Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Dean asked me how I think about working with early-stage companies. This is a great question because there is a long way distance between being a full-time employee and having a coffee with a CEO. So here are the different stages you can think about engaging with a startup depending on your financial motivation. Is…

There are a sea of different Kensington Hubs as Thunderbolt 4 is coming out and it’s pretty hard to figure out what to use for what, but if you have: Older MacBook’s with Thunderbolt 3 Want to get new M1 MacBooks with Thunderbolt 4, but which are currently limited to a single monitor Be ready…

Geez, did I not write this down? At least, I remember fixing Dave’s PC but not how I did it. I’m sure I stuff it into tongfamily.com, but from the 6,000 plus posts I have, I can figure out how to find it. But, basically, a few years ago, Dave’s PC died. I thought it…

OK, this is a little strange, but it really is a problem on the Obins AnnePro 2 if you use the tilde (~) key, the problem is that while there are some amazing things like a quick click of the right SHIFT key and FN1 and FN2 and Ctrl will give you the arrow keys…

Well, I’m an idiot, there is no doubt. I’ve been pushing the envelope of the system pretty unknowingly and I had not seen a comprehensive, here’s how you bulletproof your system and what are the best practices. So first, what to do if you are an idiot and then how to keep it from happening…

Wow, it is really raining Homekit Smart Plugs and Extension cords. Really, I’m wondering, why given the relatively low cost, you wouldn’t just get all your new extension cords and multiple outlet adapters as HomeKit devices now, so some things to think about: Upgrading an old S-Video TV with an Apple TV is not crazy…

OK, this was a strange problem I hit today, suddenly, when using WordPress, JetPack could no longer see the custom site. Even running the diagnostics led to an unknown error. I saw a fleeting message about invalid SSL certificate but this never appeared again. But when I went to Safari and click on the lock icon for…

OK, as a poor man’s burglar alarm, we’ve been trying to figure out how to use HomeKit Secure Video and also have night lights go on in various vacation and summer homes across an extended family. It turns out that it is pretty tricky to do (and we have one outstanding issue), but here are…

We went crabbing yesterday and I was reminded how nice automatic inflatable life vests are. They are way less bulky that and don’t smell like rentals. There are lots available and the big things to figure out is whether you want an automatic inflatable (that is when you hit the water, they just inflate, which…

Well, we are about halfway through getting Dishy McFlatface to work and here are some notes. First of all getting it at all: To get it, you got to https://starlink.com throw in your address and pay the $99 deposit It then estimates when you can get it. Right now, for rural areas it’s pretty easy…

OK, I’ve had some pretty bad luck with third party USB C adapters. For some like the Satechi, they don’t connect reliably, but for the Geddie which thankfully is unavailable, but I’m sure it is just being used by a new low cost manufacturer somewhere. These are things that take a single USB C connection…

OK, well, Seattle just suffered a historic three days of high temperatures (in June?) of over 100F. Portland hit a record 117F. To give you a sense of how hot that is, the Las Vegas record is 117F/48C so that is awesomely high. So what can you do in this kind of temperature. In Seattle,…

OK, we have two of these Facebook Portals (and yes, I put a blanket over it when I’m not using it :-), but it has been a decent Zoom device and also for meetings because of the automatic zoom feature. If you do have one of these though, beware that they do silent updates of…

Nothing like pretending like it is Hawaii in the Pacific Northwest, our little neck of the woods hit 107F or 42C which is really unusual, but that doesn’t stop the work, so I hit a bunch of git lfs bugs again. As a reminder, if you get the dreaded “files should be pointer but weren’t”…

Well, there are a few tricks here that these hots days in Seattle (99F/37C) yesterday and a projected (102F/39C) today have taught me about making WiFi work well enough outside the house. The main trick is that inside our house, I’ve been using minimum RSSI. The idea is pretty simple the so called Station (we…

OK, I really don’t get Bluetooth pairing for this Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro. I just tried to repair it with a different laptop and no matter how many times I powered it on and off it just never worked. I even tried what they claim is a reset which is holding the middle button…

OK, there are some great deals on Amazon today (and a lot of junk). One thing that I need a bunch of are: Eufy Solo IndoorCam C24s which are $39 but $29 with a coupon which actually captures a 3MP image (which is about 1.5x bigger image). Finally if you are sure you don’t need…

OK, as the pandemic quarantine is ending, a quick review of the headphones that I have. With Apple Spatial coming out and lossless as well, I’ve hooked up my headphones to the very best that there can be: Sennheiser HD-650. These are my most expensive headphones at $400 and they sound it. They are open-backed…

OK, so I’ve finally spent the hour to go through every USB C cable I have and try to figure out how fast they are and how much power they can deliver. Digital Trends does a pretty good job of explaining the speed “crisis” which is basically that the USB C connector has literally half…

Well, I can’t really figure out why I need a Tesla Model S Plaid or any 1,000 hp plus car that goes 0-60 in 1.99 seconds, but I sure do want one, if only because the idea of a carbon wrapped rotor spinning at 20,000 rpm to go 200 mph is such a cool idea.…

OK, normally, I don’t use vim windows, they are really tiles, so I normally use separate windows and tools like Divvy and Hammerspoon to move windows around. Still, it is sometimes good to be able to see multiple windows particularly if you want to copy and paste between them. I haven’t spent much time learning…

OK, I have some old MP3 songs that I wanted to (finally!) get into Apple Music. After realizing that some things like iMovie need DRM-free content, I was motivated. I had been using MP3Tag to do this work, but it has become a paid application, so looking for open source tools that would manipulate these…

Well, this was quite the experiment, but instead of carry my trusty Sony A7R4 to a wedding, I wanted to see if you can really shoot an entire wedding, publish the photos and make a nice wedding video all on a single iPhone 12 Pro Max. And the answer is that except for some gotchas…

OK, here is a weird one. One of the (many!) nice features of T-mobile is that in addition to their awesome Netflix On Us partnership (you get a $17 off the $24 Netflix premium plan) is their one hour of free WiFi and unlimited texting, iMessage, Whatsapp, etc on Gogo US flights which are on…

Well, I suppose it is a long to expect a computer to work, but my MacBook Pro 2016 is five years old and has been super reliable. However, today I plugged it into my trusty CalDigit ThunderBolt 3+ docking station and the CalDigit would not power up. Usually, when I plug it in, the blue…

This is a new mode (at least for me). So for instance, if you want to add say a # in front of a bunch of lines, you can do a redo over and over, but the visual mode is a nice way to think about it, you just hit ctrl-v and then your selection…

OK, I got this all setup, I’m now using an old DAC (from the iPhone 3G days!) that is a high quality one, this goes from USB to the DAC and then from there to 3.5mm to a banana plug to my Sennheiser 650s. If you want to try thi stuff: It is actually hard…

Wow, Lo & Sons makes some of the best bags and backpacks around. Wirecutter likes their Hakuba which is something that a new professional is going to need (hint!). And, we’ve had the OG for years and it has held up really well. The current OG 2 is just slightly refined with the laptop case…

If you have a MacOS then with v5.6.4 at least in June, they’ve added a bunch of really useful features. I don’t know whether this works on Windows or Chrome, but presume there are lots of differences between platforms. Also, this kind of stuff eats a lot of CPU. Right now I’m running using 65%…