used to call it the Unifi Controller which in the olden days was a piece of software that was written in Java and ran on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and you can imagine how fragile…